Pending testing of Scythian fossil DNA, Igor Rojansky, PhD, deduced that Scythians were of R1a-Z2125 Y-DNA subclade, the same as the Kipchaks' Y-DNA, the Timber Grave horse nomads, and the subclade of the Corded Ware R1a component. That conclusion, from the tip of the pen of one of the best experts on genealogical genetics, has good chances to be confirmed experimentally. And if not, it still leaves us with the Kipchaks' Y-DNA subclade, the Timber Grave horse nomads' subclade, and the subclade of the Corded Ware R1a component. That comes after it was authoritatively confirmed that the Corded Ware R1a component originated in the Timber Grave peoples. A very rich trove with endless consequences! Russia is full of shoeboxes filled with sculls from kurgan excavations, they are bidding their time to come to light.

The group of Lithuanian Tatars is an ethnic island transplanted to the Poland's territory 600 years ago. Like a host of such test tubes scattered everywhere, it affords a peak at the state (Kipchak Khanate, aka Russian moniker Golden Horde) and the society long gone. The work of I. Rojansky investigates Y-DNA composition of the small “Tatar” island and offers a telescopic view of their ancestors, in particular of the haplogroup subclade R1a-Z2125, which he traces to the Scythian ancestors based on a convergent number of analogies. This work (May 2017) is the first that, absent paleogenetic testing, provides a first deduced evidence on the genetic affiliation of the Scythians. With the ethnic affiliation of the Scythians still stubbornly discussed, and on the background of consistent ducking and retreating of the Scytho-Iranian, aka Scytho-Ossetian, theory, the identification of a specific haplogroup subclade, with its unique history of development and migrations, is a giant nail into the coffin of the fake theories and their propaganda machinery.

Probably, among the best scholastic arguments of the author is the reference to the Sekler (Székely) people, a very significant ethnic group of the Scythian descendents from the Scythia Magna in the territory of the modern Rumania. Known from the time of Phillip, the father of the Alexander the Macedonian, the Scythia Magna had survived for 2200 years, in the early Middle Ages bridging Hungary to the north and Danube Bulgaria to the south. With the de-Turkification of the Danube Bulgaria, the Dobruja Scythia was left alone. It was incorporated into Hungary for 800 years, till the dismemberment of the Hungary, and the transfer of the Sekler lands to the newly formed Rumania. Seklers gave Hungary its runic script, which was attested in use as late as 1699. The name Sekler already contains the ethnonym S'k known from the appellations Saka and Scythian, with a Türkic plural suffix -lar, validating their Scythian identity. We also know from the Chinese annals that the tribe Tujue (Türk) led by the Ashina clan, that gave the name to the polity, the Türkic people, and the Türkic linguistic family, was an offshoot of the tribe Se (Saka). That record comes from the time when the Chinese had already learned the intricacy of the Türkic (Scythian in our context) ethnic structure, and artfully used it.

Page numbers are at the end of the page; they follow the pagination of the version published in Russian. Posting's notes and explanations, added to the original text and not noted specially, are shown in (blue italics) in parentheses and in blue boxes. Green highlight mark unrelated to the contents passages that are completely out of whack with objective analysis, and instead reflect on the author's beliefs. To accentuate context, subtitles were added to the sections of the original text.

Analysis of a representative Y-DNA dataset of the Lithuanian Tatars has led to the conclusions that
(i) at least 2/3 of its members paternally descend from the inhabitants of the steppe belt of the Kipchak Khanate (aka Golden Horde), who spoke Kipchak languages and belonged to various branches of the haplogroups R1a, J2, Q1a and R1b;
(ii) the principal Y-DNA lineages of the Lithuanian Tatars originate from the Scythian tribes, which occupied the Eurasian steppe zone during the Iron Age; and
(iii) an emergence of the Kypchak branch of the Türkic languages ​​may be attributed to a Turkification of one group of the originally Scythian tribes, judging by the predominance without any exception of the R1a-Z2125 subclade among all Kypchak branches.
The latter proposal suggests a critical re-evaluation of the existing models of the Kipchak ethnic history.

