scholarly journals Genetic evidence for an origin of the Armenians from Bronze Age mixing of multiple populations

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Haber ◽  
Massimo Mezzavilla ◽  
Yali Xue ◽  
David Comas ◽  
Paolo Gasparini ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Ancestral Population ◽  
World War One ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
East Europe ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Population Migrations ◽  
Mediterranean And Black Seas

The Armenians are a culturally isolated population who historically inhabited a region in the Near East bounded by the Mediterranean and Black seas and the Caucasus, but remain underrepresented in genetic studies and have a complex history including a major geographic displacement during World War One. Here, we analyse genome-wide variation in 173 Armenians and compare them to 78 other worldwide populations. We find that Armenians form a distinctive cluster linking the Near East, Europe, and the Caucasus. We show that Armenian diversity can be explained by several mixtures of Eurasian populations that occurred between ~3,000 and ~2,000 BCE, a period characterized by major population migrations after the domestication of the horse, appearance of chariots, and the rise of advanced civilizations in the Near East. However, genetic signals of population mixture cease after ~1,200 BCE when Bronze Age civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean world suddenly and violently collapsed. Armenians have since remained isolated and genetic structure within the population developed ~500 years ago when Armenia was divided between the Ottomans and the Safavid Empire in Iran. Finally, we show that Armenians have higher genetic affinity to Neolithic Europeans than other present-day Near Easterners, and that 29% of the Armenian ancestry may originate from an ancestral population best represented by Neolithic Europeans.

Dairy Queen. Churns and milk products in the Aegean Bronze Age

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 205-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah P. Morris
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Dairy Products ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Specific Function ◽  
Milk Products ◽  
The Third ◽  
Household Processing

This article assembles examples of an unusual vessel found in domestic contexts of the Early Bronze Age around the Aegean and in the Eastern Mediterranean. Identified as a “barrel vessel” by the excavators of Troy, Lesbos (Thermi), Lemnos (Poliochni), and various sites in the Chalkidike, the shape finds its best parallels in containers identified as churns in the Chalcolithic Levant, and related vessels from the Eneolithic Balkans. Levantine parallels also exist in miniature form, as in the Aegean at Troy, Thermi, and Poliochni, and appear as part of votive figures in the Near East. My interpretation of their use and development will consider how they compare to similar shapes in the archaeological record, especially in Aegean prehistory, and what possible transregional relationships they may express along with their specific function as household processing vessels for dairy products during the third millennium BC.

scholarly journals Population structure of modern-day Italians reveals patterns of ancient and archaic ancestries in Southern Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. eaaw3492 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Raveane ◽  
S. Aneli ◽  
F. Montinaro ◽  
G. Athanasiadis ◽  
S. Barlera ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Population Structure ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Nomadic Pastoralists ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
A Genome ◽  
The World ◽  
European Populations

European populations display low genetic differentiation as the result of long-term blending of their ancient founding ancestries. However, it is unclear how the combination of ancient ancestries related to early foragers, Neolithic farmers, and Bronze Age nomadic pastoralists can explain the distribution of genetic variation across Europe. Populations in natural crossroads like the Italian peninsula are expected to recapitulate the continental diversity, but have been systematically understudied. Here, we characterize the ancestry profiles of Italian populations using a genome-wide dataset representative of modern and ancient samples from across Italy, Europe, and the rest of the world. Italian genomes capture several ancient signatures, including a non–steppe contribution derived ultimately from the Caucasus. Differences in ancestry composition, as the result of migration and admixture, have generated in Italy the largest degree of population structure detected so far in the continent, as well as shaping the amount of Neanderthal DNA in modern-day populations.

scholarly journals Paleolithic DNA from the Caucasus reveals core of West Eurasian ancestry

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iosif Lazaridis ◽  
Anna Belfer-Cohen ◽  
Swapan Mallick ◽  
Nick Patterson ◽  
Olivia Cheronet ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Western Anatolia ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Population Turnover ◽  
Genome Wide Data ◽  
Relationship Of

AbstractThe earliest ancient DNA data of modern humans from Europe dates to ∼40 thousand years ago1-4, but that from the Caucasus and the Near East to only ∼14 thousand years ago5,6, from populations who lived long after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ∼26.5-19 thousand years ago7. To address this imbalance and to better understand the relationship of Europeans and Near Easterners, we report genome-wide data from two ∼26 thousand year old individuals from Dzudzuana Cave in Georgia in the Caucasus from around the beginning of the LGM. Surprisingly, the Dzudzuana population was more closely related to early agriculturalists from western Anatolia ∼8 thousand years ago8 than to the hunter-gatherers of the Caucasus from the same region of western Georgia of ∼13-10 thousand years ago5. Most of the Dzudzuana population’s ancestry was deeply related to the post-glacial western European hunter-gatherers of the ‘Villabruna cluster’3, but it also had ancestry from a lineage that had separated from the great majority of non-African populations before they separated from each other, proving that such ‘Basal Eurasians’6,9 were present in West Eurasia twice as early as previously recorded5,6. We document major population turnover in the Near East after the time of Dzudzuana, showing that the highly differentiated Holocene populations of the region6 were formed by ‘Ancient North Eurasian’3,9,10 admixture into the Caucasus and Iran and North African11,12 admixture into the Natufians of the Levant. We finally show that the Dzudzuana population contributed the majority of the ancestry of post-Ice Age people in the Near East, North Africa, and even parts of Europe, thereby becoming the largest single contributor of ancestry of all present-day West Eurasians.

