page_title: Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer
section_title: Genetic studies
hierarchical_section_title: Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer / Genetic studies
caption_attribution_description: English: Fig. 2. (a). Alternative phylogenies relating western hunter-gatherers (WHG), CHG and early farmers (EF, highlighted in orange), with the appropriate outgroup f3-statistics. (b). The best supported relationship among CHG (Kotias), WHG (Bichon, Loschbour), and EF (Stuttgart), with split times estimates using G-Phocs. Oxygen 18 values (per mile) from the NGRIP core provide the climatic context; the grey box shows the extent of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM).
context_page_description: Caucasus hunter-gatherer, also called Satsurblia Cluster is the name of an anatomically modern human genetic lineage, first identified in a 2015 study, based on the population genetics of several modern Western Eurasian populations.
  CHG ancestry was also found in an Upper Palaeolithic specimen from Satsurblia cave, and in a Mesolithic one from Kotias Klde cave, in western Georgia.
  The CHG lineage descended from a population that split off the base Western Eurasian lineage very early, around 45,000 years ago, pre-dating the split that led to differentiated populations that descended separately to Ust'-Ishim man, Oase1 and European hunter-gatherers. The Caucasus hunter-gatherers managed to survive in isolation through the Last Glacial Maximum as a distinct population.
  Eastern Hunter-Gatherers are believed to have received admixture from CHGs, leading to the formation of Western Steppe Herders. WSHs formed the Yamnaya culture and expanded massively throughout Europe during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age.
context_section_description: The study detected a split between CHG and so-called "Western European Hunter-Gatherer" (WHG) lineages, about 45,000 years ago, the presumed time of the original peopling of Europe. CHG separated from the "Early Anatolian Farmers" (EAF) lineage later, at 25,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum. (CHG was extrapolated from, among other sources, the genomes of two fossils from western Georgia – one about 13,300 years old (Late Upper Paleolithic) and the other 9,700 years (Mesolithic), which were compared to the 13,700 year-old Bichon man genome (found in Switzerland).
  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-Y6305*, and J2-Y12379*, and mitochondrial haplogroups of K3 and H13c, respectively. The researchers found that these Caucasus hunters were probably the source of the Near Eastern DNA in the Yamnaya. 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.
  Yardumian et al. (2017) in a population genetics study on the Svans of northwestern Georgia found significant heterogeneity in mt-DNA, with common haplogroups including U1‐U7, H, K, and W6, while Y-DNA haplogroups were less diverse, 78% of Svan males being bearers of Y-haplogroup G2a. Wang et al. (2019) 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".
  Lazaridis et al. (2016) proposes a different people, likely from Iran, as the source for the Middle Eastern ancestry of the Yamnaya people, finding that "a population related to the people of the Iran Chalcolithic contributed ~43% of the ancestry of early Bronze Age populations of the steppe". That study asserts that these Iranian Chalcolithic people were a mixture of "the Neolithic people of western Iran, the Levant, and Caucasus Hunter Gatherers". The Near East population were most likely hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus (CHG), though one study suggested that farmers dated to the Chalcolithic era from what is now Iran may be a better fit for the Yamanya's Near Eastern descent. A different analysis, carried out by Gallego-Llorente et al. (2016), concludes that Iranian populations are not a likelier source of the 'southern' component in the Yamnaya than Caucasus hunter-gatherers.
caption: The relationship between Caucasus hunter-gatherers (CHG), western hunter-gatherers and early farmers as per Jones at al, 2015.
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