Uralic And Yeniseian Origins

New ancient DNA data informs both that origins of the Siberian Yeniseian peoples, the Native American populations of North America, and the Uralic people. 

In Siberia, two genetically distinct populations emerged from admixture between the early Northeastern Siberian population that was a major source of Native American ancestry, and "groups from Inland East Asia and the Amur River Basin."

One of these populations, the Cis-Baikal Late Neolithic–Bronze Age, was ancestral to the Yeniseian peoples of Siberia, who in turn admixed with some other Northeast Asian and North Central Asia populations.

The other of these populations, the Yakutian Late Neolithic–Bronze Age, was the proto-Uralic population. They spread from an east Siberian origin ca. 2500 BCE, along with subclades of Y-chromosome haplogroup N occurring at high frequencies among present-day Uralic speakers, into Western and Central Siberia in communities associated with Seima-Turbino metallurgy, a suite of advanced bronze casting techniques that starteds to expand rapidly ca. 2000 BCE. As they expanded they admixed with many other people in the region, including Indo-Iranians and various hunter-gather peoples.

The North Eurasian forest and forest-steppe zones have sustained millennia of sociocultural connections among northern peoples. We present genome-wide ancient DNA data for 181 individuals from this region spanning the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age. 

We find that Early to Mid-Holocene hunter-gatherer populations from across the southern forest and forest-steppes of Northern Eurasia can be characterized by a continuous gradient of ancestry that remained stable for millennia, ranging from fully West Eurasian in the Baltic region to fully East Asian in the Transbaikal region. 

In contrast, cotemporaneous groups in far Northeast Siberia were genetically distinct, retaining high levels of continuity from a population that was the primary source of ancestry for Native Americans. By the mid-Holocene, admixture between this early Northeastern Siberian population and groups from Inland East Asia and the Amur River Basin produced two distinctive populations in eastern Siberia that played an important role in the genetic formation of later people. 

Ancestry from the first population, Cis-Baikal Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Cisbaikal_LNBA), is found substantially only among Yeniseian-speaking groups and those known to have admixed with them.

Ancestry from the second, Yakutian Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Yakutia_LNBA), is strongly associated with present-day Uralic speakers. We show how Yakutia_LNBA ancestry spread from an east Siberian origin ∼4.5kya, along with subclades of Y-chromosome haplogroup N occurring at high frequencies among present-day Uralic speakers, into Western and Central Siberia in communities associated with Seima-Turbino metallurgy: a suite of advanced bronze casting techniques that spread explosively across an enormous region of Northern Eurasia ∼4.0kya. However, the ancestry of the 16 Seima-Turbino-period individuals—the first reported from sites with this metallurgy—was otherwise extraordinarily diverse, with partial descent from Indo-Iranian-speaking pastoralists and multiple hunter-gatherer populations from widely separated regions of Eurasia. 

Our results provide support for theories suggesting that early Uralic speakers at the beginning of their westward dispersal where involved in the expansion of Seima-Turbino metallurgical traditions, and suggests that both cultural transmission and migration were important in the spread of Seima-Turbino material culture.

Tian Chen Zeng, et al., "Postglacial genomes from foragers across Northern Eurasia reveal prehistoric mobility associated with the spread of the Uralic and Yeniseian languages" bioRxiv (October 2, 2023).