In a Allentoft 2022 preprint an Upper Paleolithic sample from West Georgia was published. ~23.600ybp. It's autosomes are quite remarkable and deserve a special thread. Here I will mention it's mtDNA. It was U4'9, which is ancestral to U4 and U9. U9 is rare lineage found mostly from Arabia to India while U4 was widespread in ancient East European foragers who had R1 Y dna. It seems U4 had good correlation with R1, while U9 is found in places where R2 is popular.
Subsequently U4 was regularly found in Yamna/CWC related cultures. But U4 was occasionally found around Caucasus also. In Kur-Araxian samples from Daghestan and Chalcolithic Armenia in Areni cave. It is hard to exactly pinpoint the exact origin of U4 but it shouldn't be far from Caucasus.
This is an important finding because it shows indirectly that the most likely place where Y dna R1 and R2 have separated is the around Caspian sea and not distant places like Siberia. Offcourse more samples ( especially from Central Asia ) are needed to confirm this theory.
PS Another very old U4'9 is mentioned in Paleolithic Italy.
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