Essay on the language of Gutians

The R1b from Bakr Awa (Mesopotamia) is now published in FTDNA. Its confirmed as Z2106 and is positive to Y100087 snp. This branch has strong presence in ancient remains from Ukraine and Russia. Thus the steppe origin of this Bakr Awa R1b is beyond the doubt.

This is the first case of Y100087 from West Asia, while other cases of Z2106 were from the parallel CTS8966 branch found from Armenia and possibly Levant.

As previously mentioned the best candidate for its affiliation is the Gutian connection. Even though its quite possible that over time he and similar people were assimilated in to locals, but their initial identity might be IE.

Its remarkable that Henning and after him Gamkrelidze and Ivanov proposed the IE origins of Gutians. Even though they linked it to Tocharian which is untenable in current stage of our knowledge.

Now with genetic data on hands lets look closer at Gutian names. 

At last three kings have the root Yarla in their name.

• Yarlagab
• Yarla
• Yarlaganda

In most likelihood the 'Yarla' is a Gutian deity name or a dynastic name while the rest are particles or other roots.

Yarla can be compared to Slavic deity Yarilo which has IE origin from *yeh₁r-. Its a Spring deity. The root is present in English in the form of word "year".

Another interesting root is the -gab. Its present in two names

• Sarlagab
• Yarlagab

It fits well with the PIE root ghabh- (also reconstructed as *gʰebʰ-). Which means to give, to hold. A frequent root in names. The English word to give is derived from that root.

Incidently the name Sarlak supports the fact that "Sarl" in Sarlagab is a root. Most probably a deity name. However this name is not from Sumerian king list so we are not sure anout its identity. He could be the same as Sarlagab ( or Zarlagab) 

Another possible root is the -gan present in 

• Tirigan
• Yarlaganda

Can be compared to PIE root *ǵenh₁. To give birth. Multiple names ending with -es or -us also supports the IE classification. The potential root Tir is also remarkable. It can be compared to Armeno-Iranian deity Tir.

Some other names are obvious Mesopotamian influence. Like Puzur-Suen. While the particle -um in some names is probably an Akkadian suffix.

Summing up the scant Gutian onomastic data we see evidence that can support their IE classification. However the potential IE language behind Gutian names seems to be somewhat different from the Proto-Armenian. It seems to be a centum, while Armenian is satem. It also preserved the phoneme [s] while Armenian converted them to [h] and lost them. What is also remarkable is that their Y DNA was widely present deep in steppe which once more could mean that the Gutian language was a (close?) parallel language to Armenian rather than a simple dialect of Proto-Armenian. 

With more ancient DNA we will have more clarity on all aspects of Middle Bronze Age migrations from steppe to West Asia.

Cambysene was a region first attested in the Geographica

 Cambysene was a region first attested in the Geographica ("Geography") of Strabo (64 BC – c. 24 AD). According to Strabo, it comprised one of the northernmost provinces of the ancient Kingdom of Armenia, and bordered on the Caucasus Mountains and was region through which a road connecting Caucasian Albania and Iberia passed. It was eventually lost by Armenia to Caucasian Albania, likely after 69 BC.

Cambysene correspond to modern Kakheti and northwestern parts of Azerbaijan. We have ancient DNA from Kakheti and it helps to understand why Strabo was considering Cambysene as part of Armenia.

Cambysene had virtually the same Etiuni related population since the Bronze Age which lived there at last till the antiquity. Probably sometimes around 4-2 century BCE the spread of Yaloylutepe culture from eastern parts of Albania introduced the Lezgi - Udi speakers into Cambysene. Ancient DNA from 3th century AD has more J1 and higher levels of CHG ancestry than usual Lchashen type ancestry. (See the chart)

In that period Graeco-Roman sources consider the Kur river as the border of Albania and Armenia, thus the Cambysene was firmly part of Albania in late antiquity. Despite this, Armenian population was still mentioned in that region in Medieval period. Even though those medieval Armenians in western Albania were most probably only partly descending from Lchashen culture but had some ancestry from south of Kur river.

Onomastic data also supports the Armenian presence in Cambysene. The river Getaru has transparent Armenian etymology (Hrach Martirosyan 2010). Compare to river Getar in Yerevan. Even more interesting it's possible that the name Cambysene (Կամբեճան) itself can be derived from Armenian term meaning water buffalo (գոմեշ). The other etymology based on the Persian king Cambys is considered as later invention and not realistic. And finally the river Yori can be compared to Armenian word *yur meaning water. Its evolved to grabar jur (ջուր) later. I discussed this theory with Armen Petrosyan and he considered it plausible.

A multidisciplinary approach for elucidating Mushki origin

A scientific article by Aram Palyan and Seb Peltkyan about the ancient people known as the Mushki, who probably had a Proto-/Para-Armenian origin.

