WELL THAT FITS BUT IT’S A BIG SURPRISE!!! by Göran Dahl Up until very recently,

WELL THAT FITS BUT IT’S A BIG SURPRISE!!!

by Göran Dahl

Up until very recently, it was thought that Eastern Europeans (in the form of Poles, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians and Balts) were the genetically closest to Proto-Indo-Iranians and, indeed, to Proto-Indo-Europeans. However, it appears that these ethnic groups had ever so slightly inflated Steppe ancestry percentages due to having higher levels of so-called Narva_HG admixture. Narva_HG belongs to the Mesolithic Narva culture, whose members were a mixture of EHG (Eastern Hunter-Gatherer) and WHG (Western Hunter-Gatherer).

Today, we can say that the people closest to Proto-Indo-Iranians and Proto-Indo-Europeans in terms of genetic distance (and Steppe ancestry) are Norwegians, Irishmen and Icelanders; the latter due to being a composite of the two former. Irishmen tend to be the closest fit for typical Proto-Indo-Iranian cultures such as Srubnaya and Sintashta, whereas Norwegians are the closest to Yamnaya_Kalmykia (a subset of Yamnaya) and Potapovka, which is thought to be ancestral to the forementioned Srubnaya.