The Relations of Urartu and Etiuni: A Case Study

 The Relations of Urartu and Etiuni: A Case Study

The relations of Biaina (Urartu) with its neighboring regions are usually depicted in cuneiform texts through military campaigns, following the conventional canons of war: destruction, plunder, prisoners, and executions. However, this method of presenting events carries a degree of propaganda and almost certainly replicates the aggressive Assyrian style. The everyday life of non-Biainians on lands controlled by Biainian kings was almost certainly more complex and nuanced.

Miqayel Badalyan 's paper discusses a clay tablet that plausibly describes the integration of Etiuni men into Urartian society. The clay tablet was found in Sardurihinili (Çavuştepe / Haykaberd) in the Van Basin. It contains numbers of people alongside ethnic names—all from the Sevan Basin—who were apparently living in Sardurihinili and performing certain duties there, most likely military service. What is remarkable is that Assyrian sources report the exact same information about Sardurihinili (which they call Sardurihurda). The Assyrians mention an ethnic group on whom the Urartian king relies to protect the Sardurihinili fortress. Although the name of this ethnic group is incomplete (--tina), Grekyan suggests that it could very well be Etiunians. Furthermore, there are other examples of individuals with Etiunian names, such as Abilianiše and Waza, who attained higher positions within the Urartian hierarchy.

We can add on our part that a few DNA samples from Sardurihinili support Badalyan's theory. One of the DNA samples from Sardurihinili belonged to an Etiuni woman. While we obviously do not know her social status in Urartian society, the description of her burial and grave goods—such as a bronze ring—does suggest that she was not an ordinary enslaved person.

Hopefully, in the future, we will see ancient DNA from Etiuni men with clear evidence in their burials of their integration into Urartian society.

The puzzle of Cimmerian-Scythian presence in ancient South Caucasus.

 The puzzle of Cimmerian-Scythian presence in ancient South Caucasus.

Ancient historic sources mentions the presence of east Iranian tribes in Iron Age South Caucasus. Despite the large number of ancient DNA from Armenia and Georgia from relevant periods there is no single sample that we can securely link to Scytho-Cimmerians. Garegin Tumanyan in his paper speaks about the same problem in archaeology. Urartian and Etiunian archaelogic cultures are widely discussed in academic circles, while no much discussion of possible east Iranian material presence.

In his paper he shows number of artefacts and features that he links to Scythians and Cimmerians. One of them are the anthropomorphic stellaes. The left one is from Lori Berd, while the right ones are from Georgia and North of Caucasus. Other feature is the presence of animal or/and human sacrifices in the graves. The link to the whole paper is below.

Update on J1-Z1842 and Kura-Araxes culture.

 Update on J1-Z1842 and Kura-Araxes culture.

The recent Agdzhoyan et al. paper about Dagestani people added some long waited details to the structure of the J1-Z1842 and its distribution.

We learned that beside ZS3114 and CTS1460 there is a third important branch in Z1842, which is very specific to Dagestan. Its ZS3042 which is absent in Armenians and apparently very rare in South Caucasus. In Yfull many Dargins and Kaitags are present in that branch.

Another important information is the branch ZS3114 which is more frequent in Lezgins than other Dagestani people. It has a more southern distribution. In Armenians its found almost exclusively among eastern Armenians. If the language of Lezgi speakers is related to this ZS3114 branch then this can support some linguistic theories making Lezgi-Udi group as the first split in Nakh-Dagestani family.

All this data forces us to rethink the origin of J1-Z1842 and place its locus of differentiation close to Eastern Caucasus range.

However I still dont think that the expansion of Z1842 started from the northeast of Caucasus. There are many arguments against such a theory. But one the most strongest is the autosomes of oldest Z1842 ancient DNA. They all have significantly lower levels of steppe ancestry than Areni cave preceding them. Its very hard to imagine that Z1842 lived for thousand years in the north and did not acquired substantial steppe ancestry.

What this data tell us is another possibility. The branch specific to Dagestan the ZS3042 could have diverged earlier with Chalcolithic culture Sioni - Ginchi (5000-4000bc). Ginchi is a site on north Caucasus with similar pottery as in Sioni (Georgia). As for the parallel CTS1460 which has a great diversity in South Caucasus/Near East and was found in multiple ancient Kura֊Araxes sites is a genuine Kura-Araxes lineage. Its TMRCA in Yfull also more realistically fits to the spread of Kura-Araxes culture.

