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. 2019 Feb 4;10(1):590.
doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-08220-8.

Ancient human genome-wide data from a 3000-year interval in the Caucasus corresponds with eco-geographic regions

Chuan-Chao Wang  1   2 , Sabine Reinhold  3 , Alexey Kalmykov  4 , Antje Wissgott  5 , Guido Brandt  5 , Choongwon Jeong  5 , Olivia Cheronet  6   7   8 , Matthew Ferry  9   10 , Eadaoin Harney  9   10   11 , Denise Keating  6   8 , Swapan Mallick  9   10   12 , Nadin Rohland  9   12 , Kristin Stewardson  9   10 , Anatoly R Kantorovich  13 , Vladimir E Maslov  14 , Vladimira G Petrenko  14 , Vladimir R Erlikh  15 , Biaslan Ch Atabiev  16 , Rabadan G Magomedov  17 , Philipp L Kohl  18 , Kurt W Alt  19   20   21 , Sandra L Pichler  20 , Claudia Gerling  20 , Harald Meller  22 , Benik Vardanyan  23   24 , Larisa Yeganyan  24 , Alexey D Rezepkin  25 , Dirk Mariaschk  3 , Natalia Berezina  26 , Julia Gresky  27 , Katharina Fuchs  28 , Corina Knipper  29 , Stephan Schiffels  5 , Elena Balanovska  30   31 , Oleg Balanovsky  30   31   32 , Iain Mathieson  33 , Thomas Higham  34 , Yakov B Berezin  26 , Alexandra Buzhilova  26 , Viktor Trifonov  35 , Ron Pinhasi  36 , Andrej B Belinskij  4 , David Reich  9   10   12   37 , Svend Hansen  38 , Johannes Krause  39   40 , Wolfgang Haak  41   42
Affiliations

Ancient human genome-wide data from a 3000-year interval in the Caucasus corresponds with eco-geographic regions

Chuan-Chao Wang et al. Nat Commun. .

Abstract

Archaeogenetic studies have described the formation of Eurasian 'steppe ancestry' as a mixture of Eastern and Caucasus hunter-gatherers. However, it remains unclear when and where this ancestry arose and whether it was related to a horizon of cultural innovations in the 4th millennium BCE that subsequently facilitated the advance of pastoral societies in Eurasia. Here we generated genome-wide SNP data from 45 prehistoric individuals along a 3000-year temporal transect in the North Caucasus. We observe a genetic separation between the groups of the Caucasus and those of the adjacent steppe. The northern Caucasus groups are genetically similar to contemporaneous populations south of it, suggesting human movement across the mountain range during the Bronze Age. The steppe groups from Yamnaya and subsequent pastoralist cultures show evidence for previously undetected farmer-related ancestry from different contact zones, while Steppe Maykop individuals harbour additional Upper Palaeolithic Siberian and Native American related ancestry.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Map of samples, sites and archaeological cultures mentioned in this study. Temporal and geographic distribution of archaeological cultures is shown for two windows in time a, b that are critical for our data. The zoomed map c shows the location of studied individuals from various sites in the Caucasus. Symbols and sample names correspond with Fig. 2 and Supplementary Data 1. The dashed line illustrates a hypothetical geographic border between genetically distinct Steppe and Caucasus clusters. (BB Bell Beaker; CW Corded Ware; TRB Trichterbecher/Funnel Beaker; SOM Seine-Oise-Marne complex). (All three maps were prepared by S. Reinhold and D. Mariaschk based on freely available geological and vegetation GIS-data from https://www.usgs.gov/, https://www.naturalearthdata.com/ and modified after Stone, T.A., and P. Schlesinger. 2003. RLC Vegetative Cover of the Former Soviet Union, 1990. ORNL DAAC, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/700.)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
ADMIXTURE and PCA results, and chronological order of ancient Caucasus individuals. a ADMIXTURE results (k = 12) of the newly genotyped individuals (filled symbols with black outlines) sorted by genetic clusters (Steppe and Caucasus) and in chronological order (coloured bars indicate the relative archaeological dates, b white circles the mean calibrated radiocarbon date and the errors bars the 2-sigma range. c ADMIXTURE results of relevant prehistoric individuals mentioned in the text (filled symbols), and d shows these projected onto a PCA of 84 modern-day West Eurasian populations (open symbols). Dashed arrows indicate trajectories of admixture: EHG—CHG (petrol), Yamnaya—Central European MN (pink), Steppe—Caucasus (green), and Iran Neolithic—Anatolian Neolithic (brown)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Results from uniparentally inherited markers. Comparison of Y-chromosome a and mitochondrial haplogroup b distribution in the Steppe and Caucasus cluster
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Modelling results for the Steppe and Caucasus cluster. Admixture proportions based on (temporally and geographically) distal and proximal models, showing additional AF ancestry in Steppe groups (a) and additional gene flow from the south in some of the Steppe groups as well as the Caucasus groups (b) (see also Supplementary Tables 10, 14 and 19)
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Admixture Graph modelling of the population history of the Caucasus region. We started with a skeleton tree without admixture, including Mbuti, Loschbour and MA1. We grafted onto this EHG, CHG, Globular_Amphora, Eneolithic_steppe, Maykop, and Yamnaya_Caucasus, adding them consecutively to all possible edges in the tree and retaining only graph solutions that provided no differences of |Z| > 3 between fitted and estimated statistics. The lowest Z-score for this graph is |Z| = 2.824. We note that the maximum discrepancy is f4(MA1, Maykop; EHG, Eneolithic_steppe) = −3.369 if we do not add the 4% EHG ancestry to Maykop. Drifts along edges are multiplied by 1000 and dashed lines represent admixture
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