The Biaina puzzle

 The Biaina puzzle

Lazaridis 2022 paper didn't found Steppe ancestry in Urartian Van samples except one outlier from Etiuni. Now the reason for this is the use of EHG as a source in qpadm models instead of Yamna. Davidski opened a topic about this subject yesterday.

In reality Çavush Tepe Urartian samples do have Steppe ancestry. Their level is equal to those that modern Armenians have. Except one sample with ID I19612.

This zero Steppe sample is also remarkable for it's high level of Anatolian farmer ancestry. The Anatolian shift is consistent with it's Y DNA G2-M406. An Y DNA popular in Anatolia. Commentators usually connect the G2-M406 with Hattic Kashkian tribes but in this particular case he can be related to Hittite Luwian people.

Unless this was a random casual migrant/captive we can assume that Van region did have contacts with Anatolia. This finding boosts the Eastern Hittite theory proposed by Armen Petrosyan

It must be noted that Urartian Sun god Siwini has a robust etymology with Hittite word siuni meaning god.

The remaining three samples from Çavushtepe do score an average of 10% of Steppe which is higher than the preceding Bronze Age period singleton. 6.2%.

Offcourse sample sizes are to small to make conclusions but at last we can say that this data do not prohibit us to make some assumptions. The most important concern the spread of grooved ware in 1200bc all over Eastern Turkey which could be associated with Mushki and Urumu tribes. Who almost certainly settled in Van bassein also.

Given that those tribes are proposed to be IE they must have R1b also which is ubiquitous in modern Van Armenians. This data also permits to understand the presence of obvious IE terms like Arzashku, arciv and names like Rusa in Van bassein.

Iron Age samples from Batman also have Steppe but significantly lower. And finally the Bronze Age from Batman has zero Steppe as expected.

Finally I add the North Iraq old Assyrian sample to compare to Van. It has no Steppe at all.

PS It must be noted that this Steppe in Van is the reason why Van Urartu works so well for modern Armenians. Otherwise if we choose I19612 as representative of Van Urartu then models change drastically. Which I inadvertently did yesterday.

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