And finally about the origins of KA culture itself. Recent claims of KA pottery in Chalcolithic levels of Areni, Ovčular tepesi in Nakhichevan and in some sites in Turkey combined with the fact the extra CHG/J1 ancestry in KA samples was from more eastern regions means that the formation of KA culture and its later spread are not necessarily done by the same population. So there must be two distinct KA with probably two distinct autosome profiles.

Alternatively the extra CHG could still be from unsampled forest mountain regions of Lori and Tavush. They could harbor a hunter gatherer (Aknashen like) enclave different from Areni and Shulaveri culture. But even with this scenario the contradiction is not solved.

According Passerini et al. the oldest KA was in lowlands with collective kurgan burials. Only starting from 3300BC highland KA with permanent settlements emerged. This later KA that we can call KA 2 can have a different locus (left side of Kur river?) and population (CHG rich) than the first one. KA 1 in the other side can be more related to Areni type population. This hypothesis obviously require confirmation by ancient DNA

The patriarch Phawos (Փաւոս)

Khorenatsi lists multiple kings/patriarchs for a short period that fits into the end of Urartu and the rise of Orontid (Eruanduni) Armenia. This can be interpreted as an argument for the complexity of that period.

We have already seen one of patriarchs of that period. The Pharnawaz who seems to be a real person related to Parnaki tribe. Another patriarch of that period is Phawos pronounced as P'awos. His name is written in various forms in different texts but the canonic form is Phawos (Փաւոս).

Finding an ancient tribe or person related to him seems impossible. But the more close look on ancient provinces of Armenia gives a remarkable result.

Strabo in his Geography mentions a certain province Phauene in Armenia. Few paragraphs later he mentions Phaunitis between Basoropeda (Vaspurakan) and Caspiane (Paytakaran). 

There is also Phauenê,⁠ a province of Armenia, and Comisenê, and Orchistenê, which last furnishes the most cavalry. Chorzenê and Cambysenê are the most northerly ...

....

(Artaxias and Zariadres) enlarged their kingdoms by cutting off for themselves parts of the surrounding nations, — I mean by cutting off Caspianê and Phaunitis and Basoropeda from the country of the Medes;

If we remove the Greek suffixes usually added to foreign toponyms we get the root Phau/Phaun. This root is virtually identic to the possible root Phaw- in the name of patriarch Phawos. We can deduce that the name of Phawos is derived from an old tribe that lived probably somewhere in Syunik/Artsakh and/or south of Araxes also in the adjacent northern regions of Iran. 

This hypothetic Phaw-os tribe gived his name to that region but overtime the name was lost.  Some scholars has proposed that the name Phauene is preserved in Pharisos of Artsakh (north of Mrav range) while Hewsen suggested that Phaun-itis is a corrupted form Siwnik/Syunik. Both proposals are problematic from linguistic perspective, even though in one manuscript the name of Phawos was written as Pharos.

Keeping aside whether the name survived to medieval period or not, there is another interesting name in ancient texts. The tribe Pausikae was living next of Caspians (Paytakaran) in 11th satrapy according Herodotus.  If we consider -ikae as a Greek suffix or a particle from the language of Pausikae we get the root Paus- in a region where later Strabo mentions Phaun-itis. This is a strong argument that such a tribe lived in that region.

Finally the ultimate origin of Pausikae/Phawos is obviously unknown. Some scholars suggested an Iranian origin for Pausikae based on a vague similarity of name with some Central Asian tribes. If -ik is a suffix from their language then they could be both Armenic and Iranian. And finally if -os was a suffix from their language then this links them to the wider Gutian group where such a suffix is found in names. My own opinion is that Phawos more likely is descending from the R1b tribes present in that region. They became part of wider Armenian identity while some others were probably absorbed in Iranians.

The king Urnayr (Ուռնայր)

 The king Urnayr (Ուռնայր)

Urnayr was an Arsacid king of Albania. Historic tradition claims that he was baptised by Gregory the Illuminator. Another Urnayr was contemporary of king Pap (around 370 AD). However not all scholars agree that there was two different Urnayrs.

Its remarkable that the name Urnayr has a typical Armenian form. Norayr (new man), Hrayr (fire man), Zhirayr (lively/active man) are such examples. Indeed Ačaryan gives an Armenian etymology for Urn-ayr meaning hammer man.

