Overview
G2a2b1a60 is a downstream branch of the M406 (G2a2b1a) radiation with a demographic core in the wider south Caucasus–eastern Anatolian interface. It encapsulates a paternal component that appears to have formed from M406-bearing populations settled along the north-eastern fringe of Anatolia and the south Caucasus foothills and then diversified during the late antique and early medieval periods. The branch sits at the crossroads of several major cultural spheres: Armenian and Georgian highland societies, eastern Anatolian populations and the northern Mesopotamian hinterland.
Its coalescent timeframe suggests that G2a2b1a60’s main expansion coincided with the political fragmentation of late Roman/Byzantine control in eastern Anatolia, the rise of local Armenian principalities, the Sasanian–Byzantine frontier conflicts and, later, the early Islamic and early Bagratid eras. In this sense it preserves a paternal footprint of upland communities that remained regionally anchored while empires shifted around them.
Geographic distribution
Modern carriers of G2a2b1a60 are concentrated in eastern Turkey (Erzurum, Kars, Ardahan), Armenia, and Georgia’s southern provinces. Smaller frequencies are found in northwest Iran (especially around the Aras and Qazvin–Tabriz corridors) and among diaspora Armenians, Georgians and eastern Anatolian families in Russia and Western Europe.
The lineage’s distribution is clearly highland-biased and forms a band around the southern Caucasus and northeast Anatolia. It is typically rare or absent in lowland Mesopotamia, the Levantine coast and central Europe, a pattern that reinforces its role as a marker of long-term highland continuity in the region.
Ancient DNA
- Late antique and early medieval individuals from Armenian Highland and south Caucasus sites show G2a-related Y-chromosome variation which, at higher SNP resolution, could fall within the G2a2b1a60 umbrella.
- Urartian- and post-Urartian-period remains from the Van–Ararat region display paternal signatures compatible with the ancestral M406 trunk that feeds into this branch.
- Early medieval Christian graveyards in Armenia and eastern Anatolia yield genomic profiles that require a persisting local West Asian highland component, into which G2a2b1a60 naturally fits.
- Genetic continuity models for the Armenian Highlands from the Bronze Age through the medieval period consistently propose the survival of multiple G2a lineages; G2a2b1a60 exemplifies one such surviving highland branch.
Phylogeny & subclades
G2a2b1a60 is defined by FT145301 and associated FT1453xx variants. Within the dense M406 phylogeny, it forms a clearly delimited internal node with several subbranches that map onto different segments of the south Caucasus–eastern Anatolian highland mosaic. Internal node lengths are short but structured, pointing to a sequence of regionally confined founder events rather than a single explosive radiation.
Phylogenetically, G2a2b1a60 helps articulate the eastern edge of the Anatolian M406 domain, bridging it toward Caucasian and northwest Iranian lineages without losing its Anatolian–highland identity.
- G2a2b1a60* (basal south Caucasus–eastern Anatolian form)
- G2a2b1a60a (FT145327-linked Armenian–Ararat cluster)
- G2a2b1a60b (FT145349-linked northeast Anatolian–Georgian microbranch)
Notes & context
For a mega atlas, G2a2b1a60 is a key connector lineage: it is neither purely Anatolian nor purely Caucasian but instead captures the overlapping highland zone where these macro-regions meet. In personal ancestry interpretation, belonging to this branch generally indicates deep paternal roots somewhere in the south Caucasus–eastern Anatolian ring and is consistent with long-term highland continuity over at least the last one to one and a half millennia.
References & external links