Genetic history of Levant. Part A.

 Genetic history of Levant. Part A.

Recently there was a surge of interest in Levantine genetics, so here is a summary of Levant genetic history in two parts

Natufian culture (13000-9000BC) a hunter gatherer society which has a remarkable feature of being sedentary or semi sedentary. Archaic E1b and CT haplogroups.

Levant Neolithic (9000-4500BC) is divided in two parts. Pre Pottery Neolithic (PPN) and Pottery Neolithic. Spread of farming to south Levant from more northern regions. The core region of farming invention was in Urfa region ( Portasar / Gobekli tepe ) near modern Syrian Turkey border. You can see on the chart an important shift to north in autosomes during this period in south Levant ( Israel , Jordan PPNB ). A best proof of this scenario is the haplotype E1b-Z1919 which has two important branches. One E-L618 moved to Europe via Anatolia and today is popular in Balkans. The other parallel branch E-V22 moved to Egypt introducing farming there. It is popular today in north Egypt. Another important lineage from this period is the E-M123 mostly found today in West Asia even though it moved to Central Asia also. Sporadic apparition of H2 and T1a.

Copper Age - Chalcolithic ( 4500-3300BC) there are no much samples from this period. The few cases from a period close to Ghassulian culture show another shift in autosomes toward north Iraq. Consistent with the archaeological records showing emergence of new burial tradition. Currently it's hard to pinpoint the exact cultural phenomenon that triggered this shift in Chalcolithic south Levant. The similar shift toward north Mesopotamia started in north Levant (Tell Kurdu) earlier. The plausible candidate is the Halaf culture. The T1a1a-L208 in this period is also favoring the theory of involvement of new groups not directly descending from Neolithic period.

Early Bronze Age (3300-2200BC) the end of Chalcolithic and the start of Bronze Age in Levant is a period of dramatic changes in material culture. Old settlements are abandoned and new mobile pastoralist groups spread all over Levant. Those are the early Semitic tribes. The change in autosomes is subtle, more eastern but the change in Y DNA in Levant EBA is drastic. The E1b shrinks and the J1-Z1853 is the most popular haplotype starting from this period. J2b1 also shows an important increase in this period. Where was exactly located the Proto Semitic homeland is debated. It is usually placed in Arabian peninsula. The slight increase of Natufian ancestry do favour a southern location. But the surge of ancestry related to historic Armenia force to imagine a region close to Mesopotamia (see the map) A region where J1 must have been present since older periods. J1 is ultimately from more northern Taurus-Zagros-Caucasus mountains.

Currently the ancient DNA is insufficient to locate precisely the Proto Semitic homeland and the path of J1 migration.

Wherever the Proto-Semitic homeland was located they expanded to north reaching Taurus mountains and to east reaching Zagros mountains. In the south they crossed Red sea and landed in Ethiopia around 1000BC. The first branch in Semitic family is the East Semitic represented by Eblaite and Akkadian. Both extinct today. They settle in north Levant and Mesopotamia where their culture merged with the Sumerians and apparently put end to Uruk culture at 3100BC. Akkadians created one of oldest empires, uniting Mesopotamian city states around 2330BC which collapsed around 2150BC.

After the 2200BC climatic event and the demise of Akkadian empire new period starts in Levant which will be discussed in Part B

Alashkert Armenians have quite remarkable genetics.

Alashkert Armenians have quite remarkable genetics. They are the closest in fst runs to three geographically distant from each other groups. Artsakh, Sasun and Hamshen Armenians.

Is this due to their central "average" position in the Armenian regional diversity or has some deeper reasons is hard to say at this stage.

Negative fst value means zero. Which means lack of any meaningful distance.

Genetic history of Greece

 Genetic history of Greece

Yediay et al. 2024 published large number of ancient DNA from Bronze Age Greece which permitted to solve the question of Greeks origin. If we skip the unsampled Paleolithic period Greece has witnessed three important migrations in prehistoric times.

+ Neolithic farmers from Anatolia, ultimately from Urfa region moved to Greece around 7000 BC. Farming was introduced earlier in Greece than in any part of Europe. From there farmers moved to north.

