Geneticists analyzed the nuclear DNA of 57 Armenians to study the demographic history of their population. The scientists rejected the hypothesis based on Herodotus' account of the Balkan origin of these people's ancestors. Instead, they confirmed previous observations that people genetically related to modern Armenians inhabited this region as early as the Bronze Age. This was reported in an article published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
The history of the Armenians has long attracted the attention of researchers. This is not least due to the fact that they have their own apostolic church, alphabet, and language, which belongs to a separate branch of the Indo-European language family.
Thanks to accounts by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, the hypothesis arose that the ancestors of Armenians migrated to the Caucasus from the Balkans, specifically from Thrace. This possibility was subsequently suggested by some linguists. However, modern evidence suggests that a genetically similar population lived in this region at least as early as the Bronze Age. Moreover, a significant portion of the ancestors of modern Armenians likely inhabited the Armenian Highlands as early as the Neolithic.
Anahit Hovhannisyan of Trinity College Dublin, together with colleagues from research institutions in nine countries, presented the results of further research into the demographic history of Armenians. To do this, the scientists sequenced 34 complete genomes of individuals whose ancestors identified themselves as Armenians for four generations. Among them were five Sasunians. The researchers also expanded their sample by sequencing genome-wide data for an additional 23 individuals, as well as by incorporating previously published ancient and modern genomes.
A study of these genomes confirmed that Herodotus was mistaken in his assertion that the ancestors of Armenians migrated from the Balkan Peninsula. Modern Armenians are a relatively homogeneous population. Only the Sasun people differed slightly from the other analyzed groups. This is likely due to a demographic bottleneck in this subpopulation's history. The scientists found no evidence that the Sasun people had Assyrian origins, as mentioned in ancient sources.
Geneticists have also confirmed that some of the ancestors of modern Armenians lived in the Caucasus as early as the Neolithic, as previously reported in a large-scale study of ancient genomes. However, modern Armenians still differed significantly genetically from the population of this region that lived there before the Late Bronze Age. This likely occurred as a result of the indigenous population mixing with people genetically similar to Iron Age populations from the Levant. The researchers estimate that, on average, the contribution of this "Levantine" component in modern Armenians is 45 percent (ranging from 28 to 53 percent depending on the region).
We previously reported how paleogeneticists analyzed the DNA of a representative of the first farmers of the North Caucasus—a representative of the Darkveti-Meshokov culture, who lived approximately seven thousand years ago. His remains were excavated in the Nalchik burial ground almost a hundred years ago.
