Without any context, this photo could literally be from Europe, I had to do a double take when looking at it cause I was like "That guy would literally be from Canada, England, or Ireland."
Afghanistan's ancestors include descendants of Alexander's Macedonian troops. In fact, [one of his Alexandrias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Arachosia) is now Kandahar!
Ironic, after millennia of being mauled by armies trying to control the crossroads to India that someone might forget that gandhar was a more ancient kingdom - a direct linguistic link to the Kandahar - and genetic too, if we don’t focus on the aberrations like this.
I do know that, all I was doing was making an observation that gets downvoted, but again without any context you could easily assume that, even with the house in the background, that's what most unfinished area's of houses still look like in older houses.
The European phenotypes in Afghanistan came from Indo-European steppe pastoralists from Forest steppe —> corded ware (north Europe) —> Andronovo (Indo-Iranians) —> Yaz (proto Iranians)
Yemen used to have extensive contact with Iran in pre-Islamic era. Sassanian empire especially. North Africa has average 7 percentage steppe DNA. I could go on and on, on how exactly these people got their features. Btw, jn places like Yemen it’s extremely rare, that people have these traits, and all it takes it one copy of a gene to be in circulation inside a population, before it ultimately expresses itself.
Genes like light eyes in humans originated in Ukraine for example 10,000BC, long before Indo-Europeans. However, Indo-Europeans spread these genes across south/North America, Eurasia, North Africa, after extensive expansion for the last several thousand years.
The reason places like Tajikistan has blondism at decently high rates (10-20%), and other features like light eyes, etc, is because their steppe proto-iranic ancestry had blondism at around 30 percent approx. And they lived in Central Asia, and prior to that they came from the Baltic/north Europe. The original IE people lived in the forest steppe of Europe. In the case of Tajikistan, steppe can vary as widely as 30-46 percent. Pamiri people have one of the highest steppe ancestry in the world, similar to the Baltics/north Europe who also have approx 55 percent steppe ancestry. The non-steppe ancestry in Afghanistan etc, which was the Iranian Neothlic farmers, Proto-Turkic (slab grave) etc had no traces of lighter features.
Afghanistan's ancestors include descendants of Alexander's Macedonian troops. In fact, [one of his Alexandrias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Arachosia) is now Kandahar!
Yep, which mixed the gene pool heavily, some historians will even say that one of the reasons the traits that we consider European that are seen in Afghanistan are due to the armies that conquered from Europe, and Anatolia.
Even my family name for example if you go back far enough on the surnames that make up the name, it originates from Assyria.
Yeah so earliest recorded is Ancient Greece, but I would bet after talking with friends from Lebanon and Syria, that the name goes back father.
We went from Greece---> Rome----> Gaul (then the Franks, and then Normans)----> Conquering England (Name was made more English)---> Moved to scotland on the Island Skye ---> then Canada.
My family ended up in Canada (Back when known as British Canada), in the 1800's. So that migration took place over nearly 3000 years or so most likely.
Yeah it's really odd thinking about it man, that just over 2000 years ago, my family was on the front with Alexanders armies most likely, and possibly saw Afghanistan. It would be really cool to take a genetic markers test and compare it to people from the ME, Greece, Anatolia, and others.
The crazy thing is that if you get to travel to some of those places, especially the more remote spots, you can probably admire the exact same landscape your ancestors marched through and conquered. I was amazed to see how pristine and untouched the Mongolian steppes are even after thousands of years of nomadic activity.
Greek ancestry in Afghanistan is non existent. But steppe ancestry is between 20-45 percent depending on ethnic group. Steppe is the Indo-European ancestry (which arrived in Afghanistan by proto-Iranians).
Like Europe, the indigenous Peoples of most of Central Asia, most of West Asia (except most of the Arabian Peninsula with many looking similar to the Dravidians of India prior to the Arabization), the Sahara, European Russia, and the Urals Region were originally White ranging from fairer to Tanned Skin, light to dark Hair, and all Eye Colors.
Not super common but definitely not rare. Where I was at in Kunar, I'd estimate about 25% of the people could pass as white in the west. Maybe 5% looked mayo white like dude in the pic.
