Ethnic Diversity in the Zagros Mountains: Part 1

 Ethnic Diversity in the Zagros Mountains: Part 1

Bronze Age Mesopotamian sources mention many ethnic groups and polities in the Zagros region, including the Hamazi, Gutians, Turukki (possibly the same as the Tukris), Lullubi, Kassites, Elamites, and others. Beside those listed, early Indo-Iranians must have also been present there.

In this group, I have already mentioned—based on a single sample—that the Elamites apparently had a high level of Iran/Zagros Neolithic ancestry. Therefore, their language could have originated from the Iran Neolithic. We have also discussed the possibility that the spread of Grey Ware (Dinkha Tepe II, after 1800 BC) in the Middle Bronze Age of northern Iran could be related to the Kassites and those unnamed Aryans.

Figuring out the genetic profile of the other mentioned groups is more problematic due to the absence of data related to their archaeology. However, in one case, a connection seems very likely—practically close to certitude. Some scholars have proposed theories that the Gutians were an Indo-European tribe ancestral to the Tocharians. Current data do not support the Tocharian link, given that the Tocharian origin is better explained by the Afanasievo culture.

Despite this, the idea of the Gutians as an Indo-European tribe is supported by the presence of R1b-Z2103 (Z2106?) in Middle Bronze Age Bakr Awa. R1b-Z2103 is a lineage that expanded in the Yamnaya culture and moved to the South Caucasus around the 2550–2500 BC period. From the South Caucasus, it moved further south toward the Zagros Mountains, and from there, they entered Mesopotamia. Cuneiform sources describe them as barbaric, destructive people who did not respect Mesopotamian gods and rituals. Some have proposed that they probably had light skin (namrum). However, modern scholars translate the meaning of namrum differently: as bright, shining, or healthy, of good quality for people or slaves. There are also reasons to believe that the Gutians elected their kings for specific periods. If true, this sets them apart from other West Asian societies where power was transferred hereditarily, and brings them closer to the ancient Greeks.

Only two dozen names are known from them, and not a single word. Thus, their linguistic classification remains obscure. In addition to these facts, I want to add that the term "Guti" was apparently a frequent endonym among various Indo-European peoples. The Tocharians called themselves Kuči, which could be derived from Guti based on regular phonetic shifts. The names of the Thracian tribe Getae, the Germanic Goths, and the Jats / Jutts in India could be related to this term. All of these parallels further reinforce the possibility that the Gutians could have originally come from the Yamnaya culture. Obviously, more ancient DNA is needed to further reinforce this theory, but at the current stage, the Gutians are clearly the best candidate for explaining the appearance of R1b in Bakr Awa. Note that this does not mean Hurrians completely lack any R1b; they could have had it, but they must have acquired it from neighboring IE tribes, meaning it was not native to them.

Later the term Guti/Quti has transformed in to catch all term denoting various people in North Zagros and Urartu region. The last mention of Guti is from the 6th century BC in Babylonian sources in the context of Persian expansion.

My next post will be about their possible language classification and the question of how it relates to Proto-Armenian, which also formed as a result of the same migration.

Remarks on Hurrians and their initial Y DNA

 Remarks on Hurrians and their initial Y DNA

The recent Williams et al. 2026 paper about ancient DNA from Mesopotamia (Bakr Awa) made some comments about the possible Hurrian DNA, so let's look closer at it. It's probably the third or fourth ancient DNA paper discussing Hurrian DNA. Despite the growing number of aDNA from regions where Hurrians and the related Urartians had left inscriptions, the understanding of their DNA is still very far from being complete. But some preliminary conclusions can be made.

Their autosomal genetic profile was primarily composed of Central farmer type. In northeastern regions where they had contacts with Proto-Armenians, they had probably acquired some steppe ancestry and R1b-Z2103. This also correlates with linguistic contacts. Like the word ešši meaning horse is almost certainly a loanword from the Armenian word eš meaning donkey (it was initially meaning horse).The ancient DNA from western regions (Alalakh) where Hurrians had left inscriptions does not have steppe ancestry but seems to be intermingled with Semitic ancestry. It's important to keep in mind that North Mesopotamia witnessed a Semitic wave around 3200–3000 BC, thus before Hurrians became the prominent group in that region. This means that Hurrians almost certainly assimilated or lived side by side with East Semites that settled there a few centuries earlier. Linguistically, it's confirmed by numerous loanwords from Akkadian.In eastern regions, Hurrians had also contacts with various poorly classified Zagros people (Gutians, Lullubi, Kassites). I will dedicate a separate topic about them later. And of course, after 1800 BC, a group of Indo-Iranians migrated to the Near East who became the ruling elite of a Hurrian-populated kingdom, Mitanni. Numerous names and words of Aryan origin among Hurrians are the best proof of this.

