Disclosed feature of the genetic origins of the female population of Armenia
Danish, Armenian, Russian and British scientists found that the female part of the population of Armenia and the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh for the past eight thousand years, from the genetic point of view virtually unchanged.
A study published in the journal Current Biology, and briefly about it reports the publishing house Cell Press.
“We were unable to detect any changes in the female gene pool for a very long period of time. This is extremely interesting, because during the same time period, the region has experienced many cultural changes, but these changes are probably not related to genetic influence, at least on the female population,” — said the authors of the work of Ashot Margaryan and Morten Allentoft.
To such conclusions experts have come, analyzing complete mitochondrial genomes from 52 ancient skeletons from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, the age of the oldest samples was 7.8 for thousands of years. These researchers compared the data with information about the mitochondrial genomes of 206 modern Armenians, as well as previously published materials on the more than 480 people from seven adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh population.
The analysis showed that the population on the territory of modern Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh increased rapidly after the last glacial maximum (about 18 thousand years ago), but migration in the region occurred approximately two or three thousand years ago, is almost not affected by its female part. In the future, scientists plan to conduct genetic analysis of samples taken from the Eastern territories of Azerbaijan and Georgia.