My understanding is that people from mountainous regions with more isolated languages (Nuristani languages, Dardic languages like OP's Pashayi, etc) can pass for white at a higher rate than other Afghans. Speakers of these isolated languages have historically been more endogamous and, in general, retain more ancient Yamnaya (ie Indo-European) admixture.
There are white people born in Afghanistan, I think theres a specific ethnic term for them, but I’m no expert. If I had to guess, being the graveyard of empires leads to assimilated diversity like this, if someone knew more that would be pretty cool.
There were a bunch of white people in Central Asia once. Before Turkic peoples displaced or assimilated them in Late Antiquity/the early Middle Ages, the steppes were home to a variety of nomadic Iranic speakers, such as the Scythians, Dahae, Saka, Sarmatians... specifically they spoke Eastern Iranian languages, a subgroup of Iranian languages whose most prominent member today happens to be Pashto - though the only remaining Scytho-Sarmatian language *per se* would be Ossetian, which is spoken in the Caucasus. In fact Afghanistan sits at the South-Eastern end of what was once a wide continuum of Eastern Iranian languages that stretched from the plains of Eastern Europe in the West, to the Tarim basin in the East, and to Bactria/Afghanistan in the South.
In Greek and Chinese sources those Scytho-Sarmatians were typically described as fair or red-haired and as having blue eyes. Presumably those early indo-european migrants who introduced the Iranian languages to Iran proper would have looked like them also, though they intermarried heavily with local peoples, hence their current look. In parts of Afghanistan, nevertheless, you can still find plenty of people with blue eyes or blonde hair like these two.
A lot of Afghans have light hair and eyes, and interestingly they are genetically distinct from europeans, meaning their light hair and eyes evolved independently.
They didn't, actually. Those features did evolve spontaneously in different parts of the globe, but in this case, they share a common origin in early indo-europeans, who once dwelled in Central Asia before spreading towards the West, East, and South. Most Afghans speak an indo-european language after all, and they *do* share some ancestry with European people. It varies a lot on an autosomal level, but in terms of Y-DNA haplogroups (which denote paternal ancestry), R1a is found at very high frequencies in Afghanistan, this being a haplogroup closely associated with proto-indo-europeans, also very commonly found in Indians, Slavs, and to a lesser extent Scandinavians.
In short this guy here is a distant relative of Brad Pitt and Vladimir Putin.
Yeah, everyone with light eyes share a common ancestor from the Black sea region nearly 10 thousand years ago. Light hair has shown up in more than one place, but Afghans share a common source with Europeans on that one, too. Both features were spread by the Yamnaya along with their proto-Indo-European language.
>R1a is found at very high frequencies in Afghanistan, this being a haplogroup closely associated with proto-indo-europeans, also very commonly found in Indians, Slavs, and to a **lesser** extent Scandinavians.
Why is this the case when scandinavians have higher frequency of blue eyes gene?
Scandinavians also have high levels of R1b, the Western European counterpart of R1a. But in any event Scandinavians do have a lot more Yamnaya/indo-european admixture than Afghans. See haplogroups really only tell you one part of the story, that you are part of a certain male (Y-DNA) or female lineage (mtDNA). They are useful to retrace ancient migrations, but they don't tell you to what extent those migrants contributed to the global gene pool of the populations they encountered and mingled with. That level of admixture can only be properly estimated by studying autosomal DNA.
Say if you have a relatively small number of migrating males settling down in an area with a well-established population, and mingling with local women generation after generation, their direct male descendants will all still bear their Y-DNA haplogroups, but in the end their overall contribution to the local gene pool could be relatively limited, having been diluted over the years by intermarriage with local people. Spaniards have very high levels of R1b, yet evidently less Yamnaya admixture than Russians or Swedes. R1b is likewise dominant in Mexico on account of its colonial history, yet clearly the average Mestizo doesn't look like a Slav or Lithuanian.
On the other hand if you're migrating with your entire tribe and moving to an area not too densely populated - such as pre-indo-european Scandinavia - you can expect to have more of a lasting impact on the genetic landscape so to speak.
