Who lived during the LGM in Crimean Refugium?

Crimea was one of those places where human habitation continued throughout the LGM.

But who lived there during the LGM, and who expanded out of Crimea after the LGM ended ???

Which haplogroups and which autosomal signatures did they carry (by the end of the LGM)?

I think, that one of good fits for the Crimean Ice Age Refuge, are the CHG (or "Teal people" by their old name).

Georgia - where CHG genomes have been found - was uninhabited during the LGM, so they couldn't be there at that time. Kotias and Satsurblia - who carried CHG auDNA - are genomes of people, who settled in Western Georgia only after the end of the LGM.

IMO they came to Georgia shortly after the LGM either from Crimea, or from Northern Iran.

Any thoughts ???

Let's remember, that CHG were only very distantly related to Anatolian / Middle Eastern EEF.

They separated from each other 25,000 years ago and their descendants did not mix after that, until long after the LGM:

http://m.phys.org/news/2015-11-fourth-strand-european-ancestry-hunter-gatherers.html

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151116/ncomms9912/full/ncomms9912.html

The Caucasus hunter-gatherer genome showed a continued mixture with the ancestors of the early farmers in the Levant area, which Manica says makes sense given the relative proximity. This ends, however, around 25,000 years ago - just before the time of the last glacial maximum, or peak Ice Age.

At this point, Caucasus hunter-gatherer populations shrink as the genes homogenise, a sign of breeding between those with increasingly similar DNA. This doesn't change for thousands of years as these populations remain in apparent isolation in the shelter of the mountains - possibly cut off from other major ancestral populations for as long as 15,000 years - until migrations began again as the Glacial Maximum recedes, and the Yamnaya culture ultimately emerges.

Click to expand...

IMO they could be living - during those ca. 15,000 years of LGM isolation from other groups - in the Crimean Peninsula.

I think they would have been MA-1 like.

Proto EHG with lots of ANE.

LeBrok said:

Proto EHG with lots of ANE.

Click to expand...

ANE = MA-1. Him and his culture spanned the LGM.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing.

I would say either EHG or CHG but I believe it can only be one and not the other since as Tomenable says earlier the CHG became very isolated. It also seems the relation of a common ancestor between CHG and EHG is a lot farther than 16,000 years so they could not have been in contact at the time.

Which seems more probably to you guys?

Firstable the refuges were not in the mountains but in valleys, at the maximum of LGM (I refer here to the above abstract).
But if they show some ancient links with Near-East populations and are not too close to EHG, it seems probable they were living in an isolated place, somewhat hilly?
the CHG auDNA places them (on what I saw) more East than today West-Asians. ANE? very possible, but what part of it?
concerning Crimea, I don't know helas. CHG? EHG?

CHG - haplo J.
I can't think of any other origin for the epigravettian in Satsurblia and Kotias Klde.

They were allready hunting and collecting obsidian near lake Sevan, Armenia by 18 ka.

http://www.digitorient.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Montoya-et-al.-2013-JHE-in-press.pdf
https://www.academia.edu/2563557/Fr..._in_north-western_Armenia_Preliminary_results

Satsurblia since 17.9 ka :

georgia Satsurblia 25,5-24,4 & 17,9-16,2 ka
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111271

collecting obsidian :
http://www.iatp.am/news/dijest/dijest4/chataigner_obsidian.pdf

obsidian trade with the Natufians (G2a) :
http://www.archatlas.org/ObsidianRoutes/ObsidianRoutes.php