Iranian hunter-gatherers

The term Iranian hunter-gatherers (IHG), is used to refer to a population genomics lineage representing the Mesolithic to early Neolithic population of the Iranian plateau, South Asia, South-Central Asia and the Caucasus.

The Iranian hunter-gatherer lineage is represented by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and later by Neolithic herders and early farmers in present-day Iran, such as remains excavated from the Hotu and Kamarband Caves and Ganj Dareh, Tepe Abdul Hosein, as well as Wezmeh. A deeply diverged sister branch (> 12kya) best represented by remains from Shahr-i-Sokhta BA2 individuals from Indus Periphery cline, formed the dominant ancestry component of the Indus Valley Civilisation in Northwestern India, which was mixed with a local East Eurasian component termed Ancient Ancestral South Indian (AASI). Later analyses detect an Anatolian farmer related signal in some of the Indus Periphery samples, likely mediated through early Neolithic or Copper Age Central Asian groups such as Sarazm and Namazga. This indicates that part of the Iran_N related ancestry in the Indus Periphery group was accompanied by Anatolian farmer input from West Asia with the spread of farming, rather than being exclusively pre-agricultural Iranian hunter-gatherer related. The Iranian hunter-gatherers also represent an important source for the formation of the Central Asian gene pool, primarily via the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex. They further displayed close genetic affinities to the Caucasus hunter-gatherers, who descend primarily from a similar source population as Iranian hunter-gatherers, but were distinct from preceding Paleolithic Caucasus populations, which were closer related to Anatolian hunter-gatherers, Western hunter-gatherers and Levantine groups.