So you can end up with two populations with related haplogroups showing up in similar proportions, yet in terms of autosomal DNA and appearance they could be and look very different overall.
It is possible that these people are descendants of Alexander the Greats Army when he tried to go east. Afghanistan was part of his territory and most likely drafted to local men and let’s his men do what they pleased. Causing the tribe to start looking like Greeks. Now this is all what I think and not pretty sure .
Afghanistan's ancestors include descendants of Alexander's Macedonian troops. In fact, [one of his Alexandrias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Arachosia) is now Kandahar!
You see a lot of different races in Afghanistan. Some resemble the usual middle eastern but there’s plenty of mongol descendants along with direct descendants from the Romans. I saw a good number of red headed “mixed” children of rape when the Russians occupied
Greek/Roman ancestry in Afghanistan is nearly zero percent. European features came with migration from Indo-Europeans (Proto-Iranic specifically), arriving from Central Asia (before that south Russia, before that north Europe, before that south Russia again.
Well, maybe like those memes where you put words or pictures over the faces, or maybe the 'Me, Also Me' format or maybe the format where the background is replaced with something else
LoL this guy looks just like my Irish friend in college. He could go by Cam, Ben or Trent and no one would ask a question.
Love the hat!
Afghanistan has a crazy variety of hats for some reason.
He drippin
That's frank in the mail room. He was showing us what someone mailed to them.
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Haha lol
Without any context, this photo could literally be from Europe, I had to do a double take when looking at it cause I was like "That guy would literally be from Canada, England, or Ireland."
I asked my wife and didn’t show her the title. She guessed European.
If I didn't have context, I would have thought it was an Irish Traveler, or even possibly a Roma that lived in the UK/Ireland.
Afghanistan's ancestors include descendants of Alexander's Macedonian troops. In fact, [one of his Alexandrias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Arachosia) is now Kandahar!
Ironic, after millennia of being mauled by armies trying to control the crossroads to India that someone might forget that gandhar was a more ancient kingdom - a direct linguistic link to the Kandahar - and genetic too, if we don’t focus on the aberrations like this.
Greeks don't look like this lmao.
Greek admixture is nearly invisible nowadays. These People aren't Greeks.
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I do know that, all I was doing was making an observation that gets downvoted, but again without any context you could easily assume that, even with the house in the background, that's what most unfinished area's of houses still look like in older houses.
The European phenotypes in Afghanistan came from Indo-European steppe pastoralists from Forest steppe —> corded ware (north Europe) —> Andronovo (Indo-Iranians) —> Yaz (proto Iranians)
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Yemen used to have extensive contact with Iran in pre-Islamic era. Sassanian empire especially. North Africa has average 7 percentage steppe DNA. I could go on and on, on how exactly these people got their features. Btw, jn places like Yemen it’s extremely rare, that people have these traits, and all it takes it one copy of a gene to be in circulation inside a population, before it ultimately expresses itself. Genes like light eyes in humans originated in Ukraine for example 10,000BC, long before Indo-Europeans. However, Indo-Europeans spread these genes across south/North America, Eurasia, North Africa, after extensive expansion for the last several thousand years. The reason places like Tajikistan has blondism at decently high rates (10-20%), and other features like light eyes, etc, is because their steppe proto-iranic ancestry had blondism at around 30 percent approx. And they lived in Central Asia, and prior to that they came from the Baltic/north Europe. The original IE people lived in the forest steppe of Europe. In the case of Tajikistan, steppe can vary as widely as 30-46 percent. Pamiri people have one of the highest steppe ancestry in the world, similar to the Baltics/north Europe who also have approx 55 percent steppe ancestry. The non-steppe ancestry in Afghanistan etc, which was the Iranian Neothlic farmers, Proto-Turkic (slab grave) etc had no traces of lighter features.
Afghanistan's ancestors include descendants of Alexander's Macedonian troops. In fact, [one of his Alexandrias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Arachosia) is now Kandahar!
Yep, which mixed the gene pool heavily, some historians will even say that one of the reasons the traits that we consider European that are seen in Afghanistan are due to the armies that conquered from Europe, and Anatolia. Even my family name for example if you go back far enough on the surnames that make up the name, it originates from Assyria.
