Haplogroup HV is a west Eurasian haplogroup found throughout the Middle East, including Iran, Anatolia (present-day Turkey) and the Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia and the republic of Georgia. It is also found to a much lesser extent in parts of East Africa, mainly in the population of Sudanese Arabs, where the frequency of Eurasian ancestry is 22.5%,[3] and a very high frequency of y-chromosome haplogroup J is also found.[4]
Much earlier, around 30,000 years ago, some members of HV moved north across the Caucasus Mountains and west across Anatolia, their lineages being carried into Europe for the first time by the Cro-Magnon. Their arrival was the second group(s) of anatomically modern humans in Europe (the first being mtDNA haplogroup U5). These continued migrations sounded the end of the era of the Neandertals, a hominid species that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia from about 230,000 to 29,000 years ago. Better communication skills, weapons, and resourcefulness probably enabled them to outcompete Neandertals for scarce resources. Importantly, some descendants of HV had already broken off and formed their own group, haplogroup H, and continued the push into Western Europe.