Ironically if we count the proportion of Armenian names among Arsacids ruling Armenia we will have a lower proportion than in Albania. Alongside the toponym Getaru this is another example of a name with transparent Armenian etymology. Prior the genetics it was virtually impossible to understand why we have Armenian terms in Albanian onomastic. But today there is no puzzle about that. Armenians and Proto-Armenians had a long presence all over Kur river basin since Bronze Age, even though its not granted that this particular name has old origins there.

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.

Great news for understanding the Kura-Araxes culture legacy.

Great news for understanding the Kura-Araxes culture legacy.

Now that ancient DNA files from Bakr Awa are uploaded to FTDNA, we can make more precise conclusions.

The most important news is about G2b from MBA Bakr Awa (~1800BC). It is from the same branch as the G2b from Kaps in Armenia EBA. This G2b from Kaps was from a Kura-Araxes layer. Another Kura-Araxes G2b sample (I22907) is upcoming from Akbari et al. dataset. And multiple other G2b samples from later Lchashen period with typical Etiuni profile. You can see them on the first picture.

All this support the idea that G2b-FGC3032 was an important Kura-Araxes marker that moved to Zagros and reached Bakr Awa, which is marked by the blue dot on the second map showing sites with KAC pottery.

Given that Bakr Awa was an important Hurrian site in MBA this raises sharply the probability that Hurro-Urartian languages descend from Kura-Araxes culture. Or at last from southern parts of it. Other haplotypes supporting such a possibility are three cases of J1-PH128 from Bakr Awa connected to South Caucasus by the parallel branch. We don't have yet the proof that it was a KAC lineage but chances are quite high that it was. Another interesting haplotype is the J2-M92 in Achaemenid era Bakr Awa. The M92 was found in Kura-Araxes site from Georgia and in Levantine site Meggido in MBA also.

Combined with the possibility that Nakh-Dagestani people also descend from Kura-Araxes a legitimate question arise. If Kura-Araxes origin of Hurrians is confirmed, do this proves that Diakonoff and Starostin linguistic theory was correct. Well Kura-Araxes was roughly contemporary with Yamnaya. If those two linguistic groups descend from the same Proto language living in Early Bronze Age then other linguists also would have easily noticed their connection, like in the IE case. However that theory didn't get acceptance and recently Alexei Kassian completely rejected such a link.

Another possibility is that Hurro֊Urartian was language of farmers, which by the way is supported by their lexical parallels with Sumerian. While Proto-Nakh-Dagestani was a language of east Caucasian hunter gatherers that were shifting to food producing way of subsistence. In that case PHU and PND will not have recent common origin but will have occasions to contact each other and exchange words. Additionally the presence of Proto-Anatolians in Late Chalcolithic historic Armenia can explain the findings of Fournet and Bomhard about an archaic IE influence on Hurrian.

Ethnic Diversity in the Zagros Mountains: Part 1

 Ethnic Diversity in the Zagros Mountains: Part 1

Bronze Age Mesopotamian sources mention many ethnic groups and polities in the Zagros region, including the Hamazi, Gutians, Turukki (possibly the same as the Tukris), Lullubi, Kassites, Elamites, and others. Beside those listed, early Indo-Iranians must have also been present there.

In this group, I have already mentioned—based on a single sample—that the Elamites apparently had a high level of Iran/Zagros Neolithic ancestry. Therefore, their language could have originated from the Iran Neolithic. We have also discussed the possibility that the spread of Grey Ware (Dinkha Tepe II, after 1800 BC) in the Middle Bronze Age of northern Iran could be related to the Kassites and those unnamed Aryans.

Figuring out the genetic profile of the other mentioned groups is more problematic due to the absence of data related to their archaeology. However, in one case, a connection seems very likely—practically close to certitude. Some scholars have proposed theories that the Gutians were an Indo-European tribe ancestral to the Tocharians. Current data do not support the Tocharian link, given that the Tocharian origin is better explained by the Afanasievo culture.

Despite this, the idea of the Gutians as an Indo-European tribe is supported by the presence of R1b-Z2103 (Z2106?) in Middle Bronze Age Bakr Awa. R1b-Z2103 is a lineage that expanded in the Yamnaya culture and moved to the South Caucasus around the 2550–2500 BC period. From the South Caucasus, it moved further south toward the Zagros Mountains, and from there, they entered Mesopotamia. Cuneiform sources describe them as barbaric, destructive people who did not respect Mesopotamian gods and rituals. Some have proposed that they probably had light skin (namrum). However, modern scholars translate the meaning of namrum differently: as bright, shining, or healthy, of good quality for people or slaves. There are also reasons to believe that the Gutians elected their kings for specific periods. If true, this sets them apart from other West Asian societies where power was transferred hereditarily, and brings them closer to the ancient Greeks.

