Interestingly, Dienekes has once more drawn our attention to the Armenians and their ethnogenesis by posting again about the speech given recently by Peter Hrechdachian.
The youtube video for the speech is linked below. The relevant part of the speech begins at 17:01. There are some charts about relevant ancient cultures at 18:44.
Basically, his argument is that most of the yDna lineages present in the Armenians are "native" to the Armenian Highlands and surrounding areas (including the Caucasus, from what I can gather), and that includes G, J2, J1 and even R1b. His main point on R1b is that it originated in the Altai about 24,000 years ago (?) then moved to the area of Central Asia, then to the area between the Black and Caspian Seas and didn't enter into Europe until 3000 BC.
In terms of overall genetic similarity he posts some data to show they are very similar to Assyrians and Kurdish Jews. In terms of R1b he points out that they are 35-40% R1b of the "older" or more upstream variations of R1b (L23+, L51-). The levels of R1a are very small, with 2/3 of it being Z93, and 1/3 of it being what he calls pre-Slavic Z280. He associates J2 with farming. (I'm still not sure of that, because at least in Europe we have yet to find an early farming sample with J2. Unless perhaps it came in the Middle Neolithic? At any rate, it might be that farmers in north and east Anatolia were J2 heavy. )
He makes no claims about how the Armenians came to speak an Indo-European language.
In contemplating this speech and the paper on Armenian genetics in light of the upcoming papers on Yamnaya and the leaks about them stating that the people were half "Armenian like", a number of questions arise:
1) If, as these researchers claim, there was a movement north into the North Caucasus (and from there perhaps onto the steppe), what haplogroups were involved? Could "G" once again make an appearance?
2) Could the bi-directional movement from the Caucasus both north and south indeed be J2a and/or perhaps J2b? In that case, would we expect to see it on the steppe? We already have one Metal Ages "Indo-European" J2a in Europe.
3) Could the south/north movement also involve R1b, which has been posited on this Board?
4) What then of R1a? Is that relegated to the EHG portion of Yamnaya, and the R1b is perhaps found in the "Armenian like" people who fed into the steppe? Could both groups have had ANE, but perhaps EHG had more of it? Could the EHG group also have included the "N" ydna lineages?
5) Would this then create a situation where Yamnaya was perhaps more R1b heavy than R1a heavy, and it was the Indo-Europeanized groups to the north, the groups which actually helped to form Corded Ware, which were actually more heavily R1a?
6) Could this result in a two wave migration of ANE into Europe (in addition to what was in the SHG, which might or might not have moved across Europe on a northerly latitude even earlier)? In other words, could there have been an actual Yamnaya wave up the Danube and west, southwest and southeast, and a movement from the Indo-Europeanized groups north of Yamnaya into the Corded Ware Zone and therefore more north and then west into Europe? Wouldn't that explain the leaks that Corded Ware is partly descended from a "Yamnaya related" group, and that the ANE in western Europe cannot be totally explained by Corded Ware?
I've been speculating along these lines for a long time. We won't know until we get the data, but does it make sense?