image: Bronze Age burial mounds known as khirigsuurs are associated with early pastoralists in Mongolia. view more
Credit: Image courtesy of Bruno Frohlich.
Researchers report cultural transmission of dairy herding between western and eastern Eurasian steppes during the Bronze Age, despite limited genetic admixture between the two groups. Migrations of herders in the western Eurasian steppe during the Bronze Age caused significant genetic and cultural shifts. However, the effects of the migrations in the eastern steppe, in modern-day Mongolia, are poorly understood. Choongwon Jeong, Christina Warinner, and colleagues performed genome-wide analysis on 22 sets of human remains from northern Mongolia, dated to the late Bronze Age. Although western steppe herders had inhabited the nearby Altai-Sayan region for more than 1,000 years, only one of the individuals contained more than 10% western steppe herder ancestry, suggesting limited gene flow between eastern and western steppe populations. The authors also examined proteins within the dental calculus of nine individuals, finding evidence of sheep, cow, and goat milk consumption, although none of the nine were genetically capable of producing lactase in adulthood. The results of the protein analysis suggest that populations of ruminant dairy animals, introduced by western herders, were part of the eastern herders' pastoral lifestyle. According to the authors, the study suggests that although genetic intermixing between western and eastern steppe herders was limited, cultural transmission led to the adoption of dairy herding in Bronze Age Mongolia.
###
Article #18-13608: "Bronze Age population dynamics and the rise of dairy pastoralism on the eastern Eurasian steppe," by Choongwon Jeong et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Christina Warinner, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, GERMANY; office tel: +49 3641 686620; e-mail: <warinner@shh.mpg.de>
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences