Caucasus hunter-gatherer

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Caucasus hunter-gatherer
Alternative namesSatsurblia cluster
Geographical rangeNative to Caucasus and northern parts of Iran, later in Pontic–Caspian steppe
PeriodUpper Paleolithic, Mesolithic
Dates13,000–6,000 BC

Caucasus hunter-gatherer (CHG), also called Satsurblia cluster,

Near Eastern) populations.[4][5]

Genetic structure of ancient Europe. Caucasus hunter-gatherers are represented by the Satsurbila and Kotias specimens.
Genetic affinity of modern populations to the ancient Kotias specimen.
Admixture graph of deep Eurasian lineages (Allentoft et al. 2024)

Formation and development

The CHG lineage is suggested to have diverged from the ancestor of

Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHGs) probably during the Last Glacial Maximum (sometimes between 45,000 to 26,000 years ago).[6] They further separated from the "Anatolian hunter-gatherer (AHG) lineage later, suggested to around 25,000 years ago during the late LGM period.[3][7] The Caucasus hunter-gatherers managed to survive in isolation since the late LGM period as a distinct population, and display high genetic affinities to Mesolithic and Neolithic populations on the Iranian plateau, such as Neolithic specimens found in Ganj Dareh. The CHG display higher genetic affinities to European and Anatolian groups than Iranian hunter-gatherers do, suggesting a possible cline and geneflow into the CHG and less into Mesolithic and Neolithic Iranian groups.[2][8]

The Mesolithic/Neolithic Iranian lineage basal to the Caucasus hunter-gatherers are inferred to derive significant amounts of their ancestry from

Kostenki-14; WEC), with the WEC2 component staying in the region of the Iranian Plateau, while the proper WEC component expanded into Europe.[11]

At the beginning of the

Early Bronze Age c. 3000—2000 BC.[14]

Caucasus hunter gatherer/Iranian-like ancestry, was first reported as maximized in hunter-gatherers from the South Caucasus and early herders/farmers in northwestern Iran, particularly the Zagros, hence the label “CHG/Iranian”.[15]

Further research

Satsurblia cave
in Georgia.
See also: Genetic history of the Middle East and Genetic history of Europe

Jones et al. (2015) analyzed genomes from males from western Georgia, in the Caucasus, from the Late Upper Palaeolithic (13,300 years old) and the Mesolithic (9,700 years old). These two males carried

Y-DNA haplogroup: J* and J2a, later refined to J1-FT34521, and J2-Y12379*, and mitochondrial haplogroups of K3 and H13c, respectively.[16] Their genomes showed that a continued mixture of the Caucasians with Middle Eastern populations took place up to 25,000 years ago, when the coldest period in the last Ice Age started.[4]

CHG ancestry was also found in an

Satsurblia cave (dated c. 11000 BC), and in a Mesolithic one from Kotias Klde cave, in western Georgia (dated c. 7700 BC). The Satsurblia individual is closest to modern populations from the South Caucasus.[2]

Margaryan et al. (2017) analysing South Caucasian ancient mitochondrial DNA found a rapid increase of the population at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, about 18,000 years ago. The same study also found continuity in descent in the maternal line for 8,000 years.[17]

According to Narasimhan et al. (2019) Iranian farmer related people arrived before 6000 BCE in Pakistan and north-west India, before the advent of farming in northern India. They suggest the possibility that this "Iranian farmer–related ancestry [...] was [also] characteristic of northern Caucasus and Iranian plateau hunter-gatherers."[13]

Proto-Indo Europeans

Eastern Hunter-Gatherers
(EHG) and Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers (CHG).
Caucasian Hunter-Gatherer (  CHG), and the small proportions of Anatolian Farmer (  Anatolian Neolithic) and Western Hunter Gatherer (  WHG) ancestry.[18]

During the

Western Hunter-gatherers (WHGs).[18][21]

According to co-author Andrea Manica of the University of Cambridge:

The question of where the Yamnaya come from has been something of a mystery up to now […] we can now answer that, as we've found that their genetic make-up is a mix of Eastern European hunter-gatherers and a population from this pocket of Caucasus hunter-gatherers who weathered much of the last Ice Age in apparent isolation.[4]

Some scholars argue that the archaic PIE ('Indo-Anatolian') language may have originated among a CHG-rich population in Western Asia, based on the lack of EHG ancestry in the probable speakers of Anatolian languages.[23] Others, such as Anthony, suggest that PIE was spoken by EHGs living in Eastern Europe.[24]

