Ancient mtDNA from Mesolithic, Bronze Age and Scythian Russia

I've now had a chance to take a closer look at that Oleg Balanovsky thesis I covered earlier this week (see here). There's a lot of stuff to write about, but since it's all in Russian, which I don't understand, I'll only focus on the ancient DNA sections with the help of Google Translate. Hopefully I haven't made any serious errors. Please let me know if I have.

Mesolithic remains from Oleni Ostrov, Karelian Republic (7500 YBP). The most frequent mtDNA haplogroups were U4 and C, but U2e, U5a, J, and H were also found. The results are very similar to those from other Mesolithic sites in Europe. However, this sample shows a much stronger affinity to modern Siberian populations. The conclusion is that there were intense contacts between Northeastern Europe and Western Siberia during the Mesolithic period.

Bronze Age remains, also from Bolshoy Oleni Ostrov cemetary, Kola-peninsula (3500 YBP). This sample produced haplogroups C, U5a, D, Z, U4 and T. Again, Asian influence is clearly evident, but it appears to have come from the Arctic zone, rather than from Western or Central Siberia. Moreover, the results suggest a significant population replacement in the region since the Bronze Age, because modern inhabitants of Karelia and surrounds exhibit a very different mtDNA gene pool.


Iron Age Scythian remains from near Rostov-on-Don (2500 YBP). This proved to be the most diverse sample of the three, carrying haplogroups T, U5a, H, I, D, A, C, F, U2e and U7. It's dominated by West Eurasian lineages, and is thus similar in that regard to a Scythian sample from Kazakhstan.

I'm assuming we'll soon be seeing these results in journal papers, along with more detailed data and commentary. Can't wait for that. Meantime, let me just say that the significant East Eurasian genetic influence in the three samples (represented by mtDNA haplogroups A, C, D, F and Z) is quite telling. It appears that much of present day European Russia, and possibly even the Northern Nordic area, were basically extensions of nearby regions of Asia until historic times.

So what happened in Russia during and after the Iron Age that pushed the genetic border between Europe and Asia to the Urals? I'd say the main players in this process were the Balts and Slavs, who expanded from near the Baltic in large numbers, absorbing and replacing the presumably much less numerous earlier inhabitants of the East European Plain. After that, the population density across most of European Russia was too high for the well-documented Mongol and Tatar invasions to even begin to reverse the trend.

Reference....

Balanovsky Oleg P., Variability of gene pool in space and time: Data synthesis, genogeography, mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome. Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Science. 2012

http://eurogenes.blogspot.ru/2012/10/ancient-mtdna-from-mesolithic-bronze.html