r/AskCaucasus

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Hello, how are you? I hope you are doing well.

I have recently been delving into the field of genetics—a complex subject. I read a great deal about it, accepting some findings while questioning others, but I have reached a point where I am stuck. The issue is as follows: I observed that the oldest gene found in the Fertile Crescent (southeastern Turkey, Iraq, and the Levant) is Haplogroup G, whereas the oldest sample found in the Caucasus is Haplogroup J. I find this quite surprising. Please provide a logical, scientific response regarding the accuracy of my observations.

Hello, I’ve rarely seen this kind of phenotype in the Caucasus. Do you know any people who look like him? And where do you think he comes from in the Caucasus?

Before you accuse me of being some kind of Russian troll or anything I've never been to any of these countries and I have no interest in causing any annoyance, I live in the opposite part of Europe and the closest relation that I have with Russia is that a friend of mine has a Russian parent. I'm just very curious about how different languages are spoken in Eastern Europe

In the case of the Caucasus I know that the country with the smallest Russian-native speaking community is Armenia, but somewhat paradoxical, as I can observe in many videos recorded in different Armenian cities, you can see Russian text signs every so often.

I mean, I searched for a random Armenian city (Gyumri) and I found the typical video where a guy walks down the streets of that city with a 4K camera. You can clearly see Russian texts in many streets (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX9FTD38tSg)

Also, I invite you to search for images of Armenian train stations and you will see that a lot of signs are in Russian. This would make sense if these would be old signs from the Soviet era, but you can also find modern signs written in Russian

So is it Russian that commonly found throughout Armenia? Or is it just my impression?

And if it is indeed, why is that the case if precisely Armenia has the lowest Russian natives among the Caucasus countries?

I was doing Europe and surrounding qpadms and got through the caucasus fast. These were all the modern samples I could find across their aadr and human origins databases. Note adygei_1 could be modeled with natufian as well but all the other north caucasians could not without the signal being too weak, and dagestanis+chechens with the exception of kumyks rejected both whg and natufian. It makes me think most of the North Caucasian groups after mixing with yamnaya had very weak faint traces of natufian from maykop/kura araxes, etc. Some takes and points

1.)Sorry they didn't have many or well labeled Georgian samples, same with Armenian, would've liked to see some Svans or Khevsurs. With that being said, it is clear South Caucasians are a sort of offshoot/alternate of Northwest Asians like Kurds, Turks, and Persians, not a European group. They are probbaly a bit more similar to most Europeans than Arabs, but definitely match up better with levantines and especially Kurds, Persians, and Turks.

2.)North Caucasians( barring Nogai who I will address) are similar to ashkenazi jews and ethnic turks west of the bosphorus. Most of them are very West Asian shifted but have a clear European component and are very distant from arabs, if Northern Europe is high whg+ehg, Southern is high Anf, north caucasians are like the high chg+zagros variant of the others.

3.)Nogai really seem like caucasian tatars genetically, and no I know Nogai are turkic people and not just an offset of tatars, I am speaking in how they mirror eachother. Nogai North of the caucasus in Astrakhan seem like eastern tatars, high east eurasian component and not as much west eurasian. The nogais in karachay Cherkessia and the westernmost tatars in western tatarstan are alike in that they have higher east eurasian dna than surrounding groups, but have a strong west eurasian base, which mirrors slavs and mordvins in west tatars, versus mirroring north caucasians in karachay cherkessia nogai. The Nogai samples from Stavropol and the tatars in central tatarstan plot between the 2 other groups, but certainly closer to the highly east eurasian ones.

4.)whg in the north caucasus. I have seen that Corded Ware, which had some whg, made it to what is modern day North Ossetia, and assumed this was the whg source. However I noticed that chechens and dagestanis, except for kumyks, don't get it, and kumyks were said to have come to the caucasus later on. This makes me wonder if mixing with medieval slavic groups may have led to the whg input, where as chechens and dagestanis, who seemed to be the first very hardcore muslims in the region, wouldn't have mixed. But those are my 2 hypotheses on how whg arrived.

5.)Just something i was surprised by, but populations in eastern Turkey, ashkenazi jews, and southern italians seem to have higher natufian ancestry than even south caucasians. I assume they might have more basal eurasian than north caucasians as well.

6.)It is clear pontic greeks were originally a greek group that came to the southwest caucasus, judging by their huge anf. They are still however, quite close to hemshin armenians, laz, and trabzon turks, all those groups are very related. Maybe not as much as g25 thinks but they are certainly close.