The Kura-Araxes culture. An open thread.

 The Kura-Araxes culture. An open thread.

Ghalichi et al. 2024 have published 7 new KA ancient samples from Georgia. Site Dzedzevbi near Dmanisi. And two more samples from Velikent Dagestan.

The low coverage didn't permitted to find the deep subclades of those samples. But apparently two male samples from Dzedzevbi are J2b2. While the other is J1 almost certainly from the Z1842 branch. The Velikent is also J1.

Overall there is now 16 Y DNA from known Kura-Araxes layers. 11 of them are J1 from the Z1842 branch. Most cases of J1 are found in regions that are geographically close to eastern Great Caucasian range. Dagestan, Kakhetia, Berkaber in Tavush and one case near Dmanisi. The strong prevalence of J1 is almost certainly the result of founder effect, because in earlier Neolithic periods the J1 was rare.

Moving away from the eastern parts of Caucasian range we see other haplotypes. Like R1b-V1636 from Sevan basin, G2b from Kaps Shirak. J2-M92 from Doghlauri central Georgia. And now two cases of J2b2 from Dzedzevbi. According the Genarchivist activists one of them is from the J2b-FT3464 a minor branch found today in Near East and Europe. While the other J2b was J2b2b-Z2453. An old Neolithic branch found in Shulaveri culture and Hajji Firuz tepe.

What we can deduce from this distribution? As I have already noted the J1 in northeastern parts of Kura-Araxes horizon can be associated with North-East Caucasian (NEC) speakers. But the whole KA horizon couldn't have been NEC speakers otherwise this would have left linguistic traces. For which there is no evidence. The rapid shift in Y DNA distribution when moving away from eastern Caucasus is another strong argument that there was another ethnic group (or groups) in Kura-Araxes.

Who could be this other group(s)?

The two main candidates are the Anatolian speakers and Hurro-Urartians. Currently the data is still too small to connect the dots between South Caucasus and Anatolia/Levant/Mesopotamia where Anatolian Hurro-Urartian languages were spoken. But some patterns are already visible