Journal article
137 ancient human genomes from across the Eurasian steppes
University of Copenhagen1
University of Oslo2
Disease Intelligence and Molecular Evolution, Department of Bio and Health Informatics, Technical University of Denmark3
Russian Academy of Sciences4
Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University5
Kyrgyz National Academy of Sciences6
Irkutsk State University7
Margulan Institute of Archaeology8
Mongolian University of Life Sciences9
National University of Mongolia10
Tuvan State University11
Université Paris 712
Explico Foundation13
Ulaanbaatar State University14
Hashemite University15
National Museum of Denmark16
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography17
Archaeological Expertise LLC18
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia19
Ministry of Public Health20
Russian-Armenian University21
Kostanay Regional Museum of Local History22
Department of Bio and Health Informatics, Technical University of Denmark23
Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology24
S. Toraighyrov Pavlodar State University25
State Historical and Cultural Reserve-Museum (ISSYK)26
University of Arizona27
Slovak Academy of Sciences28
Charles University29
Kostanay State University30
University of Gothenburg31
University of Alberta32
Metagenomics, Department of Bio and Health Informatics, Technical University of Denmark33
Leiden University34
University of Cambridge35
Stanford University36
Buketov Karaganda State University37
Shejire DNA project38
...and 28 moreFor 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 the Eurasian steppes from being inhabited by Indo-European speakers of largely West Eurasian ancestry to the mostly Turkic-speaking groups of the present day, who are primarily of East Asian ancestry.
| Language: | English |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nature Publishing Group UK |
| Year: | 2018 |
| Pages: | 369-374 |
| Journal subtitle: | International Weekly Journal of Science |
| ISSN: | 14764687 and 00280836 |
| Types: | Journal article |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41586-018-0094-2 |
| ORCIDs: | 0000-0001-7576-5380 , 0000-0002-2576-2429 , 0000-0003-3936-1850 , 0000-0003-0513-6591 , 0000-0003-2818-8319 , 0000-0002-7081-6748 , Rasmussen, Simon , Pedersen, Anders Gorm and Nielsen, Kasper |
