The Eastern-Side Armenians

The Eastern-Side Armenians

Hovhannisyan et al. (2024) published numerous DNA samples from the Artsakh, Syunik, and Gardman regions. In addition, a member of our group, Diana Sarkisova Vikutan, provided several coordinates from Shamakhi Armenians, as well as DNA samples with mixed ancestry from the Shamakhi and Artsakh regions. We are grateful to her for sharing these data.

All these datasets were combined into a single PCA and ancestry proportion chart together with other modern and ancient samples spanning the area from Syunik to Shamakhi. The analysis was performed using unscaled coordinates. Based on this, several observations can be made:

• Artsakh and Syunik Armenians: Artsakh Armenians are genetically very similar to Syunik Armenians. Both belong to the genetic cline of historic Armenia, which shows a strong affinity with the so-called “Central farmer” ancestry. Gardman Armenians are also close to this cluster, though with a slight shift toward Caucasus hunter-gatherer (CHG) ancestry.

• Distance from Armenia LIA samples: All Armenian subgroups plot away from the Armenia LIA samples from Syunik. This is due to a so-called “southern” shift that may have occurred in these eastern regions sometime after the fall of Urartu.

• Shamakhi Armenians: Shamakhi Armenians show higher steppe ancestry than any other known Armenian subgroup. The two samples from the Shamakhi region differ somewhat from each other. One of them (Sham01) displays more Zagros Neolithic ancestry. The source of this shift is currently unclear. It is worth noting that a Late Antiquity sample (3rd century AD) from the Shamakhi region already showed extra Zagros/Iran Neolithic ancestry, almost certainly due to Iranian influence in that region. Another possibility is that the Zagros shift in Sham01 reflects ancestry from a more recent non-Armenian population. Yet another possibility is that the shift derives from a still poorly sampled subgroup of Tat Armenians.

• Mixed Shamakhi–Artsakh samples: Three DNA samples show mixed Shamakhi and Artsakh ancestry. As expected, they plot between the Shamakhi and Artsakh clusters. However, their dispersion suggests that the real diversity among Shamakhi Armenians could be greater than what the currently available two samples indicate.

• Udi population: The Udi people plot far from their linguistic relatives, the Lezgins. Moreover, they are also shifted away from the Late Antiquity Shamakhi sample that may represent Caucasian Albanian ancestry. The formation of the Udi genetic profile is still unclear, but their proximity to Armenians—who themselves are shifted toward the southwest—suggests that Udis may have acquired Armenian ancestry either in antiquity or, more likely, during the medieval period. It is also noteworthy that some Azerbaijanis from the Shaki region plot close to Udis, indicating that the influence of Armenian-like ancestry was not limited to the Udi population.

Additionally, the Skourtanioti et al. (2024) paper noted an “Anatolian” shift in Iberia and linked it to the spread of Christianity. It is possible that similar processes occurred in Caucasian Albania during Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval period. Hopefully, with the publication of a temporal transect from the Kakhetia region, we will gain a better understanding of how the genetics of Caucasian Albania evolved during historical times.

In summary, the genetic history of the territory of the modern Azerbaijani Republic appears to have become quite complex after the Bronze and Iron Ages. Multiple influences shaped the genetic diversity of the region. The single Caucasian Albanian sample remains somewhat puzzling: it is still unclear whether it represents typical Albanian ancestry or an outlier. As usual, more modern and ancient samples from these regions are needed to better understand their genetic history.

If You are an Armenian and have ancestry from Gardman, Shaki and Shirvan including Shamakhi regions You can join the relevant FTDNA project. You can find the link below. The title of the project will change in the future.

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/gardmank-gandzak/about

Y-DNA from Rasuloğlu Höyük and the Hattian Context

Y-DNA from Rasuloğlu Höyük and the Hattian Context

Yediay et al. (2024) published Bronze Age samples from the North Anatolian site of Rasuloğlu Höyük in Çorum province. These samples were explicitly labeled as representatives of the Hattian cultural context, making it particularly interesting to examine their Y-DNA lineages.

One of the individuals carried haplogroup G2-M406, as expected. Many commentators have previously suggested that G2-M406 could serve as a marker associated with Hattic populations, and these results provide additional support for that idea.

