Nature Communications (Mar 2017)

Ancestry and demography and descendants of Iron Age nomads of the Eurasian Steppe

  • Martina Unterländer,
  • Friso Palstra,
  • Iosif Lazaridis,
  • Aleksandr Pilipenko,
  • Zuzana Hofmanová,
  • Melanie Groß,
  • Christian Sell,
  • Jens Blöcher,
  • Karola Kirsanow,
  • Nadin Rohland,
  • Benjamin Rieger,
  • Elke Kaiser,
  • Wolfram Schier,
  • Dimitri Pozdniakov,
  • Aleksandr Khokhlov,
  • Myriam Georges,
  • Sandra Wilde,
  • Adam Powell,
  • Evelyne Heyer,
  • Mathias Currat,
  • David Reich,
  • Zainolla Samashev,
  • Hermann Parzinger,
  • Vyacheslav I. Molodin,
  • Joachim Burger

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14615
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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The Scythian culture was widespread throughout the Eurasian Steppe during the 1stmillennium BCE. This study provides genetic evidence for two independent origins for the Scythians in the eastern and western steppe with varying proportions of Yamnaya and East Asian ancestry, and gene flow among them.