August 07, 2011

Medieval West Siberian mtDNA

J Hum Genet. 2011 Jul 14. doi: 10.1038/jhg.2011.68. [Epub ahead of print]

Genetic features of ancient West Siberian people of the Middle Ages, revealed by mitochondrial DNA haplogroup analysis.

Sato T, Razhev D, Amano T, Masuda R.


In order to investigate the genetic features of ancient West Siberian people of the Middle Ages, we studied ancient DNA from bone remains excavated from two archeological sites in West Siberia: Saigatinsky 6 (eighth to eleventh centuries) and Zeleny Yar (thirteenth century). Polymerase chain reaction amplification and nucleotide sequencing of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) succeeded for 9 of 67 specimens examined, and the sequences were assigned to mtDNA haplogroups B4, C4, G2, H and U. This distribution pattern of mtDNA haplogroups in medieval West Siberian people was similar to those previously reported in modern populations living in West Siberia, such as the Mansi, Ket and Nganasan. Exact tests of population differentiation showed no significant differences between the medieval people and modern populations in West Siberia. The findings suggest that some medieval West Siberian people analyzed in the present study are included in direct ancestral lineages of modern populations native to West Siberia.

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4 comments:

  1. So, an East Eurasian and West Eurasian mix in an era that is post-Turkic expansion and in the last case possibly also post-Mongolian empire expansion?

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  2. So, an East Eurasian and West Eurasian mix in an era that is post-Turkic expansion and in the last case possibly also post-Mongolian empire expansion?

    The Turkic and Mongolian migrations do not seem to have affected the genetics of the studied regions and folks. Even the Turkic speaking Chuvash seem to lack genetic effects of the Altaic migrations (their Mongoloid components seem derived from Uralic people) and genetically seem completely local and not Turkic-influenced.

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  3. The comment by Onurs has some mysteries.
    The studied regions are East of Urals, and the Eastern mtDNA probably is from the local Kets.
    Chuvash live rather far away West of Urals. The population is based on Bolgars, who came from farther East than Altai and may well have had Eastern components.
    It would be good to specify the Eastern components in Chuvash if they are a topic of discussion, but it hardly has much to do with the original subject.

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  4. The comment by Onurs has some mysteries.
    The studied regions are East of Urals, and the Eastern mtDNA probably is from the local Kets.
    Chuvash live rather far away West of Urals. The population is based on Bolgars, who came from farther East than Altai and may well have had Eastern components.
    It would be good to specify the Eastern components in Chuvash if they are a topic of discussion, but it hardly has much to do with the original subject.


    I already know these. I didn't compare Chuvash with the populations studied in this paper but with their Uralic speaking geographical neighbors (all of them from west of Urals), who had been studied at various times in the past. My first sentence was about the populations studied in this paper (thus east of Urals), but my second sentence was about Chuvash and their Uralic speaking neighbors (thus west of Urals). Sorry for the ambiguity.

    Yes, historically Chuvash seem to be a continuation of Bulgars (Turkic speakers), who in turn seem to have fused many Uralic speaking tribes in the past.

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