Keywords: Lithuanian Tatars, Lithuania, Tatars, DNA, nomads.
1715

In the center of Europe, surrounded by Belarusians, Poles, and Lithuanians, lives a small (about 12 thousand people) people, whose existence is breaking accepted definitions of ethnology. They are Lithuanian (or Polish-Lithuanian) Tatars who do not differ neither by their lifestyle nor appearance from their neighbors, who lost their original Türkic language more than 400 years ago, and largely changed their religion (Sunni Islam), but retained their ethnic self-awareness and a memory of their roots. According to numerous documentary records, they are descendent population of the Kipchak Khanate, who switched to the service of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) primarily in the late 14th - early 15th cc. The regiments of the light Tatar cavalry proved to be a valuable addition to the heavily armed cavalry, a basis of the Polish-Lithuanian army of that era. This is not a sole case when the nomads of the Eurasian steppes enlisted in the service of the European monarchs and settled in the territory of their countries, but only the Lithuanian Tatars managed not to dissolve among the surrounding peoples, and retain their national identity. This phenomenon attracted attention of the historians from the time when some chroniclers tried to explain a defeat of the Teutonic Order in the Battle of Grunwald by the German knights confronted by allegedly innumerable Tatar hordes.

Although the history of individual Lithuanian-Tatar gentry lines is known from documents on the transfer of their ancestors to the Lithuanian service, there is little information on the whole on the Lithuanian Tatars ancestors' places of origin and ethnic background. A solution of that puzzle was helped by a turn to the data from the population genetics collected during field research (Pankratov 2016) and obtained from the commercial Lithuanian Tatars Nobility Project (Dumin 2016). Both studies noted the contribution of the Y-chromosome lines of the Central and East Asian origin, but differed in assessing that contribution, and the origin of other genealogical lines.

One more aspect of this problem can be of interest not only to the narrow GDL specialists, but also for all medieval historians. Due to the rather early isolation from their steppe kins, the Lithuanian Tatars had to retain a complement of genealogical lines of the steppe part of the Kipchak Khanate at the time of its rise and blossom.

Since the Tatar migration to the GDL was fairly massive, at the level of several thousand professional troops, the genealogical lines of their offspring can be a “sample” of their composition at the time of migration. And an analysis provides independent data in the reconstruction of the ethnic composition and the origin of the peoples who were instrumental in the historical course of the Eastern Europe and the North Caucasus in the 10th-15th cc.
1716

Despite a large amount of the available historical and linguistic material, many questions have no unambiguous answers. In particular, there is no truly convincing theory on the ethnogenesis of the Kypchak peoples, whose languages, for a short time by historical standards, supplanted all other languages of the Great Steppe. This paper analyses the currently available data on the Y-DNA of the Lithuanian Tatars to provide additional material for addressing the above problems.

Methods and materials

Two independent samples were used as a starting material. The first was collected on condition of anonymity in Belarus among people whose ancestors beyond the 3rd generation were Lithuanian Tatars. This is a 74 haplotype test in the 17-mark format YFiler (Pankratov 2016). The second sample, published on the Lithuanian Tatars Nobility project, consists of 42 haplotype test in formats from 12 to 111 markers.

The project administrators personally selected participants with confirmed Lithuanian-Tatar origin, and made their names available. There are 32 in all, the results of tests for Y-DNA showed that not all of the namesake participants were close relatives, and conversely, as a rule the lines with recent common ancestor had participants with different surnames (In Russia, that was a result of passportization, surnames were assigned after the name of the grandfather, separating brothers into different lines.) Since one of the principal conditions for sampling, namely the absence of close kinship, was not controlled in the commercial DNA project, an additional verification is necessary as to how appropriate is its use for the task at hand. A distribution of haplotypes over haplogroups can be used as a criterion. If their shares are the same within a margin of error, both samples can be considered identical representatives and consistent with the principle of random selection. Statistics are shown below.

