Ancient North Eurasian

Ancient North Eurasian
In archaeogenetics, the term Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) is the name given to an ancestral component that represents the lineage of the people of the Mal'ta–Buret' culture and populations closely related to them, such as the Upper Paleolithic individuals from Afontova Gora in Siberia. Genetic studies indicate that the ANE are closely related to the Ancient North Siberians (ANS) represented by two ancient specimens from the preceding Yana Culture. The ANE can either be considered to descent from the earlier ANS population, or that both ANE and ANS are closely related, albeit differentiated, sister lineages, which both originated from a merger of 'Early West Eurasian' hunter-gatherers (represented by Kostenki-14), and an 'Early East Eurasian' population. Both the ANE and the ANS derive around 1/3 of their ancestry from Early East Eurasian lineages, and around 2/3 from Early West Eurasian lineages.
Around 20,000 to 25,000 years ago, a branch of Ancient North Eurasian people mixed with Ancient East Asians, which led to the emergence of Ancestral Native American, Ancient Beringian and Ancient Paleo-Siberian populations. It is unknown exactly where this population admixture took place, and two opposing theories have put forth different migratory scenarios that united the Ancient North Eurasians with ancient East Asian populations.
ANE ancestry has spread throughout Eurasia and the Americas in various migrations since the Upper Paleolithic, and more than half of the world's population today derives between 5 and 40% of their genomes from the Ancient North Eurasians. Significant ANE ancestry can be found in Native Americans, as well as in regions of Northern Europe, South Asia, Central Asia, and Siberia. It has been suggested that their mythology may have included a narrative, found in both Indo-European and some Native American fables, in which a dog guards the path to the afterlife.
Genetic studies
Definition
The ANE lineage is defined by association with the "Mal'ta boy" (MA-1), the remains of an individual who lived during the Last Glacial Maximum, 24,000 years ago in central Siberia, discovered in the 1920s. Together with the Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site samples, and Afontova Gora individuals, they are collectively referred to as 'Ancient North Siberians'.
The Ancient North Eurasians represent a distinct cluster of genetic diversity within the larger Eurasian gene pool, which is deeply related to Paleolithic and Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers. It is suggested that the ANE ancestry found among modern human populations was largely contributed from a population linked to Afontova Gora, rather than Malta or Yana.
Formation
The formation of the Ancient North Eurasian gene pool likely occurred very early by the merger of an 'Early West Eurasian' Upper Paleolithic (UP) lineage, deeply related to 'European hunter-gatherers', with an 'Early East Eurasian' Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) lineage. The ANE/ANS-associated samples from the Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site (31,600 BP) in Northeastern Siberia, the Mal'ta–Buret' culture, and the individuals associated with the Afontova Gora site, can be modeled to derive around 2/3 of their ancestry from Early West Eurasians (c. 38kya), with varying but significant contributions (c. 22–50%) from Early East Eurasians (>40kya). Their West Eurasian ancestry can be associated with ancestry found among European hunter-gatherers, such as Kostenki-14, Sunghir, or the Peștera Muierii woman, while their East Eurasian ancestry can be associated with deep East Eurasian lineages, displaying affinity for multiple early East Eurasian specimens, such as the Paleolithic Tianyuan man, which is basal to contemporary East/Southeast Asians, but also the earlier Ust'-Ishim man. The exact location of the East Eurasian source within the IUP tree has yet to be clarified.
Grebenyuk et al. summarized that the Ancient North Eurasians descended from the 'Ancient North Siberian' Yana population, which were "Early Upper Paleolithic tribes of hunters" and linked to similar groups associated with contemporaneous Southern Siberian sites. These communities of Southern Siberian and Central Asian hunters belonged to one of the earliest migration waves of the anatomically modern humans into Siberia. The authors summarized that "the initial peopling of Northeastern Asia by the anatomically modern humans could have happened both from West to East and from South to North". Sikora et al. notes that the Ancient North Eurasians (Malta and Afontova Gora individuals) are unlikely to be direct descendants of the 'Ancient North Siberian' Yana population; rather, the study argues, both are sister lineages sharing a common ancestor. According to Sikora et al., the Malta sample may additionally also have received some 'early Caucasus hunter-gatherer' geneflow (c. 11%). This scenario is questioned by Maier et al. 2023, who state that this conclusion is contradicted by other published articles, and that the direction of gene flow as well as observed affinity between ANE and CHG populations cannot be demonstrated by analysis of admixture graphs, but need further investigation.
