Searching for the origin of Gagauzes: inferences from Y-chromosome analysis

The Gagauzes are a small Turkish-speaking ethnic group living mostly in southern Moldova and north- eastern Bulgaria. The origin of the Gagauzes is obscure. They may be descendants of the Turkic nomadic tribes from the Eurasian steppes, as suggested by the ''Steppe'' hypothesis, or have a complex Anatolian-steppe origin, as postu- lated by the ''Seljuk'' or ''Anatolian'' hypothesis. To distinguish these hypotheses, a sample of 89 Y-chromosomes repre- senting two Gagauz populations from the Republic of Moldova was analyzed for 28 binary and seven STR polymor- phisms. In the gene pool of the Gagauzes a total of 15 Y-haplogroups were identified, the most common being I-P37 (20.2%), R-M17 (19.1%), G-M201 (13.5%), R-M269 (12.4%), and E-M78 (11.1%). The present Gagauz populations were compared with other Balkan, Anatolian, and Central Asian populations by means of genetic distances, nonmetric multi- dimentional scaling and analyses of molecular variance. The analyses showed that Gagauzes belong to the Balkan pop- ulations, suggesting that the Gagauz language represents a case of language replacement in southeastern Europe. Interestingly, the detailed study of microsatellite haplotypes revealed some sharing between the Gagauz and Turkish lineages, providing some support of the hypothesis of the ''Seljuk origin'' of the Gagauzes. The faster evolving micro- satellite loci showed that the two Gagauz samples investigated do not represent a homogeneous group. This finding matches the cultural and linguistic heterogeneity of the Gagauzes well, suggesting a crucial role of social factors in shaping the Gagauz Y-chromosome pool and possibly also of effects of genetic drift. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 00:000-000, 2009. ' 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc. The Gagauzes are a small Turkish-speaking ethnic group living mostly in southern Bessarabia (Moldova Republic, southwestern Ukraine) and southern Dobruja (northeastern Bulgaria, southeastern Romania). The Gagauzes speak the Oghuz version of the Turkic lan- guages, which also includes the Azeri, Turkish, and Turk- meni languages. The Gagauz language is particularly close to the Balkan Turkish dialects spoken in Greece, northeastern Bulgaria, and in the Kumanovo and Bitola areas of Macedonia. The Balkan Turkic languages, includ