Shulaveri-Aratashen-Shomutepe (SAS) culture. 7000/6200-5300BC.

 Shulaveri-Aratashen-Shomutepe (SAS) culture. 7000/6200-5300BC.

We have five good quality new samples from Shulaveri (SAS) culture in Georgia (Aruchlo). They had YDNA H2, J2a1a and R. This latter is from the R2 haplogroup according Genarchivist activists.

On the PCA three of five farmers plot close to related Neolithic samples from Armenia and Azerbaijan while modern people close them are the Armenians in G25. It's now obvious that this was the main genetic profile in SAS/Shulaveri culture. Those were the first farmers in South Caucasus and their ancestry was largely derived from central regions of Fertile Crescent hence the reason that occasionally we call them Central farmers. Ghalichi 2024 used also the term East Anatolian farmers. Given some archaeological data from Van region we can assume that most of historic Armenia (except probably the most western and southwestern regions) was inhabited by this type of farmers.

Besides this "Central"/"Armenian like" type there were also farmers with higher CHG ratio. First we have seen them in Aknashen from Armenia. Now we have another similar CHG shifted sample from Georgia plotting close to modern Georgians. It's not exactly identic to Aknashen but rather plots close to Darkveti-Meshoko ( labeled as Caucasus Eneolithic ) raising the possibility that Darkveti-Meshoko culture formed as a mixture of Shulaveri and CHG. The Darkveti culture is remarkable because genome wide it's genetic profile looks a good candidate for being Pre-Proto-Kartvelian. High CHG and very low Steppe. But the absence of G2a1a there and scant sampling from west Caucasus makes those suggestions still speculative.

Another sample from Aruchlo/Georgia plots close to CHG hunters. The ARO006 with YDNA R2. Making it a hunter who learned farming without having any significant admixture from those farmers. The presence of such hunter related genetic profile in Shulaveri culture means that there were at last two different languages in SAS. One derived from the first farmers and another derived from the hunters who learned farming. It's remarkable that archaeology supports this dualistic nature of Shulaveri culture. Two different potteries were made in Shulaveri. One of them was Chaff-tempered. The other one was Grit-tempered. Chaff-tempered was almost certainly made by the first farmers who came from southern regions of historic Armenia. While the Grit-tempered was made by groups derived from the local hunters.

It's interesting that both pottery traditions continued in ancient South Caucasus and historic Armenia after the Neolithic period. Grit-tempered was prominent in Sioni (also found in Adablur and Guinchi) culture which evolved in Early and Middle Chalcolithic (5300-4300BC). . We can conjecture that they were CHG shifted. Offcourse this is a just a prediction based on archaeology which can be wrong, given that currently there are no samples from this period. While Chaff-tempered pottery became prominent in Late Chalcolithic period (4300-3600BC). The Late Chalcolithic period DNA both from Armenia and Azerbaijan shows that they were mostly derived from the first Neolithic farmers having some extra new admixtures.

And finally we can now say with high degree of certitude that the CHG shifted genetic profile of Kura-Araxes culture (3600-2400BC) had local origins. When farmers settled all over Kur and Arax river valleys the forest-mountain zone between those two valleys also known as Lesser Caucasus became a sort of refugium where they preserved the initial hunter gatherer ancestry in higher proportion. This is the reason why the oldest radiocarbon dated Kura-Araxes sites are found in north Armenia (Gegharot) and south Georgia.

But this is not the whole story. Apparently Kura-Araxes also had two potteries and genetic profiles. Which could mean that for at last 4000 years two genetic profiles were competing in South Caucasus starting from the Neolithic period till the end of Early Bronze Age.

PS. There was in reality six samples from Aruchlo. But one of them has so little coverage that it was not included in the calculations.