The closest populations with G25 scaled to:

 The closest populations with G25 scaled to:

Romans who lived in republican Rome.

Myceneans. The 2nd and 3rd charts

Both of those populations have left written texts and no one doubt about their ethnicity. As we can see a simple comparison to modern populations is not a solid way to make judgements about the language of an ancient population.

It's only one argument. But they are many other arguments. Like the linguistic, the ancient texts, the archaeology, the comparison to the preceding population, the overall common sense and finally the uniparental markers especially the Y DNA.

This is the main reason that most recent DNA papers do not rely anymore on this type of argument. Lazaridis proposed the theory, and many scholars like Anthony now agree that Lchashen Metsamor culture which is known in Urartian texts as Etiuni land was Armenian. Their proposal is based on many lines of arguments. Not just one. And in this group we were discussing this possibility years before Lazaridis proposed it in 2022. Now we have a nice situation when the data from various fields coalesce to the same conclusion.

I understand that some people could have doubts and are not happy with this conclusions. Most probably they have their own pet theory. They are welcomed to present their own vision of the situation. This group do not forbid alternative theories.

But if an alternative theory starts from a denial of Etiuni, it's definitely do not increase the credibility of an alternative theory. One can say that Etiuni was an extinct Armenian dialect. That is possible. But saying that it is not Armenian while another group having the same admixture elsewhere is Armenian is irrational. They were different Armenian groups in ancient Armenia. All them stemming from Middle Bronze Age developments. And Etiuni is one of those groups. One of largest. Someone who claims that Biainili is Armenian ( which by the way is possible ) but Etiuni is not Armenian, this person needs to explain where he place the deep sources of Armenic languages. Otherwise it's a sort of creationism where Armenian emerges only with Biainili-Urartu and was in an unknown place before that. Not only there is a need to be specific about the deep past but also how he connects Armenian with other IE languages. This is the real way of defending an alternative theory not denying Etiuni