SummarySeveral major migrations and population turnover events during the later Stone Age (after ... more SummarySeveral major migrations and population turnover events during the later Stone Age (after c. 11,000 cal. BP) are believed to have shaped the contemporary population genetic diversity in Eurasia. While the genetic impacts of these migrations have been investigated on regional scales, a detailed understanding of their spatiotemporal dynamics both within and between major geographic regions across Northern Eurasia remains largely elusive. Here, we present the largest shotgun-sequenced genomic dataset from the Stone Age to date, representing 317 primarily Mesolithic and Neolithic individuals from across Eurasia, with associated radiocarbon dates, stable isotope data, and pollen records. Using recent advances, we imputed >1,600 ancient genomes to obtain accurate diploid genotypes, enabling previously unachievable fine-grained population structure inferences. We show that 1) Eurasian Mesolitic hunter-gatherers were more genetically diverse than previously known, and deeply diver...
In this paper we evaluate the extent of freshwater reservoir effects (37 samples across 12 locati... more In this paper we evaluate the extent of freshwater reservoir effects (37 samples across 12 locations) and present new data from various archaeological sites in the Eurasian Steppe. Together with a summary of previous research on modern and archaeological samples, this provides the most up-to-date map of the freshwater reservoir offsets in the region. The data confirm previous observations highlighting that FREs are widespread but highly variable in the Eurasian Steppe in both modern and archaeological samples. Radiocarbon dates from organisms consuming aquatic sources, including humans, dogs, bears, aquatic birds and terrestrial herbivores (such as elk feeding on water plants), fish and aquatic mammals, as well as food crusts, could be misleading, but need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare1. However, mode... more Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare1. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling2–4 at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 bc3. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia5 and Anatolia6, have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Furthermore, we map the population changes accompanying domestication from 273 ancient horse genomes. This reveals that modern domestic horses ultimately replaced almost all other local populations as they expanded rapidly across Eurasia from about 2000 bc, synchronously with equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled char...
The paper is devoted to the study results of kurgan Halvay 5, which is located on the left bank o... more The paper is devoted to the study results of kurgan Halvay 5, which is located on the left bank of the Tobol branch of the Karatomar Reservoir (Northern Kazakhstan, Kostanay Region) 7 km to the north-east of Halvay and 500 m to the north-east of the Sintashta kurgan Halvay 3. The diameter of the kurgan is 30 m with a moat, the height is 0,8 m. Five burials were recorded under the embankment of the kurgan. All the primary burials of the kurgan Halvay 5 belong to the XXI century BC to Sintashta culture. All the main burials of the kurgan Halvay 5 were robbed in antiquity. The moat after the burial of the deceased (at least at the time of the robbery of the pits) was not filled up for a while. Funerary chambers have an overlapping of boards and logs, their walls are lined with bark and grass, the bottom is also covered with grass and bark. In the course of the study, the following analyses were performed: anthropological, paleozoological, paleobotanical, dendrochronological, X-ray fluo...
ABSTRACT The role of migration and mobility of people across the steppe has often been cited as k... more ABSTRACT The role of migration and mobility of people across the steppe has often been cited as key to Bronze Age developments across Eurasia, including the emergence of complex societies in the steppe and the spread of material culture. The central Eurasian steppe (CES) is a focal point for the investigation of the shifting nature of pastoral societies because of the clear transition in archaeological patterning that occurred from the Middle (MBA) to Late Bronze Age (LBA). The spread of LBA (1700–1400 cal BC) Andronovo cultural materials found across wide swaths of the steppe provide indirect evidence for broad scale interactions, but the degree to which people moved across the landscape remains poorly understood. This study takes a first step into documenting human movement during these critical periods through strontium (87Sr/86Sr) and oxygen (δ18O) isotopic analyses of tooth enamel recovered from human individuals buried in the cemeteries of Bestamak (MBA) and Lisakovsk (LBA) in northern Kazakhstan. Strontium isotope results, referenced against the distribution of contemporary bioavailable strontium in the vicinity of both sites, suggest local communities engaged in small-scale mobility with limited ranges. Reduced strontium and oxygen isotopic variation visible in humans from Lisakovsk suggests mobility decreased from the Middle to Late Bronze Age likely indicative of a shift in resource and landscape use over time.
