New ancient DNA from Greece.

New ancient DNA from Greece, specifically from the Corinth region and western Greece. The older samples are similar to other samples from Greece and the Balkans, but the Roman-era samples show a shift toward Anatolia, somewhat consistent with Roman imperial events.

One of the Roman-era Corinthians has Y-DNA R1b-L584, consistent with this eastern shift. Another individual from the Roman era had J2-M92, plausibly reflecting Anatolian affiliation as well. Other Y-DNA haplogroups found at these sites are typical of the Balkans: E1b-L618, R1b-PF7562, J2b-L283, T1a2, and G2.

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The consensus of our findings (PCA, ADMIXTURE, and qpAdm using the “Most_Proximate” set of sources) shows that the Amvrakia and Tenea individuals can be considered descendants of the LBA and IA populations of the southern Balkans, especially the area of present-day Greece. In addition, the Roman Tenea individuals appear to have an additional minor contribution from the east, represented by BA Levant and Hellenistic Türkiye (Northwest and West, including Halikarnassos) in the “Most_Proximate” qpAdm analysis. Overall, local genetic continuity is suggested from LBA/IA Greece to Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greece, and to a lesser degree to Roman Greece. However, for the latter, the spatial sampling is inadequate to justify such a generalization.

An open thread about Bronze Age Anatolian Y DNA

An open thread about Bronze Age Anatolian Y-DNA

I plan to write a review about the origins of IE Anatolians. As stated earlier in this group, I believe that a definitive solution to this question requires dozens of Bronze Age Y-DNA samples from specific locations in central Anatolia that are neither Greek (Aegean coast), nor Hattic or Kaskian (northern Anatolia), nor areas with a strong Hurrian presence. Before such data become available, I would like to summarize the already available Y-DNA in order to identify patterns. I will not discuss in this thread the steppe markers R1b and I2. Their affiliation with IE migrations is unambiguous. What is more important about them is the route of migration and their possible linguistic affiliation within the IE family. I will discuss them in the review about Anatolian IE.

J1-Z1828* found at Harmanören - Göndürle Höyük, dated to ~2400 BC (Lazaridis et al. 2017).
There is no information about the downstream branch, but the chances are quite high that it belongs to the BY69 branch, which was found in Anatolia in later periods.

J2-Z6065>Y9268>Z43664 from Ovaören, dated to ~2750 BC (Damgaard et al. 2018).
This branch is parallel to P81 found in the Maykop culture.

Another J2-Z6065 was found in Yediay et al. 2024.

2× J2-M67>Z6273 from Kültepe (Kalehöyük), dated around 2500–1200 BC (Damgaard et al. 2018).
This branch may reflect a new post-Neolithic migration; however, its presence in Neolithic Italy (Cardial Ware) raises the possibility that it was already present in Anatolia since the Neolithic period.

Another possible Bronze Age Anatolian lineage is E-791. However, we need to wait for the publication of Yediay et al. 2024 and the raw files for full confirmation of this theory.

Indirect data suggest that J2-L70, and possibly upstream levels, was also a Bronze Age Anatolian lineage that expanded in the LBA–IA, possibly with the Luwians.

I did not include G2-M406 and T1a2a, as there are strong reasons to believe that they were initially associated with the expansion of the Hattic people.

The main visible pattern is that all these haplotypes have clear eastern connections. Another remarkable feature is their absence from a large set of Minoan Y-DNA. This supports the idea that they cannot be connected to Proto-Minoan migration or to the non-IE Hattic people.

To be continued.

An unusual branch of E1b-M123 from ancient Aghitu

An unusual branch of E1b-M123 from ancient Aghitu

An E1b-Z21466 was found in ancient Aghitu from the Hellenistic era. This branch is rare in ancient remains. Only one sample was previously known from the Imperial Roman period, and now another has been found in ancient Armenia.

You may ask why this is important. Well, Z21466 is a parallel branch of E1b-L791 (see the chart), which is also not particularly rich in ancient samples. L791 is important because indirect data suggest that its expansion is related to Bronze Age Anatolia. The presence of samples from the parallel branch may provide a hint about the direction from which L791 came to Anatolia. Even though the common ancestor of L791 and Z21466 is quite old (12,000 years), the limited amount of ancient DNA from these two branches suggests that they had a compact distribution in the past.

