Jericho (Arabic: Arīḥā; Hebrew: Yeriḥo) is a city in the Palestinian Territories and is located near the Jordan River in the West Bank. It is believed to be one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world and the city with the oldest known protective wall in the world.
Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of more than 20 successive settlements in Jericho, the first of which dates back 11,000 years (9000 BCE), almost to the very beginning of the Holocene epoch of the Earth’s history.
Jericho’s name in Hebrew, Yeriẖo, is generally thought to derive from the Canaanite word reaẖ (“fragrant”). The Arabic name ʼArīḥā, means “fragrant” and also has its roots in Canaanite Reaẖ.
However, other theories hold that it originates in the Canaanite word for “moon” (Yareaẖ) or the name of the lunar deity Yarikh for whom the city was an early centre of worship.
Yarikh (also written as Jerah, Jarah, or Jorah) is a moon god in Canaanite religion whose epithets are “illuminator of the heavens”‘, “illuminator of the myriads of stars” and “lord of the sickle”. The latter epithet may come from the appearance of the crescent moon.
The city of Jericho was a center of his worship, and its name may derive from the name Yarikh, or from the Cannanite word for moon, Yareaẖ. It seems to have Hurrian roots and may be connected with Kušuḫ, the Hurrian moon god.
Khirbet Kerak (Arabic: Khirbet al-Karak, “the ruin of the fortress”) or Beth Yerah (Hebrew: “House of the Moon (god)”) is a tell (archaeological mound) located on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee in modern-day Israel.
Though it is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible or other Bronze or Iron Age sources, the name may preserve, at least in part, the Canaanite toponym of Ablm-bt-Yrh, “the city/fort (qrt) of his-majesty Yarih”.
As Ablm (Heb. Abel), this location is mentioned in the 14th century BCE Epic of Aqhat, and is thought to be a reference to the Early Bronze Age structure extant at Khirbet Kerak.
The tell spans an area of over 50 acres—one of the largest in the Levant—and contains remains dating from the Early Bronze Age (c. 3000 BC – 2000 BC) and from the Persian period (c. 450 BC) through to the early Islamic period (c. 1000 AD).
“Khirbet Kerak ware” is a type of Early Bronze Age Syro-Palestinian pottery first discovered at this site. It is also found in other parts of the Levant (including Jericho, Beth Shan, Tell Judeideh, and Ugarit).
Khirbet Kerak culture appears to have been a Levantine version of the Early Transcaucasian Culture. The Kura–Araxes culture or the early trans-Caucasian culture was a civilization that existed from about 4000 BC until about 2000 BC, which has traditionally been regarded as the date of its end.
The earliest evidence for this culture is found on the Ararat plain; it spread northward in Caucasus by 3000 BC. The name of the culture is derived from the Kura and Araxes river valleys. It is sometimes known as Shengavitian, Karaz, Pulur, and Yanik Tepe cultures.
Hurrian and Urartian language elements are quite probable, as are Northeast Caucasian ones. The presence of Kartvelian languages was also highly probable. Influences of Semitic languages and Indo-European languages are highly possible.
The Hurrians were a people of the Bronze Age Near East. They spoke a Hurro-Urartian language called Hurrian and lived in Anatolia and Northern Mesopotamia.
By the Early Iron Age, the Hurrians had been assimilated with other peoples. Their remnants were subdued by a related people that formed the state of Urartu, which corresponds to the biblical mountains of Ararat, also known as the Kingdom of Van.
Urartu was centered around Lake Van in the historie Armenian Highlands (present-day eastern Anatolia). The present-day Armenians are an amalgam of the Indo-European groups with the Hurrians and Urartians. Being heirs to the Urartian realm, the earliest identifiable ancestors of the Armenians are the peoples of Urartu.