Another interesting finding from Rasuloğlu was haplogroup T1a2a. It should be noted that T1a2 lineages have repeatedly been identified in ancient Anatolia, including both T1a2a and T1a2b branches. Apparently, this was a minor Neolithic lineage that spread somewhat later into Europe and appears only rarely in Neolithic European contexts, largely restricted to the Balkans.

Later, during the Early Chalcolithic period, the expansion of groups related to the Hattian cultural sphere in northern Anatolia (and later associated with Hittite and Palaic populations) seems to have increased the frequency of T1a2-L131 alongside G2-M406.

Another T1a2 lineage has been identified in an ancient sample from the Hellenistic period in Samsun, a region that likely had Hattic and possibly Kaskian populations during the Bronze Age. Additional occurrences of T1a2 have also been reported in western Anatolia.

It is noteworthy that, similar to G2-M406, T1a2 is rare or virtually absent in Bronze Age Minoan Crete. This suggests that the population involved in the rise of the Minoan civilization differed from the groups that expanded into northern Anatolia during the Early Chalcolithic.

The distribution of T1a2 among modern Armenians also supports these observations. The lineage is found predominantly among western Armenians and is rare in eastern Armenia. Interestingly, a modern Armenian individual occupies a basal position within T1a2*, which provides additional evidence that the early homeland of T1a2 may have been located in the vicinity of historic Armenia.

Aratta

Aratta

Aratta was a semi-legendary land known from Sumerian epics. It probably existed during the first half of the third millennium BCE.

Its location has long been debated. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov proposed an Indo-European etymology for Aratta based on river terminology. Indeed, a river named Aratta is attested in the Urmia Basin during the Iron Age—about two thousand years after the legendary Aratta.

Despite this semantic parallel, other theories placing Aratta in more eastern regions, such as Afghanistan or eastern Iran, remain popular and are supported by various arguments.

It is noteworthy that Aratta was not only the name of a land in Sumerian sources but also an ordinary word. One meaning is “heavy,” “glorious,” or “important,” while another meaning is “tin.”

The interpretation of Aratta as “tin” may be understood in two ways. Either Aratta was a land rich in tin mines, or it was a place from which the Sumerians obtained tin through trade, or from which they learned about the use of tin.

Tin was an important metal in the Bronze Age. There were two main techniques for producing bronze from copper: alloying copper with arsenic or with tin. Both types of bronze are found in Armenia during the Kura–Araxes period. Moreover, Armenia also possessed tin deposits. However, Central Asia also has tin mines, and tin bronze was widely used in Europe as well.

For a long time, considerable uncertainty existed about the origin of tin used in the Near East. A recent study using isotopic analysis has challenged the theory that most of the tin used in the Levant, Greece, and Anatolia originated in Central Asia. Instead, the authors propose a European source.

However, Aratta itself cannot have been located in Europe. If we follow this line of reasoning, two possibilities emerge. Either Aratta was a trading hub somewhere in the Near East that obtained tin from Europe and redistributed it to the Sumerians, or Aratta was located in Armenia or the nearby northern Zagros region, where the Kura–Araxes culture existed during that period. These two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. Isotopic studies of tin from historic Armenia may help clarify this question in the future.

Finally, the Armenian word for tin, anag (անագ), is related to the Sumero-Akkadian-Hurrian word for tin or lead (anna, annaki, anagi). This linguistic connection may reflect long-standing trade contacts between Mesopotamia and the Armenian Highlands.

Genetic History of the Levant — Part A

Recently there has been a surge of interest in Levantine genetics. Here is a summary of the genetic history of the Levant in two parts.

Natufian Culture (13,000–9,000 BCE)

The Natufian culture was a hunter-gatherer society with the remarkable feature of being sedentary or semi-sedentary. The main Y-DNA haplogroups associated with Natufians include archaic forms of E1b and CT lineages.

Levant Neolithic (9,000–4,500 BCE)

The Neolithic in the Levant is divided into two phases: Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) and Pottery Neolithic.

Agriculture spread to the southern Levant from more northern regions. The core area where farming was first developed was in the Urfa region (Portasar / Göbekli Tepe) near the modern Syrian–Turkish border. Genetic data show an important northward shift in autosomes in the southern Levant during this period, particularly visible in PPNB samples from Israel and Jordan.