Most likely, the common ancestor Z841 is related to the spread of the so-called Central farmers from northern Mesopotamia northward, including historic Armenia, and possibly southward into southern Mesopotamia. Later, L791 expanded in Anatolia during the Bronze Age. Yediay et al. 2024 identified an E1b-Z830 in Bronze Age Anatolia. Most likely, it belongs to the M123 branch. When the files are uploaded, we will know its exact subclade.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s relatives have been tested, and he belonged to the E1b-L791 branch.

Y DNA from Hellenistic era Syunik Aghitu (Skourtanioti et al. 2025) are now uploaded to FTDNA and TheYtree. 16 Y DNA were detected by Theytree.

Y-DNA from Hellenistic-era Syunik (Aghitu) (Skourtanioti et al. 2025) has now been uploaded to FTDNA and TheYTree. Sixteen Y-DNA samples were detected by TheYTree.

1× E1b-PF6759
1× G1 (low coverage)
1× J2-M92
1× I2-L699>S12195
1× R1b-Y4364
9× R1b-L584
2× undetermined R1b-M269

From this list, the most interesting is I2-L699, which is found for the first time in ancient Armenia. Its presence was expected, given that L699 was present in Yamnaya. With a few exceptions, such as the Sredni Stog enclave in the lower Don Yamnaya, it was a rare lineage from the Early Bronze Age in the Steppe, so it is not surprising that we have not seen much of it in ancient Armenia. This I2 is different from I2a2b. The latter had an important founder effect in the Trialeti–Vanadzor culture and is the main reason for its high frequency in ancient Armenia and Georgia.

This finding shows that dense sampling is needed to identify rare markers. Therefore, carriers of R1b-PF7562 and R1b-Z2110 can still expect to find their haplotypes in ancient Armenia.

According to Hovann Simonian, the haplotype of Andranik Ozanyan, also known as Zoravar Andranik or Andranik Pasha, was I2-L699>S12195>Y6998 (Pic 2). His branch does not directly descend from the Aghitu I2 but shares a common ancestor with it.

The administrative division of Achaemenid Persia is still a matter of debates.

The administrative division of Achaemenid Persia is still a matter of debate.

Most scholars agree that the satrapic system was hierarchical. There were main and minor satrapies, with the latter ruled by the former. In the Bisitun inscription, 23 lands are mentioned, which are usually assumed to represent the main satrapies during the reign of Darius. Herodotus’ list of 20 satrapies is an incomplete account of both main and minor satrapies, with a clear bias toward the western regions of the empire, while the eastern regions are very poorly represented.

Khorikyan discusses these questions, and based on his papers, I made a map of the main satrapy of Armenia mentioned in Bisitun and other sub-satrapies mentioned in Herodotus.

Saspeirs, Saspirs, or Sapirs, according to Herodotus, were located between Colchis and Media. For this reason, they have been placed in modern Armenia. However, if modern Azerbaijan was part of the main Median satrapy (map 3), then a location in eastern Georgia is also possible. Locating the Saspeirs in modern Armenia has no solid arguments. Neither in the Urartian period nor in the later Armenian period is there a single toponym that can be linked to Saspeir in modern Armenia. Meanwhile, such a toponym exists in Georgia: Iberia. Some scholars have proposed the theory that “sa-” is a Georgian prefix for land, as in Sakartvelo, and that the true root in Saspeirs/Sapirs is *speir or *pir, which may be the proto-form of Greek Iberia and Latin Hiberia.

From a genetic point of view, we know that Iberian-related ancestry had already formed in eastern Georgia in early antiquity. Therefore, some early Georgian polity must have existed there during the Achaemenid period. The Saspeirs could be the precursor of Iberia.

Matiene is another obscure tribe mentioned alongside the Saspeirs. Matiene existed in several places: in Anatolia and northwestern Iran. Khorikyan cites at least one Greek source in which Matiene is mentioned in a Caucasian context, and based on this, he places it in the headwaters of the Kura River.

From a genetic point of view, the presence of R1a and Q2 in the ancient Samtskhe region is remarkable. It could be related to Persian rule there, but it may also reflect a different influence from the Iranian plateau, with the Matiene being a plausible candidate.

Not much is known about the Alarodi—only two sentences mention them—so their localization will remain speculative.

