Abstract
The population prehistory of Xinjiang has been a hot topic among geneticists, linguists, and archaeologists. Current ancient DNA studies in Xinjiang exclusively suggest an admixture model for the populations in Xinjiang since the early Bronze Age. However, almost all of these studies focused on the northern and eastern parts of Xinjiang; the prehistoric demographic processes that occurred in western Xinjiang have been seldomly reported. By analyzing complete mitochondrial sequences from the Xiabandi (XBD) cemetery (3,500–3,300 BP), the up-to-date earliest cemetery excavated in western Xinjiang, we show that all the XBD mitochondrial sequences fall within two different West Eurasian mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) pools, indicating that the migrants into western Xinjiang from west Eurasians were a consequence of the early expansion of the middle and late Bronze Age steppe pastoralists (Steppe_MLBA), admixed with the indigenous populations from Central Asia. Our study provides genetic links for an early existence of the Indo-Iranian language in southwestern Xinjiang and suggests that the existence of Andronovo culture in western Xinjiang involved not only the dispersal of ideas but also population movement.
Highlights
Recent archaeogenetic studies showed that the expansion of western steppe herders (WSHs) had a marked impact on the demographic, cultural, social and linguistic development since the third millennium BCE on the Eurasian continent
The prehistory of Xinjiang is of considerable interest given its special geographic location in connecting the East and the West Eurasians
Tracing the population prehistory with present-day individuals is prone to be distorted by recent admixture events, which is especially the case for Xinjiang populations because the opening of the well-known “Silk Road” made the gene flow among different populations in this region even more frequent
Summary
Recent archaeogenetic studies showed that the expansion of western steppe herders (WSHs) had a marked impact on the demographic, cultural, social and linguistic development since the third millennium BCE on the Eurasian continent 2,200–1,800 BCE) arose near the Urals and succeeded a majority of ancestry from the preceding Yamnaya culture. The cultural influences from WSHs suggested that ancient mobile pastoralists had played an extremely significant role in the prehistoric trans-Eurasian exchanges and the formation of agropastoralism
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