Are Modern Afghans and Iranians Related? Genetics of the Persian People 

My parents are from Afghanistan and my teacher was so shocked when I told her people don’t speak Arabic there. Our official and widely spoken languages are Pashto and Dari.

Can we say that Afghan people have the most awesome eyes?

*Proud to be an Afghan, proud to be Persian* 🇦🇫🇮🇷🇹🇯

I'm Black. I research world history and ethnicities. Your video was informative and I learned a lot about the Persian, Iranian, and Tajik peoples. Also about Afghanistan and and the different ethnicities. I enjoyed the video very much Thank you

An ethnic Azeri here, just wanna note that from what I've gathered in actuality it seems we are genetically more close to ethnic Persians than Anatolian Turks, it's just we've gone through language shift due to Seljuk migrations . Though I do stand open to be corrected. Cheers 😊

Very interesting! I truly do not believe that people understand how diverse The Middle East and Asia is. I love how you break it down so people can see how very complicated it can really be. Why we sit back and say "But they are all Middle Eastern so why are they fighting each other?" Culture and ethnicity really makes a difference. Loved the vid.

I'm Afghan but I took a DNA ethnicity test thing and it said that I was 39% South Asian, 45% Iranian and 14% Russian. So there you go.

Love this the concept of your channel. I've been wanting to make videos about stuff like this for a long time, but I'm glad someone else has done it already. Keep it up!

I love it when you upload. You teach more than my teachers too. You make very good quality videos. :)

🇮🇷🇮🇷🇮🇷🇦🇫🇦🇫🇦🇫🇹🇯🇹🇯🇹🇯 Long live Persians

Keep fightin in the comment section over skin color. Divide and conquered

10/10 Comments. Never change, my friends. :'D

im a lur a we speak ancient persian.also kurds have many ancient words in their language.a persian can completely understand our speaks.and a lur can understand 50-60 % of kurdish words.if i listen carefully and think about the root of kurdish words i can understand 90 %of kurdish.

Geography now comes out with Iran and now I get to learn more about their people from you, good timing lol

beautiful video 👍🏻

Most Americans think Afghans and Iranians are dark skinned stereotypical people, but the Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Persians are clearly Caucasian people, this area has lots of interesting ethnic groups it's a shame people today only know this area for terrorism and war :(

I also have one grandparent from Rasht- weird coincidence! Great video, very fascinated by the topic too :)

You look so much like Paul from GeographyNow. Even the hand gesture at the end. You're like him except you're a history buff. Btw I love your content a lot

great video, very interesting. keep making videos dude. I want you to do every civilization in the world. great job. thanks

Thank you. 2021, we want to know more about Afghan and this is very useful.

I learn a lot from it. You're the man bro!

Great video! Just when i've been obsessed with Iran lately!

Keep releasing videos my man.

Great video man I really enjoy your channel.

As a Pashtun, I don't consider the 'pathans' of india as Pashtuns. They're just Indians who claim Afghan origin. Many people in South Asia claim to have Turk/Arab/Afghan/Persian backgrounds. I ain't going to say they're lying but in the end of the day they're still seen as Pakistanis/Indians

I really appreciate your work. Do you study anthropology perhaps?

Great point made! 2:59 Very important video thank you 👍

It depends on tribe, you could be European or Asian. There are so many different types of people, it's quite incredible.

I probably put 2 1/2 hours into researching Ethinic groups of Afghanistan. Specifically the red-black hair with green or blue eyes. It was needless to say a work of love and worth the effort. I have a neighbor who is Pashtun/Kabul. She's a lovely woman to know. A picture of her parents with their traditional dress is on her table. She and the rest of her siblings left before total war. I was working in the library when the article of the Girl with the green Eyes crossed my path. I haven't brought the subject up with my neighbor. Today I found your website and subscribed. I'm not finished yet!!! Truly fascinating subject.thank you!!!!

Thank you so much for this very important information. I was glad to learn about all the ethnic groups in this specific region. It is my favorite subject. Thanks again.

Great video! You've earned yourself a new subscriber :)

Your videos are great, just wanted you to know

I'm an Afghan, My father is a Pashtun and my mother is a Tajik Afghan. I did a DNA test and my results are West Asian - 33.9% =Turkey/Iran South Asian - 28.1% = India Central Asian - 22.5% = Afghanistan/Tajikistan Scandinavian -12.5% = Norway/Sweden Native American -1.5% = America Middle Eastern - 1.5 % = Arab =

I am a pashtun from kandahar (south afghanistan) and all my family members are fair skinned and a lot of us have blue or green eyes. I also have dark hair, blue eyes and fair skin. but I would have loved to have a little darker skin as a contrast to my eye color :D everyone thinks I am greek.