1717

Both samples include the same complement of haplogroups, and the most represented R1a has relative fractions of 50% and 40% respectively. The second largest haplogroup J2 yields 20% in both, and some scatter in the minor lines is within the statistical error. The data is consistent, allowing a combined analysis of both samples as a single whole. The total number of 116 samples of Y-DNA gives a test density of 1 to 500 for an ethnic group of about 12,000 people. This is a high indicator, surpassing the data from many studies of population genetics, which is considered to be “classical”. An analysis of a sample of the Lithuanian Tatars in the population geneticists study from Belarus (Pankratov 2016), also used data on the Y-DNA of other Türkic-speaking peoples, Nogais, Kazan Tatars, Azeris, Chuvashes, etc.. That data is also used as far as practicable.

First of all, statistics on the main haplogroups and subclades in the sample of Lithuanian Tatars should be considered and compared with data on relevant peoples. It is represented graphically in Fig. 1, where for the Lithuanians, Poles, Ukrainians and Kazakhs the source was the projects available on the Family Tree DNA website (https://www.familytreedna.com/projects.aspx), and for the Belarusians (Rozhansky 2013), Crimean Tatars (Muratov 2016 ) And the Kirgiz (Di Cristofaro 2013) from the published field samples.
1718

Fig. 1. Distribution of 12 major haplogroups and sub-clusters of Europe in samples of Lithuanian Tatars,
their surrounding peoples, and peoples of the Eurasian steppe zone

Approaching the statistical data formally, Lithuanian Tatars would occupy an intermediate position between the Eastern Slavs and the Türkic peoples, as was stated according to the Principal Components Analysis (PCA) in the population genetics article (Pankratov 2016, Supplementary Fig. 1). The authors concluded that “the results of the PCA pointed to the mixed origin of the patrilineal pool in the Lithuanian Tatars, as it contains haplogroups typical of the Caucasus, Central Asia and Siberia, along with those that are now common among Europeans.” To understand whether this is really the case, and what is the actual degree of the Y chromosome lines' mix instead of all-averaging PCA should be used DNA genealogy's methods. Prior to the analysis, note that no East Asian haplogroups C2-M217 and O-M175 are contained in the available sample of the Lithuanian Tatars, in the Fig. 1 they are in the category “other”, and they constitute a significant proportion of the Kazakhs and Kirgizes. That will be needed in the subsequent discussion.

Lithuanian Tatars haplogroup R1a, 46%

Almost half of the Lithuanian Tatars from the joint sample belong to the haplogroup R1a, represented by subclades Z2125, M458 and Z280.

The distribution of 17-marker haplotypes along branches is shown in Fig. 2.
1719

Fig. 2. Tree of 17-marker haplotypes of Lithuanian Tatars of haplogroup R1a.
Added from the list in (Pankratov 2016) Nogais' and Volga Tatars' haplotypes are not labeled.

As follows from the structure of the tree, the same branches are present in both samples, and the seven participants of the Lithuanian Tatar Nobility project show exact coincidences on common markers with haplotypes collected on condition of anonymity in Belarus. This circumstance made it possible to clarify attribution of several lines from the field sample, typified by only 26 snips.

The Asian subclade R1a-Z2125 has two branches, whose ancestors' dating agrees with the timing of the Lithuanian Tatars' becoming a separate ethnic group. A group of 11 haplotypes on the right part of the tree belongs to the branch YP1542, widespread among the Kirgiz and Altaians. Its 17-marker base haplotype diverges by 2 mutations from the base haplotypes of the main Kirgiz branch from the field sample (Di Cristofaro 2013), which is dated by 1400±300 years ago:

Lithuanian Tatars 13 25 15 11 11 14 10 14 11 32 15 14 21 12 15 11 23
Kirgizes              13 25 16 11 11 14 10 14 11 32 15 14 21 12 16 11 23

The neighboring group of 9 haplotypes belongs to the very rare branch R1a-S23201, carriers of which are found among Hungarian Seklers, Moldovans, Russians, Ukrainians, Kazan Tatars, Chechens, and also in the British Isles.

