The Siberian Ice Maiden Devochka is a mummy of a young Scythian woman from the 5th century BCE, found in 1993 in a kurgan of the Pazyryk culture in Republic of Altai, Russia.
The mummified remains of the “Ice Maiden,” a Scytho-Siberian young woman who lived on the Eurasian Steppes, were found undisturbed in a subterranean burial chamber.
DNA testing confirmed that the Scytho-Siberian maiden was NOT related to present-day peoples of the Altai. It turns out that the maternal line of Devochka the Scythian Ice Maiden is HV2.
HV2 maternal DNA is a very rare haplogroup. It was found in 2 individuals from a Scythian grave site including the spectacularly preserved Ice Maiden Devochka.
Genetic studies showed that the Pazyryks were a part of Samoyedic family, with very strong elements of ancient Iranian-Caucasian substratum.
(Source: Tracing the Origin of the East-West Population Admixture in the Altai Region (Central Asia)
Today the highest occurrence of HV2 maternal lineage is found in Slovakia in Central Europe and among the Volga Bulgars.
In the Iranian Plateau, HV2 appears either in populations that are native to the Caucasus or Caspian mountain regions and/or to the population groups that originated from the Caspian or Caucasus region and migrated further South and East.
HV2 mtDNA demographics in Study Populations in Iran are as follows:
Persian Central and southern central Iran – 2.4%,
Gilaki Northern Iran, southwestern Caspian Sea area – 8.1%,
Kurdish Western Iran – 5.0%,
Lur Southwestern Iran (Zagros Mountains) – 5.9%,
Baluch South Eastern Iran-western Pakistan, Baluchistan – 10.3%,
Parsi Zoroastrians of Karachi Pakistan- 9.1%,
My maternal grandmother was a Zoroastrian from kerman and as it appears through her, I carry the same EXACT maternal DNA HV2 as the Scythian Ice Maiden.
It appears that the genetic studies show that the ancient Iranians and ancient Zoroastrians directly descend from Indo European populations that lived in Southern Russian, Northern Caucasus and South of Ural Mountains.
ardeshir