In this article, the authors use a multidisciplinary approach to the question of the origin of the Mushki, relying, among other things, on paleogenetic data. Soviet researchers had already associated the Mushki with the Proto-Armenians. Thus, Igor Mikhailovich Diakonoff considered them Proto-Armenians who had migrated from the Balkans. This was based largely on the fact that later Assyrian sources used the name Mushki for the Phrygians as well, which gave rise to the theory that they had migrated from the Balkans through Anatolia toward the Armenian Highlands. However, the Mushki are first mentioned by the Assyrians farther east, precisely in the Armenian Highlands. Modern evidence instead supports a migration of the Mushki from the east — that is, from the Armenian Highlands toward Anatolia — where they apparently carried their ethnonym with them, which was later used by the Assyrians to designate the Phrygians.

The main arguments of the paper:

• The homeland of the Mushki was at the headwaters of the Euphrates during the Bronze Age. Their actual endonym was most likely *mosk'.

• Beginning around 1200 BCE, they migrated southward and southwestward, where they came into contact with the Assyrians and possibly with the post-Hittite kingdoms.

• Since the Phrygians are closest to the Greeks and unquestionably originated in the Balkans, the Mushki could not originally have been Phrygians, although by the 8th century BCE the term Mushki referred to the country of Phrygia.

• The reasons why the term Mushki became a name for the Phrygians are unknown, but there are many examples in history of such transfers of names, including France, Bulgaria, Palestine, etc.

• The Paleo-Balkan term musk, meaning “mule,” was most likely derived from the name of the Mushki. Both archaeological and paleogenetic evidence suggest that mules began to be bred in Anatolia and from there spread into Europe.

• The term Mushki has no clear etymology, but a number of strong arguments suggest that -k' is a suffix. Tribes and toponyms/onomastic forms with such a suffix are attested around the headwaters of the Euphrates and in northern Anatolia.

• The ethnic identity of the Mushki remains unclear. However, the presence of this suffix, together with the fact that during the Iron Age the genetic marker of the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture (I2a2b) migrated westward, supports the possibility that the Mushki may have been an Armenian tribe, although not Proto-Armenian in the sense previously proposed. A connection with the Kaskians, who inhabited northern Anatolia, is also possible.

• The migration of the Mushki and other tribes also left an archaeological trace in the form of grooved pottery (Grooved Ware, c. 1200 BCE).

• A Kartvelian origin is unlikely. However, the Georgian terms Mtskhe and Mtskheta (Samtskhe) may derive from the name of the Mushki. Genetic traces of a migration of the Mushki from the headwaters of the Euphrates northward into present-day Samtskhe in Georgia also do not support the Georgian hypothesis.

• The transition from mosk > mc'xe occurred in two stages and was probably completed by the 5th century CE. First there was the transition mosk' > moc', followed by the addition of the suffix -x. The Byzantine term Mesch is the Greek designation for the Georgian mc'xe.

• Ultimately, the Mushki (Greek Moschoi) ceased to exist as a distinct ethnic group with its own identity and were assimilated among Armenians, Georgians, and Cappadocians, where they left their mark in the form of mythical founding fathers.

Text from the Armenian DNA Telegram channel.

The original paper: An Examination of the Muški Tribe: A Multidisciplinary Approach Including Paleogenomics.

Common ancestor of Greek, Armenian and Albanian.

 Common ancestor of Greek, Armenian and Albanian.

In Petrosyan and Palyan 2023 we proposed a theory that the common ancestor of Greek and Armenian was the Catacomb culture. The rationale for this proposal was the date when steppe ancestry appears in respective regions. Around 2500BC in South Caucasus and 2300BC in southern Balkans Greece.

However the increasing number of ancient DNA from Balkans and Greece do not support this theory. Instead in Yediay et al. 2024 preprint the common ancestor of Graeco-Armenian was named the late Yamnaya period.

Yamnaya indeed had a massive expansion in Balkans after 3000BC. While Catacomb did not have apparently. See the maps.

Neverthless the Yamnaya culture did not reached central and southern Greece during the Yamnaya wave. The old Minoan and Anatolian farmer related ancestry was still present in EBA south Greece.

Proto-Greek alongside Phrygian and Paionian apparently formed in Bulgaria - North Macedonia region in Early Bronze Age as a result of mixture between Yamnaya and local Balkanian farmers. Later after 2300BC a new wave of migration moved to south Greece where the Mycenean culture formed after 1700BC.

This new version explains why Mycenean Greeks had a such diluted steppe ancestry. Because it was diluted twice. It also explains the strong presence of J2-Z6064 in Mycenean culture. This J2 was Euro-Anatolian farner lineage that integrated into the the emerging Proto-Greek community and expanded with them to central and south Greece. Albanian is another language that almost certainly descend directly from Yamnaya migration to Balkans. Even though they apparently had additional linguistic influences from later Thracian groups (E-V13).

This new version does not change much overall the picture. Except that the separation of Armenian and Greek is pushed back by some 200-250 years.

It also do not contradict to available linguistic data (Martirosyan, Kim etc) which will be discussed in a sepaeate topic.