All these numerous interactions of Hurrians with neighbors complicate the understanding of Hurrian DNA. Most of the time, it's very hard to figure out whether the excavated Y-DNA was natively Hurrian or is from neighbors. So the best way is to ignore possible neighboring group Y-DNA and try to find the core Hurrian ones. Fortunately, there was an archaeological culture in North Mesopotamia that almost certainly was created by Hurrians, even though not exclusively by Hurrians (East Semites were also part of it).

It's the Khabur ware (2000–1500 BC) in North Mesopotamia. The distinctive painted Khabur ware pottery apparently evolved into Nuzi ware, which shows a robust correlation with the Mitanni kingdom. This Khabur pottery has it's roots in North Mesopotamia, where the oldest Hurrian text was found from Urkesh (see the map) at around 2300 BC.

We already have samples from Khabur ware-related sites. It's from the Dinkha Tepe BIA 1. Occasionally, you will see claims that Dinkha Tepe 1 from the Urmia Basin are Semites. That is very unlikely. The J2-PF5197 found there is atypical to Bronze Age Semites, while the J1-P58 can be from them. Khabur ware was present in Bakr Awa, where we find an unusual Y-DNA, J1-PH128. At least three Y-DNA out of 10 were from this branch. This branch of J1 is unrelated to Semitic J1 and to NEC J1. So we can conjecture that it's a genuine Hurrian J1. Its popularity among Armenians is another hint of their plausible Hurrian connection.

As usual more samples from Khabur and Nuzi ware will help to find more plausible genuine Hurrian Y DNA.

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.

An update on North West Caucasians.

 An update on North West Caucasians.

Apparently we missed this story in this group. In Ghalichi et al. 2024 new samples from the Dolmen culture were published and one of them was G2-L1266. This haplotype is very popular among all North West Caucasian speakers. This finding support the possibility that the linguistic ancestors of Abkhaz-Adyghean (NWC) speakers were from the Dolmen culture.

After the Bronze Age in northwestern Caucasus a new Iron Age cultural landscape appears known as Maeotian culture. The name is based on the Greek sources term.

From another paper (Andreeva et al. 2025) two female samples were published supposedly linked to Maeotians.

Their genetic profile was different from the neighbouring Scythians. They had a typical Caucasian genetic profile. This supports the theory that the Greek sources Maeotians had probably a NWC origin.

The G2-L1266 moved to northwestern Caucasus from south. In most likelihood from Anatolia or eastern parts of Anatolia. There is some slim chance that it was from South Caucasus via the Maykop culture.. But current data is not particularly supportive of this possibility.

As for the ultimate origin of NWC languages it can be the same as the haplotype but can be different given that multiple cases of local J2 also were found in Dolmen culture

This map of Kura Araxes sites is from Wilkinson 2014.

 This map of Kura Araxes sites is from Wilkinson 2014. Its possible that he didnt mention all known sites but overall it shows well the pattern of their geographic distribution.

As You can see there are very little known Kura-Araxes sites in middle and lower Kur river region. This is exactly the region where Early Kurganic culture of steppe origin mixed with locals (2550-2300 BC) according the archaeologic studies that i posted earlier.

In Late Chalcolithic period this region was occupied by Leila tepe culture people genetically related to Chaff faced ware horizon. Those people had much more Anatolian/Levantine neolithic related ancestry and less CHG than Kura-Araxes. This is the reason why the succeeding Trialeti Vanadzor culture and Lchashen-Metsamor show excess of Anatolian related ancestry. This shift is visible also in Y DNA. By the presence of haplotypes like E-M84 and T1a1a in Armenia MLBA period. Those haplotypes are very unlikely to represent typical Kura-Araxes haplotypes.

The second picture is a qpadm model made by Nareg Asatrian where it is visible that Yamnaya Moldova works quite well as a source for ancestry for Armenia MLBA. Its a reproduction of the model done in Yediay et al. 2024.