+ Chalcolithic migrants from historic Armenia around 4000-3000 BC. This second migration was associated with Chaff faced ware in Anatolia. While in Greece it left the strongest impact in Crete and Aegean Cycladic islands. It can be connected to the formation of Minoan civilization. (Linear A) Even though Heggarty 2023 wanted to link it with Greeks.

This migration introduced new haplotypes and in most likelihood is partly responsible for the so called Mediterranean substrate present both in Greek and Armenian. An examlle is the iwl, el (իւղ, եղ) meaning oil in Armenian. Compare to Greek elaiwon (ἔλαιον) olive oil.

+ Migration from Pontic Caspian Steppe around 2200 BC. Similar to Armenia the change from Early Bronze Age to Middle Bronze Age is associated with migrations from Pontic Caspian steppe. Those migrants introduced haplotypes like R1b-Z2103 and R1b-PF7562. With few cases of I2 and J2b2a. Mycenaean Greeks also had large number of J2-Z6055 a lineage that was present in Greece since the Neolithic period. High level of that lineage are probably due to founder effect.

After a short MBA period there is a dilution of steppe ancestry in Late Bronze Age Greece (1700-1100BC). A period associated with Mycenaean culture. (See the chart) Linear B has been deciphered and linked to early or parallel extinct forms of Greek. Mycenaean Greeks had ancestry both from local Neolithic farmers and preceding migrants from more eastern regions. In the chart it's marked as Anatolia C. Which is related to the CFW from historic Armenia.

Yediay et al. 2024 linked the steppe migration with Indo Europeans from Yamnaya culture. Thus solving in convincing manner the origins of Greek people.

Around 1200 BC the Mycenaean civilization collapsed and many people were forced to emigrate. During this period number of groups moved to eastern Mediterranean where they were known as Sea people. One of those groups settled in Cyprus introducing Greek language there.

Even prior that Greeks were already settling in Western Anatolian coasts. In that region they are known probably as Ahhiyawa in Hittite texts. Multiple wars started for the control of western Anatolian coasts. The memory of those wars is preserved in the Greek epic poems known as Illiad and Odyssey.

Modern Greek is usually assumed to be derived from Attic-Ionic dialect

Attempt to redo the models from recent papers.

 Attempt to redo the models from recent papers.

Armenia LBA as a simple mixture of Kura-Araxes and Catacomb is a failure. P value too low. ( pic. 1)
Addition of an Anatolian population like Ikiztepe C improves the p value. This was done in Skourtanioti 2024. The model is feasible. p=0.2
The use of CamlibelTarlasi_LateC instead of Ikiztepe improves the p value even more. Done in Yediay 2024. p more than 0.3
An addition of Leila tepe culture (from what is now Azerbaijan) instead of Anatolian C improves the p value much more. p more than 0.7. But the standard errors increase a lot because the Kura-Araxes and Leila tepe are too close genome wide to each other. To reduce the standard errors I need to change the settings (right pops). This will require a time from me. But I think its quite obvious what is going here.
And finally I add the Ukraine N hunter gatherers to the source and the p value reaches practically 0.9, close to certitude. The standard errors also improves slightly, but still requires improvement.

Conclusions. The populations that played a role in the formation of Trialeti Vanadzor culture came from what is now the Krasnodar region, acquired there a minor Ukraine_N HG ancestry. Moved via Dagestan mixed with older South Caucasian Chalcholithic groups in Kura-Araxes plains then splits into two branches. One moved to upstream to Kur-Debed region and created the TVC, while the other moved to Urmia and Van basins and created Van-Urmia culture even though their genetic impact there was lower than in TVC. The Y DNA associated with those people should be searched in Krasnodar region. L584, I2a2b, PH331. Finding Y4364 will be harder. Its even possible that the true homeland of Proto-Yamnaya was also there

Before I review the recent Yedia et al. 2024 preprint few comments are needed about this chart.

 Before I review the recent Yedia et al. 2024 preprint few comments are needed about this chart.