It is unknown what language was spoken by the peoples of Urartu at the time of the existence of the kingdom, but there is linguistic evidence of contact between the proto-Armenian language and the Urartian language at an early date (sometime between the 3rd—2nd millennium BC), occurring prior to the formation of Urartu as a kingdom.
The Kura-Araxes people underwent a major expansion, first west to Anatolia, south to the Fertile Crescent and east toward the Iranian plateau, possibly all the way to Pakistan, where they would have influenced the Indus Valley Civilisation.
It is likely that the descendants of the Kura-Araxes culture eventually colonised Greek islands, including Crete, where they would have founded the Minoan Civilisation (2600-1100 BCE), Europe’s oldest civilisation.
Based on the modern phylogeny, Kura-Araxes people are thought to have belonged primarily to Y-DNA haplogroups J2a1 (the largest lineage), J1a2-Z1828, T1a-P77, G2a1 (L293, aka FGC7535 or Z6552), G2a2b1a (M406) and L1b.
Other minor haplogroups may have been present too, including the now rare R1b1a-L388, which was identified in one Kura-Araxes individual by Lazaridis et al. (2016).
During the Classical Antiquity ancient Greek islanders, who were descended in great part from the Minoans, colonised southern Italy, bringing their Kura-Araxes lineages with them.
The oldest known G-L293 sample is a Neolithic man from western Iran. Nowadays, G-L293 is the most common G2a clade in the central and northern Caucasus, peaking at 64% of the population in North Ossetia.
The Kura-Araxes culture expanded from the South Caucasus, where L293 is considerably lower (1% in Armenia and eastern Turkey). L293 is conspicuously absent from Sardinia and the northern half of Italy, which excludes both a Neolithic and an Indo-European origin.
It is found at low frequencies across Turkey, northwest Iran, northern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon (i.e. the further extent of the Kura-Araxes culture proper), but also in Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, southern Italy (especially in Sicily) and Corsica.
G-M406 reaches its maximum frequency (18%) among the Chamalal people in Southwestern Dagestan, but is otherwise more common in Georgia (3%), Armenia (2%), Iran (0.5-2.5%) and Turkey (3-6%) than in the Caucasus itself.
It is found at low frequencies in the Levant, and as far south as Egypt and Yemen. In Europe, M406 is most common in Greece (2%), including Crete (2.5%), as well as in Italy (3%), and particularly Sicily (4%).
Neither G-L293 nor G-M406 have been identified among the hundreds of Neolithic European individuals tested, which is in agreement with a later Bronze Age dispersal from the South Caucasus.
Haplogroup J2 is thought to have appeared somewhere in the Middle East towards the end of the last glaciation, between 15,000 and 22,000 years ago.
Notwithstanding its strong presence in West Asia today, haplogroup J2 does not seem to have been one of the principal lineages associated with the rise and diffusion of cereal farming from the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia to Europe.
However, the development of early cereal agriculture is thought to have been conducted by men belonging primarily to haplogroups G2a (northern branch, from Anatolia to Europe), as well as E1b1b and T1a (southern branch, from the Levant to the Arabian peninsula and North Africa).
It is likely that J2 men had settled over most of Anatolia, the South Caucasus and Iran by the end of the Last Glaciation 12,000 years ago. It is possible that J2 hunter-gatherers then goat/sheep herders also lived in the Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic period.
The first expansion probably correlated with the diffusion of domesticated of cattle and goats (starting c. 8000-9000 BCE), rather than with the development of cereal agriculture in the Levant.
A second expansion would have occured with the advent of metallurgy. J2 could have been the main paternal lineage of the Kura-Araxes culture (Late Copper to Early Bronze Age), which expanded from the southern Caucasus toward northern Mesopotamia and the Levant.
After that J2 could have propagated through Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean with the rise of early civilizations during the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. J2 men would have definitely have represented a sizeable portion of the population of Bronze and Iron Age civilizations.