Objects of Prestige? Chariots in the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean and Near East

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 67-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marian H. Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Late Bronze Age

Climate Forcing Due to the 8200 Cal yr BP Event Observed at Early Neolithic Sites in the Eastern Mediterranean

2006 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Weninger ◽  
Eva Alram-Stern ◽  
Eva Bauer ◽  
Lee Clare ◽  
Uwe Danzeglocke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Thermohaline Circulation ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Central Anatolia ◽  
East Europe ◽  
The North ◽  
South East Europe ◽  
Study Interval ◽  
Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation ◽  
Early Farmers

AbstractWe explore the hypothesis that the abrupt drainage of Laurentide lakes and associated rapid switch of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation 8200 yr ago had a catastrophic influence on Neolithic civilisation in large parts of southeastern Europe, Anatolia, Cyprus, and the Near East. The event at 8200 cal yr BP is observed in a large number of high-resolution climate proxies in the Northern Hemisphere, and in many cases corresponds to markedly cold and arid conditions. We identify the relevant archaeological levels of major Neolithic settlements in Central Anatolia, Cyprus, Greece and Bulgaria, and examine published stratigraphic, architectural, cultural and geoarchaeological studies for these sites. The specific archaeological events and processes we observe at a number of these sites during the study interval 8400–8000 cal yr BP lead us to refine some previously established Neolithisation models. The introduction of farming to South-East Europe occurs in all study regions (Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, Bulgaria) near 8200 cal yr BP. We observe major disruptions of Neolithic cultures in the Levant, North Syria, South-East Anatolia, Central Anatolia and Cyprus, at the same time. We conclude that the 8200 cal yr BP aridity event triggered the spread of early farmers, by different routes, out of West Asia and the Near East into Greece and Bulgaria.

Huurlingen, mobiliteit en reizigerslatijn

Lampas ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-419
Author(s):  
Jorrit Kelder
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Knowledge Exchange ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Private Entrepreneurs ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Do So

Summary The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it argues that the Mycenaean Greek world served as a nexus for international trade between the Near East and Europe during the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600 to 1100 BCE). Rather than a barbarian periphery, Europe – and in particular regions such as the Carpathian basin and the southern Baltic (Denmark and Scania) – was an integral part of the much better known ‘civilised’ world of the ancient Near East. Second, it argues that ‘mercenaries’ (a term that I will use rather loosely, and which includes both private entrepreneurs and military captives) served as a hitherto overlooked conduit for knowledge exchange between Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Near East. It will do so by highlighting a number of remarkable archaeological finds, and by discussing these against the backdrop of contemporary (Late Bronze Age and Iron Age) texts as well as later legends.

Horned Objects in Anatolia and the Near East and possible connexions with the Minoan “Horns of Consecration”

1969 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 147-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Diamant ◽  
Jeremy Rutter
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
The Past ◽  
North East ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
East Anatolia

Numerous interpretations of the meaning, function, and derivation of the Minoan “horns of consecration” have been put forward since Evans discovered the first object of this kind in his excavations at Knossos. As yet, not one of the various theories proposed has been universally accepted. Consequently, the authors of this article would prefer not to be so presumptuous as to claim that they have indeed solved the problem of the usage and origins of the Minoan “horns”; on the other hand they believe that excavations in the past twenty years have strongly suggested that the Minoan “horns” have their origins in Anatolia and that the object's function, originally at least, was a pot-support in a hearth.In Anatolia, horned objects which we consider served as precursors of the Minoan “horns of consecration” fall into three classes. Examples of the first of these classes have been found in EB II hearths at Beycesultan and at Tarsus. Survivals of this type of “horns” are also found in Late Bronze Age [hereafter LB] Kusura C and Beycesultan III–II. The second class consists of the pot-stands or andirons connected with Khirbet Kerak ware in the 'Amuq, Palestine, north-east Anatolia, and the Caucasus.

Turkey in the world

Turkey ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Finkel
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The World

Where does Turkey fit into the world? A map is the obvious place to see where Turkey fits in the world. It lies at the intersection of several overlapping regions—the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle and Near East, and the Eastern Mediterranean. However, the...

Settlement mound Tepecik and the Karaz culture in Eastern Anatolia

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 262-285
Author(s):  
Hatice Gönül Yalçin
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Distribution Area ◽  
Eastern Anatolia ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Architectural Features ◽  
Late Chalcolithic ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Prehistoric Settlements ◽  
Small Finds

The longevity of the Kura-Araxes culture is an archaeological phenomenon in the Caucasus and Near East. Over the course of a millennium, this culture spread from its origins in Eastern Anatolia, the Transcaucasia and northwest Iran to Southeastern Anatolia, northern Syria, Palestine and Israel. Named after the settlement mound Karaz near Erzurum, the Karaz culture is a widely established Turkish term for the Kura-Araxes culture. In Palestine and Israel, this culture is called Khirbet-Kerak. Apart from the striking small finds and special architectural features, it has a special pottery with characteristics that remained almost uniform in its area of distribution. Situated in the Altınova plain in Eastern Anatolia, Tepecik was also home for this significant culture. Today, this settlement mound lies under the waters of the Keban Dam in Elazığ. Yet its strategic location on a tributary of the Euphrates enabled the emergence and development of various cultures. At this settlement, archaeologists documented the Karaz culture that occurred in an almost unbroken cultural sequence from the Late Chalcolithic up to the beginnings of the Middle Bronze Age. Thus, Tepecik is one of the most significant prehistoric settlements within the distribution area of the Kura-Araxes/Karaz/Khirbet Kerak culture in the Near East. This paper presents the Karaz pottery from Tepecik as well as the possible development of the Karaz culture in the course of the Early Bronze Age at this settlement. .

THE CAUCASUS AND THE NEAR EAST IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE (FOURTH & THIRD MILLENNIA BC)

1994 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
V.A. TRIFONOV
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
The Caucasus
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