and Georgian missionaries partially Christianised the Ingush, although Christianity was weakened by the Mongol invasions. The remains of several churches, notably the Tkhaba-Yerdy and the Albe-Yerd can be found in Ingushetia. The Ingush gradually converted to Islam throughout the 18th–19th century. Vakhushti of Kartli wrote in 1745 that the inhabitants of the village Angushti were Sunni Muslims. Endonyms and exonyms The Ingush refer to themselves as Ghalghaj (from Ingush: Ghala ('fortress' or 'town') and ghaj ('inhabitants' or 'citizens'). The Ingush and Ingushetians were also known by the following ethnonyms or demonyms: Exonyms: Gelia (American cartographer J. H. Colton, Strabo), Tschetschna (German geographers Joseph Grassl and Joseph Meyer), Kist (Georgian), Gergar, Dzurdzuk (Georgian), Ghlighvi (Georgian), Angushtini (Russian), Machaloni (Ossetian); Chechen highlanders called Ingush Makhaloni or Makhloi (according to Chechen historian Khalid Oshayev). Endonyms: These self-namings represent different Vainakh tribes which make up the Ingush population today. Ghalghaj or Gelgaj, Nakh (meaning 'people'), Vainakh (meaning 'our people'), Orstkhoi, Nart-Orstkhoi, Galash, Tsori, Dzheirakhoi, Khamhoi, Metshal, Fyappi, and Nyasareth. Population origins According to Leonti Mroveli, the 11th-century Georgian chronicler, the word Caucasian is derived from the Vainakh ancestor Kavkas. According to Professor George Anchabadze of Ilia State University: The Soviet-Russian anthropologists and scientists, N.Ya. Marr, V.V. Bounak, R.M. Munchaev, I.M Dyakonov, E.I. Krupnov, and G.A. Melikashvilli, wrote: "Among Ingush the Caucasian type is preserved better than among any other North Caucasian nation". Professor G.F. Debets recognized that Ingush Caucasian anthropologic type is the most Caucasian among Caucasians. In an article in Science magazine, Bernice Wuethrich states that American linguist Dr. Johanna Nichols "has used language to connect modern people of the Caucasus region to the ancient farmers of the Fertile Crescent" and that her research suggests that "farmers of the region were proto-Nakh-Daghestanians". Nichols is quoted as stating that "The Nakh–Dagestanian languages are the closest thing we have to a direct continuation of the cultural and linguistic community that gave rise to Western civilization" Population genetics The Ingush have 89% of J2 Y-DNA which is the highest known frequency in the world and J2 is closely associated with the Fertile Crescent. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of the Ingush differs from other Caucasian populations and the rest of the world. "The Caucasus populations exhibit, on average, less variability than other [World] populations for the eight Alu insertion polymorphisms analyzed here. The average heterozygosity is less than that of any other region of the world, with