# Population Genetics > mtDNA Haplogroups >  Were mtDNA H2a1, I, R1a and W the haplogroups of the Maykop culture ?

## Maciamo

The North Caucasus has a very unique genetic landscape. The mitochondrial haplogroups found there, especially in the Northwest Caucasus include a lot of rare lineages that aren't found at higher frequencies almost anywhere else. These include haplogroups *H2a1*, *I* (mostly the I1, I2 and I4a subclades), *R1a* (not to be confused with its Y-DNA homophone), *U2e* and *W*. There are also other more common haplogroups that reach unusually high frequencies in parts of the Caucasus, such as *K, U3 and X2*, although they probably originated in the South Caucasus and the Near East. 

What piqued my interest is that haplogroups H2a1, I and W in particular (R1a being so rare anyway) have never been found in Europe nor in the Near East before the Bronze Age. That made me wonder where they could have originated. If they weren't native to Europe, nor from the Near East, and they aren't East Asian or South Asian either, that only leaves the North Caucasus, a small region that was isolated from the South Caucasus, Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent by quasi-impassable mountains: the Greater Caucasus range, a formidable natural barrier of snowy peaks exceeding 4,000 or 5,000 metres on most of its length. It is therefore not surprising that many lineages, and particularly the less mobile ones on the maternal side, should have evolved in relative isolation for many millennia probably since well before the end of the last glaciation.

It could be that the lineages that ended up stuck against the northern edge of the Caucasus once roamed the Eurasian steppes as nomadic hunter-gatherers, and that they were force to migrate south during the Last Glacial Maximum, only to find their way blocked by the Caucasus, and so they settled there. Haplogroups H2a1, I, U2e and W are also quite common in the eastern Baltic, so the traditional territory of these lineages might have spanned between the Baltic and the North Caucasus. Whether the Palaeolithic paternal lineage associated with them is R1a or another (extinct ?) haplogroup is yet to be determined.

What is interesting is that H2a1, I and W are now found dispersed around most of Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and North Asia. All of them correlate pretty well with the distribution of Y-haplogroup R1a. Yet, none of them were found in Eastern Europe, even in Russia, before the Bronze Age. This may just be due to the scarcity of ancient DNA samples. But there are over 30 Mesolithic Russian samples and all of them belonged to H, T, U2, U4 or U5. 

H2a1, I and W then all suddenly show up in both the Corded Ware and the Unetice culture in Central Europe during the Bronze Age. This makes me wonder whether they were original R1a lineages from the forest-steppe, or if they represent an ingression of Northwest Caucasian people (Maykop culture) into the R1a steppe population.

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## bicicleur

good point

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## skaheen15

Maciamo, what, if anything, would you make of the fact that both W and I seem to be relatively sparse in Ireland, except in the extreme west?

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## Maciamo

> Maciamo, what, if anything, would you make of the fact that both W and I seem to be relatively sparse in Ireland, except in the extreme west?


R1a is rare in Ireland. The extreme west was settled by the Vikings, who would have carried more I and W.

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## skaheen15

> R1a is rare in Ireland. The extreme west was settled by the Vikings, who would have carried more I and W.


I see.
I don't want to drag this thread away from the Maykop culture, but I'm curious about Irish mtDNA lineages, I had read somewhere on this forum, I think in one of your posts, that Ireland's mtDNA was particularly rich in HGs associated with the pontic steppe folk(on top of it's massive amount of R1b on the paternal side), with fewer near eastern lineages than most of western Europe. Is that the case?

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## John123

That's what I've long suspected; mtdna W and I were small Scandinav substratums with a more ancient presence in the near east.

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## Inal

Maciamo, 

Thank you for this thread. My mtDNA haplogroup is also H2a1, and my ancestors are indeed from the Northwesternmost part of the Caucasus region where the city of Maykop is located. I would really appreciate if you could help me find out more about this particular subclade and its origin.

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## ChristieMoore33

I know I'm like a fish out of water here since I'm from the United States and this is all about Europe, but I am a W1 and somehow my people left Europe and came to the Colonies at some point in time, for some reason. From my results, I am almost a 'pure' W1 with only 1 mutation difference from the original W1. Also, the 16223 mutation in all W's in a T, mine is a C, like the original W1. Either mine never has changed or it changed to a T like the others and then mutated back to a C? I have no idea where my line is from seeing I've only been able to trace my mtDNA line back to the early 1800's and that was in North Carolina.

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