Samples from ancient Batman are quite close to Xenophon's route both by time and space.

 Samples from ancient Batman are quite close to Xenophon's route both by time and space. Yet they didn't get the attention they deserve.

Batman samples can be divided into three group. Chalcolithic era. Then an Iron Age period between 640-550bc which in this context would be more correctly labeled as Urartian/Shubria/Assyria, Medes, Armenian Satrapy. And then there is a singleton sample of obvious southern origin. Dated at 430bc.

In Iron Age there is an obvious dilution of Mesopotamian ancestry and an increase of CHG/Steppe. Here we see the inverse to what was happening in RoA. Though it is hard to say whether this change occured in Iron Age or earlier in Bronze Age.

Those 4 Iron Age samples (the youngest excluded) are close to Urfa Armenians. But they are not exactly identic. Urfa Armenians have less Levant/Iran ancestry than those ancient Batman samples.

Xenophon mention that the river Centrites ( modern Botan ) was the border between Armenians and Carduchoi. Batman is close to that river. So here we see the type of population that Xenophon encountered while crossing the river.

Assuming that Carduchoi were close to ancient Batman samples then this seriously reduce the chances of their Iranian origin. Though given the proximity of Zagros it is still possible that further east of Batman there were other people. Further sampling is needed for solving this question.

And finally the youngest sample I4733 from Batman has a strong Levantine shift (see the third chart). It's Y dna is J1-L620 xP58 ( https://www.yfull.com/tree/J-FT33771/ ). Another Y dna found among regular Batman_Anc was the L2-L595. An Y dna that seems to be associated with Hurrians.

PS You can get the average of Batman Anc with the Levantine outlier excluded below in comments.

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