Dairying enabled Early Bronze Age Yamnaya steppe expansions
Wilkin S. Ventresca Miller A. Fernandes R. Spengler R. Taylor W.T.-T. Brown D.R. Reich D. Kennett D.J. Culleton B.J. Kunz L. Fortes C. Kitova A. Kuznetsov P. Epimakhov A. Zaibert V.F. Outram A.K. Kitov E. Khokhlov A. Anthony D. Boivin N.
28 October 2021Nature Research
Nature
2021#598Issue 7882629 - 633 pp.
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 Mountains1,2 and Mongolia3. Although some models hold that this expansion was the outcome of a newly mobile pastoral economy characterized by horse traction, bulk wagon transport4–6 and regular dietary dependence on meat and milk5, hard evidence for these economic features has not been found. Here we draw on proteomic analysis of dental calculus from individuals from the western Eurasian steppe to demonstrate a major transition in dairying at the start of the Bronze Age. The rapid onset of ubiquitous dairying at a point in time when steppe populations are known to have begun dispersing offers critical insight into a key catalyst of steppe mobility. The identification of horse milk proteins also indicates horse domestication by the Early Bronze Age, which provides support for its role in steppe dispersals. Our results point to a potential epicentre for horse domestication in the Pontic–Caspian steppe by the third millennium bc, and offer strong support for the notion that the novel exploitation of secondary animal products was a key driver of the expansions of Eurasian steppe pastoralists by the Early Bronze Age.
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Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
Institute for Evolutionary Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States
School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno-střed, Czech Republic
Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado, Museum of Natural History, Boulder, CO, United States
Department of Anthropology, Hartwick College, Oneonta, NY, United States
Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, United States
Institutes of Energy and the Environment, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States
Functional Genomics Centre Zürich, University of Zürich/ETH, Zürich, Switzerland
Center for Egyptological Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation
Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education, Samara, Russian Federation
South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk, Russian Federation
Institute of History and Archaeology, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation
Institute of Archaeology and Steppe Civilizations, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom
Center of Human Ecology, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation
Faculty of History, Archaeology, and Ethnology, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, United States
Department of Archaeology
Institute for Evolutionary Medicine
Department of Anthropology
School of Archaeology
Faculty of Arts
Department of Anthropology
Department of Anthropology
Department of Genetics
Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology
Department of Anthropology
Institutes of Energy and the Environment
Functional Genomics Centre Zürich
Center for Egyptological Studies
Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education
South Ural State University
Institute of History and Archaeology
Institute of Archaeology and Steppe Civilizations
Department of Archaeology
Center of Human Ecology
Faculty of History
School of Social Science
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology
Department of Anthropology
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