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major cause of human hepatitis. There is considerable uncertainty ab... more Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major cause of human hepatitis. There is considerable uncertainty about the timescale of its evolution and its association with humans. Here we present 12 full or partial ancient HBV genomes that are between approximately 0.8 and 4.5 thousand years old. The ancient sequences group either within or in a sister relationship with extant human or other ape HBV clades. Generally, the genome properties follow those of modern HBV. The root of the HBV tree is projected to between 8.6 and 20.9 thousand years ago, and we estimate a substitution rate of 8.04 × 10-1.51 × 10 nucleotide substitutions per site per year. In several cases, the geographical locations of the ancient genotypes do not match present-day distributions. Genotypes that today are typical of Africa and Asia, and a subgenotype from India, are shown to have an early Eurasian presence. The geographical and temporal patterns that we observe in ancient and modern HBV genotypes are compatible with well-...
For thousands of years the Eurasian steppes have been a centre of human migrations and cultural c... more For thousands of years the Eurasian steppes have been a centre of human migrations and cultural change. Here we sequence the genomes of 137 ancient humans (about 1× average coverage), covering a period of 4,000 years, to understand the population history of the Eurasian steppes after the Bronze Age migrations. We find that the genetics of the Scythian groups that dominated the Eurasian steppes throughout the Iron Age were highly structured, with diverse origins comprising Late Bronze Age herders, European farmers and southern Siberian hunter-gatherers. Later, Scythians admixed with the eastern steppe nomads who formed the Xiongnu confederations, and moved westward in about the second or third century BC, forming the Hun traditions in the fourth-fifth century AD, and carrying with them plague that was basal to the Justinian plague. These nomads were further admixed with East Asian groups during several short-term khanates in the Medieval period. These historical events transformed th...
Abstract Large-scale earthworks ranging from 90 m to over 400 m in length, recently discovered in... more Abstract Large-scale earthworks ranging from 90 m to over 400 m in length, recently discovered in northern Kazakhstan, have come to be commonly named as the “Geoglyphs of Turgai”. These monuments mainly have been found in northern Kazakhstan within the Turgai deflection. These geometrical earthworks of the Turgai have been serendipitously identified through the analysis of satellite imagery. In the past few years over 60 such geometrical earthworks have been identified; however only 30 of these have been checked and confirmed by archeologists after visiting the sites. Most of these geometric earthworks consist of earthen mounds arranged in lines, rings, crosses, and square with diagonal lines. In this paper we present the first dating results from these geometric earthworks, which affiliate the earliest stages of this phenomenon to the Early Iron Age period (ca. 800 B.C.). This chronological context provides a starting platform for further interpretation of these monuments, concentrating on the reasoning behind their construction and the building of an understanding concerning the complexity of the steppe populations who undertook such forms of construction.
Direct and accurate radiocarbon dating of lipid residues preserved in ceramics is a recently esta... more Direct and accurate radiocarbon dating of lipid residues preserved in ceramics is a recently established method that allows direct dating of specific food products and their inception in human subsistence strategies. The method targets individual fatty acids originating from animal fats such as ruminant dairy, ruminant adipose, non-ruminant adipose and aquatic fats. Horse lipid residues found in Central Asian pottery vessels are also directly dateable using this new method. Here we present the identification of equine lipid residues preserved in two pottery assemblages from the Neolithic and Eneolithic in Kazakhstan and their direct 14C dating. The site of Botai, previously radiocarbon-dated to the 4th millennium BC, was used as a reference to evaluate the dates obtained directly on horse lipids. The direct dating of equine products extracted from Botai potsherds are shown to be compatible with previous 14C dates at the site. The site of Bestamak, lacking previous14C measurements, h...
Connections, contacts and interactions between ancient cultures of Northern Eurasia and civilizations of the East during the Palaeometal period (IV–I mil. BC), 2019
Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare1. However, mode... more Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare1. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling2–4 at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 bc3. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia5 and Anatolia6, have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Furthermore, we map the population changes accompanying domestication from 273 ancient horse genomes. This reveals that modern domestic horses ultimately replaced almost all other local populations as they expanded rapidly across Eurasia from about 2000 bc, synchronously with equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled char...
