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Science 29 June 2018
The first horse herders and the impact of early Bronze Age steppe expansions into Asia
de Barros Damgaard P, Martiniano R, Kamm J, Moreno-Mayar JV, Kroonen G, Peyrot M, Barjamovic G, Rasmussen S, Zacho C, Baimukhanov N, Zaibert V, Merz V, Biddanda A, Merz I, Usmanova E, Loman V, Hemphill B, Seguin-Orlando A, Yediay FE, Ullah I, Sjögren KG, Iversen KH, Choin J, de la Fuente C, Ilardo M, Schroeder H, Moiseyev V, Gromov A, Polyakov A, Omura S, Senyurt SY, Ahmad H, McKenzie C, Margaryan A, Hameed A, Samad A, Gul N, Khokhar MH, Goriunova OI, Bazaliiskii VI, Novembre J, Weber AW, Orlando L, Allentoft ME, Nielsen R, Kristiansen K, Sikora M, Outram AK, Durbin R, Willerslev E
The Yamnaya expansions from the western steppe into Europe and Asia during the Early Bronze Age (~3000 BCE) are believed to have brought with them Indo-European languages and possibly horse husbandry. We analyzed 74 ancient whole-genome sequences from across Inner Asia and Anatolia and show that the Botai people associated with the earliest horse husbandry derived from a hunter-gatherer population deeply diverged from the Yamnaya. Our results also suggest distinct migrations bringing West Eurasian ancestry into South Asia [...]
