Did Caucasus hunter-gatherers ever live in what is now Iran?

Nope, they only lived in the Caucasus Mountains. See that's probably why they're called Caucasus hunter-gatherers, or CHG for short. But what about the hunter-gatherers from the Belt and Hotu caves in northern Iran, you might ask? Well, what about them? They're not CHG, nor are they significantly more closely related to CHG than the early farmers of the Zagros Mountains. To illustrate the point

* This article was originally published here