Only two dozen names are known from them, and not a single word. Thus, their linguistic classification remains obscure. In addition to these facts, I want to add that the term "Guti" was apparently a frequent endonym among various Indo-European peoples. The Tocharians called themselves Kuči, which could be derived from Guti based on regular phonetic shifts. The names of the Thracian tribe Getae, the Germanic Goths, and the Jats / Jutts in India could be related to this term. All of these parallels further reinforce the possibility that the Gutians could have originally come from the Yamnaya culture. Obviously, more ancient DNA is needed to further reinforce this theory, but at the current stage, the Gutians are clearly the best candidate for explaining the appearance of R1b in Bakr Awa. Note that this does not mean Hurrians completely lack any R1b; they could have had it, but they must have acquired it from neighboring IE tribes, meaning it was not native to them.

Later the term Guti/Quti has transformed in to catch all term denoting various people in North Zagros and Urartu region. The last mention of Guti is from the 6th century BC in Babylonian sources in the context of Persian expansion.

My next post will be about their possible language classification and the question of how it relates to Proto-Armenian, which also formed as a result of the same migration.

Remarks on Hurrians and their initial Y DNA

 Remarks on Hurrians and their initial Y DNA

The recent Williams et al. 2026 paper about ancient DNA from Mesopotamia (Bakr Awa) made some comments about the possible Hurrian DNA, so let's look closer at it. It's probably the third or fourth ancient DNA paper discussing Hurrian DNA. Despite the growing number of aDNA from regions where Hurrians and the related Urartians had left inscriptions, the understanding of their DNA is still very far from being complete. But some preliminary conclusions can be made.

Their autosomal genetic profile was primarily composed of Central farmer type. In northeastern regions where they had contacts with Proto-Armenians, they had probably acquired some steppe ancestry and R1b-Z2103. This also correlates with linguistic contacts. Like the word ešši meaning horse is almost certainly a loanword from the Armenian word eš meaning donkey (it was initially meaning horse).The ancient DNA from western regions (Alalakh) where Hurrians had left inscriptions does not have steppe ancestry but seems to be intermingled with Semitic ancestry. It's important to keep in mind that North Mesopotamia witnessed a Semitic wave around 3200–3000 BC, thus before Hurrians became the prominent group in that region. This means that Hurrians almost certainly assimilated or lived side by side with East Semites that settled there a few centuries earlier. Linguistically, it's confirmed by numerous loanwords from Akkadian.In eastern regions, Hurrians had also contacts with various poorly classified Zagros people (Gutians, Lullubi, Kassites). I will dedicate a separate topic about them later. And of course, after 1800 BC, a group of Indo-Iranians migrated to the Near East who became the ruling elite of a Hurrian-populated kingdom, Mitanni. Numerous names and words of Aryan origin among Hurrians are the best proof of this.

All these numerous interactions of Hurrians with neighbors complicate the understanding of Hurrian DNA. Most of the time, it's very hard to figure out whether the excavated Y-DNA was natively Hurrian or is from neighbors. So the best way is to ignore possible neighboring group Y-DNA and try to find the core Hurrian ones. Fortunately, there was an archaeological culture in North Mesopotamia that almost certainly was created by Hurrians, even though not exclusively by Hurrians (East Semites were also part of it).

It's the Khabur ware (2000–1500 BC) in North Mesopotamia. The distinctive painted Khabur ware pottery apparently evolved into Nuzi ware, which shows a robust correlation with the Mitanni kingdom. This Khabur pottery has it's roots in North Mesopotamia, where the oldest Hurrian text was found from Urkesh (see the map) at around 2300 BC.

We already have samples from Khabur ware-related sites. It's from the Dinkha Tepe BIA 1. Occasionally, you will see claims that Dinkha Tepe 1 from the Urmia Basin are Semites. That is very unlikely. The J2-PF5197 found there is atypical to Bronze Age Semites, while the J1-P58 can be from them. Khabur ware was present in Bakr Awa, where we find an unusual Y-DNA, J1-PH128. At least three Y-DNA out of 10 were from this branch. This branch of J1 is unrelated to Semitic J1 and to NEC J1. So we can conjecture that it's a genuine Hurrian J1. Its popularity among Armenians is another hint of their plausible Hurrian connection.

