Azerbaijan Lowlands — Late Neolithic

In the lowland plains of what is now Azerbaijan, communities were reshaping their lives between roughly 5730 and 5375 BCE. Archaeological data from sites such as Mentesh Tepe (Zeyem Chaj, Mentesh Tepe area) and Polutepe (Uchtepe village, Jalilabad district) indicate settled lifeways during the Late Neolithic, with pottery, small-scale farming, and participation in regional exchange networks. The landscape — a convergence of riverine plains and steppe margins — offered cultivable soils and routes for contacts across the southern Caucasus.

Limited evidence suggests these lowland communities were part of wider transformations across the Near East: the spread of domesticated plants and animals, evolving craft traditions, and intensified inter-site connections. While two recovered genomes provide direct human data, they are a slender thread in a much larger tapestry; archaeological contexts, ceramic assemblages, and settlement patterns remain crucial for reconstructing how these communities emerged and interacted.

Archaeological data indicates continuity with local Neolithic traditions alongside influences from neighboring upland and southern regions. The lowlands likely served as corridors for both goods and ideas, and as sedimentary archives of organic and cultural change. As more excavation and radiocarbon dating refine chronologies, these Mentesh Tepe and Polutepe finds anchor a fleeting but vivid moment in the deep history of the South Caucasus.

Two ancient genomes recovered from the Azerbaijan lowlands (Mentesh Tepe and Polutepe) date to 5730–5375 BCE and yield mitochondrial haplogroups U7 and H (one individual each). These mtDNA lineages offer tentative glimpses into maternal ancestry: U7 today is concentrated in the Near East, parts of the Caucasus, and Iran, while H is widespread across West Eurasia. Such distributions suggest maternal connections spanning the South Caucasus and adjacent regions.

Importantly, no common Y-DNA haplogroup is reported for these samples, so paternal lineages remain unresolved. With only two samples—well below the ten-sample threshold for robust population inference—any genetic interpretation must be treated as provisional. Limited evidence suggests these individuals fit within a broader regional pattern revealed by other ancient DNA work in the Caucasus: a mosaic of ancestry that often includes a Caucasus hunter-gatherer (CHG) component, Neolithic farmer inputs from the west and south, and later admixture events.

Genetic data combined with archaeology points to female-line continuity and long-range connections but not to clear demographic turnovers. These genomes are early, cinematic threads in the genetic history of the South Caucasus; more samples are required to test hypotheses about migration, sex-biased movement, and continuity through the Bronze Age and later.