Caucasus Lowlands, Late Neolithic

In the twilight of the sixth millennium BCE the flatlands of the eastern Caucasus hosted small, rooted communities whose traces now survive as pottery shards, hearths and buried individuals. Archaeological data indicates occupation in sites such as Zeyem Chaj (associated with Mentesh Tepe) and Polutepe near Uchtepe village in Jalilabad district, Azerbaijan. Radiocarbon dates for the sampled individuals fall between 5730 and 5375 BCE, placing them in the regional Late Neolithic horizon when farming, herding and local networks of exchange were intensifying.

Limited evidence suggests these communities were part of a broader tapestry of Neolithic cultures stretching from the South Caucasus into the Near East. Material culture and settlement patterns in the lowlands reflect adaptations to riverine and steppe-edge environments—fertile soils for cultivation and pastures for stock. While precise cultural attribution remains cautious, the combined archaeological and genetic glimpses indicate both local continuity and connections beyond the immediate landscape. Given the small sample size (two genomes), origins should be treated as provisional: these individuals provide hints, not a complete picture, of demographic processes shaping the Caucasus Lowlands during the Late Neolithic.

Ancient DNA recovered from two individuals dated between 5730 and 5375 BCE provides a narrow but evocative genetic window. Maternal lineages present are mtDNA U7 in one individual and mtDNA H in the other. U7 is today associated with Near Eastern and South Caucasus populations and has been observed in some ancient individuals from western Asia, suggesting connections or ancestry components linked to Near Eastern gene pools. H is a broadly distributed West Eurasian lineage common in Europe and parts of the Near East.

These mtDNA signals hint at a mixed maternal heritage in the Caucasus lowlands, reflecting interaction zones where Near Eastern and West Eurasian ancestries meet. Crucially, no Y-chromosome haplogroups are reported for these samples, so paternal lineage structure remains unknown. With only two genomes, any demographic inference is preliminary: small-sample bias is a major caveat. Nonetheless, when integrated with archaeological context, these genetic results support a picture of Late Neolithic communities that were locally rooted but connected through networks of movement and exchange across the Caucasus and into neighboring regions. Future sampling across more burials and sites will be necessary to test whether U7 and H were typical in the region or represent isolated maternal lines.