A strong genetic indicator of this migration is the haplogroup E1b-Z1919, which has two major branches:

• E-L618, which moved to Europe via Anatolia and today is common in the Balkans.

• E-V22, which moved south into Egypt and introduced farming there. Today it is common in northern Egypt.

Another important lineage from this period is E-M123, which today is mainly found in West Asia but also appears in Central Asia. Sporadic occurrences of H2 and T1a are also documented.

Copper Age / Chalcolithic (4,500–3,300 BCE)

There are relatively few samples from this period. The limited available data, associated with the Ghassulian culture, show another autosomal shift toward northern Iraq.

This shift is consistent with archaeological evidence indicating the emergence of new burial traditions. At present, it is difficult to determine exactly which cultural phenomenon caused this change in the southern Levant during the Chalcolithic period.

A similar shift toward northern Mesopotamia had already begun earlier in the northern Levant (Tell Kurdu). A plausible cultural candidate connected with this process is the Halaf culture.

The presence of T1a1a-L208 during this period also supports the idea that new groups were involved that were not directly descended from earlier Neolithic populations.

Early Bronze Age (3,300–2,200 BCE)

The transition from the Chalcolithic to the Early Bronze Age in the Levant was a period of dramatic cultural change. Many old settlements were abandoned, while new mobile pastoralist groups spread throughout the region. These groups are usually identified with early Semitic tribes.

The autosomal change during this period is relatively subtle, showing a slightly more eastern genetic shift. However, the change in Y-DNA is much more pronounced. The frequency of E1b lineages declines significantly, while J1-Z1853 becomes the most common haplogroup from this period onward. J2b1 also increases in frequency during this time.

The exact location of the Proto-Semitic homeland remains debated. It is often placed in the Arabian Peninsula, and the slight increase in Natufian ancestry does support a southern origin. However, the appearance of additional ancestry related to historic Armenia suggests a region closer to Mesopotamia (see the map), where J1 may have already been present in earlier periods. Ultimately, J1 appears to originate further north in the Taurus–Zagros–Caucasus mountain region.

At present, ancient DNA evidence is still insufficient to precisely determine the Proto-Semitic homeland or the exact migration path of J1.

Wherever the Proto-Semitic homeland was located, Semitic populations expanded widely:

• northward to the Taurus Mountains,

• eastward to the Zagros Mountains,

• and southward across the Red Sea, reaching Ethiopia around 1000 BCE.

The earliest branch of the Semitic language family is East Semitic, represented by Eblaite and Akkadian, both now extinct. These populations settled in northern Levant and Mesopotamia, where their culture merged with that of the Sumerians and likely contributed to the end of the Uruk cultural system around 3100 BCE.

The Akkadians later established one of the earliest empires in history, uniting Mesopotamian city-states around 2330 BCE. This empire collapsed around 2150 BCE.

After the 2200 BCE climatic event and the fall of the Akkadian Empire, a new period began in the Levant, which will be discussed in Part B.

Alashkert Armenians

Alashkert Armenians

Alashkert Armenians display quite remarkable genetic characteristics. In FST analyses, they appear to be the closest to three geographically distant Armenian groups: Artsakh, Sasun, and Hamshen Armenians.

It is difficult to determine at this stage whether this pattern reflects their central or “average” position within Armenian regional genetic diversity, or whether it has deeper historical causes.

It should also be noted that a negative FST value effectively means zero, indicating the absence of any meaningful genetic distance between the compared populations.

 

Genetic History of Greece

Yediay et al. (2024) published a large number of ancient DNA samples from Bronze Age Greece, which helps clarify the origins of the Greek population. If we set aside the still poorly sampled Paleolithic period, Greece appears to have experienced three major migrations in prehistoric times.

1. Neolithic Migration (around 7000 BCE)

The first migration involved Neolithic farmers from Anatolia, ultimately originating from the Urfa region. These farmers moved into Greece around 7000 BCE, introducing agriculture. Farming appeared in Greece earlier than in any other part of Europe, and from there agricultural populations expanded northward into the rest of the continent.

2. Chalcolithic Migration (around 4000–3000 BCE)

A second migration arrived from regions associated with historic Armenia during the Chalcolithic period. This movement is associated with the Chaff-Faced Ware (CFW) cultural horizon in Anatolia. In Greece, this migration had its strongest impact in Crete and the Cycladic islands of the Aegean and may be connected with the formation of Minoan civilization (Linear A culture). Heggarty (2023), however, attempted to associate this migration with the origins of the Greek language.

