Origin and Post-Glacial Dispersal of Mitochondrial DNA Haplogroups C and D in Northern Asia

More than a half of the northern Asian pool of human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is fragmented into a number of subclades of haplogroups C and D, two of the most frequent haplogroups throughout northern, eastern, central Asia and America. While there has been considerable recent progress in studying mitochondrial variation in eastern Asia and America at the complete genome resolution, little comparable data is available for regions such as southern Siberia – the area where most of northern Asian haplogroups, including C and D, likely diversified. This gap in our knowledge causes a serious barrier for progress in understanding the demographic pre-history of northern Eurasia in general. Here we describe the phylogeography of haplogroups C and D in the populations of northern and eastern Asia. We have analyzed 770 samples from haplogroups C and D (174 and 596, respectively) at high resolution, including 182 novel complete mtDNA sequences representing haplogroups C and D (83 and 99, respectively). The present-day variation of haplogroups C and D suggests that these mtDNA clades expanded before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), with their oldest lineages being present in the eastern Asia. Unlike in eastern Asia, most of the northern Asian variants of haplogroups C and D began the expansion after the LGM, thus pointing to post-glacial re-colonization of northern Asia. Our results show that both haplogroups were involved in migrations, from eastern Asia and southern Siberia to eastern and northeastern Europe, likely during the middle Holocene

Climatic or dietary change? Stable isotope analysis of Neolithic–Bronze Age populations from the Upper Ob and Tobol River basins

Dietary changes in the populations inhabiting southwest Siberia and northern Kazakhstan indicate concurrent changes in the economy, at the same time marking the beginnings of East–West interaction across northern Eurasia. The introduction of domestic animal species of Near Eastern origin, such as sheep and goat, dramatically changed the lives of the local population. Past palaeodietary research using stable isotope analysis has mainly focussed on pastoral populations of the Bronze Age period. It is crucial, however, to assess the diets of humans and animals from earlier periods (Neolithic/Chalcolithic) in order to understand the timing and nature of dietary change during the Bronze Age of southwest Siberia and northern Kazakhstan, in particular the possible contribution of environmental change influencing dietary shifts. In this paper, we report the results of stable isotope analysis on 55 human and 45 faunal samples from southwest Siberia (Upper Ob River) and northern Kazakhstan (Tobol River basin), ranging from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. These data, combined with published human and faunal collagen results from the region as well as new accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) radiocarbon dating results, indicate little change in animal diet over time, but a notable change in human diet at ca. 2500 cal. BC. The data allow us to determine the time when pastoralism came to the fore, with concomitant economic differences to the local population.</p