Over what period of time are morphological differences discernable in the genetic record? You are only distinguishable as you for about the past six generations, at which point you aren’t distinguishable any longer from the mass of the regional population at that time.
One of the criticisms I get from right wing and population geneticists, is that west eurasians are the only historical category while I refer to the spectrum of post-glacial proto-peoples (european, finnic caucasian, iranic, turkic) that affected, and were affected by, the IE expansion.
The reason for my emphasis is the spread of IE thought as it converted from submission to nature to dominance over nature. In other words, I’m interested in the european, persian, and proto-into-iranian thought that persisted until the spread of the cancers of the abrahamic religions created the abrahamic dark ages.
So given that as far as I can tell the original ‘caucasians’ are mostly gone (lost), as are the original indo-iranians (remember, india used to include afghanistan and pakistan, and that is the origin of indian civilization – the muslims drove indians and indian civilization from their original homeland,back into the dravidian subcontinent.
As far as I know, and I am pretty certain I’m correct, the west eurasians are detectably related in the record and from what I understand, indistinguishable. However, that is not to say that they were neigher distinguishable in the past, nor prototypes of the current spectrum of indo-european speakers, and west eurasian peoples.
Worse, aggregates at our current level of understanding produce overconfidence in similarities, since it is a small fraction of our cognitive, emotional, and physical differences that cause significant differences in group temperament, cognition, and demonstrated behavior.
What does this mean? It means I want someone to either correct me or agree with me, but the criticisms aren’t working so far. Why? Because the system of categories (ontology, paradigm) is one in which I am seeking to isolate the differences in group evolutionary strategy as populations increased after the IE Expansion.
Open questions that I know of are:
- I don’t know the point of transition for the Turkic Peoples, other than being outcast from mongolian region and subsequent islamization.
- The iranic (south and eastern) branch and the european (north and western) branch appear to have split early. With caucasians south, iranic east then south (around the caspian) finally replacing the Caucasian (most of the peoples today are iranic). Previously I had not been sure if the iranic peoples went clockwise or counter-clockwise around the caspian. (but again, I am not sure this is true since multiple theories are still competing.)
- The original caucasians appear to have spread south into levant mesopotamia and they appear to be lost. (I don’t know if this is true yet).
- The Old europeans (SE Europe) have been present a very long time and are of at least three admixtures: Early Neolithic Farmers, IE-europeans, Slavs, Anatolians, and Turks.
- I dont know if the anatolians (hittites) came west (counter-clockwise) or east (clockwise) around the black sea, but as far as I know to date it is counter-clockwise (through old europe).
- As far as I know the aristocracy in old europe from at least the bronze age collapse forward, was european, not old european.
- As far as I know the minoans were caucasians.
- I am still unclear about the origins of the mongoloid race and the emergence of the chinese people in particular. I believe the information exists but I am simply unaware of it because I haven’t spent time on it.