Overview
G-Y297559 represents a deeply rooted highland lineage that formed in the ecotones bridging the Armenian Highlands, northern Mesopotamia and the eastern Anatolian plateau. Archaeogenetic data and comparative models reveal that the ancestral populations connected to this lineage belonged to early Chalcolithic agro-pastoral networks positioned along the crucial connective zone linking Van Lake basin, upper Tigris drainage and the north Zagros highlands. The tmrca corresponds to the Middle to Late Bronze Age, a period marked by Hurrian expansion, the rise of fortress-cities, and long-range herding–trade mobility across highland corridors.
Cultural-linguistic interaction zones of this period, including Hurrian, early Urartian and proto-Aramean layers, likely intensified paternal bottlenecks that shaped the lineage’s downstream phylogeny.
Geographic distribution
Today Y297559 is most common in eastern Turkey, Armenia, northern Iraq and northwest Iran. Secondary distributions appear in northeastern Syria. The lineage is virtually absent outside the Near East, reflecting its strong association with highland–Mesopotamian frontier populations.
Ancient DNA
- Bronze Age individuals from the Erzurum–Van–Hakkari arc show upstream marker constellations parallel to ancestral Y297559.
- Middle Bronze Age settlements in the upper Tigris region exhibit genetic affinities consistent with the early branches of this lineage.
- Iron Age Urartian-era remains demonstrate autochthonous continuity within the same demographic sphere as Y297559.
Phylogeny & subclades
Y297559 forms a robust but regionally constrained structure. It branches into: an Armenian plateau cluster, a Tigris headwater cluster and a Zagros-facing cluster. Divergence patterns are congruent with Bronze Age territorialization and early Iron Age highland polities.
- G-Y297559* Armenian plateau rooted basal clade
- G-Y297559a upper Tigris Bronze Age derived branch
- G-Y297559b Zagros foothill microclade
- rare northern Mesopotamian derivative
Notes & context
This lineage adds granularity to the atlas’s highland–Mesopotamian region, one of the most genetically complex prehistoric corridors of West Asia.
References & external links