The real reason for samples from Moldova working well is that they have the extra Anatolian farmer related ancestry necessary for Armenia MLBA. For reasons that i explained above and absolutely unrelated to Moldova. Another reason is the extra WHG but it will be a subject for a different post.

In conclusion the linguistic substrate for Proto Armenians was not the Kura-Araxes culture or lets be more cautious was not exclusively the Kura-Araxes. Chaff faced ware and Leila tepe's hypothetic language(s) also must have important influence on Armenian.

I2a2b (SK1270 or Y16419) in Trialeti-Vanadzor culture remains a puzzle

 I2a2b (SK1270 or Y16419) in Trialeti-Vanadzor culture remains a puzzle. We know that its from Europe, we know that it reached South Caucasus via the north. But till now we dont have intermediate specimens between Central Europe and South Caucasus.

Akbari et al. 2026 samples when published can solve this puzzle.

We have three ancient Y DNA that are relatively close to TVC cluster and here how they look genome wide. Their common ancestor with TVC I2a2b is something like 8000-9000 years.

One of them I17647 is something like Ukraine HG intermediate between WHG and EHG. (7500 year old)

The other one I10491 is also heavily WHG and EHG. But it has also Yamnaya related ancestry. Which is important because before moving to South Caucasus the Trialeti Vanadzor lineage must have been present in Yamnaya. (6600 year old)

And the third one I29874 is a typical European farmer similar to Potocani I2a2b from Chalcolithic Croatia.

Based on this we can say that at last I17647 and I10491 are in most likelihood from East Europe. While the last one is from Central Europe.

PS the two first samples are from E zone in suplemments. See the the third picture for the map.

The end of the Kura-Araxes culture and the emergence of new kurgan cultures.

 The end of the Kura-Araxes culture and the emergence of new kurgan cultures. Here I present a short summary of the papers by Ruben Badalyan et al. (2024) and Pavel Avetisyan & R. Badalyan. The two papers are based solely on archaeological data, with no discussion of paleogenetics. The first paper deals mainly with the end of the Kura-Araxes (KA) culture, while the second focuses on Middle Bronze Age cultures.

Key points

The depopulation of KA sites started earlier, around the 27th–26th centuries BC, than the appearance of the new Middle Bronze Age cultures.
The appearance of new cultures in the Kura-Araxes region was rather a consequence than a cause of this depopulation.
The depopulation was not complete but there was a 15-20 fold drop in settlement numbers. The last period of KA coexisted with Early Kurgans.
In most cases (though not all), traces of burning and fire in KA settlements were not caused by invaders, but had internal causes — either spontaneous or deliberately carried out by the inhabitants themselves (ritualistic or sanitary?). After the fires, the settlements were rebuilt. A similar tradition also existed in the Balkans.
KA sites in the Upper Euphrates and Tigris regions did not experience the same depopulation. On the contrary, they developed into urban centers with active trade connections to Mesopotamia.
The earliest manifestations of the new kurgan cultures begin around 2550 BC in the Kur River basin. The Kur basin appears to have been the core region of this new culture. This date fits very well with the chronology calculated by Lazaridis et al. (2022) (my comment).
Early kurgan culture was not homogeneous. It had two variants: the Martqopi variant and the Bedeni variant. Martqopi shares more features with the preceding Kura-Araxes culture, while Bedeni shares very few. Trialeti seems to have been closer to Martqopi. Bedeni used tin bronze, whereas KA and Martqopi relied mainly on arsenical bronze. Tin-bronze technology originated in Europe.
Early kurgan sites are not frequent in the Republic of Armenia and appear only after 2450 BC. No early kurgan burials have been found south of the Araxes River.
After 2200 BC, the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture expanded throughout the Kura-Araxes basin and south of the Araxes. It had two types of pottery: monochrome pottery with dot decoration and painted pottery. The painted type apparently emerged in the south and became the predominant type in the regions south of the Araxes River.
The painted type expanded from south to north and remained rare in Georgia. In the territory of modern Armenia, painted pottery constituted about fifty percent of the pottery assemblage in Trialeti-Vanadzor culture layers, and it was the dominant type south of the Araxes River.
After 1900 BC, new cultures derived from the Trialeti-Vanadzor culture formed on top of the TVC horizon. These included the Karmirvank (Van-Urmia) culture, the Sevan-Artsakh (Uzerlik) culture, and the Karmirberd culture.

My next post will be about the comparison of available paleogenetic data with this vision based on archaeology.