Lipson and Reich (2017) modeled the Malta sample to derive ancestry from a West Eurasian source, with additional admixture from a lineage basal to East Asians (represented by Amis), while also noting the possibility for a reversed geneflow from Malta into East Asians, which however had less support with the available data. Yang et al. 2020a,b, corroborated that both the Malta and Yana specimens formed from the merger of a sister lineage of the 'European hunter-gatherer' Kostenki-14, and from a lineage basal or contemporary to the 'Basal-East Asian' Tianyuan man, while finding no evidence for a reversed geneflow from ANE into Tianyuan or modern East Asians. Other studies could reproduce a shared affinity between ANE and the Tianyuan man, and also confirmed higher affinity between the Tianyuan man and Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers, which received significant amounts of ANE ancestry.
Distribution
By c. 32kya, populations carrying ANE-related ancestry were probably widely distributed across northeast Eurasia. They may have expanded as far as Alaska and the Yukon, but were forced to abandon high latitude regions following the onset of harsher climatic conditions that came with the Last Glacial Maximum.
Populations genetically similar to MA-1 and Afontova Gora were an important genetic contributor to Native Americans, Europeans, Ancient Central Asians, South Asians, and some East Asian groups, in order of significance.
Lazaridis et al. (2016:10) note "a cline of ANE ancestry across the east-west extent of Eurasia". A 2016 study found that the global maximum of ANE ancestry occurs in modern-day Kets, Mansi, Native Americans, and Selkups.
The ancient Bronze-age-steppe Yamnaya and Afanasevo cultures were found to have a significant ANE component at c. 50%. According to Moreno-Mayar et al. 2018 between 14% and 38% of Native American ancestry may originate from gene flow from the Mal'ta–Buret' (ANE) population. This difference is caused by the penetration of posterior "Neo-Siberian" migrations into the Americas, with the lowest percentages of ANE ancestry found in Inuit and Alaskan Natives, as these groups are the result of migrations into the Americas roughly 5,000 years ago. Estimates for ANE ancestry among first wave Native Americans show higher percentages, such as 42% for those belonging to the Andean region in South America. The other gene flow in Native Americans (the remainder of their ancestry) was of an East Asian-related origin, specifically diverged from other East Asians c. 30,000 years ago. Gene sequencing of another south-central Siberian people (Afontova Gora-2) dating to approximately 17,000 years ago, revealed similar autosomal genetic signatures to that of Mal'ta boy-1, suggesting that the region was continuously occupied by humans throughout the Last Glacial Maximum.
Genomic studies also indicate that the ANE component was introduced to Western Europe by people related to the Yamnaya culture, long after the Paleolithic. It is reported in modern-day Europeans (10%–20%). Additional ANE ancestry is found in European populations through Paleolithic interactions with Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers, which resulted in populations such as Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherers.
A deer tooth pendant impregnated with the genetic material of an ANE woman was found in the Denisova Cave, and dated to circa 24,700 years before present. She is closely related to Mal'ta and Afontova Gora specimens, found further east.
The Ancient Tianyuan Man and modern East/Southeast Asian populations were found to lack Upper Paleolithic Western Eurasian or ANE-related admixture, suggesting "resistance of those groups to the incoming UP population movements", or alternatively a subsequent reexpansion from a genetically East Asian-like population reservoir.
Groups partially derived from the Ancient North Eurasians
Native American contribution
According to Jennifer Raff, the Ancient North Eurasian population mixed with a daughter population of ancient East Asians, who they encountered around 25,000 years ago, which lead to the emergence of Native American ancestral populations. However, the exact location where the admixture took place is unknown, and the migratory movements that united the two populations are a matter of debate.
One theory supposes that Ancient North Eurasians migrated south to East Asia, or Southern Siberia, where they would have encountered and mixed with ancient East Asians. Genetic evidence from Lake Baikal in Mongolia supports this area as the location where the admixture took place.
However, a third theory, the "Beringian standstill hypothesis", suggests that East Asians instead migrated north to Northeastern Siberia, where they mixed with ANE, and later diverged in Beringia, where distinct Native American lineages formed. This theory is supported by maternal and nuclear DNA evidence. According to Grebenyuk, after 20,000 BP, a branch of Ancient East Asians migrated to Northeastern Siberia, and mixed with descendants of the ANE, leading to the emergence of Ancient Paleo-Siberian and Native American populations in Extreme Northeastern Asia. However, the Beringian standstill hypothesis is not supported by paternal DNA evidence, which may reflect different population histories for paternal and maternal lineages in Native Americans, which is not uncommon and has been observed in other populations.
The descendants of admixture between ANE and ancient East Asians include Ancient Beringian/Ancestral Native American, which are specific archaeogenetic lineages, based on the genome of an infant found at the Upward Sun River site (dubbed USR1), dated to 11,500 years ago. The AB and the Ancestral Native American (ANA) lineage formed about 25,000 years ago, and subsequently diverged from each other, with the AB staying in the Beringian region, while the Ancestral Native Americans populated the Americas. The ANE genetic contribution to late-Paeolithic Ancestral Native Americans (USR1 specimen, dated to 11,500 BP in Alaska, and Clovis specimen, dated to 12,600 BP in Montana) is estimated at around 36.8%. There are also the Ancient Paleo-Siberians, populations represented by the Late Upper Paeolithic Lake Baikal Ust'Kyakhta-3 (UKY) 14,050-13,770 BP. They carried 30% ANE ancestry and 70% East Asian ancestry.