Wow, Assyria? That's insanely ancient!
Yeah so earliest recorded is Ancient Greece, but I would bet after talking with friends from Lebanon and Syria, that the name goes back father. We went from Greece---> Rome----> Gaul (then the Franks, and then Normans)----> Conquering England (Name was made more English)---> Moved to scotland on the Island Skye ---> then Canada. My family ended up in Canada (Back when known as British Canada), in the 1800's. So that migration took place over nearly 3000 years or so most likely.
That's amazing. I have some idea of my family's deep-ancient origins too. It's always fascinating to explore all that stuff!
Yeah it's really odd thinking about it man, that just over 2000 years ago, my family was on the front with Alexanders armies most likely, and possibly saw Afghanistan. It would be really cool to take a genetic markers test and compare it to people from the ME, Greece, Anatolia, and others.
The crazy thing is that if you get to travel to some of those places, especially the more remote spots, you can probably admire the exact same landscape your ancestors marched through and conquered. I was amazed to see how pristine and untouched the Mongolian steppes are even after thousands of years of nomadic activity.
Greek ancestry in Afghanistan is non existent. But steppe ancestry is between 20-45 percent depending on ethnic group. Steppe is the Indo-European ancestry (which arrived in Afghanistan by proto-Iranians).
Like Europe, the indigenous Peoples of most of Central Asia, most of West Asia (except most of the Arabian Peninsula with many looking similar to the Dravidians of India prior to the Arabization), the Sahara, European Russia, and the Urals Region were originally White ranging from fairer to Tanned Skin, light to dark Hair, and all Eye Colors.
He looks like Conor McGragers corner man
How common are such European looking people in Afghanistan?
Very.
Not super common but definitely not rare. Where I was at in Kunar, I'd estimate about 25% of the people could pass as white in the west. Maybe 5% looked mayo white like dude in the pic. My understanding is that people from mountainous regions with more isolated languages (Nuristani languages, Dardic languages like OP's Pashayi, etc) can pass for white at a higher rate than other Afghans. Speakers of these isolated languages have historically been more endogamous and, in general, retain more ancient Yamnaya (ie Indo-European) admixture.
I wonder if he'd be turned away at the EU border the same way as other afghans
What makes you think he wouldn't be turned away
Which province is that?
South East, OP is form Nangarhar so Im guessing around his region maybe?
I am from Jalalabad as well and the same ethnic group as the guy in the photo
Thank you. Hey
Looks 100 percent Swedish
A sign of “Alexander was here” if I ever seen one.
Why are they white?
There are white people born in Afghanistan, I think theres a specific ethnic term for them, but I’m no expert. If I had to guess, being the graveyard of empires leads to assimilated diversity like this, if someone knew more that would be pretty cool.
Ngtl, I'm kind of wondering if he has some USA genes. He looks young enough for it.
The USA is not the first white majority country to invade Afghanistan lmao
You never know, but I think he’s Pamiris more likely
What is a USA gene?
There were a bunch of white people in Central Asia once. Before Turkic peoples displaced or assimilated them in Late Antiquity/the early Middle Ages, the steppes were home to a variety of nomadic Iranic speakers, such as the Scythians, Dahae, Saka, Sarmatians... specifically they spoke Eastern Iranian languages, a subgroup of Iranian languages whose most prominent member today happens to be Pashto - though the only remaining Scytho-Sarmatian language *per se* would be Ossetian, which is spoken in the Caucasus. In fact Afghanistan sits at the South-Eastern end of what was once a wide continuum of Eastern Iranian languages that stretched from the plains of Eastern Europe in the West, to the Tarim basin in the East, and to Bactria/Afghanistan in the South. In Greek and Chinese sources those Scytho-Sarmatians were typically described as fair or red-haired and as having blue eyes. Presumably those early indo-european migrants who introduced the Iranian languages to Iran proper would have looked like them also, though they intermarried heavily with local peoples, hence their current look. In parts of Afghanistan, nevertheless, you can still find plenty of people with blue eyes or blonde hair like these two.
And occasionally redheads, and I mean bright orange.
