We have new regional data from Urfa. Thanks to Sunshine Shoghig Shahinian who provided the files. The data was analyzed by Robert Navoyan and me.
1/ The first chart shows the closest populations to Armenians from Urfa. As expected the Armenian average is one of the closest. But Erzurum is slightly closer.
2/ The ancestry proportions in the second image shows that Urfa Armenians have similar structure compared with other subgroups. The main difference is the slightly higher South Anatolian Neolithic ancestry which is consistent with their geographic position. They have also lower Steppe which makes sense given the distance from Caucasian range. To my surprise they don't have extra Levantine ancestry. Their Levantine ancestry is equal to Erzurum ( from Javakhk ) levels which is quite interesting. Because it can mean that in the past Euphrates was used to move to North from Upper Mesopotamia. It's also consistent with the fact that the kingdom Dayene/Diaukhi in Nairi was initially in the south then moved to North toward Erzurum region. Though this result can be the consequence of earlier or later events.
3/ The third image is a PCA. Consistent with the previous analysis the Armenian_Urfa has a slight shift toward west/Anatolia and partly overlaps with Greek_Cappadocia. Despite similarities with Assyrians in Gedmatch the Urfa Armenians are not pulled toward Assyrians.
4/ And finally we wanted to compare Urfa Armenians with an ancient DNA from Titris Hoyuk Early Bronze Age. This site is close to Urfa. Well it turns out that the closest modern pop to a local Bronze Age sample are the Urfa Armenians. This is a remarkable finding. It must be noted that this do not mean that no any migration occured since EBA. They almost certainly occured simply those migrants were not very different from Titris Hoyuk.
Also one should not confuse this result with the closest ancient DNA to Urfa Armenians. The closest aDNA to Urfans is still the South Caucasian Neolithic like for all other Armenians. This type of ancestry which we label Central farmers was present all over historic Armenia. And Cayonu008 sample showed that it was present near Urfa also since the Neolithic. But this a subject for different topic.
Distance to: Armenian_Urfa
0.03081703 AZE_Caucasus_lowlands_LN
0.03462119 IND_Roopkund_B_o
0.03468724 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA
0.03706614 IRN_Hajji_Firuz_C
0.03929593 TUR_Arslantepe_LC
0.04178189 TUR_Alalakh_MLBA
0.04550224 TUR_Ikiztepe_LC
0.05022027 SYR_Ebla_EMBA
0.05031025 TUR_Titris_Hoyuk_EBA
0.05114875 TUR_Ovaoren_EBA
PS I want also to thank Tsolig Shahinian for her activism.
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