I really really love your channel. I don't feel like I know anyone that gets me like this in real life

That was awesome good video

I strongly disagree that the "Middle Eastern" phenotype is even remotely monolithic. It's EXTREMELY diverse with extremely distinct regional differences as well as extreme differences in coloration/complexion. I would say the diversity is about as great as that of Europe, if not more. If you can't tell the difference between Persians, Syrians, Yemenis, Gulf Arabs, Moroccans, and Egyptians, then you probably just don't know enough to have a good idea of what they each look like. A Lebanese person will look as much like an Omani as an Irish person will look like a Greek. A Tunisian will look like a Persian as much as as a Spaniard will look like a Ukrainian.

It is a great video thank you man

great job very informative

(4:16) "Although they're sometimes considered Iranian peoples" ?? Azeri people play a huge part in Iranian history, having lived in Iranzamin for thousands of years. They also very proudly defended Iran in wars and have contributed with so much, from art, music, culture etc. So yeah, @Masaman has some more reading up to do for sure.

not just mongols it was a wave of migrations of turkic peoples before mongols, it wasnt just mongols that cleared out indo-europeans in central asia.

I like your videos keep up the good work

Excellent!

As a Persian, I've met many Iranian people. I find the Azeris to be the most interesting. May of them even call themselves Persian in my experience, which I found really interesting.

Just disable your comment sections please.. some of the comment make me lose faith in humanity

hello there, you know if there is an Indo-Iranian ethnicity that does not live in Iran?? possibly one in Afghanistan or Pakistan or both aside of the Dehwari????

Enlightening video

The people of Iran have always called their country Iran . Persia is a European word , and comes from the Iranian region of Fars , from which we get the true name of the Persian language, Farsi .

Finally! As people can see Afghans, both the Persian (Tajiks) and Pashtuns of afghanistan who make up 80% of the population together are Iranic and the rest (Uzbek/hazara) are Turkic by origin! Our culture is a fusion of iranic and Turkic and people need to stop associating us with south Asians or desi people whom we don’t share culture/language or ethnicity with! We are western Asian (Middle Eastern) and central asians!

Cool video

Very interesting !

You mention Aimak/aymak and show pictures of pashtun boys??????

The picture that you are showing with blue eyes is actually Pashtun from the kochi tribes .not Tajik .

amazing ! thanks

Masaman,you should make a video about Egyptians.That would be really cool.

We Iranians are not like westerners...we don't differentiate between each other like you want us to.

Thanks for this, I enjoyed listening. One small point, ethnic Azeris do speak Turkish and have adopted some Turkish culture, but ethnically they are almost identical to other Iranians. Remember Azerbaijan is just a region of Iran, which the Russians stole the top third of.

Good video- Lot of info - Well made --- You need to do a video on the people of Gilgit/Baltistan who live in the Northern most regions of Pakistan cause we know very little about them. Am from India though. Also the Kalash people of North Western Pakistan

Hey masaman, what is your ancestry, what countries do you have from your DNA? I'm curious

Iran / Persia is the one constant in the region historically, as a nation state. Amazing.

I liked to mention this also :). Im an a Afshar from south East of Iran ( which make me a turkic origin person ). These days mostly Afshars speak Persian or adopted native languages ( so far i have seen Kurdish , Lurish and Mazani speaking Afshars too ) and even some of my relatives would even get offended by being call as Turk these things happened by policies of former Pahlavi dynasty. So far Afshars of Kerman didnt mix with natives at least until late 1790s or 1800s when their khantes was collppased by Qajars they started to mix with Persians. Its also interesting that i dont show turkic features a lot ( since my motherside is half persian ) but for example grandfather of my father totaly look turkish centeral Asian. Still some Turkic groups such as Seljuks also exist in Kerman which they all also have Asian Look like mostly if they didnt mix but all speaking Persian only. Also for making it more Accurate , Tajik and Tat were a General name whicb used by Turkish speaking people to call the Natives. In Azerbaijan they use Tat while in Kerman and even some villages still Persians are call as Tajik by the Turks. And the last thing is in Azerbaijan both Turks ane Tats ( natives) mixed natives adopted their language , but by our case its like we adopted language of the natives Persian but since we modernized later in 1930s and still had our tribal life we even know name of our Turkish clan and tribe which so far few settled people of Azerbaijan know this still or remember it

I'm so glad I found this channel...btw, hopse so you'll make video about Slavs(I'm Croat myself)

What do you think of Modern day Dalmatians which the last speaker died in XIX century and do you think they used to make a sort of 'Latin bridge' between Italy and Romania in what is now Yugoslavia? Buna nuat.

