Caucasus hunter-gatherer

Caucasus hunter-gatherer (CHG), also called Satsurblia cluster is an anatomically modern human genetic lineage, first identified in a 2015 study, based on the population genetics of several modern Western Eurasian (European, Caucasian and Near Eastern) populations. The CHG lineage descended from a population that diverged from a Common Western Eurasian meta-population early; and separated from the "Anatolian Hunter Gatherer" (AHG) lineage later, around 25,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum. The Caucasus hunter-gatherers managed to survive in isolation through the Last Glacial Maximum as a distinct population. At the beginning of the Neolithic, at c. 8000 BC, they were probably distributed across western Iran and the Caucasus, and people similar to northern Caucasus and Iranian plateau hunter-gatherers arrived before 6000 BC in Pakistan and north-west India. A roughly equal merger between the CHG and Eastern Hunter-Gatherers in the Pontic–Caspian steppe resulted in the formation of the Western Steppe Herders (WSHs). The WSHs formed the Yamnaya culture and subsequently expanded massively throughout Europe during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Genetic history of the Middle East and Genetic history of Europe 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-FT34521, and J2-Y12379*, and mitochondrial haplogroups of K3 and H13c, respectively. 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. CHG ancestry was also found in an Upper Palaeolithic specimen from Satsurblia cave (dated ca. 11000 BC), and in a Mesolithic one from Kotias Klde cave, in western Georgia (dated ca. 7700 BC). The Satsurblia individual is closest to modern populations from the South Caucasus. Fu et al.