Surprising findings in the genes of people from the Caucasus Mountains
The Caucasus has long been a crossroads of civilisations. But why have the genes of its original inhabitants changed so little over the past 5,000 years?
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In the southern Caucasus, researchers from Germany, Georgia, Armenia, and Norway have now examined the genes of, among others, some of the very first Christians.
The Caucasus Mountains are a place where people and cultures have come and gone for thousands of years.
That is why the research finding of the international research group is so remarkable.
The researchers have analysed ancient DNA from 230 individuals spread across 50 different locations in Georgia and Armenia.
A new analysis method
Norwegian researcher Sturla Ellingvåg participated in the project, which was led by the Max Planck – Harvard Research Centre for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean.
"This skeletal material from hundreds of prehistoric people who lived in what's now Georgia and Armenia, from 3,500 years before our era up until just before the Viking Age, has given us a unique picture of people in the Caucasus Mountains across several time periods," Ellingvåg tells Science Norway.
The researchers used a new method called a time transect, which allows them to build a genetic timeline and track changes in the population through history.
Surprisingly stable DNA
"The Caucasus Mountains have always been central, both in the spread of Indo-European languages from the steppes in the north and in the spread of agriculture from major civilisations further south," says Ellingvåg.
He explains that the DNA results reflect this.
"But they also reveal that the population here has remained surprisingly stable over thousands of years," he says.
Sees a parallel to Scandinavia
Sturla Ellingvåg sees an interesting similarity to Scandinavia’s mountainous regions.
"Just like in Scandinavia, there has been a lot of mixing between different peoples. But there hasn't been much replacement of people," he says.
Ellingvåg suggests that geography and the mountainous landscape in the Caucasus and Scandinavia played a key role.
"In both places we see genetic continuity all the way from the Bronze Age, despite a high degree of mobility in later periods," he says.
Ellingvåg notes that it may have been easier to seek refuge in mountainous areas.
A cultural crossroads
For thousands of years, the Caucasus was a meeting place for people, ideas, and technologies.
That likely explains why some of the earliest Christian communities took root here.
The mountainous area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea brought together people from the steppes in the north – in today's Ukraine and Russia – with the great civilisations of Mesopotamia and Persia to the south.
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Even Vikings from Scandinavia may have passed through.
"In 1042, Vikings took part in a battle in Georgia. This is something virtually everyone in Georgia knows about," says Ellingvåg.
Yamnaya warriors from the steppes
In the middle of the Bronze Age – around 5,000 years ago – people from the Yamnaya culture, often called Yamnaya warriors, came from the steppes of what is now Ukraine and Russia down into the Caucasus Mountains. They mixed with the local population.
Before this, people from farming cultures in southern Mesopotamia and Persia had done the same.
"Yet we see that the original population of the Caucasus Mountains blended relatively little with outsiders, something that may well be explained by geography," says Ellingvåg.
Children had deformed skulls
Harald Ringbauer, a population geneticist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, notes that the Caucasus Mountains stand out compared to other parts of western Eurasia (Europe and Asia). In those regions, many changes throughout history have been linked to extensive migrations.
"The persistence of a deeply rooted local gene pool [in the Caucasus Mountains] through several shifts in material culture is exceptional," he says in a press release from the institute.
Still, the research reveals clear traces of influence from other regions and cultures.
One of the most striking findings is that, in the early Middle Ages, some communities in the Caucasus Mountains began deliberately deforming the skulls of children.
This cultural practice was long thought to be directly linked to Central Eurasian steppe peoples.
A tradition that was passed on
"We identified numerous individuals with deformed skulls who were genetically Central Asian," geneticist Eirini Skourtanioti says in the press release.
"However, our analyses revealed that most of these individuals were locals, not migrants. This is a compelling example of the cultural adoption of a practice that was likely disseminated in the area by nomadic groups," he says.
Sturla Ellingvåg adds that cranial deformation was also, to some extent, taken up by the Goths after their migration from Scandinavia to the Black Sea region.
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Translated by Alette Bjordal Gjellesvik
Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no
References:
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft: Population history of the Southern Caucasus, Press release, 2025.
Skourtanioti et al. The genetic history of the Southern Caucasus from the Bronze Age to the Early Middle Ages: 5,000 years of genetic continuity despite high mobility, Cell, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.07.013
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