Make what you want to make of it
In this project, initiated by Professor Michael Nothnagel from the Cologne Center for Genomics (CCG) at the University of Cologne and Professor Hossein Najmabadi from the Genetics Research Center (GRC) at the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Science in Tehran, their groups cooperated with numerous other universities in Iran, while Professor Barbara Helwing from Sydney provided expertise on Iran's historical background.
The researchers analysed the genetic data of 1,021 volunteers whose parents and grandparents identified themselves as belonging to one of eleven selected Iranian ethnic groups, including large groups such as Iranian Persians and Azeri, but also smaller ones like Arabs, Baluchi, Gilaki and Kurds. These volunteers were sampled all over Iran. They found out that Iranian Persians and Kurds, for example, exhibit high in-group genetic variation which is larger than that of, for example, Germans. However, the entire gene pool has remained largely unchanged over at least the past 5,000 years, but probably rather the past 10,000 years.
To put this in perspective: Today's German population has likely retained only about 10 to 20 percent of the genetic constitution of the hunters and gatherers who populated western and central Europe 10,000 years ago. Furthermore, Britons and North Italians are genetically more similar than some ethnic groups in Iran. 'This was somewhat surprising,' Michael Nothnagel said. 'Until recently, many scientists had assumed genetic variation across present-day Iranians to be rather homogeneous.'