Populations in Mongolia from the late second millennium B.C.E. through the Mongol Empire are traditionally assumed, by archaeologists and historians, to have maintained a highly specialized horse-facilitated form of mobile pastoralism. Until recently, a dearth of direct evidence for prehistoric human diet and subsistence economies in Mongolia has rendered systematic testing of this view impossible. Here, we present stable carbon and nitrogen isotope measurements of human bone collagen, and stable carbon isotope analysis of human enamel bioapatite, from 137 well-dated ancient Mongolian individuals spanning the period c. 4400 B.C.E. to 1300 C.E. Our results demonstrate an increase in consumption of C4 plants beginning at c. 800 B.C.E., almost certainly indicative of millet consumption, an interpretation supported by archaeological evidence. The escalating scale of millet consumption on the eastern Eurasian steppe over time, and an expansion of isotopic niche widths, indicate that historic Mongolian empires were supported by a diversification of economic strategies rather than uniform, specialized pastoralism.

Department of Anthropology and Archaeology University of Calgary Calgary Alberta Canada

Department of Anthropology National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution Washington D C USA

Faculty of Arts Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Mongolian Academy of Sciences Jukoviin orgon chuloo 77 Ulaanbaatar Mongolia

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History Department of Archaeogenetics Jena Germany

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History Department of Archaeology Jena Germany

National University of Mongolia Ulaanbaatar Mongolia

School of Archaeology University of Oxford Oxford UK

School of Social Science The University of Queensland Brisbane Australia

University of Colorado Department of Anthropology Museum of Natural History Boulder CO USA

University of Michigan Department of Anthropology Ann Arbor Michigan USA

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