Remarks on the J2-Z6065 from ancient Bakr Awa in Mesopptamia.

 Remarks on the J2-Z6065 from ancient Bakr Awa in Mesopptamia.

J2-Z6065 is one most frequent type of J2 in Armenia after the J2-M67. This is hardly surprising given that currently one of oldest Z6065 is found from Massis Blur Neolithic site in Republic of Armenia. This mean that Z6065 was a Neolithic lineage found all over historic Armenia and South Caucasus.

However this is not the whole story. Most of J2-Z6065 found among Armenians is concentrated in two Middle Bronze Age clusters. The YP879 and BY32912. Middle Bronze Age was characterized in Armenia by migration from north and expansion of haplotypes associated with this migration R1b-Z2103 and I2a2b.

So how to explain the presence of J2-Z6065 Middle Bronze age clusters. Well when steppe migrants first settled in south Caucasus and other regions they must have encountered populations that had Z6065 in their patrilineal gene pool. They mixed with them and apparently some of this Z6065 became part of new elites and later expanded with this newly mixed population.

I already suggested in this group that YP879 found in Iron Age Van was probably a Van Urmia culture related haplotype. Now we have data from Bakr Awa that indirectly supports this theory.

One of steppe admixed Middle Bronze Age sample (A22041) from Bakr Awa is J2-Z6065. Even more this person had mtdna U2d2 which was regularly found in steppe cultures. Without much doubt this person was not native to Mesopotamia and he came with the R1b-Z2103 from South Caucasus.

It was positive to Z39478, so he couldn't be ancestral to the aforementioned YP879 branch, however it could be potentially ancestral to another cluster like BY32912. Alternatively it was P81, then it could be from Maykop culture or local South Caucasus. Whatever was the case this finding is very important because it gives a hint how some Z6065 clusters in Armenians formed.

Returning to J2-YP879 found in Iron Age Cavushtepe in Biaina ( Urartu ). A question arises. Was this person an Hurro-Urartian speaker or Armenian speaker who carried an already assimilated J2 lineage that probably came from South Caucasus or Urmia basin. We of course can't know the answer to this question, but with more samples related to YP879 we can propose more solid theories.