Conny Waters – AncientPages.com – An international research team comprising experts from Germany, Georgia, Armenia, and Norway analyzed ancient DNA from 230 individuals across 50 archaeological sites in Georgia and Armenia.
This study reconstructs the genetic interactions among populations in the South Caucasus over time, offering insights into individual mobility within these regions and migrations that served cultural exchange, technological advancements, and novel burial practices.
The study at the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean was jointly led by Johannes Krause, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and Philipp Stockhammer, Professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
The study shows that people in the South Caucasus maintained a constant ancestry profile from the Early Bronze Age (c. 3500 BC) to the Great Migration (c. 500 AD).
According to Harald Ringbauer, a population geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, whose research team led the study, said that the persistence of a deeply rooted local gene pool across numerous changes in material culture is extraordinary, and contrasts sharply with other regions in Western Eurasia, where such changes were often associated with significant population movements.
The investigations have also uncovered evidence of migration from adjacent regions. Specifically, during the later phases of the Bronze Age, a portion of the region’s genetic composition can be attributed to individuals originating from Anatolia and Eurasian steppe herders. These migrations served as conduits for cultural exchange, technological advancements, novel burial practices, and the dissemination of economic systems such as nomadic pastoralism.
Mtskheta, the ancient capital of the Iberian Kingdom at the confluence of the Kura and Aragvi rivers, is located about 20 kilometers north of Tbilisi in Georgia. This study analyzed the DNA of individuals buried in the Samtavro Cemetery, a small white complex of buildings on the right of the photo. Some of these individuals had artificially deformed skulls. Mtskheta was the economic and political capital of the Kingdom of Iberia for almost a millennium, until the 5th century AD, and also a center of early Christianization. Image credit: Harald Ringbauer
Following this era, the population in the region experienced growth; however, genetic traces of intermingling were often transient or limited to individual cases.
The study offers insights into intentionally deformed skulls by early medieval people from the Kingdom of Iberia in present-day eastern Georgia. This practice was long thought to be linked to migrations of steppe peoples from Central Asia.
Eirini Skourtanioti, the lead author of a study and a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, reports that researchers have identified individuals with deformed skulls who are genetically native to Central Asia. They show direct genealogical links to the Avars and Huns.
However, further analysis indicates that most of these individuals were locals rather than migrants. This finding illustrates how local populations adopted cultural practices initially introduced by nomadic groups in the region.
Liana Bitadze, head of the Anthropological Research Laboratory in Tbilisi, Georgia, and co-author of the study, confirms the significance of this discovery: “Until now, we have investigated this question using comparative morphometric analyses. However, thanks to ancient DNA, we can now present completely new evidence that helps us find more precise answers.”
As the study emphasizes urban centers and early Christian sites in eastern Georgia developed as a melting pot of diverse peoples by late antiquity, amnd thus the Caucasus became a dynamic cultural and genetic contact zone.
This research attempts to set new standards in the study of the population history of these regions. However, it’s important to note that these areas have been largely overlooked by archaeogenetics until now.
Written by Conny Waters – AncientPages.com Staff Writer