This migration introduced several new haplogroups and may also be partly responsible for the so-called Mediterranean substrate present in both Greek and Armenian. A linguistic example is Armenian iwl / el (իւղ, եղ) meaning “oil,” which can be compared with Greek elaion (ἔλαιον) meaning “olive oil.”

3. Steppe Migration (around 2200 BCE)

The third migration came from the Pontic–Caspian Steppe around 2200 BCE. Similar to developments in Armenia, the transition from the Early Bronze Age to the Middle Bronze Age in Greece is associated with migrations from the steppe.

These migrants introduced haplogroups such as R1b-Z2103 and R1b-PF7562, along with smaller numbers of I2 and J2b2a. Mycenaean Greeks also carried significant levels of J2-Z6055, a lineage that had already been present in Greece since the Neolithic. Its high frequency in the Bronze Age likely reflects a founder effect.

Mycenaean Period (1700–1100 BCE)

After a relatively short Middle Bronze Age period, steppe ancestry becomes diluted during the Late Bronze Age (1700–1100 BCE), which corresponds to the Mycenaean civilization (see chart).

The Linear B script has been deciphered and represents an early form of the Greek language. Mycenaean Greeks possessed ancestry both from local Neolithic farmers and from earlier migrants arriving from more eastern regions. In genetic charts, this eastern component is sometimes labeled Anatolia_C, which is related to populations associated with Chaff-Faced Ware cultures of historic Armenia.

Yediay et al. (2024) connect the steppe migration with Indo-European speakers associated with the Yamnaya horizon, thus providing a convincing explanation for the origins of the Greek population.

Late Bronze Age Collapse and Greek Expansion

Around 1200 BCE, the Mycenaean civilization collapsed, forcing many populations to migrate. During this period, several groups moved into the eastern Mediterranean and became known as the Sea Peoples. One of these groups eventually settled in Cyprus, where they introduced the Greek language.

Even earlier, Greeks had already begun settling along the western coast of Anatolia. In Hittite texts, these groups may correspond to the Ahhiyawa. Numerous conflicts were fought over control of these coastal regions. The memory of these wars is preserved in the Greek epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Modern Greek is generally considered to derive from the Attic–Ionic dialect group.

Attempt to redo the models from recent papers.

 

Attempt to Redo the Models from Recent Papers

Modeling Armenia LBA as a simple mixture of Kura-Araxes and Catacomb fails: the p-value is too low (pic. 1).

Adding an Anatolian population such as İkiztepe_C improves the p-value. This approach was used in Skourtanioti (2024), and the model becomes feasible (p ≈ 0.2).

Using Çamlıbel Tarlası_LateC instead of İkiztepe further improves the p-value. This was done in Yediay (2024), yielding p > 0.3.

Replacing the Anatolian component with Leyla Tepe (from what is now Azerbaijan) improves the model much more (p > 0.7). However, the standard errors increase substantially because Kura-Araxes and Leyla Tepe are too close genome-wide. To reduce the standard errors, I need to adjust the settings (right populations). That will require some time, but I think it is already quite clear what is happening here.

Finally, when I add Ukraine Neolithic hunter-gatherers (Ukraine_N HG) as an additional source, the p-value rises to ~0.9, i.e., close to certainty. The standard errors also improve slightly, although they still require further refinement.

Conclusions

The populations that contributed to the formation of the Trialeti–Vanadzor culture (TVC) likely came from what is now the Krasnodar region, where they acquired a minor Ukraine_N HG component. They then moved via Dagestan, mixed with older South Caucasus Chalcolithic groups in the Kura-Araxes lowlands, and subsequently split into two branches:

• One branch moved upstream into the Kura–Debed region and formed the TVC.

• The other moved into the Urmia and Van basins and formed the Van–Urmia culture, although their genetic impact there appears to have been lower than in the TVC.

The Y-DNA associated with these groups should therefore be sought in the Krasnodar region, especially lineages such as L584, I2a2b, and PF331. Identifying Y4364 will be more difficult. It is even possible that the true homeland of Proto-Yamnaya was also located there.