Armenia Middle and Late Bronze Age samples do have ancestry from three sources. The first one is from Armenia EBA the Kura-Araxes culture which is expected and do not require an explanation.

The second stream of ancestry is marked as Anatolia_C. This could be surprising but has an easy explanation. Anatolia_C is largely derived from historic Armenia Neolithic and Chalcolithic groups known as Chaff faced ware. Those groups lived before the Kura-Araxes and where present in modern Azerbaijan where they were known as Leila tepe culture. When Caucasian HG shifted Kura-Araxes expanded from it's homeland in South Caucasus it didn't replaced all those preceding people and in many places they continued to live. When 4500 years ago steppe ancestry came from north they first crossed what is now Azerbaijan and in most likelihood encountered the remnants of Leila tepe culture. They mixed with them acquired the "Anatolia_C" like ancestry and then moved to upper sources of Kur-Debed rivers and mixed with the Armenia EBA related people. Another source of Anatolia_C like ancestry could be from southern regions of Arax plain.

This by the way was noted by Skourtanioti 2024 also but they gave a wrong explanation thinking that there was a two separate migrations. One from Anatolia and another from Steppe during the same period. Genetic bloggers have noticed this much earlier and Davidski has even a thread dedicated to it.

And finally the presence of so called CWC ancestry. It is obviously not real because CWC is highly associated with R1a and there was no any R1a in Middle and Late Bronze Age South Caucasus ( from Armenia and Georgia). The reason why CWC appears there is because the group of steppe people that moved to South Caucasus most probably had some WHG affinity. This extra WHG/UNHG affinity was present in east of Azov region even before Yamnaya formed and most probably is the plausible explanation of the apparition of I2a2b in ancient Armenia. Notice that CWC is similar to Yamnaya but has extra 10% UNHG related ancestry and some 20% of Euro-Anatolian farmer ancestry. Even a small 1% introgression of WHG into a Yamnaya population will create an effect of presence of 10% CWC ancestry and given the excess of Anatolian ancestry in MLBA it's not surprising that the calculator assumed that he deals with CWC rather than a Yamnaya. So this is without doubt an artefact of calculation which nevertheless has its objective causes.

The same can be said about Urartu samples where the Anatolia_C is higher, thus the ancient Neolithic ancestry is higher while steppe ancestry is lower. Except one outlier who was a migrant from Etiuni

One of Greek samples from Hovhannisyan 2024 is located in the modern Armenian cloud.

 One of Greek samples from Hovhannisyan 2024 is located in the modern Armenian cloud. I couldn't find any information about him except that Greek DNA used in the paper was from Lazaridis 2014 Nature.

Based on his location on the PCA he is not a Cappadocian Greek. Also he do not give impression to be related to Trabzon Greeks. Most probably he is from Urums from South West of Georgia. Urums settled in Tsalka region of Georgia after Russian and Turkish wars of 19th century.

We have an Urum person in our group and his DNA could also be similar to that person. Off course this is a just an assumption that needs further verification.

Urums should not be confused with Urumu tribe of Iron Age. The word Urum is derived from Rome, Roman empire. While the name of Urumu has unknown origin, but could be well related to Aramu.

In the second PCA You can see the main modern Greek cloud which is away from modern Armenians. It is somewhat pulled toward north compared to Mycenaean period. Another Greek samples is almost certainly from Anatolia. Located in the middle of Armenians and Greeks.

A new alphabetic system was apparently discovered in north Syria.

 A new alphabetic system was apparently discovered in north Syria. It can be the oldest alphabet known. Dated at 2400BC.

Till now it was assumed that the first alphabet was derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphs, while later it's modification appeared in Sinai and from there to Levant Phoenicia. This alphabet from ancient Syria is older than the Proto-Sinaitic one. This can change our understanding how and when alphabetic systems emerged and evolved.

https://hub.jhu.edu/.../ancient-alphabet-discovered-syria/

I made this map to explain how modern Armenian genetics has formed.