Do ancient and modern Egyptians. Some Black groups claim that sub saharan Africans are close related to ancient egyptians. Im curious. Make sure you show my comment in the video. 😉

A lot of important and interesting facts here, although some mistakes. I am a Baluch, and I was a little disappointed that you didn't mention the Baluch, who are a missing piece of this puzzle. Our language contains words more ancient (similar to ancient Persian languages) than Kurdish and todays Farsi (which was brought back to life after about 400 years of arab occupation). Our history, our language, and our heritage is connected with the "Persian people" (Persians, Kurds, afghan, etc.) that you have mentioned here. I think studying the history of Baloch will add to many answers of the missing dots. Although the majority of the Baluch people have origins connected with "Persian people" there are som sub-ethnic groups within the Baluch people who has their origins from different ethnicities such as arabs [due to geographical reasons, Baluchistan is close to the Arabian peninsula by sea. Also would like to add that many ethnic Baluch people (of greater Persian origin) are citizen and have history in Khaleej (Gulf countries such as Oman, UAE, Bahrain etc.)], also africans (due to slavery in Baluchistan and other costal areas of Iran), and there also exist some tribes with royal Indian origins (raj, rajput). Because of the geographical situation of Baluchistan (being divided in three: Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan) the Baluch people have been exposed to ethnic cleansing (similar to Kurds in Turkish occupied Kurdestan) which has led to a lot of our culture to be affected due to Pakistani occupation who impose their culture on us. This is also what has happened to the Pashtun and most of them are not aware of this. If you listen to some Balochi or Pashtun music they can often sound similar to Indian music, this is a result of Pakistani politics of making one identity, which is a false and inorganic identity. The Baluch of Iran are also consider their land to be occupied by Persians, but at leas we are people who share same origins and if there are any tensions it is due to religious Shia/sunni reasons. I would also like to add that the in the book that brought modern day Farsi back to life the "ShahName", one of the main heroes of this book, Rustam (and also Sohrab) were Baluch. My fathers DNA-results from national geographics DNA-test clearly concluded my father as an ethnic Iranian, but there were also many genetic ties to people of the Mediterranean (almost 35%). I respect all ethnicities, this is just to add some context into history.

At around 4:10, you mentioned Turkey. I think maybe your description is a bit off, but I don't know the truth. I just know that the Turkic people from the east came to Turkey only within the last few centuries, and definitely no more than about 1500 years ago. I think before that, you had maybe a mixture of Indo-Europeans (Yamna?), and Near-Eastern farmer stock. Maybe this would make for a good video, and you can help me to know the situation in detail?

Brother your father was half Gilaki and I am a Gill(Jat) from Punjab Pakistan. Is there any connection?

3 notes: 1. Part of Pamirians (mostly Wakhi) live in Pakistan, too, quite many. 2. Hazara descend more from Turks than Mongols (plus the previous population of the area). 3. Before the arrival of Indo-Europeans (mostly Indo-Iranians) Middle East was entirely populated by other peoples speaking their own languages (non-IE), and their genetic contribution to subsequent population of the area is recognisable. Even miraclous blondes in Hindukush and other places (mostly highlands) are not any "pure" relicts of Indo-Iranian migration from the area between Black sea, Caspian sea and Ural mountains (those could have diverse phenotype, by the way).

and what about Semites in Iran??

I think you have a misunderstanding about Indo-European people. According to Geno 2 project carried out by National Geographic, Indo-Europeans were the people who left East Africa around 70,000 years ago and gradually settled in present day Iran, Turkey and the east Mediterranean coast. It took another 30,000 to 40,000 years for these Indo-Europeans to start migrating to northern Europe as well as parts of present day Afghanistan and central Asia. that's why according to Geno 2 project , Europeans generally have a strong Mediterranean component around 30% to 40% which is common with their Indo-European ancestors. Another confusing factor is that on the last 1000 years, many Europeans travelled East through the silk road and in the last 500 this trend accelerated. This affected the Iranian gene pool as well. According to Geno 2, the average Iranian has 8% Northern European heritage which is a result of relatively recent migration from northern Europe to the Middle East.

Much appreciated

Do genetics on people from the Balkans.

Very informative thanks as an iraqi Kurd I can understand farsi, the modern Tehran farsi is very different than the population of iran or ordinary citizens can understand each other

Very interesting

I love your videos but this one had so many inaccurate things, if you want I can help you with them, but still I think it was a good video.

