Dairying enabled Early Bronze Age Yamnaya steppe expansions.

ABSTRACT: During the Early Bronze Age, populations of the western Eurasian steppe expanded across an immense area of northern Eurasia. Combined archaeological and genetic evidence supports widespread Early Bronze Age population movements out of the Pontic-Caspian steppe that resulted in gene flow across vast distances, linking populations of Yamnaya pastoralists in Scandinavia with pastoral populations (known as the Afanasievo) far to the east in the Altai Mountains^1,2 and Mongolia³. Although some models hold that this expansion was the outcome of a newly mobile pastoral economy characterized by horse traction, bulk wagon transport^4-6 and regular dietary dependence on meat and milk⁵, hard evidence for these economic features has not been found. Here we dra

SUBMITTER: Wilkin S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8550948 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature