Back

Ancient human genomes from the Altai region reveal population continuity and shifts in the 4th-12th centuries

Ozdemir, Y. C.; Gyuris, B.; Jakab, K.; Szeniczey, T.; Heltai, B.; Megyes, M.; Mende, B. G.; Major, I.; Seregin, N.; Gorbunov, V. V.; Grushin, S.; Dashkovskiy, P. K.; Demin, M. A.; Kiryushin, K. Y.; Mamadakov, Y. T.; Stepanova, N. F.; Tur, S. S.; Fribus, A. V.; Rykun, M. P.; Turk, A.; Tishkin, A. A.; Szecsenyi-Nagy, A.

2026-03-25 genetics
10.64898/2026.03.24.713889 bioRxiv
Show abstract

The Altai region is a crossroads of the Asian steppes. However, the population history of the region remains understudied. We analyse ancient human genomes from the Altai and Ob regions, creating a ca. 1400-year-long time transect with 91 new data. We demonstrate an Iron Age genetic variety that continued into the Medieval era, with additional large-scale spread of East Asian genetic ancestry coinciding with the rise and spread of the Turkic cultural customs. Furthermore, we find a unique lineage in the Early Medieval Altai with elevated Ancient North Eurasian ancestry, providing a missing link between the North Eurasian hunter-gatherers and modern North Asian people. We identify distinct genetic patterns and connections among populations of the Mountainous and the Forest-Steppe Altai in the 4th-8th centuries.

Matching journals

The top 4 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.