Maternal genetic features of the Iron Age Tagar population from Southern Siberia (1st millennium BC).

Early nomads in the Eurasian steppes since the beginning of the 1st millennium BC played a key role in the formation of the cultural and genetic landscape of populations of a significant part of Eurasia, from Eastern Europe to Eastern Central Asia. Numerous archaeological cultures associated with early nomads have been discovered throughout the Eurasian steppe belt. The Tagar archaeological culture existed in the Minusinsk basin (Sayan Mountains, Southern Siberia, Russia) in the northeastern periphery of the Eurasian steppe belt from the 8th to 1st century BC during the pre-Scythian, Scythian, and Early Xiongnu-Sarmatian periods.

MtDNA Haplogroup A10 Lineages in Bronze Age Samples Suggest That Ancient Autochthonous Human Groups Contributed to the Specificity of the Indigenous West Siberian Population.

Background: The craniometric specificity of the indigenous West Siberian human populations cannot be completely explained by the genetic interactions of the western and eastern Eurasian groups recorded in the archaeology of the area from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Anthropologists have proposed another probable explanation: contribution to the genetic structure of West Siberian indigenous populations by ancient human groups, which separated from western and eastern Eurasian populations before the final formation of their phenotypic and genetic features and evolved independently in the region over a long period of time. This hypothesis remains untested.