Експанзија кавкаско-иранске компоненте (коју би условно могли повезати са хаплогрупом Ј) на Медитерану, не би требало сводити само на миграције и колоније Грка и Феничана у гвозденом добу, већ је то кретање кренуло и раније, током бронзаног доба. Ова медитеранска миграција исток-запад није повезана са степском миграцијом из континенталне Европе. У раду "The Spread of Steppe and Iranian Related Ancestry in the Islands of the Western Mediterranean" из 2020. године дат је сљедећи закључак:
"Second, our analysis shows that Iranian-related ancestry, which was widespread in the Aegean by the Middle Bronze Age in association with the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures, had also spread as west as Sicily in substantial proportion at least by the time of the Mycenaeans. One possibility is this ancestry spread west along with the Mycenaean cultural expansion. However, the presence of artifacts associated with the Sicilian Castellucian culture in Malta, Greece, and Anatolia before the peak of the Mycenaean culture leaves open the possibility of earlier gene flows, a hypothesis that could be investigated once pre-Minoan data from the Aegean become available. We find no evidence of substantial proportions of Iranian-related ancestry in the Balearic islands or Sardinia until the Phoenician period, but this does not mean that these islands were isolated from the eastern Mediterranean, and indeed the opposite is true. Archaeological evidence shows that this was a period of unprecedented material culture exchange, with substantial westward flows of goods as reflected for example in the importation of Cypriot copper in Late Bronze Age Sardinia."