SummarySeveral major migrations and population turnover events during the later Stone Age (after ... more SummarySeveral major migrations and population turnover events during the later Stone Age (after c. 11,000 cal. BP) are believed to have shaped the contemporary population genetic diversity in Eurasia. While the genetic impacts of these migrations have been investigated on regional scales, a detailed understanding of their spatiotemporal dynamics both within and between major geographic regions across Northern Eurasia remains largely elusive. Here, we present the largest shotgun-sequenced genomic dataset from the Stone Age to date, representing 317 primarily Mesolithic and Neolithic individuals from across Eurasia, with associated radiocarbon dates, stable isotope data, and pollen records. Using recent advances, we imputed >1,600 ancient genomes to obtain accurate diploid genotypes, enabling previously unachievable fine-grained population structure inferences. We show that 1) Eurasian Mesolitic hunter-gatherers were more genetically diverse than previously known, and deeply diver...
In this paper we evaluate the extent of freshwater reservoir effects (37 samples across 12 locati... more In this paper we evaluate the extent of freshwater reservoir effects (37 samples across 12 locations) and present new data from various archaeological sites in the Eurasian Steppe. Together with a summary of previous research on modern and archaeological samples, this provides the most up-to-date map of the freshwater reservoir offsets in the region. The data confirm previous observations highlighting that FREs are widespread but highly variable in the Eurasian Steppe in both modern and archaeological samples. Radiocarbon dates from organisms consuming aquatic sources, including humans, dogs, bears, aquatic birds and terrestrial herbivores (such as elk feeding on water plants), fish and aquatic mammals, as well as food crusts, could be misleading, but need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare1. However, mode... more Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare1. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling2–4 at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 bc3. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia5 and Anatolia6, have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Furthermore, we map the population changes accompanying domestication from 273 ancient horse genomes. This reveals that modern domestic horses ultimately replaced almost all other local populations as they expanded rapidly across Eurasia from about 2000 bc, synchronously with equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled char...
The paper is devoted to the study results of kurgan Halvay 5, which is located on the left bank o... more The paper is devoted to the study results of kurgan Halvay 5, which is located on the left bank of the Tobol branch of the Karatomar Reservoir (Northern Kazakhstan, Kostanay Region) 7 km to the north-east of Halvay and 500 m to the north-east of the Sintashta kurgan Halvay 3. The diameter of the kurgan is 30 m with a moat, the height is 0,8 m. Five burials were recorded under the embankment of the kurgan. All the primary burials of the kurgan Halvay 5 belong to the XXI century BC to Sintashta culture. All the main burials of the kurgan Halvay 5 were robbed in antiquity. The moat after the burial of the deceased (at least at the time of the robbery of the pits) was not filled up for a while. Funerary chambers have an overlapping of boards and logs, their walls are lined with bark and grass, the bottom is also covered with grass and bark. In the course of the study, the following analyses were performed: anthropological, paleozoological, paleobotanical, dendrochronological, X-ray fluo...
ABSTRACT The role of migration and mobility of people across the steppe has often been cited as k... more ABSTRACT The role of migration and mobility of people across the steppe has often been cited as key to Bronze Age developments across Eurasia, including the emergence of complex societies in the steppe and the spread of material culture. The central Eurasian steppe (CES) is a focal point for the investigation of the shifting nature of pastoral societies because of the clear transition in archaeological patterning that occurred from the Middle (MBA) to Late Bronze Age (LBA). The spread of LBA (1700–1400 cal BC) Andronovo cultural materials found across wide swaths of the steppe provide indirect evidence for broad scale interactions, but the degree to which people moved across the landscape remains poorly understood. This study takes a first step into documenting human movement during these critical periods through strontium (87Sr/86Sr) and oxygen (δ18O) isotopic analyses of tooth enamel recovered from human individuals buried in the cemeteries of Bestamak (MBA) and Lisakovsk (LBA) in northern Kazakhstan. Strontium isotope results, referenced against the distribution of contemporary bioavailable strontium in the vicinity of both sites, suggest local communities engaged in small-scale mobility with limited ranges. Reduced strontium and oxygen isotopic variation visible in humans from Lisakovsk suggests mobility decreased from the Middle to Late Bronze Age likely indicative of a shift in resource and landscape use over time.