1720

The small number of the haplotypes and the large distances between them allow to estimate the timing of the common ancestor only approximately at 3500±1000 years ago. Their base haplotypes are, respectively:

Lithuanian Tatars 13 23 17 11 11 14 11 14 11 32 16 14 20 12 16 11 23
R1a-S23201       13 23 17 11 11 14 10 14 11 32 16 14 20 12 16 11 23

Both branches belong to the subclade R1a-S23592, which is parallel to the well-studied R1a-Z2123, widely distributed in the Indian subcontinent and in a number of the Türkic-speaking peoples. It should also be noted that the parent branch of S23592 was identified in a fossil DNA sample under the code number RISE495 from the Krasnoyarsk Territory, referred to the Karasuk Bronze Age culture (Allentoft 2015, V. Tagankin, private communication). Thus, there is no doubt that both considered lines of the Lithuanian Tatars ascend to the peoples who settled the eastern part of the Eurasian steppes from the Bronze Age during the Aryan migrations.

However, the quantity of the haplogroup R1a steppe branches in this sample are fewer than that of the Central European subclade R1a-M458, which led the authors of the Scientific Reports article to a conclusion of the Lithuanian Tatars' Y-chromosome lines admixed nature. Albeit such conclusion seems to be axiomatic, it conflicts with a number of facts. First, the 17-marker tree of haplotypes shows two compact branches which converge to dating significantly beyond the time of the appearance of Tatar settlements in the GDL. If they had arisen by conflating with the surrounding Slavic population, the times of their ancestors' lives were about 600 years ago and later, or they would have been close to the dating of these branches among the Slavs, that is about 2300-2700 years ago. Secondly, the sample Blt27 at the top of the diagram is in close kinship with the Karanogais from the Dagestan and the Itil Tatars, in no way connected with Byelorussia. That group of 5 haplotypes coincides by common markers with a group of three Kazan Tatars from the Tatar project FTDNA, whose common ancestor lived 400±170 years ago, and for which is confirmed a West Slavic branch of L260. Obviously, they all descend from a common Tatar ancestor, whose further genealogy is yet unknown. Thirdly, the same can be said of the group of the Lithuanian Tatars, Karanogais, a Kuban Nogay and a Volga Tatar in the lower part of the diagram. The following chain of snips was established for one of them:

R1a-M458 > PF7521 > CTS11962 > L1029 > YP417 > YP418 > YP1137.
1721

According to data from the FTDNA haplogroup project, the YP1137's parent branch YP418 stands out from the entire Central European branch (CTS11962) in that it is extremely rare among the Western Slavs, but dominates among the Russians, Ukrainians and Bulgars, who, in turn, have few other branches. As in the case of the “Tatar” line L260, the ancestor of that branch obviously also belonged to one of the Türkic-speaking peoples. Finally, the scenario with the recent change of the subclade M458 lines from the Belarusians to the Lithuanian Tatars contradicts the unusual “selectivity” of such transfer. The branches of the primarily Central European subclade M458 are widely spread among the Belarusians, but their share (about 15%) is smaller than that of the subclade R1a-Z280 (35%) and is compatible with contributions of the branches N1c-L1025 and I2a-CTS10228. In the 19 haplotypes R1a-M458 sample of the Lithuanian Tatars are 5 R1a-Z280, one or two N1c-L1025 and not a single I2a-CTS10228. In the population genetics such imbalance is usually attributed to the “founder effect”, but this explanation is akin to the textbook's “rope is a simple cord”. Interpretation should not suffer truisms and strains.

(end of the Scythian/Lithuanian Tatar R1a-S23592 section)
1722

Lithuanian Tatars haplogroup J2, 20%

Fig. 3. Tree of 17-marker haplotypes of the Lithuanian Tatars from haplogroup J2.
Added from the list in (Pankratov 2016) haplotypes of the Nogais, Volga Tatars,
Mordovians, Mari, Chuvash, and Bashkirs, are not labeled.

The second haplogroup in the sample is J2-M172. Its significant share (23 out of 114 haplotypes) obviously made a main contribution to the PCA calculation, bringing the Lithuanian Tatars closer to the peoples of the North Caucasus. However, such blunt approach is inadmissible, since the haplogroup J2 diverges into dozens of far-flung branches, many not related to the Caucasus at all. In the cited paper (Pankratov 2016) the issue of attribution to the haplogroup J2 branch was left out, voiding conclusions drawn by the authors. Apparently, to somehow compensate for the deficiency, examining the haplogroup J2 authors turned to a large number of haplotypes among other peoples: Nogais, Volga Tatars, Mordvins, Mari, Chuvashes and Bashkirs.
1723

A summary tree for the entire multinational sample is shown in Fig. 3.

