A number of genetic studies have recently investigated
Armenian DNA from different perspectives revealing some fascinating and
consistent results. For example in 2014 Hellenthal et. al. in a paper published
in Science have investigated worldwide human admixture history over the past
4000 years and created a Genetic Atlas of human admixture. Oddly enough they
could not identify the Armenian admixture for the past 4000 years and placed
Armenians into the “no admixture, uncertain” category (read more about it
HERE).
Another recent study by Haber et. al. (2015) has shed
more light in this regard by specifically focusing on Armenian genetics. They
found that Armenians show a signatures of an origin from mixture of diverse
populations occurring 3,000 to 2,000 BCE which incidentally coincides with the
legendary founding of Armenia by the patriarch Hayk in 2492 BCE. This
revelation was even picked up by the New York Times. Haber et. al. also found
that Armenian admixture after the late bronze age seized, showing no
significant traces of further admixture for some three and a half thousand
years. It appears that Armenians have stopped mixing from that time on showing
genetic isolation to a great extent. The authors describe: “Our tests suggest
that Armenians had no significant mixture with other populations in their
recent history and have thus been genetically isolated since the end of the
Bronze Age.” This makes Armenian genetics very unique in the region marked by
great diversity and admixture. As such Armenians above all seem to better
represent the ancient populations of the Near East. Haber et. al. have shown
that the genetic landscape in most of the Middle East appears to have been
continuously changing and that:
“the position of the Armenians within the global genetic
diversity is unique and appears to mirror the geographical location of
Anatolia… Armenians’ adoption of a distinctive culture early in their history
resulted in their genetic isolation from their surroundings. Their genetic
resemblance today to other genetic isolates in the Near East, but not to most
other Near Easterners, suggests that recent admixture has changed the genetic
landscape in most populations in the region.”
Moreover they found that modern Armenians show a great
genetic affinity to ancient Europeans, meaning that Armenians of today because
of their isolation have retained the genetic makeup of the ancient people of
the Near East who have spread into Europe during various migration waves (read
more about it HERE).
http://www.peopleofar.com/2015/02/25/armenians-have-a-high-genetic-affinity-to-ancient-europeans/
http://www.peopleofar.com/2015/02/25/armenians-have-a-high-genetic-affinity-to-ancient-europeans/
5000 Year Old Armenian Ancestry
As the genetic studies progress so does our understanding
of Armenian ancestry increases.
Remains at a Bronze Age burial at Gegharot Armenia
Gegharot Armenia One might wonder, wouldn’t it be
interesting if we dug out ancient bones from the Armenian Highlands and
compared it to see how and if they are related to modern Armenians? Well, that
is exactly what a team of archaeologists and geneticists set out to investigate
along with a bunch of other questions related to ancient DNA.
Bronze Age burial sight at Gegharot, Armenia
Bronze Age burial sight at Gegharot, Armenia DNA samples
from ancient burial sights found all over the Republic of Armenia have been
collected and send off to be tested by the University of Copenhagen. The data
has now been collected and the results are soon to be published in the
prestigious Nature journal, authored by 44 people from 13 different countries.
The authors of the study however have already lifted the vale on some of the
findings affirming that the DNA from these ancient bones indeed matches with
those of the modern Armenians. Referring to the international genetic study,
the Head of the Laboratory of the Institute of Molecular Biodiversity of the
National Academy of Sciences Levon Yepiskoposyan has recently stated in an interview
to the press that: “Modern Armenians are direct descendants of the people who
lived in the territory of Armenia 5000 years ago.” Eight samples from ancient
burial sights across Armenia, dated to the middle and the late Bronze Age as
well as the Iron Age, have been collected and tested.
“The results of genetic studies have shown that the DNA
samples of the Bronze Age individuals that have been found on the territory of
Armenia have a genetic portrait that is almost indistinguishable from the
genetic portrait of people living today in Armenia” – said Yepiskoposyan.
Levon Yepiskoposyan at the press conference
06-05-2015Levon Yepiskoposyan at the press conference 06-05-2015
He added that from these results we can safely conclude
that modern Armenians indeed have very old roots in the Armenian Highlands.
In this study, we were able to solve not only some of the
the genetic, historical and archaeological questions, but also to some extent
disprove the allegations that the Armenians are only living 200 years in the
territory of Eastern Armenia. These findings again affirm that modern Armenians
represent an ancient Near Eastern population, due to their genetic isolation in
Armenian Highlands. As such Armenians can be regarded as a “living fossil”. To
better understand the implications of these studies, I’ve been following
several discussions on the internet about these recent findings. One expert,
who was also involved with the above mentioned project, explains as follows:
06-07-2015
Armenians became genetically isolated during the Late
Bronze Age (about 3500 years before the present) and have not intermixed with
populations from distant regions since then. Because Armenians are Late Bronze
Age (LBA) genetic isolates, we, as a population are like a living fossil. When
comparing the ancient DNA of individuals dug up in modern Armenia with those of
Armenians, there isn’t much of a difference in the DNA. It essentially means
that we represent a genetic continuum of at least 3500 years. What this means
beyond just Armenians, as the article that will be out in the prestigious
journal of Nature soon, is that we can compare modern European populations with
modern Armenians, knowing that it’s the same as comparing the modern European
population with ancient Near Easterners (as Armenians represent an essentially
pure sample of the Late Bronze Age). We are closer to the basal populations
that existed in the Near East, subsequently migrated toward Europe during the
Bronze Age-Iron Age, than any other population in present Europe.
Excavation at Shengavit Bronze Age burial sight in
Armenia
Excavation at Shengavit Bronze Age burial sight in
Armenia
So if you compare ancient DNA found in Europe between the
Neolithic to the Iron Age, you see huge shifts in populations as Near
Easterners and others from the East settled and influenced the substructure of
the European genome. These groups were present as populations in the Near East,
having contributed to the early Highland group that then became genetically
isolated and became the Armenians as we know it today. Think of us as frozen in
time for at least 3500 years. Comparing us to modern European groups is like
comparing the modern groups to 3500 year old Highland tribes.
So imagine that you have various tribes in the Near East that
coalesced to form Armenians. Let’s designate them with alphabetical letters. So
assume that people from tribes A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H, and J became genetically
isolated during the Bronze Age and coalesced to form Armenians. A few groups of
people from some of these tribes, say A-D, migrated to Tuscany and mixed with
indigenous tribes M,N,O,P,Q forming modern Tuscans. We can now compare modern
Tuscans with modern Armenians as though we were comparing modern Tuscans with
ancient Armenians (the Near Eastern tribes from over 3500 years ago) and
uncover the links between the two. By doing so, we can recover the fact that
Armenians and Tuscans share A-D in their genome. We can then recover ancient
DNA from Tuscany and determine when the A-D tribal migration took place. As we
do this all over Europe, we find certain patterns. These patterns show that
there were substantial population shifts in the genome of Europeans,
particularly after the Neolithic, based on Near Eastern waves of migration. The
groups that migrated from the Near East during the Mesolithic/Chalcolithic,
were later replaced by Early Bronze Age groups, then Mid-Late Bronze Age, then
Iron Age, etc. By looking at ancient DNA, and also comparing the admixture of
modern populations with each other, we can make sense of how Europe was
populated.
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