page_title: Georgians
section_title: Genetics
hierarchical_section_title: Georgians / Genetics
caption_attribution_description: English: Old peasant with dagger and long smoking pipe, Mestia, Svanetia, Georgia (Republic)
context_page_description: The Georgians, or Kartvelians, are a nation and indigenous Caucasian ethnic group native to Georgia and the South Caucasus. Large Georgian communities are also present throughout Russia, Turkey, Greece, Iran, Ukraine, United States and the European Union.
  Georgians arose from Colchian and Iberian civilizations of the classical antiquity and are one of the most ancient nations still living today. After Christianization of Iberia by Saint Nino, they became one of the first who embraced the faith of Jesus in the early 4th century, and now the majority of Georgians are Eastern Orthodox Christians, and most follow their national autocephalous Georgian Orthodox Church, although there are small Georgian Catholic and Muslim communities as well as a significant number of irreligious Georgians. Located in the Caucasus, on the continental crossroads of Europe and Asia, the High Middle Ages saw Georgian people form a unified Kingdom of Georgia in 1008 AD, the pan-Caucasian empire, later inaugurating the Georgian Golden Age, a height of political and cultural power of the nation.
context_section_description: A study of human genetics by Battaglia, Fornarino, al-Zahery, et al. (2009) suggests that Georgians have the highest percentage of Haplogroup G (30.3%) among the general population recorded in any country. Georgians' Y-DNA also belongs to Haplogroup J2 (31.8%), Haplogroup R1a (10.6%), and Haplogroup R1b (9.1%).
caption: Georgian peasant in Mestia, c. 1888
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