Contrary to the population geneticists' graphs, the Lithuanian Tatars practically have no branches typical for the North Caucasus. In the left and at the bottom of the diagram are 6 disparate haplotypes attributable to the subclades J2b-L283, J2a-PF5197, J2a-M67 and J2a-L25. The type of four 12-marker haplotypes from the Lithuanian Tatar Nobility project not included in the tree is unclear, except for one identified as J2a-L192. The remaining 13 haplotypes form a compact branch with an ancestor from the era of Kipchak hegemony in the Eurasian steppes. This genealogical line stands apart from other cases of haplogroup J2 in the Eastern Europe, since it does not belong to any featured subclades of the L283, M67 and L25. The SNP Pack in analysis of the J-M172 (J2-M172) finds this snip sequence:

L26> PF5087> Z2221> PF5197> PF5172> PF5191> FGC16096> S15439.

The J2 Haplogroup Project (https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/j2-m172/about) registered only 3 participants with a confirmed snip S15439, its equivalent L198 was determined for 9 participants, for another 6 haplotypes was confirmed a higher snip FGC16096. The project administrators included remaining cases of these branches by a similarity of extended haplotypes.

The structure and geography of the branch FGC16096 is presented in the following scheme (Figure 4).
1724

Fig. 4. Tree of 37-marker haplotypes of subclade J2-FGC16096

It is possible to estimate how far three compact lines of the branch S15439 from Saudi Arabia (1000±200 years before the common ancestor), Switzerland (875±210 years) and Lithuania (850±260 years) diverge. Here are their basic 37-marker haplotypes, in the same sequence:

12 23 14 10 13-15 11 13 12 13 11 29 15 9-9 11 11 26 15 20 29 13-13-15-15 11 10 19- 22 14 14 16 16 34-38 11 9
12 23 14 10 14-15 11 13 13 13 11 29 15 9-9 11 11 26 15 19 30 13-15-16-16 10 11 19- 22 15 14 17 15 35-38 11 9
13 23 14 10 13-18 11 15 13 14 11 30 17 9-9 12 11 24 15 21 32 14-15-16-16 11 11 19- 22 15 13 16 17 34-34 12 9

They form a triangle with sides in 31, 29 and 14 mutations, where the short side corresponds to the distance between the Arab and the Swiss group. This means that the Lithuanian-Tatar branch diverged from the others 7300 years ago or earlier. Since it belongs to the subclade J2a-PF5197, which is specific for the Asia Minor and South Asia, the most likely choices are the Central Asia and the adjacent step belt.
1725

The remaining haplogroups found in the sample of Lithuanian Tatars are noticeably inferior in numbers to R1a and J2, but among them also are a number of lines that can give information about the origin of this ethnic group. They are presented in graphical form in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5. A minor haplogroups tree of 17-marker haplotypes of Lithuanian Tatars.
The added from the list in (Pankratov 2016) haplotypes of Armenians and Azerbaijanis are not labeled.

The branches of haplogroups Q (10%), R1b-M73 (3 ea) и R1b-Z2103 (2 ea), marked in Fig. 5, are found in many peoples of the Great Steppe, and therefore their appearance in the Lithuanian Tatars is quite natural. It is curious that all three representatives of R1b-M73 subclade appear to belong to the branch identified in the remains of the Mongol nobility of the Mongol Empire times sensationalized by journalists who were not too familiar with the subject (Lkhagvasuren 2016).

    1726

Lithuanian Tatars haplogroup G2a-L1264, 6% (Irrelevant guest)

The origin of the young line from the G2a-L1264 branch is not so obvious.