We All Persian Are *The Same* 🇦🇫❤️🇮🇷❤️🇹🇯

Do a video on Zoroastrians and Nestorian Christians (more correctly, members of the Church of the East), as they both had a rich past from Iran to Central Asia and indeed even China and now they both number very few. You could address an alternate history in which either religious group (or both) is much more numerous to this day.

At 1:11 u said over 7000 miles but wrote 7112 kilometers on the screen.

i loved the cover, u couldn't find any badder

I am from Afghanistan, Although I have a very little study of history of this region, this peace of information seems to be very accurate

Nice Im Hazara i Love may peopple so match hazaristan

Please do a Bangladesh/Bengal genetics video

Do you watch geography now , cause he uploaded a video about Iran too today

Thank you man for this informative video. You have a very impartial view on things. As a Hazara, we are Turko-Mongol and Persian mix. Genetically we are more Turko-Mongol, but culturally and linguistically we are Persians. Not to mention the majority of Hazaras are Shia muslims like Iranian Persians, in a Sunni dominated country, Afghanistan.

So much negative energy and racism in the comment section of many of Masaman's videos, it's tiring. Many of you are so uncultured and seem to be living in your own little bubble. Think for *yourselves* and stop letting people with troubled minds and negative energy tell you what is what etc.

The azeris are not of turkish origin. Turkish tribes came from east asia in the time of Turkic migration. Azarbaijan (Atropatene) has been an ancient iranian province since ever. They are in fact one of the first iranian tribes, but persia had (mostly after samanids) lots of foreign rulers and lots of them had turkish origin and their capital city was mostly in todays azerbaijan. That's one of the reasons they speak a mixed persian/turkish language which we now call azeri. But the old-azeri language belongs to the dead languages, it was a nord-iranian language en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Azeri

another interesting and concise video

will you talk about Egypt, please?

One major mistake in this video that I suggest you do more research on. I am half azari, but Azaris in Iran are genetically much closer to the rest of the Iranian population than to the Turks to the west. A genetic study was done and confirmed this hypothesis. Linguistically because of the proximity to the Ottoman empire, and the influence of that empire, the language sipped into those regions.

The Pamiris language is closely related to Pashto of the Pashtuns and their languages are considered Eastern Iranian.

Excellent video Mr. Masaman. Very informative.

In the classical Persian literary tradition - the entire vocabulary of which consists of stock phrases and images - "Turk' and 'Tajik' are stand-in terms for easily recognizable social stereotypes: one simple but violent; the other wily but civilized. Rūmi turns this on its head, however, in the following couplet: Attack upon attack came the darkness of night/Be strong like a Turk, not soft like a Tajik' (Yek hamleh va yek hamleh, āmad shab va tārīkī/chosti kon va "Torki' kon, na narmī va ‘Tājīkī'). Often ‘Turk' was also used to refer to the poet's beautiful young (unattainable) beloved, as in the following lines from Sa'di: 'Maybe they'll tell the King/"Your Turk (i.e., your Beloved) has spilled Tajik blood" (Shayad ke be padshah begüyand/Tork-e tö berikht khūn-e Tājīk), or elsewhere, 'Show your Tajik face, not Abyssinian black/That the Heavens may obliterate the face of the Turks' (Ru-ye Tājīkāna-t benmā, tā dagh-e habash/ Asman chehre-ye Torkān yaghma'i keshad). Since Turkic men often ‘married up’ and started families with Tajik women, the bloodlines tended to become increasingly mixed over the generations. (Recent DNA studies in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have shown no notable genetic difference between modern Uzbeks and Tajiks.) And since children typically spent their first years within the harem, the influence of Tajik mothers in constructing the identity of their mixed-race children was surely much greater than is admitted in the patriarchal written sources of the time. Military figures in particular often made much of their tough Turkic heritage, even as they sought to demonstrate their own cultivation by speaking Persian and patronizing Persian courtly culture. The Tajik scribes, for their part, were naturally required to flatter their patrons, but they flattered themselves as well in whatever subtle ways they could. - Richard Foltz, Chapter 4, Tajiks and Turks, The Turk-Tajik symbiosis

Any Afghan Persians here🇦🇫

Afghanistan have many different cultures Mostly speaks Farsi

good video man .....love from rasht

If my dna test says 24% Caucasus of turkey and 25% iran/persia am i azerbaijani?

These people are the real Aryans

Where did the Pashtuns of today originally come from? They don't seem to feature much in ancient history for some reason. Are they descended from the ancient Aryans?

Why not use the term South West Asia instead? Would it be more accurate?

Are Bangladeshi are related to Saudi Arabia?I heard some claim they are Arabia desendence.