Jōmon people, the pre-Neolithic population of Japan, mainly derived their ancestry from East Asian lineages, but also received geneflow from the ANE-related "Ancient North Siberians" (represented by samples from the Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site) prior to the migration from the Asian mainland to the Japanese archipelago. Jōmon ancestry is still found among the inhabitants of present-day Japan: most markedly among the Ainu people, who are considered the direct descendants of the Jōmon people, and to a small, but significant degree among the majority of the Japanese population.
Siberian and Asian Holocene populations
Altai hunter-gatherer is the name given to Middle Holocene Siberian hunter-gatherers within the Altai-Sayan region in Southern Siberia. They originated from the admixture of Paleo-Siberian and Ancient North Eurasian groups and show increased affinity towards Native Americans. Bronze Age groups from North and Inner Asia with significant ANE ancestry (e.g. Lake Baikal hunter-gatherers, Okunevo pastoralists) can be successfully modeled with Altai hunter-gatherers as a proximal ANE-derived ancestry source. The Okunevos and Botai can be considered as direct descendents of the Ancient North Eurasians (ANE), specifically of the Malta-Buret people.
West Siberian Hunter-Gatherer (WSHG) is a specific archaeogenetic lineage that was first reported by Narasimhan et al. (2019). It can be modeled as 20% EHG, 73% ANE and 6% Ancient Northeast Asian. Although only represented by three sampled hunter-gatherer individuals from Tyumen Oblast in the Russian Forest Zone east of the Urals dated ca. 5,000 BCE, high-levels of WSHG-like ancestry can be detected in various populations of Central Asia until the Bronze Age. The population of the Botai culture, while probably not directly descended from WSHG, displays a high affinity with the WSHG lineage.
Lake Baikal Holocene - Among the Ancient Northeast Asians (ANA) of the Neolithic to Early Bronze Age period, Baikal Eneolithic (Baikal_EN) and Baikal Early Bronze Age (Baikal_EBA) derived 6.4% to 20.1% ancestry from ANE, while the rest of their ancestry was derived from ANA. Fofonovo_EN near by Lake Baikal were mixture of 12-17% ANE ancestry and 83-87% ANA ancestry.
Tarim mummies
A 2021 genetic study on the Tarim mummies found that they were primarily descended from a population represented by the Afontova Gora 3 specimen (AG3), genetically displaying "high affinity" with it. The genetic profile of the Afontova Gora 3 individual represented about 72% of the ancestry of the Tarim mummies, while the remaining 28% of their ancestry was derived from a population represented by the Baikal EBA (Early Bronze Age Northeast Asian Baikal populations).
The Tarim mummies are thus one of the rare Holocene populations who derive most of their ancestry from the Ancient North Eurasians (ANE, specifically the Mal'ta and Afontova Gora populations), despite their distance in time (around 14,000 years). Having survived in a type of "genetic bottleneck" in the Tarim basin where they preserved and perpetuated their ANE ancestry, the Tarim mummies, more than any other ancient populations, can be considered as "the best representatives" of the Ancient North Eurasians.
European populations
Lazaridis et al. (2014) detected ANE ancestry among modern European populations in proportions up to 20%. In ancient European populations, the ANE genetic component is visible in tests of the Yamnaya people but not of Western or Central Europeans predating the Corded Ware culture: ANE ancestry was introduced in the European gene pool with the Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) lineage which derived significant ancestry from ANE, ranging from 9% to up to 75%, with the remaining ancestry from a group more closely related to, but distinct from, Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHGs). It is represented by two individuals from Yuzhny Oleny in Karelia, one of Y-haplogroup R1a-M417, dated c. 8.4 kya, the other of Y-haplogroup J, dated c. 7.2 kya; and one individual from Samara, of Y-haplogroup R1b-P297, dated c. 7.6 kya. After the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, the Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG) and EHG lineages merged in Eastern Europe, accounting for early presence of ANE-derived ancestry in Mesolithic Europe. Evidence suggests that as Ancient North Eurasians migrated westward from Eastern Siberia, they absorbed Western Hunter-Gatherers and other West Eurasian populations as well.
Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer (SHG) is represented by several individuals buried at Motala, Sweden ca. 6000 BC. They were descended from Western Hunter-Gatherers who initially settled Scandinavia from the south, and received later admixture from EHG who entered Scandinavia from the north through the coast of Norway.
