Scythians were nomadic and semi-nomadic people that ruled the Eurasian steppe during much of the first millennium BCE. While having been extensively studied by archaeology, very little is known about their genetic identity. To fill this gap, we analyzed ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from Scythians of the North Pontic Region (NPR) and successfully retrieved 19 whole mtDNA genomes. We have identified three potential mtDNA lineage ancestries of the NPR Scythians tracing back to hunter-gatherer and nomadic populations of east and west Eurasia as well as the Neolithic farming expansion into Europe. One third of all mt lineages in our dataset belonged to subdivisions of mt haplogroup U5. A comparison of NPR Scythian mtDNA linages with other contemporaneous Scythian groups, the Saka and the Pazyryks, reveals a common mtDNA package comprised of haplogroups H/H5, U5a, A, D/D4, and F1/F2. Of these, west Eurasian lineages show a downward cline in the west-east direction while east Eurasian haplogroups display the opposite trajectory. An overall similarity in mtDNA lineages of the NPR Scythians was found with the late Bronze Age Srubnaya population of the Northern Black Sea region which supports the archaeological hypothesis suggesting Srubnaya people as ancestors of the NPR Scythians.

Biology Department Grand Valley State University 1 Campus Drive Allendale Michigan 49401 United States of America

Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies Stockholm University Wallenberglaboratoriet SE 106 91 Stockholm Sweden

Department of Human Evolutionary Biology Institute of Anthropology Faculty of Biology Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan Umultowska 89 61 614 Poznan Poland

Department of Human Evolutionary Biology Institute of Anthropology Faculty of Biology Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan Umultowska 89 61 614 Poznan Poland Department of Biology and Environmental Studies Faculty of Education Charles University Prague Magdalény Rettigové 4 116 39 Prague Czech Republic

Institute of Archaeology Faculty of History Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan Umultowska 89D 61 614 Poznan Poland

Institute of Archaeology National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Lanzheronivska Street 65026 Odessa Ukraine

Molecular Biology Techniques Laboratory Faculty of Biology Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan Umultowska 89 61 614 Poznan Poland

Taras Shevchenko University in Tiraspol Taras Shevchenko University in Tiraspol October Street 25 33 00 Tiraspol Moldova

Citace poskytuje Crossref.org