Genetic evidence for an origin of the Armenians from Bronze Age mixing of multiple populations.
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 under-represented in genetic studies and have a complex history including a major geographic displacement during World War I. Here, we analyse genome-wide variation in 173 Armenians and compare them with 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 ~3000 and ~2000 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 ~1200 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 Armenian ancestry may originate from an ancestral population that is best represented by Neolithic Europeans.
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, UK.
Marc
0000-0003-1000-1448
M
Haber
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, UK.|Institute for Maternal and Child Health -IRCCS 'Burlo Garofolo'-Trieste, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy.
Massimo
M
Mezzavilla
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, UK.
Yali
Y
Xue
Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (CSIC-UPF), Departament de Ciències de la Salut i de la Vida, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.
David
D
Comas
Institute for Maternal and Child Health -IRCCS 'Burlo Garofolo'-Trieste, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy.
Paolo
P
Gasparini
The Lebanese American University, Chouran, Beirut, Lebanon.
Pierre
P
Zalloua
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, UK.
Chris
C
Tyler-Smith
D001136:Armenia; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D015894:Genome, Human; D063426:Human Migration; D006801:Humans; D019083:Mediterranean Region; D010375:Pedigree; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D011153:Population / Q000235:genetics*