Western Steppe Herders (WSH) is the name given to a distinct ancestral component that represents descent closely related to the Yamnaya culture of the Pontic–Caspian steppe. This ancestry is often referred to as Yamnaya ancestry or Steppe ancestry, and was formed from EHG and CHG (Caucasus hunter-gatherer) in about equal proportions.
Phenotype prediction
Genomic studies by Raghavan et al. (2014) and Fu et al. (2016) suggested that Mal'ta boy may have had brown eyes, and relatively dark hair and dark skin, while cautioning that this analysis was based on an extremely low coverage of DNA that might not give an accurate prediction of pigmentation. Mathieson, et al. (2018) could not determine if Mal'ta 1 boy had the derived allele associated with blond hair in ANE descendants, as they could obtain no coverage for this SNP.
Anthropologic research
Kozintsev (2020) argues that the historical Southern Siberian Okunevo population, which derives most of their ancestry from Ancient North Eurasians and their closest relatives, as possessing a distinct craniometric phenotype, which he dubbed "Americanoid", which represents the variation of the first humans in Siberia. He further argues that "As the geography and chronology of the ANE component show, it is misleading to describe it as Western Eurasian and associate it solely with ancient Caucasoids. To all appearances, it emerged before the Caucasoid-Mongoloid split."
Zhang et al. (2021) proposed that the 'Western' like features of the earlier Tarim mummies could be attributed to their Ancient North Eurasian ancestry. Previous craniometric analyses on the early Tarim mummies found that they formed their own cluster, and clustered with neither European-related Steppe pastoralists of the Andronovo and Afanasievo cultures, nor with inhabitants of the Western Asian BMAC culture, nor with East Asian populations further east.
Evolution of blond hair
Blond hair is associated with a single nucleotide polymorphism, the mutated allele rs12821256 of the KITLG gene. The earliest known individual with this allele is a female south-central Siberian ANE individual from the Afontova Gora 3 site, which is dated to before present (the earlier ANE Mal'ta boy lacks the sequence coverage to make this determination). The allele then appears later in ANE-derived Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) populations at Samara, Motala and Ukraine, circa 10,000 BP, and then in populations with Steppe ancestry. Mathieson, et al. (2018) thus argued that this allele originated in the Ancient North Eurasian population, before spreading to western Eurasia.
Geneticist David Reich said that the KITLG gene for blond hair probably entered continental Europe in a population migration wave from the Eurasian steppe, by a population carrying substantial Ancient North Eurasian ancestry. Hanel and Carlberg (2020) likewise report that populations derived Ancient North Eurasian ancestry, specifically the Eastern Hunter-Gatherers and the Yamnayas, were responsible for transmitting this gene to Europeans. The gene was also found among the Tarim mummies.
Comparative mythology
Since the term 'Ancient North Eurasian' refers to a genetic bridge of connected mating networks, scholars of comparative mythology have argued that they probably shared myths and beliefs that could be reconstructed via the comparison of stories attested within cultures that were not in contact for millennia and stretched from the Pontic–Caspian steppe to the American continent.
The mytheme of the dog guarding the Otherworld possibly stems from an older Ancient North Eurasian belief, as suggested by similar motifs found in Indo-European, Native American and Siberian mythology. In Siouan, Algonquian, Iroquoian, and in Central and South American beliefs, a fierce guard dog was located in the Milky Way, perceived as the path of souls in the afterlife, and getting past it was a test. The Siberian Chukchi and Tungus believed in a guardian-of-the-afterlife dog and a spirit dog that would absorb the dead man's soul and act as a guide in the afterlife. In Indo-European myths, the figure of the dog is embodied by Cerberus, Sarvarā, and Garmr. In Zoroastrianism, two four-eyed dogs guard the bridge to the afterlife called Chinvat Bridge. Anthony and Brown note that it might be one of the oldest mythemes recoverable through comparative mythology.
A second canid-related series of beliefs, myths and rituals connected dogs with healing rather than death. For instance, Ancient Near Eastern and Turkic-Kipchaq myths are prone to associate dogs with healing and generally categorised dogs as impure. A similar myth-pattern is assumed for the Eneolithic site of Botai in Kazakhstan, dated to 3500 BC, which might represent the dog as absorber of illness and guardian of the household against disease and evil. In Mesopotamia, the goddess Nintinugga, associated with healing, was accompanied or symbolized by dogs. Similar absorbent-puppy healing and sacrifice rituals were practiced in Greece and Italy, among the Hittites, again possibly influenced by Near Eastern traditions.
See also
Western Hunter-Gatherer
Prehistory of Siberia
References
Notes
Bibliography
ANE
Genetic history of Europe
Peopling of the world
Peopling of the Americas
Indo-European genetics
Last Glacial Maximum
Mesolithic