If we literally interpret statistics on modern peoples, this line should be attributed to recent migrants from the North Caucasus, since the L1264 branch is one of the main genealogical lines of Adygea-Abkhazian peoples, and is also prevalent in Georgia. However, the finding of haplogroup G2 (the subcomponent was not determined) in the burials of the Don Alan of the 8th century AD. show that 600-700 years before the migration of Tatars to the GDL, this haplogroup existed in the territory of the future Kipchak Khanate (Afanasyev 2015).

The geography of the G2a-L1264 branch outside the Caucasus proves the same. It is scattered with low frequency among the eastern Slavs, Tatars and Ashkenazi Jews, which is more in line with the early steppe origin of these rare lines than with the relatively recent migration from the North Caucasus.

Lithuanian Tatars haplogroup N, 3% (Irrelevant guest)

The sample has only three haplotypes of the haplogroup N, of which one belongs to the subclade P43 common among the Türkic peoples. The attribution of the other two is unclear due to low resolution.

Lithuanian Tatars haplogroup I2a2-M223, 1% (Irrelevant guest)

On the origin of the only sample of the haplogroup I2a2-M223, which is rare in Eastern Europe, is difficult to draw any conclusions.

Lithuanian Tatars haplogroup J1-Р58, 4% (Irrelevant guest)

Finally, the remaining two groups consist of close relatives with unlikely both steppe and Slavic origins. The first, of the haplogroup J1-P58, the authors of the cited article tried to draw from the Caucasus, apparently guided by the PCA calculation. Since they could not find any of the P58 subclade in the North Caucasus (where is located the parallel Z1828), for comparative haplotypes were taken those of the Armenians and Azeris. For some unknown reason, remained outside of the study the people from the same settlements with the Lithuanian Tatars for the last 600 years, the Ashkenazim Jews. The base haplotype of one of the Ashkenazim branches of the haplogroup J1, namely J-FGC5206, exactly coincides with the base haplotypes of the Lithuanian Tatars group:

12 23 14 10 13 17 11 13 11 31 17 14 20 11 15 10 20

Evidently, the genealogy line ascends to the East European Jews, but its details are still unknown.

Lithuanian Tatars haplogroup R1b-L51, 5 ea, 4%

The origin of the second line from the West European subclade R1b-L51 is still unclear due to low resolution.

Conclusion

According to the results of the analysis, it can be concluded that from 65% to 85% of Lithuanian Tatars from the joint sample in their male ancestors ascend to the peoples who inhabited the Kipchak Khanate at the turn of the 14th-15th centuries. The differences relate mainly to haplotypes from the R1a-M458 subclade in low resolution. In favor of their carriers also ascending to migrants from the Eurasian steppes, attests statistics on the Nogais (Shalyaho 2013) and Circassians (Balanovsky 2011) carrying not typed for deeper snips haplotypes of R1a-M485, and also a sole Balkar haplotype from the Karachay-Balkarian project (set no. 307200, https://www.familytreedna.com/public/KBalkarDNA/default.aspx?section =yresults) of a very rare parental line of the R1a-M458.

1727

The version on the recent origin of the Kuban and Terek Cossacks appears to be obvious, but it does not agree neither with the factual history of the Türkic peoples in the North Caucasus, nor with the dating of the sample branches (Figure 2).

Comparison of the current distribution of haplogroups presented in the sample and the data of the fossil DNA shows that the entire body of the steppe genealogical lines can be divided into “Western” and “Eastern” parts. The “Western” includes branches G2a-L1264, R1a-M458, R1b-Z2103, J2b-L283, and possibly also some participants from the branches R1a-Z280 and J2a. The “Eastern” includes R1a-S23592, R1b-M73, J2a-S15439, Q1a, and Q1b.

The modern quantitative relationship of these lines, fundamentally important in the PCA calculation, is of a secondary importance in the reconstruction by the methods of DNA genealogy (that reunites distant samples by familial connections). During 600 years' of the Tatar subethnos existence in the GDL, the original proportions changed several times: some initial lines grew faster, some slower, and many ended without descendants in the modern population. That is, happened what is called a genetic drift. For that reason, the principal historical information about Kipchak Khanate peoples is borne not by the percentage of particular genealogical lines in the modern sample, but by the very existence of such lines and the dating of their ancestors.

