Finding a People's Origin

A recent paper in the American Journal of Human Biology looks into the origin of the Gagauzes people. They speak Turkish, live in southern Moldova and northeastern Bulgaria, and are thought to be descendants of either Turkic nomadic tribes or have a more complicated Anatolian-steppe origin. The researchers surveyed 89 Y-chromosomes samples from two Gagauz populations, compared them to those from Anatolian, Balkan, and Central Asian populations, and found the Gagauzes appear to be Balkan. However, the researchers say that the samples are not from a homogeneous group and that some microsatellite haplotypes are shared between Gagauz and Turkic populations. Razib blogs about this paper, adding a historical and anthropological perspective.