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major cause of human hepatitis. There is considerable uncertainty ab... more Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major cause of human hepatitis. There is considerable uncertainty about the timescale of its evolution and its association with humans. Here we present 12 full or partial ancient HBV genomes that are between approximately 0.8 and 4.5 thousand years old. The ancient sequences group either within or in a sister relationship with extant human or other ape HBV clades. Generally, the genome properties follow those of modern HBV. The root of the HBV tree is projected to between 8.6 and 20.9 thousand years ago, and we estimate a substitution rate of 8.04 × 10-1.51 × 10 nucleotide substitutions per site per year. In several cases, the geographical locations of the ancient genotypes do not match present-day distributions. Genotypes that today are typical of Africa and Asia, and a subgenotype from India, are shown to have an early Eurasian presence. The geographical and temporal patterns that we observe in ancient and modern HBV genotypes are compatible with well-...
For thousands of years the Eurasian steppes have been a centre of human migrations and cultural c... more For thousands of years the Eurasian steppes have been a centre of human migrations and cultural change. Here we sequence the genomes of 137 ancient humans (about 1× average coverage), covering a period of 4,000 years, to understand the population history of the Eurasian steppes after the Bronze Age migrations. We find that the genetics of the Scythian groups that dominated the Eurasian steppes throughout the Iron Age were highly structured, with diverse origins comprising Late Bronze Age herders, European farmers and southern Siberian hunter-gatherers. Later, Scythians admixed with the eastern steppe nomads who formed the Xiongnu confederations, and moved westward in about the second or third century BC, forming the Hun traditions in the fourth-fifth century AD, and carrying with them plague that was basal to the Justinian plague. These nomads were further admixed with East Asian groups during several short-term khanates in the Medieval period. These historical events transformed th...
Abstract Large-scale earthworks ranging from 90 m to over 400 m in length, recently discovered in... more Abstract Large-scale earthworks ranging from 90 m to over 400 m in length, recently discovered in northern Kazakhstan, have come to be commonly named as the “Geoglyphs of Turgai”. These monuments mainly have been found in northern Kazakhstan within the Turgai deflection. These geometrical earthworks of the Turgai have been serendipitously identified through the analysis of satellite imagery. In the past few years over 60 such geometrical earthworks have been identified; however only 30 of these have been checked and confirmed by archeologists after visiting the sites. Most of these geometric earthworks consist of earthen mounds arranged in lines, rings, crosses, and square with diagonal lines. In this paper we present the first dating results from these geometric earthworks, which affiliate the earliest stages of this phenomenon to the Early Iron Age period (ca. 800 B.C.). This chronological context provides a starting platform for further interpretation of these monuments, concentrating on the reasoning behind their construction and the building of an understanding concerning the complexity of the steppe populations who undertook such forms of construction.
Direct and accurate radiocarbon dating of lipid residues preserved in ceramics is a recently esta... more Direct and accurate radiocarbon dating of lipid residues preserved in ceramics is a recently established method that allows direct dating of specific food products and their inception in human subsistence strategies. The method targets individual fatty acids originating from animal fats such as ruminant dairy, ruminant adipose, non-ruminant adipose and aquatic fats. Horse lipid residues found in Central Asian pottery vessels are also directly dateable using this new method. Here we present the identification of equine lipid residues preserved in two pottery assemblages from the Neolithic and Eneolithic in Kazakhstan and their direct 14C dating. The site of Botai, previously radiocarbon-dated to the 4th millennium BC, was used as a reference to evaluate the dates obtained directly on horse lipids. The direct dating of equine products extracted from Botai potsherds are shown to be compatible with previous 14C dates at the site. The site of Bestamak, lacking previous14C measurements, h...
Connections, contacts and interactions between ancient cultures of Northern Eurasia and civilizations of the East during the Palaeometal period (IV–I mil. BC), 2019
Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare1. However, mode... more Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare1. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling2–4 at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 bc3. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia5 and Anatolia6, have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Furthermore, we map the population changes accompanying domestication from 273 ancient horse genomes. This reveals that modern domestic horses ultimately replaced almost all other local populations as they expanded rapidly across Eurasia from about 2000 bc, synchronously with equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled char...