As usual more samples from Khabur and Nuzi ware will help to find more plausible genuine Hurrian Y DNA.

Remarks on the J2-Z6065 from ancient Bakr Awa in Mesopptamia.

 Remarks on the J2-Z6065 from ancient Bakr Awa in Mesopptamia.

J2-Z6065 is one most frequent type of J2 in Armenia after the J2-M67. This is hardly surprising given that currently one of oldest Z6065 is found from Massis Blur Neolithic site in Republic of Armenia. This mean that Z6065 was a Neolithic lineage found all over historic Armenia and South Caucasus.

However this is not the whole story. Most of J2-Z6065 found among Armenians is concentrated in two Middle Bronze Age clusters. The YP879 and BY32912. Middle Bronze Age was characterized in Armenia by migration from north and expansion of haplotypes associated with this migration R1b-Z2103 and I2a2b.

So how to explain the presence of J2-Z6065 Middle Bronze age clusters. Well when steppe migrants first settled in south Caucasus and other regions they must have encountered populations that had Z6065 in their patrilineal gene pool. They mixed with them and apparently some of this Z6065 became part of new elites and later expanded with this newly mixed population.

I already suggested in this group that YP879 found in Iron Age Van was probably a Van Urmia culture related haplotype. Now we have data from Bakr Awa that indirectly supports this theory.

One of steppe admixed Middle Bronze Age sample (A22041) from Bakr Awa is J2-Z6065. Even more this person had mtdna U2d2 which was regularly found in steppe cultures. Without much doubt this person was not native to Mesopotamia and he came with the R1b-Z2103 from South Caucasus.

It was positive to Z39478, so he couldn't be ancestral to the aforementioned YP879 branch, however it could be potentially ancestral to another cluster like BY32912. Alternatively it was P81, then it could be from Maykop culture or local South Caucasus. Whatever was the case this finding is very important because it gives a hint how some Z6065 clusters in Armenians formed.

Returning to J2-YP879 found in Iron Age Cavushtepe in Biaina ( Urartu ). A question arises. Was this person an Hurro-Urartian speaker or Armenian speaker who carried an already assimilated J2 lineage that probably came from South Caucasus or Urmia basin. We of course can't know the answer to this question, but with more samples related to YP879 we can propose more solid theories.

An update on North West Caucasians.

 An update on North West Caucasians.

Apparently we missed this story in this group. In Ghalichi et al. 2024 new samples from the Dolmen culture were published and one of them was G2-L1266. This haplotype is very popular among all North West Caucasian speakers. This finding support the possibility that the linguistic ancestors of Abkhaz-Adyghean (NWC) speakers were from the Dolmen culture.

After the Bronze Age in northwestern Caucasus a new Iron Age cultural landscape appears known as Maeotian culture. The name is based on the Greek sources term.

From another paper (Andreeva et al. 2025) two female samples were published supposedly linked to Maeotians.

Their genetic profile was different from the neighbouring Scythians. They had a typical Caucasian genetic profile. This supports the theory that the Greek sources Maeotians had probably a NWC origin.

The G2-L1266 moved to northwestern Caucasus from south. In most likelihood from Anatolia or eastern parts of Anatolia. There is some slim chance that it was from South Caucasus via the Maykop culture.. But current data is not particularly supportive of this possibility.

As for the ultimate origin of NWC languages it can be the same as the haplotype but can be different given that multiple cases of local J2 also were found in Dolmen culture

This map of Kura Araxes sites is from Wilkinson 2014.

 This map of Kura Araxes sites is from Wilkinson 2014. Its possible that he didnt mention all known sites but overall it shows well the pattern of their geographic distribution.

As You can see there are very little known Kura-Araxes sites in middle and lower Kur river region. This is exactly the region where Early Kurganic culture of steppe origin mixed with locals (2550-2300 BC) according the archaeologic studies that i posted earlier.

In Late Chalcolithic period this region was occupied by Leila tepe culture people genetically related to Chaff faced ware horizon. Those people had much more Anatolian/Levantine neolithic related ancestry and less CHG than Kura-Araxes. This is the reason why the succeeding Trialeti Vanadzor culture and Lchashen-Metsamor show excess of Anatolian related ancestry. This shift is visible also in Y DNA. By the presence of haplotypes like E-M84 and T1a1a in Armenia MLBA period. Those haplotypes are very unlikely to represent typical Kura-Araxes haplotypes.

