R1b-M269 in the Bronze Age Levant

The new Harvard genotype datasets that I blogged about recently include a couple of potentially very useful samples from the Levant dated to 1400-1100 BCE. Search for IDs I2062 and I1934 in the anno files here. They're both from an archeological paper about a Late Bronze Age (LBA) burial site in what is now Israel that was published back in 2017 (see here).

Surprisingly, individual I2062 is

Early chariot riders of Transcaucasia came from...

I'm finding it increasingly difficult nowadays to fully appreciate all of the ancient DNA samples that are accumulating in my dataset. But it's not entirely my fault.

Among the hundreds of ancient samples published last year there was a couple of Middle Bronze Age (MBA) individuals from what is now Armenia labeled "Lchashen Metsamor" (see here). I wasn't planning to do much with these samples

Armenians vs Georgians

Armenians and Georgians are ethnic groups that live side by side in the south Caucasus, or Transcaucasia. By all accounts, they've both been there since prehistoric times and they're very similar in terms of overall genetic structure.

However, they speak languages from totally unrelated families: Indo-European and Kartvelian, respectively. How did this happen and might the answer lie in the

Catacomb > Armenia_MLBA

It's now clear, thanks to ancient DNA, that Transcaucasia and surrounds were affected by multiple, and at times significant, population movements from Eastern Europe during the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age periods. Based on the ancient samples from what is now Armenia, I'd say that this process peaked during the Middle Bronze Age. But who exactly were the people who perhaps swarmed south of the