Within the Indian subcontinent, J2a peaks at frequencies of 15-25% around the Indo-Pakistani border, from Punjab to Gujarat and Sindh. It is very possible that bronze technology spread from the South Caucasus across the Iranian plateau until the Indus Valley, giving rise to the Harappan Civilisation.
This region matches exactly the confines of the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilization, also known as the Harappan Civilisation, that existed from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE and which practised bull worship like other J2a civilizations.
Bronze started being used by the Harappan Civilization circa 3000 BCE, a few centuries after its earliest known regular use around the Caucasus by the Maykop culture (from 3700 BCE) and the Kura–Araxes culture (from 3500 BCE).
The Maykop culture was closely linked to the Yamnaya culture in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe and is thought to be associated with Proto-Indo-European speakers and Y-haplogroups R1a and R1b.
The Kura-Araxes culture would have allowed the diffusion of Y-haplogroup J1 and J2a around the Middle East, taking over the Neolithic societies primarily associated with Y-haplogroup G2a and G2b.
Quite a few ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilisations flourished in territories where J2 lineages were preponderant. All the great seafaring civilisations from the middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age were dominated by J2 men.
This is the case of the Hattians, the Hurrians, the Etruscans, the Minoans, the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Israelites, and to a lower extent also the Romans, the Assyrians and the Persians.
It is very likely that J2a, J1-Z1828, L1b, T1a-P77 and G2a-L293 were the dominant male lineages the Early Bronze Age Kura-Araxes culture (3,400-2,000 BCE), which expanded from the South Caucasus to eastern Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia and the western Iran.
It has been hypothetised that R1b people (perhaps alongside neighbouring J2 tribes) were the first to domesticate cattle in northern Mesopotamia some 10,500 years ago. R1b tribes descended from mammoth hunters, and when mammoths went extinct, they started hunting other large game such as bisons and aurochs.
Cattle herders probably maintained a nomadic or semi-nomadic existence, while other people in the Fertile Crescent (presumably represented by haplogroups E1b1b, G and T) settled down to cultivate the land or keep smaller domesticates.
The analysis of bovine DNA has revealed that all the taurine cattle (Bos taurus) alive today descend from a population of only 80 aurochs. The earliest evidence of cattle domestication dates from circa 8,500 BCE in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic cultures in the Taurus Mountains.
The two oldest archaeological sites showing signs of cattle domestication are the villages of Çayönü Tepesi in southeastern Turkey and Dja’de el-Mughara in northern Iraq, two sites only 250 km away from each others. This is presumably the area from which R1b lineages started expanding – or in other words the “original homeland” of R1b.
The three main branches of R1b1 (R1b1a, R1b1b, R1b1c) all seem to have stemmed from the Middle East. The early R1b cattle herders would have split in at least three groups.
One branch (M335) remained in Anatolia, but judging from its extreme rarity today wasn’t very successful, perhaps due to the heavy competition with other Neolithic populations in Anatolia, or to the scarcity of pastures in this mountainous environment.
A second branch migrated south to the Levant, where it became the V88 branch. Some of them searched for new lands south in Africa, first in Egypt, then colonising most of northern Africa, from the Mediterranean coast to the Sahel.
The third branch (P297), crossed the Caucasus into the vast Pontic-Caspian Steppe, which provided ideal grazing grounds for cattle. They split into two factions: R1b1a1 (M73), which went east along the Caspian Sea to Central Asia, and R1b1a2 (M269), which at first remained in the North Caucasus and the Pontic Steppe between the Dnieper and the Volga.
It is not yet clear whether M73 actually migrated across the Caucasus and reached Central Asia via Kazakhstan, or if it went south through Iran and Turkmenistan. In any case, M73 would be a pre-Indo-European branch of R1b, just like V88 and M335.
R1b-M269 (the most common form in Europe) is closely associated with the diffusion of Indo-European languages, as attested by its presence in all regions of the world where Indo-European languages were spoken in ancient times, from the Atlantic coast of Europe to the Indian subcontinent.