In sum, Khorikyan proposes that the 18th satrapy was located north of Armenia rather than in eastern Armenia.

Finally, the Pactyuce mentioned alongside the Armenians is most likely a corrupted form of Patuka, a Luwian or Hittite term derived from peda, meaning “land,” from which Katpatuka is derived, meaning “lower land.” A village named Patuk is attested near Kharberd (Elazığ).

The third map shows the main satrapies according to Jacobs, while the second map shows the temporal expansion of the empire according to Mladiov.

There are some chances that Kaskean from North Anatolia will not be anymore considered as unrecorded language.

There is a possibility that the Kaska people of northern Anatolia will no longer be considered speakers of an unrecorded language.

Sasseville published a paper this year in which he examines some Hittite cuneiform texts containing an unknown language and suggests that these unknown words may be Kaska lexemes. The paper is behind a paywall, but a brief discussion with ChatGPT gave me the impression that Sasseville is inclined toward the theory that the Kaska language had some connection with Hattic.

The currently limited archaeogenetic data from northern Anatolia also support this theory. Rasuloğlu Höyük, which is linked to Hattic culture, yielded G2-M406 and T1a2a. The same haplotypes were found in more northern locations where the Kaska people were attested.

This year has also been remarkable for Kaska archaeology. A site explicitly linked to the Kaska people was discovered, and a settlement near Samsun has been proposed as the famous city of Nerik.

All links are provided below.

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document

About Rasuloglu aDNA

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DWaYca1Rf/

About ppssible connection with Nerik

Traces of Indigenous Kaška People Discovered in Sacred Hittite City of Nerik | OMÜ | Ondokuz Mayıs Üniversitesi

A new site

First archaeological evidence of the Kaskas, the Hittites' fierce enemies, discovered - Anatolian Archaeology

A remarkable linguistic review from Yediay et al. 2024 written by Kroonen, Thorso and Wigman.

 A remarkable linguistic review from Yediay et al. 2024, written by Kroonen, Thorsø, and Wigman.

It is in the supplements. Hrach Martirosyan’s paper is also referenced. The link is in the comments.

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Armenian is currently spoken in the Republic of Armenia and by a worldwide diaspora, but it has historically formed a patchwork of dialects across large parts of Anatolia and the South Caucasus. Its first substantial attestation is Classical Armenian literature, appearing from the 5th century CE. Traditionally, it is considered an independent branch of the Indo-European family tree, but it is frequently placed in a higher-order subgroup with Greek.

As previously mentioned, our new IBD analyses show that Bronze Age individuals from both Greece and Armenia are best modeled as having shared ancestry derived from a population closely related to previously unpublished Middle Bronze Age samples from Moldova, associated with the Late Yamnaya culture. This contrasts with, for example, individuals associated with Italic languages, who derive their Steppe ancestry via Corded Ware and Bell Beaker individuals. These results are consistent with the assumption of a primordial Graeco-Armenian subgroup that started diverging by the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE at the latest. The rather sudden replacement of the previously widespread Transcaucasian Kura-Araxes culture by the Trialeti culture by the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, with certain similarities to early Mycenaean culture, probably represents the first tangible sign in the region of an Indo-European element ancestral to the Armenian branch.

From the Iron Age, samples with Urartian and pre-Urartian contexts show a similar proportion of ancestry associated with the western Steppe, which is consistent with the existing view that the Urartian population was multiethnic and multilingual, and it supports the hypothesis that it may have contained an Armenian-speaking component. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, Steppe ancestry emerges in the South Caucasus already in the Middle Bronze Age, with no significant later input, and it is only a marginal ancestry component in Central Anatolia. This makes the traditional hypothesis of a migration of Armenian speakers across Anatolia after 1200 BCE increasingly doubtful.

Many scholars have assumed a particularly close relationship between (Thraco-)Phrygian and Armenian, even closer than that of Greek and Phrygian. However, more recent study of Phrygian has revealed a scarcity of exclusively shared features with Armenian, making such a hypothesis difficult to support. Likewise, our IBD results yield no support for assuming a common migration of Armenians and Phrygians through Anatolia, but rather suggest that the shared innovations of Greek, Phrygian, and Armenian are attributable to a higher-order subgroup (or linguistic area) connected with the Late Yamnaya culture of the 3rd millennium BCE.