During the Early Bronze Age, populations of the western Eurasian steppe expanded across an immense area of northern Eurasia. Combined archaeological and genetic evidence supports widespread Early Bronze Age population movements out of the Pontic-Caspian steppe that resulted in gene flow across vast distances, linking populations of Yamnaya pastoralists in Scandinavia with pastoral populations (known as the Afanasievo) far to the east in the Altai Mountains1,2 and Mongolia3. Although some models hold that this expansion was the outcome of a newly mobile pastoral economy characterized by horse traction, bulk wagon transport4-6 and regular dietary dependence on meat and milk5, hard evidence for these economic features has not been found. Here we draw on proteomic analysis of dental calculus from individuals from the western Eurasian steppe to demonstrate a major transition in dairying at the start of the Bronze Age. The rapid onset of ubiquitous dairying at a point in time when steppe populations are known to have begun dispersing offers critical insight into a key catalyst of steppe mobility. The identification of horse milk proteins also indicates horse domestication by the Early Bronze Age, which provides support for its role in steppe dispersals. Our results point to a potential epicentre for horse domestication in the Pontic-Caspian steppe by the third millennium BC, and offer strong support for the notion that the novel exploitation of secondary animal products was a key driver of the expansions of Eurasian steppe pastoralists by the Early Bronze Age.

Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT Cambridge MA USA

Center for Egyptological Studies Russian Academy of Sciences Moscow Russian Federation

Center of Human Ecology Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology Russian Academy of Sciences Moscow Russian Federation

Department of Anthropology and Archaeology University of Calgary Calgary Alberta Canada

Department of Anthropology Hartwick College Oneonta NY USA

Department of Anthropology National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution Washington DC USA

Department of Anthropology University of California Santa Barbara CA USA

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

Department of Anthropology University of Michigan Ann Arbor MI USA

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

Department of Archaeology University of Exeter Exeter UK

Department of Genetics Harvard Medical School Boston MA USA

Department of Human Evolutionary Biology Harvard University Cambridge MA USA

Faculty of Arts Masaryk University Brno střed Czech Republic

Faculty of History Archaeology and Ethnology Al Farabi Kazakh National University Almaty Kazakhstan

Functional Genomics Centre Zürich University of Zürich ETH Zürich Switzerland

Howard Hughes Medical Institute Harvard Medical School Boston MA USA

Institute for Evolutionary Medicine Faculty of Medicine University of Zürich Zürich Switzerland

Institute of Archaeology and Steppe Civilizations Al Farabi Kazakh National University Almaty Kazakhstan

Institute of History and Archaeology Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yekaterinburg Russian Federation

Institutes of Energy and the Environment The Pennsylvania State University University Park PA USA

Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education Samara Russian Federation

School of Archaeology University of Oxford Oxford UK

School of Social Science The University of Queensland Brisbane Queensland Australia

South Ural State University Chelyabinsk Russian Federation

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