Short article
The genomes of the Yamnaya individuals from the steppe bordering the Caucasus show subtle genetic traces that are also characteristic of the neighboring farming populations of south-eastern Europe. Detailed analysis now shows that this subtle gene flow cannot be linked to the Maykop population, but could have come from the west.
An international research team, coordinated by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) and the Eurasia Department of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) in Berlin, is the first to carry out systematic genetic investigations in the Caucasus region. The study, published in Nature Communications, is based on analyses of genome-wide data from 45 individuals in the steppe and mountainous areas of the North Caucasus. The skeletal remains, which are between 6,500 and 3,500 years old, show that the groups living throughout the Caucasus region were genetically similar, despite the harsh mountain terrain, but that there was a sharp genetic boundary to the adjacent steppe areas in the north.
The greater part of Caucasia originated in the vast structural downwarp in the Earth’s crust known as the Alpine geosyncline, dating from the late Oligocene Epoch (about 25 million years ago).Caucasus the Russian Kavkaz mountain system and the region lying between the Black Sea (west) and the Caspian Sea (east) is occupied by Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. Caucasia has ancient links between Europe and Asia, and through it the ancient cultures spread northward. It was also one of the most ancient centres of bronze working from the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE.
"The genetic results do not support scenarios of large-scale migrations from the south during the Maykop period, or even from the northwest, as was postulated by some archaeologists. These findings have major implications for our understanding of the local development of North Caucasus cultures in the 4th millennium BC," explains Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Svend Hansen, Director of the DAI's Eurasia-Department.
By the 3rd millennium BC, pastoralist groups from the steppe were bringing about a fundamental change in the population of Europe. The current study confirms parallel changes in the Caucasus along the southern border of the steppe zone. "During the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC, however, the people living in the Northern Caucasus all shared a similar genetic makeup even though they can be recognized (archaeologically) as different cultural groups," says Sabine Reinhold, co-director of the archaeological team. "Individuals belonging to Yamnaya or Catacomb cultural complexes, according to archaeological analyses of their graves, are genetically indistinguishable from individuals from the North Caucasian culture in the foothills and in the mountains. Local or global cultural attributions were apparently more important than common biological roots."
Link to full paper; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-08220-8
Article sourced from Eurekaert