 I made this map to explain how modern Armenian genetics has formed. The map shows the genetic situation in Middle Bronze Age thus 4000 years ago. I deliberately selected those colors to emphasize the clinal nature of this situation.

The yellow is the TVC/Lchashen culture. with high steppe ancestry. Usually labeled here as Etiuni.

The orange has low steppe more or less equal to modern Armenians. Few samples from Van Urartu.

While the red region do not have steppe and have extra affinity to Levantine Bronze Age. Notice those regions were inhabited by Hurrians. We have some samples from Sirnak , Batman. But there are not young enough to see what was the situation in Middle and Late Bronze Age. Dinkha tepe 2 is Middle Bronze Age but it's from northwest Iran so not exactly representative of red region.

Further south the Levant lowland was inhabited by close to red people with a more southern shift . Numerous samples from Alalakh, Ebla.

Modern Armenians have ancestry from this three orange, yellow, red regions. The highest level is from orange region in most Armenians. Eastern Armenians have extra yellow. Armenians from southwestern regions do have significant orange but also have some red ancestry. An important thing to understand is that orange itself can be modeled as a mixture of yellow and red. So we can reduce the colors needed but it can oversimplify the situation. Also some alleles of red regions can be found in eastern Armenians and Armenians of south and western regions also have some alleles from yellow. Overall this makes all Armenians to cluster tight on the PCA.

Another thing to understand is that modern Armenians do NOT have any significant extra ancestry from outside regions other than those colored. In more recent historic times some sporadic influences occurred off course. But they are negligible and can be ignored in calculations. Also Armenians who settled outside of those regions acquired some local ancestry but it occurred in historic times and those extra acquisitions can be verified and are well known.

The reader will have a legitimate question. Why those three regions samples are not used for modeling Armenians. Well the problem comes probably from how those tools work. When You select too close populations that increase the standard errors. While distant populations decrease the standard errors. Notice all this three colors are close to each other despite exaggerated perceptions. That is why sometimes it's easier to choose a distant source from south of red zone and get some feasible models. There can be other problems also that I am probably not aware.

But the real problem is not the models per se. After all Lazaridis also used Levant N as a distal source and it claimed that it increased after the 600BC. And this didn't resulted in any "sensationalistic" titles in media outlets. The problem is the lack of historic interpretations of those models. When You don't interpret Your data based on real known historic events, it's not surprising that others will do it in a way they want.

Those historic events are well known. As I said it's the presence of Hurrian belt all over southern regions of historic Armenia who had a more southern genetic profile. And the formation of Urartu empire and it's expansion. There can be other events also that we could have overlook but those two facts are fully sufficient to explain the peculiarities of modern Armenian genetic profile.

Hopefully our paper with Armen Petrosyan will be published soon in English. We discuss this period of shift in East Armenia and I hope it can be useful for those who want to understand this story better.

PS below in the comments You can see a model mixing yellow and orange with high standard errors. Made by Nareg Asatrian

Hovhannisyan et al

 Hovhannisyan et al. 2024 published for the first time 5 genome wide DNA samples of Sasun Armenians. Until now we had only Y DNA studies about Sasun Armenians which showed that their Y DNA pool is different from other Armenian subgroups (see picture 2). Various theories has been proposed to explain this difference based on historic records and legends.

The paper analyzed this question and didn't found much difference between modern Armenian subgroups and Sasun Armenian autosomes. You can see that on the PCA. They plot close to other Armenians marked as E,W,C while Sasun is marked as S. All five samples from Sasun are in the "southern" side of the "Armenian cloud" on the PCA which matches their geographic position. When the G25 coordinates of those samples became available we will have occasion to look at them closer.

As for their Y DNA difference, without ancient DNA from that region it will be hard to understand that peculiarity. T haplogroup homeland was in most likelihood located close or was overlapping with Sasun, while R2 in Sasun is probably a founder effect. R2 was prominent in Zagros neolithic farmers and recently was discovered even in South Caucasian farmers.

