Abstract
Medieval era encounters of nomadic groups of the Eurasian Steppe and largely sedentary East Europeans had a variety of demographic and cultural consequences. Amongst these outcomes was the emergence of the Lipka Tatars—a Slavic-speaking Sunni-Muslim minority residing in modern Belarus, Lithuania and Poland, whose ancestors arrived in these territories via several migration waves, mainly from the Golden Horde. Our results show that Belarusian Lipka Tatars share a substantial part of their gene pool with Europeans as indicated by their Y-chromosomal, mitochondrial and autosomal DNA variation. Nevertheless, Belarusian Lipkas still retain a strong genetic signal of their nomadic ancestry, witnessed by the presence of common Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA variants as well as autosomal segments identical by descent between Lipkas and East Eurasians from temperate and northern regions. Hence, we document Lipka Tatars as a unique example of former Medieval migrants into Central Europe, who became sedentary, changed language to Slavic, yet preserved their faith and retained, both uni- and bi-parentally, a clear genetic echo of a complex population interplay throughout the Eurasian Steppe Belt, extending from Central Europe to northern China.
Highlights
Segments, though in different amounts, which they share with populations from South Siberia and Mongolia[2]
In order to further elucidate the relationships between Belarusian Lipka Tatars (BLT) and other Eurasian populations, we determined 17-loci Y-STR haplotypes for 74 BLT samples and 80 samples from other populations (Supplementary Table 3), constructing median-joining networks for haplogroups G2a-U1, J1-P58, J2a(xM67), N-Tat, Q1a-M346, R1a-Z2125, R1a-M458, R1a-M558, and R1b-M478, including published haplotypes (Supplementary Figs 2–10, Supplementary Table 4)
We found that Q1a-M346, R1b-M478 and R1a-Z2125 Y-STR haplotypes are most similar phylogenetically between BLT and Turkic-speaking populations of Central Asia (Kyrgyz, Kazakhs and Uzbeks) and South Siberia (Tuvinians, Khakassians and Shors) (Supplementary Figs 6,9 and 10, Supplementary Tables 5 and 6), whereas G2a-U1 and J1-P58 haplotypes of BLT are the closest in their phylogeny to those from Caucasus populations (Supplementary Figs 2 and 3, Supplementary Tables 7 and 8)
Summary
Segments, though in different amounts, which they share with populations from South Siberia and Mongolia[2]. The core of Lipkas as a distinct ethnic group had formed already by the end of the 14th century[3] and it is likely that the documented migrations from the Crimea, Azov Sea and Don River regions played a major role in this process[4,5,6] These migrants spoke one or several languages belonging to the Kipchak group of the Turkic languages[7], but by the beginning of the 17th century they had already switched to Belarusian or Polish[5]. This relatively rapid language replacement may have been facilitated by (i) the initial linguistic heterogeneity of Lipka’s ancestors, (ii) the widespread practice of marriages with locals during the 14th and 15th centuries, and (iii) participation of Lipkas in the military service of the host country[8] Despite these aspects of cultural integration into East European society, Lipkas retained their Muslim religion, which remains a core component of their ethnic self-identification today. In order to infer the origin of different components of the gene pool of the present-day BLT, together with the mode and timing of their admixture in the past, we analyze BLT samples in the context of 120 complete mtDNA sequences from 35 Eurasian populations including 11 BLT and 27 new sequences from other populations, 1628 Y-STR haplotypes from 81 populations including 74 BLT and 80 new haplotypes from other populations, and 1231 genome-wide genotypes from 87 populations including six new BLT samples
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