The “Eastern” group of branches links the Lithuanian Tatars with the peoples speaking Kypchak languages ​​- Kirgiz, Kazakhs, Bashkirs, Karachais and Balkars, which also have these branches, although in different proportions. The origin of the “Western” group probably should be connected with the population of the Eastern Europe, which repopulated again the steppe zone after the demographic crisis at the turn of the 3rd-2nd mill. BC. That is evidenced by the timing of the corresponding branches' ancestors for the haplogroups G2a, J2b, R1a and R1b, which fall into a narrow interval of 4200-3800 years ago. According to archaeological data, between 4200 and 4000 years ago in the European steppe zone burials disappear, but they appear in the Southern Urals, marking the Sintashta culture (Anthony 2007). Paleoclimatologists record unusually strong drought in the Middle East beginning about 4,200 years ago and lasting for about 100 years (DeMenocal 2001). The consequences of the drastic climatic change, in addition to the fall of the Akkadian kingdom in Mesopotamia and the Old Kingdom in Egypt, apparently include an outmigration from the desertified steppes. When the drought was over, people returned, but those already were different tribes, whose descendants lived there till the next radical change of population at the sunset of the Kipchak Khanate.
1728

Over the past time from the Bronze Age epoch their genealogical lines have commingled in many ways with the lines from the east, including those that, after making a circle, returned to places that had once left.

Due to historical circumstances, the mixed character of the population of the Black Sea steppes of the late Middle Ages was largely “conserved” in the Lithuanian Tatars. This is the uniqueness of their position, since in other kindred peoples the replacement of the original genealogical lines was much more intensive.

For example, the Itil autochthonous lines prevail among the Kazan Tatars, the local Caucasian haplogroups prevail among the Türkic-speaking peoples of the North Caucasus, and the Mongolian tribes, the ancestors of the modern Kalmyks (Karzhavin 2009), contributed significantly to the ethnogenesis (and phenotype) of the Kazakhs.

The first to note is the absence in the sample of the haplogroups of East Asian origin (C2 and O), and a very low proportion of the haplogroup N, which is a marker of migrations from the Altai (sic!) for many Türkic peoples. Although their extinction can be attributed to a genetic drift, such selectivity is likely an indicator that there also were few of them in the initial populations, which increases the likelihood of “washing away” such lines. The haplogroups Q1b, Q1a-M25 and R1b-M73, although present in the Altai and Mongolia, according to statistics tend to gravitate towards the Central Asia, where they probably were born. The possible Central Asian origin of the branch J2a-S15439 has already been mentioned above, and the migratory paths of the R1a-Z93 branch, ancestral to R1a-Z2125, from the Eastern European Plain to the East are reliably reconstructed from the sum of the available data (Klyosov, 2016).

Since there is strong evidence that the original language of the Lithuanian Tatars belonged to the Kipchak group of the Türkic languages ​​(Pankratov 2016, Supplementary Information Text), obviously their main component was the Kypchak people, known in Old Rus sources under a collective name “Polovtsians (половцы)”, with an accent on the last syllable (Zaliznjak 2014, page 649).

Their ethnogenesis in many respects remains a mystery, and the specialists' consensus exists only on the origin place of the Türkic languages ​​recorded in the earliest written sources. From the paleographic material and medieval chronicles, the original habitat of the Türkic peoples is usually placed in the upper course of the Ob and Enisei, where nowadays live Tuvans, Khakases, Chulyms, Karagases (Tofalars), Shors, Tubalars, Kumandins, Chelkans, and Altai-kiji (https://www.ethnologue.com/country/RU/languages) Despite the linguistic kinship, they show significant differences in their Y-chromosome lines (Derenko 2008, Balaganskaya 2011, Dulik 2012, Underhill 2014).

1729

In various, often contrasting proportions, the indigenous peoples of Altai and Sayan have the haplogroups C2, D, O2, Q1a-L53, N, R1a, and R1b, and for many of them can be discerned young branches with ancestral dates of 1000-1500 years ago. An analysis of the available 17-marker haplotypes (Dulik 2012, Underhill 2014) shows that the sample of Lithuanian Tatars has only the subclades R1a-S23592 and Q1a-L53 (branch L330), and a single haplotype of the subclade N-P43.

