Caucasian Albanian genome (ZRJ003) 23andme format

Caucasian Albania was an ancient kingdom located in the eastern Caucasus region, corresponding to parts of modern-day Azerbaijan, southern Dagestan (Russia), and parts of Georgia. It existed roughly from the 4th century BCE until the 8th century CE, when it was fully incorporated into the Arab Caliphate.

The region was home to a diverse mix of ethnic groups and tribes, collectively referred to as the Caucasian Albanians. These groups spoke several languages from the Northeast Caucasian family and some possibly from other language families.

The most direct descendants of the Caucasian Albanians are the Udi people, a small ethnic group living in Azerbaijan and Georgia today. They preserved many Christian documents and ancient Albanian scripts.

From 4th century BCE to 8th century AD, Caucasian albania was a vassal state of larger empires, such as the persian Achaemenid empire.

In 4th century AD, King Urnayr established Christianity as the main religion of Caucasian Albanians, however 3 centuries later the Arabs arrived and Caucasian Albanians switched to Islam.

The name of Albania in Europe is derived from the ancient Illyrian tribe of the Albanoi, first mentioned by Ptolemy in the 2nd century CE. The term evolved into the medieval Latin Albania, referring to the region corresponding to modern-day Albania in the Balkans. The name "Albania" in the Caucasian context is derived from the Latinized form of the native term, possibly related to the Old Persian "Aran" or Greek "Albanía." It is likely linked to terms denoting "mountains" or "hilly land," reflecting the region's geography.

Despite the shared name, the two Albanias have no historical or cultural connection. The similarity is coincidental, rooted in distinct etymologies referring to local geographic or tribal features.

For this video, I prepared the genome of a 2nd century caucasian albanian, from a 2022 study called “Spatial and temporal heterogeneity in human mobility patterns in Holocene Southwest Asia”. I ran the sample through my Trait Predictor tool for DNA analysis.