Sasun's Y DNA can also be related to the specific history of that region. Assyrian sources report a kingdom known as Shubria in that region. The name of this kingdom is derived from an older Sumerian term known as Subir. Not much is known about the Subir, except that in later sources the term Subarean language means a Hurrian language. In Iron Age multiple Hurrian king names are attested in that region. Even though this do not necessarily mean tha old Subir were Hurrians also. The neighboring southern lowlands of Sasun had a Semitic presence while in the north, in Mush region Urumu tribes are attested. Urumu later known as Urme were almost certainly an Armenian speaking tribe. Around 400BC Xenophon consider the Centrites (modern Botan river) as the southern border of Armenians. Sasun is situated north of that river border so well within the Armenian satrapy. More ancient DNA is needed to understand the whole complexity of the genetic history of that region

EHG genetic profile appears in Eastern Europe after the Late Glacial Maximum ( 20.000 ybp).

EHG genetic profile appears in Eastern Europe after the Late Glacial Maximum ( 20.000 ybp). Before that the region was populated by different people who apparently became extinct due to very cold weather.

EHG samples are found from north Caucasus till Karelia in the most northern parts of East Europe. In internet You can find various maps showing the EHG ancestry impact in world. They need some comments. ( See the link in comment section )

There are two ways to calculate the EHG left today in the world.

One way is to ignore the fact that most of EHG was dispersed by Yamnaya and Corded Ware. This is the frequent method but it's a confusing way because it creates a wrong perception about Yamnaya ancestry impact. Given that EHG was roughly the half of Yamnaya culture genetics many would assume erroneously that highest EHG means highest Yamnaya. Which is not true.

The other way is to extract Yamnaya/ Corded ware ancestry from the total EHG and to see what is left of pure EHG that was unaffiliated to Yamnaya migrations.

For this I selected Corded ware samples in sources, given that Yamnaya never moved to north Europe. Only Corded ware culture related to Yamnaya did. I also added ANE samples from Siberia to avoid pseudo EHG effect. And used Karelia HG to check the pure EHG.

I included all modern populations and here are the results.

The highest level of pure EHG unaffiliated to Yamnaya ancestry is found in Mari, Chuvash ( a Turkic group) , Saami, some northern Russians and Udmurts. The highest level is 33% but most of them has lower than 25%. As we can see today there is no much EHG left that is unaffiliated to Yamnaya/CWC. It is mostly found in north Eastern Europe which makes sense because this is the region where Corded ware pastoralists never settled. The cold weather was not permitting them to practice herding and basic crop raising.

Now let's see where is the highest Corded ware ancestry. The second chart shows that it is in north Europe mostly found in Germanic speakers in Scandinavia. It is 53% and lower. Notice that You will get the same result if Yamnaya is used instead of Corded ware. So Yamnaya related ancestry is the highest in north western Europe which has a trivial explanation. Most of north Europe especially the Scandinavia was a sparsely populated place. While south Europe , West Asia and South Asia had a high density of population. It makes sense that Yamnaya related ancestry would have left higher impact in regions with low density than in regions with higher density.

So what do tell us this data about the possible language of those northern EHG. Given that it is found only in a subset of Uralic speakers then it's very unlikely that those northern EHG were speaking an Uralic language. Even more most eastern Uralic speakers do not have any EHG, though they have Yamnaya related ancestry. You can note that the main peculiarity of the Uralic speakers in East Europe is the presence of Siberian / Nganassan ancestry. Their most frequent Y DNA N1 is also from the Siberian side. On the other side those northern populations virtually lack any Y DNA related to EHG. Whatever R1a they have is derived from Corded ware. Overall this suggests that the language spoken by those northern EHG is now extinct. The Uralic speakers came from east, from Siberia some time after the 1500BC. While IE speakers like Balto-Slavic and Germanic groups in north Europe descend from Corded ware culture that expanded in that regions after the 2800BC

Nine principal genetic profiles of Western Eurasians

 Nine principal genetic profiles of Western Eurasians. We use frequently those terms so it would be good to know them. Most of this genetic profiles appear after the Last Glacial Maximum. Before the Glacial maximum (20.000-26.000 years ago) Eurasia was populated by different genetic profiles.