From that observation can be drawn a preliminary conclusion that either the Altai population underwent radical changes in the post-Mongol era, when the Lithuanian Tatars already settled on their new lands, or the contribution of the inhabitants of this region to the ethnogenesis of the Kypchak peoples was comparatively small. Based on the data on fossil DNA, the first variant is quite likely, since several dozen carriers of the haplogroup R1a were found in graves from the Bronze Age to the early Middle Ages, but only single samples from haplogroup C (Keyser 2009, S07 sample), J2a-PF5050 (Allentoft 2015, C. Rottensteiner, private communication, sample RISE602), N-P43 (Pilipenko 2015) and Q1a-M25 (Allentoft 2015, samples of RISE600 and RISE601).

The available statistics, however, do not yet allow us to assess how significant was the preponderance of the “Scythian” branches of R1a-Z93 in the region and at what time they were partially replaced by the East Asian haplogroups C2, O2, N-P43, and Q1a-L53. The likelihood of the second possibility, of the Kypchaks' origin outside the Altai, directly depends on the still fragmentary data on the fossil DNA of the Eurasian steppe peoples during the Middle Ages. It is closely intertwined with the so-called problem of the “Alan inheritance”, which is one of the hot topics in the history of the North Caucasus.

Both variants (about Altai-Kipchak connection), however, converge on one point - the pedigrees of the Lithuanian Tatars' overwhelming majority, apparently like the Polovtsians, a “slide” of whom they can be considered, date back to the peoples inhabiting the steppe zone of Eurasia from the Bronze Age and creating a cultural community whose material features Left a mark on all its space.

Crescendo

They (“Polovtsians” or Kipchaks) are known in various sources as Scythians (Σκύθοι), “Saka”, “Shaka”, “Ashkuza”, “Ishkuza”, “*Shats” (蔡). As follows from the up-to-date data on Y-DNA, the Scythians and Polovtsians (the ancestors of the Lithuanian Tatars, according to this concept) are very close peoples, descendants of the Aryan (R1a) tribes who started the movement from the Eastern European Plain to the east about 4000 years ago. From them (Aryans), they (Scythians, “Polovtsians”, Kipchaks) inherited the genealogical lines of the subclade R1a-Z93, which added via contacts with the surrounding peoples the branches from the haplogroups G2, J2, R1b, and subsequently R1a-Z282, and the haplogroups of the East Asian origin.

1730

At which stage of their history they moved from the original Indo-European language to the Türkic one is yet to be determined. On the example of Lithuanian Tatars, we have a rare case of a spiral movement in the form of a return to the language of the Indo-European family.

Thus, an analysis of a representative Y-DNA dataset of the Lithuanian Tatars has led to the conclusions that
(i) at least 2/3 of its members paternally descend from the inhabitants of the steppe belt of the Kipchak Khanate (aka Golden Horde), who spoke Kipchak languages and belonged to various branches of the haplogroups R1a, R1b, J2, and Q1a;
(ii) the principal Y-DNA lineages of the Lithuanian Tatars originate from the Scythian tribes, which occupied the Eurasian steppe zone during the Iron Age; and
(iii) an emergence of the Kypchak branch of the Türkic languages ​​may be attributed to a Turkification of one group of the originally Scythian tribes, judging by the predominance without any exception of the R1a-Z2125 subclade among all Kypchak branches. The latter proposal suggests a critical re-evaluation of the existing models of the Kipchak ethnic history.

To localize the place, time, and scale of that event (conversion to Türkic), if it is confirmed, it is also necessary to rethink the material collected by archaeologists and experts in the source study.

Finally, DNA genealogy makes it possible to understand how come that the Lithuanian Tatars preserved their national identity in conditions when many similar ethnic groups inevitably had to be assimilated.

Besides the religious and class barriers, not a lesser role had their preservation of the traditional continuity from father to son, which always was primary for the Kypchaks, manifested by a very high proportion of the ancestral lines. That could not be shaken neither by the loss of the language, nor by numerous marriages to the Slav maidens, nor even by the conversion to the Christianity.