Ricerc@Sapienza

Iran was the homeland of one of the most ancient civilizations and its geographic position at the crossroad of Middle East, central Asia and Europe allowed extensive contacts between people from these regions and Iranian populations. Iran also shows a high ethnic diversity, with many different populations speaking both Indo-European Iranian and Altaic Turkic languages. Interestingly, the two largest nomadic people of Iran, namely Bakhtiari and Qashqai, belong to these two different linguistic families, although they share a similar nomadic pastoral lifestyle in the Zagros mountains and neighbouring provinces. Their origins are still matter of debate, although it is accepted that Bakhtiari probably originated locally in Iran while Qashqai arrived from central Asia between the XI and XIII centuries.
Despite these features, evolutionary genetics studies about the Iranian populations are still scarce and very little information is available for Bakhtiari and Qashqai. Our research project wants to investigate their genetic history and their relations with other Iranian and non-Iranian people, in order to understand their origin and, more generally, the population history of Iran and Eurasia. To this aim, we plan to sample 200 individuals belonging to these two ethnic groups (100 Bahktiari and 100 Qashqai) and to analyse them by analysis the Y-chromosome DNA testing. The data will be used to reconstruct their ancestral components and will be compared with available relevant data from the literature from Asia, Africa and Europe. Our genetic results will be then used to paint a comprehensive picture of the role of the Iranian populations in the peopling of Eurasia and northern Africa, trying to reconstruct the movements and interactions between ancient people from these regions.