Project description:Through the use of proteomic analysis of 32 dental calculus samples from anceint Mongolia, we show that ruminant dairying was present in Mongolia by at least 3000 B.C.E., over 1500 years prior to previously published work. Excitingly, the earliest site with dairy evidence has been identified as archaeologically Afanasievo, supporting the hypothesis that dairy practices and animals likely entered the Eastern steppe with migrating western steppe populations. Furthermore, at 1200 B.C.E. we detect the first direct evidence for horse milk consumption, demonstrating the Bronze Age origins of equine dairying on the eastern steppe which occurred concomitantly with early evidence for horse bridling and riding in the region. The incorporation of horse milk and riding into early Mongolian subsistence strategies led to dramatic economic and demographic shifts that enabled the formation of the well-known steppe empires.
Project description:Though bacteria and fungi are common inhabitants of decaying wood, little is known about the relationship between bacterial and fungal community dynamics during natural wood decay. Based on previous studies involving inoculated wood blocks, strong fungal selection on bacteria abundance and community composition was expected to occur during natural wood decay. Here, we focused on bacterial and fungal community compositions in pine wood samples collected from dead trees in different stages of decomposition. We showed that bacterial communities undergo less drastic changes than fungal communities during wood decay. Furthermore, we found that bacterial community assembly was a stochastic process at initial stage of wood decay and became more deterministic in later stages, likely due to environmental factors. Moreover, composition of bacterial communities did not respond to the changes in the major fungal species present in the wood but rather to the stage of decay reflected by the wood density. We concluded that the shifts in the bacterial communities were a result of the changes in wood properties during decomposition and largely independent of the composition of the wood-decaying fungal communities.
Project description:Land cover change has long been recognized that marked effect the amount of soil organic carbon. However, little is known about microbial-mediated effect processes and mechanism on soil organic carbon. In this study, the soil samples in a degenerated succession from alpine meadow to alpine steppe meadow in Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau degenerated, were analyzed by using GeoChip functional gene arrays.
Project description:Medieval era encounters of nomadic groups of the Eurasian Steppe and largely sedentary East Europeans had a variety of demographic and cultural consequences. Amongst these outcomes was the emergence of the Lipka Tatars - a Slavic-speaking Sunni-Muslim ethno-religious minority residing in modern Belarus, Lithuania and Poland, whose ancestors arrived in these territories via several migration waves, mainly from the Golden Horde. Our results show that Belarusian Lipka Tatars share a substantial part of their gene pool with Europeans as indicated by their Y-chromosomal, mitochondrial DNA and autosomal variation. Nevertheless, Belarusian Lipkas still retain a strong genetic signal of their nomadic ancestry, witnessed by the presence of common Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA variants as well as autosomal segments identical by descent between Lipkas and East Eurasians from temperate and northern regions. Hence, we document Lipka Tatars as a unique example of former Medieval migrants into Central Europe, who became sedentary, changed language to Slavic, yet preserved their faith and retained, both uni- and bi-parentally, a clear genetic echo of a complex population interplay throughout the Eurasian Steppe Belt, extending from Central Europe to northern China.
Project description:This project explores dietary proteins in human dental calculus through shotgun proteomics. These files are in addition to those accidentally not included in the original publication, Dairying enabled Early Bronze Age Yamnaya steppe expansions . DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03798-4. Files include raw, mgf, and mzid files from the two Botai individuals: DA092 (Botai 2A), DA089 (CII(3) 30-40), and additional files from Russian sites: DA431, DA431 (Lebyazhinka 5, LEB N-0), Z333 (Khvalynsk 2, KHA2 N-12), and Z444 (Murziha 2, MUR2 N-128) as well as the blanks used in the experiments. It also inlcludes the corresponding files for DA436, as in the previous upload an under-injected sample was included as the MDF.