The second picture is a qpadm model made by Nareg Asatrian where it is visible that Yamnaya Moldova works quite well as a source for ancestry for Armenia MLBA. Its a reproduction of the model done in Yediay et al. 2024.

The real reason for samples from Moldova working well is that they have the extra Anatolian farmer related ancestry necessary for Armenia MLBA. For reasons that i explained above and absolutely unrelated to Moldova. Another reason is the extra WHG but it will be a subject for a different post.

In conclusion the linguistic substrate for Proto Armenians was not the Kura-Araxes culture or lets be more cautious was not exclusively the Kura-Araxes. Chaff faced ware and Leila tepe's hypothetic language(s) also must have important influence on Armenian.

I2a2b (SK1270 or Y16419) in Trialeti-Vanadzor culture remains a puzzle

 I2a2b (SK1270 or Y16419) in Trialeti-Vanadzor culture remains a puzzle. We know that its from Europe, we know that it reached South Caucasus via the north. But till now we dont have intermediate specimens between Central Europe and South Caucasus.

Akbari et al. 2026 samples when published can solve this puzzle.

We have three ancient Y DNA that are relatively close to TVC cluster and here how they look genome wide. Their common ancestor with TVC I2a2b is something like 8000-9000 years.

One of them I17647 is something like Ukraine HG intermediate between WHG and EHG. (7500 year old)

The other one I10491 is also heavily WHG and EHG. But it has also Yamnaya related ancestry. Which is important because before moving to South Caucasus the Trialeti Vanadzor lineage must have been present in Yamnaya. (6600 year old)

And the third one I29874 is a typical European farmer similar to Potocani I2a2b from Chalcolithic Croatia.

Based on this we can say that at last I17647 and I10491 are in most likelihood from East Europe. While the last one is from Central Europe.

PS the two first samples are from E zone in suplemments. See the the third picture for the map.

The end of the Kura-Araxes culture and the emergence of new kurgan cultures.

 The end of the Kura-Araxes culture and the emergence of new kurgan cultures. Here I present a short summary of the papers by Ruben Badalyan et al. (2024) and Pavel Avetisyan & R. Badalyan. The two papers are based solely on archaeological data, with no discussion of paleogenetics. The first paper deals mainly with the end of the Kura-Araxes (KA) culture, while the second focuses on Middle Bronze Age cultures.

Key points

The depopulation of KA sites started earlier, around the 27th–26th centuries BC, than the appearance of the new Middle Bronze Age cultures.
The appearance of new cultures in the Kura-Araxes region was rather a consequence than a cause of this depopulation.
The depopulation was not complete but there was a 15-20 fold drop in settlement numbers. The last period of KA coexisted with Early Kurgans.
In most cases (though not all), traces of burning and fire in KA settlements were not caused by invaders, but had internal causes — either spontaneous or deliberately carried out by the inhabitants themselves (ritualistic or sanitary?). After the fires, the settlements were rebuilt. A similar tradition also existed in the Balkans.
KA sites in the Upper Euphrates and Tigris regions did not experience the same depopulation. On the contrary, they developed into urban centers with active trade connections to Mesopotamia.
The earliest manifestations of the new kurgan cultures begin around 2550 BC in the Kur River basin. The Kur basin appears to have been the core region of this new culture. This date fits very well with the chronology calculated by Lazaridis et al. (2022) (my comment).
Early kurgan culture was not homogeneous. It had two variants: the Martqopi variant and the Bedeni variant. Martqopi shares more features with the preceding Kura-Araxes culture, while Bedeni shares very few. Trialeti seems to have been closer to Martqopi. Bedeni used tin bronze, whereas KA and Martqopi relied mainly on arsenical bronze. Tin-bronze technology originated in Europe.
Early kurgan sites are not frequent in the Republic of Armenia and appear only after 2450 BC. No early kurgan burials have been found south of the Araxes River.
After 2200 BC, the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture expanded throughout the Kura-Araxes basin and south of the Araxes. It had two types of pottery: monochrome pottery with dot decoration and painted pottery. The painted type apparently emerged in the south and became the predominant type in the regions south of the Araxes River.
The painted type expanded from south to north and remained rare in Georgia. In the territory of modern Armenia, painted pottery constituted about fifty percent of the pottery assemblage in Trialeti-Vanadzor culture layers, and it was the dominant type south of the Araxes River.
After 1900 BC, new cultures derived from the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture formed on top of the TVC horizon. These included the Karmirvank (Van-Urmia) culture, the Sevan-Artsakh (Uzerlik) culture, and the Karmirberd culture.

