Addendum to J2b-M205 Uruk Expansion of Sumerian Culture Video

After I published the video I realized a few things I left out.

J2b-M205 itself has an Ubaid Period TMRCA

The main branch of J2b-M205, known as J2b-Y3165 and comprising all living J2b-M205, has TMRCA of 6000 years. This corresponds to the beginning of the Uruk Expansion which you can read more about in A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000-323BC which I quote in the video.

However J2b-M205 itself all descends from one man who lived earlier than that. He was the ancestor of all living J2b-M205 in the J2b-Y3165 line and the extinct J2b-M205 line found in an ancient sample in Sidon.

This J2b-M205 MRCA lived about 7300 years ago, so he actually lived before the Uruk Expansion in a period known as the Ubaid period. The Ubaid period began earlier than that in southern Mesopotamia but by 7300 years ago had spread to northern Mesopotamia per the Wikipedia article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubaid_period

J2b-FTA1458 found in Iraq, Anatolia, Arabian Littoral, Syria and in 2400 BC Jordan - Microcosm of J2b-M205 Geographic Diversity

A few months ago YFull found that the oldest ancient sample of J2b-M205, I1730 from Ain Ghazal, Jordan dating to 4246-4507 years before present, could be grouped together with several other lineages on the basis of having inherited SNP FTA1458 from a common ancestor who lived about 2900 BC.

https://www.yfull.com/tree/J-FTA1458/

These few samples, amazingly represent nearly the complete geographic diversity we see within J2b-M205 as a whole: Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Arabian Littoral, and the Levant.

Sargon of Akkad was the first person to have politically unified most of the entire Near East, in 2334 BC. This was much later than the Uruk Expansion of the 4th millennium BC that saw the establishment of Uruk colonies like Habubu Kabira (which should be noted was abandoned after several generations).

The J2b-FTA1458 MRCA is estimated to have lived 200 years after the Uruk Period (4000-3100 BC). This was the start of the Early Dynastic Period (2900-2350 BC) of Mesopotamia.

So perhaps while Ebla itself and Canaan to the south and whatever state the Ain Ghazal ancient sample belonged to were not formally incorporated within Sargon's Akkadian Empire, the migration of I1730's ancestor to the region is perhaps best understood as an Early Dynastic Period migration. Though given the error ranges an earlier migration (Uruk Expansion) cannot be completely ruled out.

One possible vector of migration for an Early Dynastic Period (ED) migration was the demand for scribes to write in the new cuneiform system, a more advanced version of the writing system that had been introduced and subsequently abandoned in many areas of the Near East outside of Babylonia during the Uruk Expansion.

Some texts in Ebla (roughly Syria) state that "the young scribes came up from Mari" which suggests that the city provided training to Syrian scribes. - Scribal Culture, p. 64

So this is just one possible vector of migration.

Another vector of migration commonly practiced in powerful Mesopotamian families during the ED period was to install a family member as chief priest/priestess of a temple of another city, for monetary or political gain. Sargon did this, installing his daughter Enheduanna as high priestess of the moon god Nanna in Ur, making her the moon god's wife. Incidentally Enheduanna was the world's first documented poet.

I was not able to find any details regarding the burial context of I1730. Now I think it would be very interesting to look for any clues to a possible connection to Babylonia, given the potential male line genetic link that I currently theorize.

The Iraqi sample in this line traces his male line to Nineveh Governorate. This was part of the northern Mesopotamian region called Subartu that Sargon had incorporated into his empire.

These posts are the opinion of Hunter Provyn, a haplogroup researcher in J-M241 and J-M102.

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