A genomic history of the North Pontic Region from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age.

ABSTRACT: The North Pontic Region was the meeting point of the farmers of Old Europe and the foragers and pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe^1,2, and the source of migrations deep into Europe^3-5. Here we report genome-wide data from 81 prehistoric North Pontic individuals to understand the genetic makeup of its people. North Pontic foragers had ancestry from Balkan and Eastern hunter-gatherers⁶ as well as European farmers and, occasionally, Caucasus hunter-gatherers. During the Eneolithic period, a wave of migrants from the Caucasus-Lower Volga area⁷ bypassed local foragers to mix in equal parts with Trypillian farmers, forming the people of the Usatove culture around 4500 BCE. A temporally overlapping wave of migrants from the Caucasus-Lower Volga blended

SUBMITTER: Nikitin AG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11909631 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature