Khövsgöl LBA

In archaeogenetics, the term LBA Khövsgöl (or Khövsgöl_LBA, i.e. "Khövsgöl Late Bronze Age"), is the name given to an ancestral component that represents the lineage of Late Bronze Age herders from Khövsgöl in northern Mongolia (ca. 1380–975 BC).

Genetic profile of about 20 Khovsgol LBA individuals of the Middle-Late Bronze Age (1400 to 1100 BC), in Mongolia
Khövsgöl LBA in the Middle-Late Bronze Age (1400 to 1100 BC) in Mongolia. Khövsgöl LBA is essentially composed of Baikal EBA ancestry ( , essentially Ancient Northeast Asian, ANA  ), with a small admixture of Sintashta ( )
Khövsgöl LBA ancestry ( ) among the Xiongnu in Mongolia circa 3rd century BC-1st century AD.

Overview

Over 20 LBA sites were found in Khövsgöl region.[1] Eight burials were unearthed in northern Mongolia. The burials were located in the Bulgan sum of Khovd aimag.[2] They date from the Late Bronze Age (LBA), from between 1380/1280 and 975/880 BC.[3][1][2]

Origin

It seems that the Khövsgöl_LBA people descended from Early Bronze Age populations from the Eastern steppe.[1] West Eurasian contribution, mostly from Sintashta people, was minimal.[1] Nearly all of them were indeed of local origin (hunter-gatherers), and dairy pastoralism seems to have been adopted by them from neighbouring cultures rather than being the result of the migration of new peoples into the region.[1][4]

Descendants

Eastern Scythians were carriers of Khovsgol LBA.[5] According to a 2020 study by Alexander Savelyev and Choongwon Jeong, around 58% of the ancestry of the Xiongnu belonged to Khovsgol LBA.[6] A 2021 genetic study conducted on the remains of a Hun elite warrior buried in Budapest (c. 350 AD) revealed that about 20% of his ancestry was Khovsgol LBA.[7]

Eastern Mongolian LBA Ulaanzuukh individuals (from whose culture the Slab-grave culture likely originated)[8] received gene flow from LBA Khovsgols. LBA Ulaanzuukh individuals were found to be genetically identical to the Slab Grave individuals,[lower-alpha 1] confirming the archaeological hypothesis that the Slab Grave culture emerged from the LBA Ulaanzuukh.[9] Ulaanzuukh individuals are modeled as having 24.5% contribution from Khovsgol_LBA, with a peak of 63.5% in one individual.[8] Conversely, a Khovsgol LBA individual was found to genetically fall within the Ulaanzuukh_SlabGrave cluster, suggesting contact between the Ulaanzuukh_SlabGrave and LBA Khovsgol cultures.[9]

In 2018, Jeong et al. published a study based on DNA extracted from the Khovsgol individuals remains, with the Khovsgols main cluster "mainly modeled as a mixture of components most enriched in modern northeast Asians (e.g., Nivkh) and ancient Siberians (e.g., AG3, Botai, and Okunevo)".[10][11] Khövsgöl main cluster individuals mostly belonged to Siberian mitochondrial haplogroups, namely Haplogroup A, B, C, D, and G. All main cluster individuals belonged to paternal haplogroup Q1a, except for one individual belonging to N1c1a.[12][3] LBA Khövsgöls, like other ancient Siberians, share more ancestry with Native Americans than modern Siberians do.[3][12] LBA Khovsgols showed the highest genetic affinity (based on f3 statistics) with earlier ancient groups from the Baikal region and modern Siberian and northeast Asian populations, such as the Negidals from the Amur River basin and Nganasans from the Taymyr Peninsula.[3]

In the same study, Jeong et al. found that the populations sharing the highest amount of genetic drift with the Khövsgöl main cluster are the Negidals, Evenks, Nganasans, Nanais, Yukaghirs, Evens, Itelmens, Ulchis, Koryaks, Nivkhs and Chukchis. The modern ethnic groups with most extra affinity to the Khövsgöl main cluster in contrast to Tuvinians are the Native American tribes of the Pima and the Southern American indigenous tribe of the Karitiana.[3] Compared to the main cluster, one individual, a female, showed an extra affinity with modern Yi people and Koreans (highest), Dai, Tujia, She, Han, followed by Japanese, Sherpa, Evens, Mongolians, and Kinh.[3] She was "modeled as a mixture of predominantly Ulchi and a minor component (6.1–9.4%) that fits most ancient western Eurasian groups".[3] One individual (haplogroup R1a-Z2123) stood out for having substantial WSH ancestry, and indeed had extra affinity with modern North-Western European ethnic groups.[3][12]

Culture
Deer stone-Khirigsuur Complex (DSKC) has been associated with LBA Khovsgol burials[3]

The culture to whom the burials belong hasn't been determined yet, and was previously called Baitag culture.[2] LBA Khovsgol burials have however been associated with Deer Stone-Khirigsuur Complex (DKSC).[12] The culture's funerary tradition consisted of kurgans. Bones of ruminants, ritually buried with the bodies, are immediately suggestive of pastoralism. Jeong et al. examined the dental calculus of nine Khövsgöl LBA individuals and found peptides "showing mass spectra typical of bovine, ovine, and caprine β-lactoglobulin and α-S1-casein, two milk-specific proteins".[1] The finds thus determine with certainty that ruminant dairy pastoralism had penetrated in the Eastern steppe by that time (i.e., Late Bronze Age).[1]

The Khovsgol sites are important in the study of the spread of pastoralism and dairy animals in Mongolia.[1]

Notes
  1. Indeed, Choongwon et al. merged LBA Ulaanzuukh and Slab Culture into a single analysis group, Ulaanzuukh_SlabGrave[9]

References
  1. Orlando, Ludovic. "Late Bronze Age cultural origins of dairy pastoralism in Mongolia". www.pnas.org. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
  2. Linduff, Katheryn M.; Rubinson, Karen S. (2021). Pazyryk Culture Up in the Altai. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780429851537.
  3. Jeong, Choongwon; Wilkin, Shevan; Amgalantugs, Tsend; Warinner, Christina. "Bronze Age population dynamics and the rise of dairy pastoralism on the eastern Eurasian steppe". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
  4. Raff, Jennifer. "How Bronze Age Northern Mongolian Peoples Got Milk". Forbes. Retrieved 16 May 2023.
  5. Gnecchi-Ruscone et al. 2021, p. 4
  6. Savelyev, Alexander; Jeong, Choongwoon (7 May 2020). "Early nomads of the Eastern Steppe and their tentative connections in the West". Evolutionary Human Sciences. 2 (E20). doi:10.1017/ehs.2020.18. hdl:21.11116/0000-0007-772B-4. PMC 7612788. PMID 35663512. S2CID 218935871. Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. "Specifically, individuals from Iron Age steppe and Xiongnu have an ancestry related to present-day and ancient Iranian/Caucasus/Turan populations in addition to the ancestry components derived from the Late Bronze Age populations. We estimate that they derive between 5 and 25% of their ancestry from this new source, with 18% for Xiongnu (Table 2). We speculate that the introduction of this new western Eurasian ancestry may be linked to the Iranian elements in the Xiongnu linguistic material, while the Turkic-related component may be brought by their eastern Eurasian genetic substratum." Table 2: Sintashta_MLBA, 0.239; Khovsgol LBA, 0.582; Gonur1 BA 0.178
  7. Gnecchi-Ruscone et al. 2021, Fig.3A
  8. Lee, Juhyeon; Miller, Bryan K.; Johannesson, Erik; Ventresca Miller, Alicia; Warinner, Christina; Jeong, Choongwon. "Genetic population structure of the Xiongnu Empire at imperial and local scales". ScienceAdvances.
  9. Jeong, Choongwon; Wang, Ke; Wilkin, Shevan; Treal Taylor, William Timothy. "A Dynamic 6,000-Year Genetic History of Eurasia's Eastern Steppe". Cell.
  10. "The genetic profile of LBA Khövsgöl individuals summarized by PCA and ADMIXTURE. (A) Khövsgöl (Kvs, ARS017, and ARS026) and other ancient individuals". Κορνήλιος Αντωνιάδης.
  11. "The genetic profile of LBA Khövsgöl individuals summarized by PCA and ADMIXTURE. (A) Khövsgöl (Kvs, ARS017, and ARS026) and other ancient individuals". Κορνήλιος Αντωνιάδης.
  12. Quiles, Carlos. "Minimal gene flow from western pastoralists in the Bronze Age eastern steppes". www.indo-european.eu. Retrieved 14 May 2023.

Sources
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