All this genetic profiles have common origins and descend from one source population which is not sampled yet

Cayonu is an early Neolithic site situated in northeast of the Portasar/Gobekli tepe.

 Cayonu is an early Neolithic site situated in northeast of the Portasar/Gobekli tepe.

In Lazaridis 2024 ancient DNA from Cayonu was used for modeling Neolithic farmers of Armenia.Those models should be viewed as preliminary given that we don't have hunter gatherer DNA from historic Armenia. But they give a hint of what can be expected.

I wanted to see where is best preserved the ancestry of those Cayonu first farmers. So I choose 16 ancestral components and used them to model world populations. Without much surprise Cayonu related ancestry is best preserved in modern populations derived from Mesopotamia and historic Armenia.

Just for comparison. The Natufian ancestry from neighbouring Levant is best preserved in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.While Anatolian farmers in Sardinia and south Europe.

Notice that this method gives a different result from what would I get if I simply had compared the Cayonu farmers distance to moderns. First the distance would be high showing that their ancestry was diluted over time. But given the genetic proximity of Cayonu to Anatolian and Levantine farmers the people from the aforementioned regions would get priority. With this method I exclude that shared ancestry to see where exactly Cayonu really left impact.

The result is in the first chart. Sorted from high to low.

My next post will be about EHG using the same method

Urfa region hunters and farmers.

 Urfa region hunters and farmers.

Portasar / Gobekle tepe megalithic constructions are well known. Another site with even more impressive statues was found in nearby Karahantepe. In 2021 another remarkable finding from Sayburc ( see the map for the locations of those sites)

Human reliefs were made in Sayburc around 9000BC. Apparently by early farmers of West Asia and fertile crescent.

It becomes evident that the hunter gatherer society that invented the farming and domesticated animals had a quite complex society. Without bronze tools they must have spend quite a large time to polish stones and carve the rocks.

Ancient DNA from neighbouring sites such as Nevali Chori, Cayonu are available. Well they don't have alien DNA but were situated in the intermediate position between Anatolian hunters and Pre Pottery N, Levantine Natufians and farmers from South Caucasus, Armenia Neolithic farmers. You can see them in the blue hexagon between three red circles on the 4th picture PCA

Deep origins of IE family

 Deep origins of IE family

This question regularly arise in our group, so some remarks are needed.

IE family is a linguistic concept produced by linguists. They had made an internal classification of daughter IE languages and came to the conclusion that the Anatolian branch is the first while all others including the Armenian descend from another branch which has different names. Late PIE, nuclear IE and various other names.

This mean that for the question of deep origins of IE family the origins of Anatolian languages is crucial. Given that Anatolian languages are extinct we can't test them directly. The only way to know their origins is to have large number of ancient DNA from Anatolia. And when I say Anatolia I mean exactly those places where only Anatolians lived. Not the coasts of Aegean sea where early Greek tribes settled and not the so called East Anatolia, east of Euphrates where early Armenic tribes were already present. Also not regions in north Levant where Hurrians and Semites had a strong presence.

If we exclude all this regions we are left with just a dozen ancient DNA from those genuine Bronze Age (3000-1200BC) Anatolians. This number is absolutely insufficient for having definitive conclusions about their origins. Those samples only give a hint what can be expected.

Here are the list of this expectations.

1. Anatolians were from Armenian highland farmers. (Quite likeky)

2. Anatolians were from Steppe Eneolithic in north Caucasus who migrated via Caucasus (Also possible but an important question of steppe Eneolithic ancestry dilution must be addressed)

3. Anatolians were from CLV, Volga or Dnepr clines and moved via Balkans to Anatolia. ( this scenario is unlikely but there is a need to fully ruled out it )

As You can see the key to the Deep origins of IE family is not in Armenia, not in modern Armenian genetics, not in Caucasus or Europe. Especially in north Europe. The key to the answer is in the Bronze Age Anatolia.