According to Jones et al. (2015), Caucasus hunter-gatherer (CHG) "genomes significantly contributed to the Yamnaya steppe herders who migrated into Europe ~3,000 BCE, supporting a formative Caucasus influence on this important Early

Indo-Aryan languages."[25] For example, about 50%-70% of Armenian ancestry is derived from CHG, persisting from Neolithic times to the present.[26] Wang et al. (2018) analysed genetic data of the North Caucasus of fossils dated between the 4th and 1st millennia BC and found correlation with modern groups of the South Caucasus, concluding that "unlike today – the Caucasus acted as a bridge rather than an insurmountable barrier to human movement".[27]

Ancient Greece, Aegean and Italy

Beyond contributing to the population of mainland Europe through Bronze Age pastoralists of the Yamnaya, CHG also appears to have arrived on its own in the Aegean without Eastern European hunter–gatherer (EHG) ancestry and provided approximately 9–32% of ancestry to the Minoans. The origin of this CHG component might have been Central Anatolia.[28]

Genetic analysis shows that Iranian-related ancestry, which was widespread in the Aegean by the Middle Bronze Age in association with the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures, had also spread as far west as Sicily in substantial proportion at least by the time of the Mycenaeans. One possibility is this ancestry spread west along with the Mycenaean cultural expansion.[29] An arrival of the CHG-related component in Southern Italy from the Southern part of the Balkan Peninsula, including the Peloponnese, is compatible with the identification of genetic corridors linking the two regions and the presence of Southern European ancient signatures in Italy.[30] Collected data from Iron Age individuals dating from 900 to 200 BCE (including the Republican period) group shows a clear ancestry shift from the Copper Age, interpreted by ADMIXTURE as the addition of a Steppe-related ancestry component, and an increase in the Neolithic-Iranian component.[31]

See also

References

  1. PMID 30158639
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  2. ^ a b c d Jones et al. 2015.
  3. ^ a b Fu et al. 2016.
  4. ^ a b c "Europe's fourth ancestral 'tribe' uncovered". BBC. 16 November 2015.
  5. ^ Dutchen, Stephanie (2 May 2016). "History on Ice". Harvard Medical School. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
  6. ^ "'Fourth strand' of European ancestry originated with hunter-gatherers isolated by Ice Age". University of Cambridge. 16 November 2015. By reading the DNA, the researchers were able to show that the lineage of this fourth Caucasus hunter-gatherer strand diverged from the western hunter-gatherers just after the expansion of anatomically modern humans into Europe from Africa.
  7. PMID 35561686
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  8. PMID 27502179
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  9. ^ Lazaridis et al. 2016.
  10. PMID 34352227
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  11. PMID 38528002
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  12. ^ Anthony 2009b, p. 29.
  13. ^ a b Narasimhan et al. 2019, p. 11.
  14. ^ Jeong et al. 2019.
  15. PMID 37499002
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  16. ^ "YFull | NextGen Sequence Interpretation".
  17. PMID 28669760
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  18. ^
    PMID 30713341
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  19. PMID 32621306
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  20. PMID 25731166
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  21. ^
    S2CID 251843620
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  22. ^ a b David Anthony (2019), "Archaeology, Genetics, and Language in the Steppes: A Comment on Bomhard", Journal of Indo-European Studies, Volume 47, Number 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2019.
  23. PMID 36007055
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  24. ^ Anthony, David (1 January 2019). "Archaeology, Genetics, and Language in the Steppes: A Comment on Bomhard". Journal of Indo-European Studies.
  25. ^ Jones et al. 2015: "Caucasus hunter-gatherers (CHG) belong to a distinct ancient clade that split from western hunter-gatherers ~45 kya, shortly after the expansion of anatomically modern humans into Europe and from the ancestors of Neolithic farmers ~25 kya, around the Last Glacial Maximum."
  26. ^ Dergachev, Valentin; Shephard, Henry; Sirbu, Ghenadie; Szécsényi-Nagy, Anna (2022). "The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe". Science. 377 (6609): 982–987 – via ResearchGate.
  27. ^ Wang et al. 2018.
  28. PMID 28783727
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  29. PMID 32094539
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  30. PMID 31517044
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  31. PMID 31699931
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Sources

Further reading

External links
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