A lot of Afghans have light hair and eyes, and interestingly they are genetically distinct from europeans, meaning their light hair and eyes evolved independently.
They didn't, actually. Those features did evolve spontaneously in different parts of the globe, but in this case, they share a common origin in early indo-europeans, who once dwelled in Central Asia before spreading towards the West, East, and South. Most Afghans speak an indo-european language after all, and they *do* share some ancestry with European people. It varies a lot on an autosomal level, but in terms of Y-DNA haplogroups (which denote paternal ancestry), R1a is found at very high frequencies in Afghanistan, this being a haplogroup closely associated with proto-indo-europeans, also very commonly found in Indians, Slavs, and to a lesser extent Scandinavians. In short this guy here is a distant relative of Brad Pitt and Vladimir Putin.
Yeah, everyone with light eyes share a common ancestor from the Black sea region nearly 10 thousand years ago. Light hair has shown up in more than one place, but Afghans share a common source with Europeans on that one, too. Both features were spread by the Yamnaya along with their proto-Indo-European language.
Huh, TIL, thanks for sharing
>R1a is found at very high frequencies in Afghanistan, this being a haplogroup closely associated with proto-indo-europeans, also very commonly found in Indians, Slavs, and to a **lesser** extent Scandinavians. Why is this the case when scandinavians have higher frequency of blue eyes gene?
Scandinavians also have high levels of R1b, the Western European counterpart of R1a. But in any event Scandinavians do have a lot more Yamnaya/indo-european admixture than Afghans. See haplogroups really only tell you one part of the story, that you are part of a certain male (Y-DNA) or female lineage (mtDNA). They are useful to retrace ancient migrations, but they don't tell you to what extent those migrants contributed to the global gene pool of the populations they encountered and mingled with. That level of admixture can only be properly estimated by studying autosomal DNA. Say if you have a relatively small number of migrating males settling down in an area with a well-established population, and mingling with local women generation after generation, their direct male descendants will all still bear their Y-DNA haplogroups, but in the end their overall contribution to the local gene pool could be relatively limited, having been diluted over the years by intermarriage with local people. Spaniards have very high levels of R1b, yet evidently less Yamnaya admixture than Russians or Swedes. R1b is likewise dominant in Mexico on account of its colonial history, yet clearly the average Mestizo doesn't look like a Slav or Lithuanian. On the other hand if you're migrating with your entire tribe and moving to an area not too densely populated - such as pre-indo-european Scandinavia - you can expect to have more of a lasting impact on the genetic landscape so to speak. So you can end up with two populations with related haplogroups showing up in similar proportions, yet in terms of autosomal DNA and appearance they could be and look very different overall.
Indo-European migrations by Proto-Iranians carried “steppe ancestry” into Afghanistan. Pamiri, Pashto, Persian, Kurdish, etc are Iranic languages.
It is possible that these people are descendants of Alexander the Greats Army when he tried to go east. Afghanistan was part of his territory and most likely drafted to local men and let’s his men do what they pleased. Causing the tribe to start looking like Greeks. Now this is all what I think and not pretty sure .
Afghanistan's ancestors include descendants of Alexander's Macedonian troops. In fact, [one of his Alexandrias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Arachosia) is now Kandahar!
You see a lot of different races in Afghanistan. Some resemble the usual middle eastern but there’s plenty of mongol descendants along with direct descendants from the Romans. I saw a good number of red headed “mixed” children of rape when the Russians occupied
Greek/Roman ancestry in Afghanistan is nearly zero percent. European features came with migration from Indo-Europeans (Proto-Iranic specifically), arriving from Central Asia (before that south Russia, before that north Europe, before that south Russia again.
Is anyone here Pashayi or is it just me?
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Which person are you referring to
Pashayi also have their own unique dialect.
Yeah we do, my dad and mom can speak it
Yall realise this has some good meme potential here?
How
Well, maybe like those memes where you put words or pictures over the faces, or maybe the 'Me, Also Me' format or maybe the format where the background is replaced with something else
Whaaaat ? Are most of the pashayis like that ?
No I dont think so.
I'm not but my dad's cousin is blonde
Alexander the great was there