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major cause of human hepatitis. There is considerable uncertainty ab... more Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major cause of human hepatitis. There is considerable uncertainty about the timescale of its evolution and its association with humans. Here we present 12 full or partial ancient HBV genomes that are between approximately 0.8 and 4.5 thousand years old. The ancient sequences group either within or in a sister relationship with extant human or other ape HBV clades. Generally, the genome properties follow those of modern HBV. The root of the HBV tree is projected to between 8.6 and 20.9 thousand years ago, and we estimate a substitution rate of 8.04 × 10 −6 – 1.51 × 10 −5 nucleotide substitutions per site per year. In several cases, the geographical locations of the ancient genotypes do not match present-day distributions. Genotypes that today are typical of Africa and Asia, and a subgenotype from India, are shown to have an early Eurasian presence. The geographical and temporal patterns that we observe in ancient and modern HBV genotypes are compatible with well-documented human migrations during the Bronze and Iron Ages 1,2. We provide evidence for the creation of HBV genotype A via recombination, and for a long-term association of modern HBV genotypes with humans, including the discovery of a human genotype that is now extinct. These data expose a complexity of HBV evolution that is not evident when considering modern sequences alone. HBV is transmitted perinatally or horizontally via blood or genital fluids 3. The estimated global prevalence is 3.6%, ranging from 0.01% (UK) to 22.38% (South Sudan) 4. In high endemicity areas, in which prevalence is over 8%, 70–90% of the adult population show evidence of past or present infection 5 (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/ fs204/en/). The young and the immunocompromised are most likely to develop chronic HBV infection, which can result in high viraemia over years to decades 3. Approximately 257 million people are chronically infected and around 887,000 people died in 2015 owing to associated complications (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs204/en/). Despite the prevalence and public health impact of HBV, its origin and evolution remain unclear 6,7. Inference of HBV nucleotide substitution rates is complicated by the fact that the virus genome consists of four overlapping open reading frames 8 , and that mutation rates differ between phases of chronic infection 9. Studies based on heterochronous sequences, sampled over a relatively short time period, find higher substitution rates, whereas rates estimated using external calibrations tend to be lower, leading to a wide range of estimated HBV substitution rates (7.72 × 10 −4 –3.7 × 10 −6 substitutions per site per year) 10–12. Human HBV is classified into at least nine genotypes (A–I) based on sequence similarity of at least 92.5% within genotypes 13 , with a heterogeneous global distribution 7,8 (Fig. 1a). Attempts to explain the origin of genotypes using human migrations have been inconclusive. The hypothesis that HBV co-evolved with modern humans as they left Africa 60–100 thousand years ago (ka) has been contested owing to the basal phyloge-netic position of genotypes F and H, which are found exclusively in the Americas 6. HBV also infects non-human primates, and the human and other great ape HBVs are interspersed in the phylogenetic tree, possibly owing to cross-species transmission 14. Given the variability of estimated substitution rates, the incongruence of the tree topology with some human migrations and the mixed topology of the non-human primate and human HBV sequences in the phylogenetic tree, there remains considerable uncertainty about the evolutionary history of HBV. Recent advances in the sequencing of ancient DNA (aDNA) have yielded important insights into human evolution, past population dynamics 15 and diseases 16,17. However, ancient sequences have been recovered for only a handful of exogenous human viruses, including influenza virus (sample approximately 100 years old) 18 , variola virus (sample approximately 350 years old) 19 and HBV (samples approximately 340 and 450 years old) 20,21. The knowledge gained from these cases emphasizes the general importance of ancient sequences for the direct study of long-term viral evolution. HBV has several characteristics that make it a good candidate for detection in an aDNA virus study: its extended high viraemia during chronicity 3 , the relative stability of its virion 22 , and its small, circular and partially double-stranded DNA genome 8. Shotgun sequence data were previously generated from 167 Bronze Age 1 and 137 predominantly Iron Age 2 individuals from central to western Eurasia with a sample age range of approximately 7.1–0.2 thousand years (kyr) old. We identified reads that matched the HBV genome in
В настоящем издании публикуются материалы многолетних исследований самых загадочных и удивительны... more В настоящем издании публикуются материалы многолетних исследований самых загадочных и удивительных наземных сооружений Тургая. На протяжении 10 лет посредством изучения космоснимков было обнаружено 95 «геоглифов», что в переводе с греческого означает «рисунок, созданный рельефным способом на земле». 69 объектов изучены и представлены в данном выпуске. Книга адресована широкому кругу специалистов в области истории, археологии, краеведения, а также всем интересующимся древней историей
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