Ancestry and demography and descendants of Iron Age nomads of the Eurasian Steppe

Martina Unterländer,Friso Palstra,Zuzana Hofmanová,Melanie Groß,Jens Blöcher,Adam Powell,Aleksandr Khokhlov,Mathias Currat,Nadin Rohland,Hermann Parzinger,Wolfram Schier,Z Samashev ,Iosif Lazaridis,Dimitri Pozdniakov,Sandra Wilde,Évelyne Heyer ,А С Пилипенко ,В.и Молодин ,Myriam Georges,Christian Sell,David Reich,Benjamin Rieger,Elke Kaiser,Karola Kirsanow,Joachim Bürger

doi:10.1038/ncomms14615

Abstract

During the 1st millennium before the Common Era (BCE), nomadic tribes associated with the Iron Age Scythian culture spread over the Eurasian Steppe, covering a territory of more than 3,500 km in breadth. To understand the demographic processes behind the spread of the Scythian culture, we analysed genomic data from eight individuals and a mitochondrial dataset of 96 individuals originating in eastern and western parts of the Eurasian Steppe. Genomic inference reveals that Scythians in the east and the west of the steppe zone can best be described as a mixture of Yamnaya-related ancestry and an East Asian component. Demographic modelling suggests independent origins for eastern and western groups with ongoing gene-flow between them, plausibly explaining the striking uniformity of their material culture. We also find evidence that significant gene-flow from east to west Eurasia must have occurred early during the Iron Age.

Highlights

During the 1st millennium before the Common Era (BCE), nomadic tribes associated with the Iron Age Scythian culture spread over the Eurasian Steppe, covering a territory of more than 3,500 km in breadth
The Tagar/Tes group (#7) had to be excluded because of their imprecise dating. These analyses revealed that they were most likely derived from one single population that was expanding over the time period considered here, that is, the two samples are unlikely to represent two independent populations that diverged earlier than 108 generations before present (g BP) or B2.7 ky BP
Our results show that the Iron Age groups—long believed to be connected through shared cultural artefacts associated with the classical Scythians of the North Pontic region— share a genetic connection

Summary

Introduction

During the 1st millennium before the Common Era (BCE), nomadic tribes associated with the Iron Age Scythian culture spread over the Eurasian Steppe, covering a territory of more than 3,500 km in breadth. We find evidence that significant gene-flow from east to west Eurasia must have occurred early during the Iron Age. During the first millennium BCE, nomadic people spread over the Eurasian Steppe from the Altai Mountains over the northern Black Sea area as far as the Carpathian Basin[1]. The majority of the samples generated by this study or retrieved from the literature date to the fourth to third century BCE and were discovered at archaeological sites situated in the Kazakh, Russian and Mongolian parts of the Altai Mountains These findings were all assigned to the Pazyryk culture, which is named after the first discoveries by Gryaznov in 1927 and 1929 in the Pazyryk Valley and famous for its rich frost-conserved graves, where human bodies, tapestry and clothing remained well-preserved[23,24,25] (Fig. 1)

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