Sunday, May 3, 2015

Siberian Historical Population Genetics

Siberia has repeatedly swung between being predominantly West Eurasian genetically, and predominantly East Eurasian.  One swing, of early Indo-Europeans, peaked around 4000 years ago, and then swung back the other way starting around 1500-2500 years ago (with Turks and then Mongols migrating East to West), only to swing in the West Eurasian direction again with the expansion of the Russian empire starting around 200-300 years ago.

New population genetic studies (open access) reveal that the West Eurasian ancestry in most modern Siberian populations is attributable to the Bronze Age Indo-European wave, rather than the more recent wave of Slavic Russian colonization.

1 comment:

Marnie said...

Thanks for this short post.

I haven't had the chance to read the paper yet, but an argument for population fluctuation and high mobility between Asian-like and European-like people seems likely (to me).