My next post will be about the comparison of available paleogenetic data with this vision based on archaeology.

The King Pharnavaz (Փառնավազ)

In Armenian historical tradition, the post-Urartian period — which, incidentally, is also the post-Assyrian period — is marked by the emergence of new elites.

In Movses Khorenatsi’s history, the first crowned king of Armenia (after Assyrian rule) was Paruyr Skayordi. He was an ally of the Medes and, according to Khorenatsi, participated in the destruction of the Assyrian Empire. However, the historian Sebeos reports a different story about the same period [1]. He mentions a certain Pharnavaz who was loyal to the Babylonians and was recognized by Babylon as king of Armenia. Afterward, this Pharnavaz and his descendants controlled lands in the southwestern regions of historical Armenia (Ałdznikʿ and Tsopkʿ).

The Assyrian Empire was destroyed by an alliance of Babylon and the Medes in 614–609 BC. After this, Babylonian sources report three additional campaigns in northern Mesopotamia in which the lands of Urartu are mentioned as targets of attack and plunder. It is quite possible that, after the annihilation of Assyrian political influence, Babylon had interactions with rulers located in the southern parts of historical Armenia and recognized one of the local rulers as king. Thus, the reports of the Babylonian Chronicles fit well with Sebeos’s account of Pharnavaz.

The name Pharnavaz is absent from Urartian texts; however, Assyrian texts mention a certain tribe, the Parnaki, dwelling in a region north or east of Assyria, in the northern Zagros. A derivation of the personal name Pharnavaz from the Parnaki tribe is quite plausible and is supported by historical parallels found in Anatolia, where the satrapal Pharnacid dynasty bore both the names Pharnaces and Pharnabazus. The term Pharnavaz itself is composed of two Iranian words: *farna* (“glory,” “splendor”) and *bāzu* (“arm”), which, according to Armenian phonetic rules, could have developed into Pʿarnawaz (Փառնաւազ).

Assuming that Sebeos’s story has a real historical background, we can reconstruct the following chronology of events:

**8th–7th century BC.** A minor Iranian tribe, not directly affiliated with the Medes or Persians, was dwelling near historical Armenia. They are mentioned by the Assyrians. In the Armenian patriarchal list, the name Pʿarnak is also present in ancient times.

**At the end of the 7th century BC.** The destruction of Assyria and the extreme weakening of the Biainean dynasty triggered migrations and the emergence of new elites. The Parnaki tribe most probably settled in the southwestern regions of Armenia, had occasion to interact with the Babylonians, and became part of the local ruling class. It was assimilated by the Armenians, and the memory of King Pharnavaz became part of Armenian historical tradition. 

Another Pharnavaz is also important in Georgian historic tradition. He is the king of Iberia around ~300BC and the founder of Pharnavazid dynasty. I will dedicate a separate post about the possible relation of this two Pharnavaz' and the position of Pharnacid dynasty of Anatolia in all this.

During the same post Assyrian period, or slightly earlier, Paruyr Skayordi was probably ruling in the eastern regions of historical Armenia — in or around the territory of the modern Republic. In that location, Paruyr Skayordi would have had occasion to interact with the Medes, and this memory was recorded by Khorenatsi. It must be noted that Khorenatsi also mentions Pharnavaz as a “grandson” of Paruyr Skayordi, but gives no further information about him. The Urartian cuneiform texts referring to the lands of Išqigulu and to Sagaputra (“son of Saka”) as king may also be interpreted as evidence for a Skayordi domain in the eastern regions.

In conclusion, the end of the Assyrian Empire was also a period of weakening for the Biainean dynasty and of political fragmentation in the Armenian Highlands. New elites appeared, possibly some of Iranian origin, and were assimilated into the Armenian-Urartian cultural milieu. Slightly later, the Orontid (Eruanduni) dynasty emerged and unified the country.

References

[1] Tsakanyan, R., The Versions of Khorenatsi and Sebeos on the Fall of Assyria, VEM, 2017, № 4(60), pp. 230-239, in Arm.

See also

• A tribe Parnaki is attested in Iron Age Assyrian texts