Besides genetics there is another "soft" way to support a theory related to deep origins of IE. It's a linguistics. Let's say a genius linguist proves that Indo-Uralic theory is correct. Indo-Uralic theory posits that IE and Uralic languages descend from the same source. If someone proves that they are connected and all others accept it then we will have no any other option to believe that common origins of IE and Uralic was in EHG (Eastern European hunters). But currently no one has provided this "proof" and overall genetic data shows that Uralic family was from Siberia most probably related to Yukaghir people.

In Lazaridis 2024 they speak about the crop raising terminology in IE. They used it an argument for more southern origins. Arguments like contacts with Semites and Sumerians are also important but they can't be decisive because the IE languages were already spoken 6300 years ago in Near East. There is no much reasons to doubt it now. So proving that they had contacts with Sumerians changes nothing and helps in no way to understand their deep origins.

Another absolutely meaningless activity is to attack Yamnaya, to question it's affiliation to late IE languages. This way of acting is irresponsible because the only reason that western academy is interested in Armenian theory since the 2015 is the Yamnaya culture. If You remove Yamnaya from that system then there is no much reason to believe that Armenian highland farmers are related to IE given that they didn't migrated directly to Europe or India. But they migrated a lot to Caucasus where at last three different non-IE linguistic families exist today.

So my advise to some our members try to be patient, not emotional. We can not change the past. We can just learn about it

The East Asians and the Mongoloid race.

This group is dedicated to the Armenians but given that various subjects are discussed that are indirectly related to IE and thus Armenian origins so let's take a broader view on Eurasia. Another reason to discuss the East Asian genetics is related to our two neighbouring countries who speaks Turkic languages that came from the aforementioned region.

After it's initial spread in Eurasia (45.000years ago) humans divided into two major groups. East Eurasians living east of Himalayan mountains and West Eurasians.

Initially both groups were close genetically. Ancient DNA confirmed it. But after the Last Glacial Maximum, thus 20.000 years ago in East Asia new drifted group formed which had Mongoloid phenotype. It formed as a result of evolution and not migration. Today those people are known as Mongoloid race, while West Eurasians are known as Caucasoid or Europoid race.

The East Asian ancestry formed in northern central China / Amur region. The main Y DNA associated with them are the N, O and C2. See the attached maps. The haplogroup Q living in Paleolithic Siberia had West Eurasian origin and was initially associated with people having Caucasoid phenotype. The main population associated with them is known as ANE. Ancient North Eurasian which do not exist anymore.

Amerindians formed as a result of mixture of "caucasoid" ANE and old Mongoloids in Far East. Even though their most important Y DNA remained the "western" Q1. They settled in America some 15.000 years ago.

At some point number of important innovations occurred in East Asia providing a competitive advantage to them. One of oldest potteries are found in Amur region, north China dated between 12.000-18.000 years before present. Some 7000-8000 years ago the haplogroup N moved from Mongolia to "Caucasoid" Siberia starting a large migration and conquest which reached modern Finland and Europe. Today the highest level of haplogroup N is found in Uralic speakers, who's homeland was probably in east of Uralic mountains. Turkic speakers also have the N haplogroup but in a lesser degree. Haplogroup O expansion was more related to farming invention in China. Both in south (rice) and north (millet) China. They had large expansion to southern regions, replacing there Black people related to Aborigenes, Onge and Papua. And finally, the haplogroup C2 initially restricted solely to Amur region had a dramatic expansion in Current Era related to Mongols and Evenk (Tungusic) speakers.

Here is a comprehensive list of linguistic families that expanded from East Eurasia spreading genes associated with Mongoloid race in the rest of the world. You can see the autosomal impact in 4th map. It's probably a little bit exaggerated but overall give an impression of the scale of these expansions.

+ Uralic

+ Turkic

+ Mongolic

+ Evenks also known as Tungussic

+ Sino-Tibetan, the most famous member is the Chinese

+ Austro-Asiatic that reached India.

+ Austronesian stretched from Madagascar to Easter Island in Pacific via Indonesia.

I will dedicate separate threads to some linguistic families that are interesting from the Armenian history perspective