Ancient North Eurasians lived in Siberia during the Ice Age. Their DNA is a genetic ‘missing link’ between Europeans, Iranians, Siberians and the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Japan.
Ancient North Eurasians lived 25,000 years ago, during the last Glacial Maximum. At the time, homo sapiens lived-in scattered bands across Africa, Eurasia and Australia who seldom met. Some groups survived and passed on their genes; others did not. As these bands lived in different climates and lived distinct lifestyles for thousands of years, they tended to look different. Because most modern peoples descend from numerous lineages, groups like the Ancient North Eurasians do not correspond to any one people today.
Ancient hunter-gatherers periodically returned to the same sites where they deposited tools, the bones of hunted animals and their dead. Archaeologists link sites to common cultures. Archaeogeneticists connect archaeological sites with genetic lineages.
Three sites are associated with the Ancient North Eurasians:
- Mal’ta Buret’ culture
- Yana Rhinocerous Site
- Anfontova Gora
Remains indicate the ANE were hunter-gatherers with partial Neanderthal ancestry. They hunted hares, bears, bison, mammoths, horses and reindeer and built their houses from antlers and bone. Their tools were made from ivory and flint, their clothes from wool and hide. The Mal’ta Buret culture left over 30 ‘Venus figurines’ made from mammoth ivory (pictured). A 2021 study suggests ANE were the first people to domesticate dogs.
The Mal’ta boy was a four-year-old child buried near Lake Baikal, Siberia. He wore an ivory crown, a bead necklace and a pendant shaped like a bird. Genetic sequencing indicates the boy was a typical Ancient North Eurasian who shares DNA with both modern Europeans and Native Americans.
Until the 2000s, scientists thought Native Americans were of entirely East Asian origin. The Mal’ta boy, however, shares no DNA with modern East Asians, indicating the humans who first crossed the Bering Landbridge were of mixed East Asian and ANE ancestry.
Preserved bodies like the Mal’ta boy had brown hair, dark eyes and medium-light skin. The Anfontova Gora site contains the oldest known person to have blonde hair – a woman living around 16,000 BC.
Over time, the Ancient North Eurasians dispersed and interbred with different populations. In the west, they became herders who spoke proto-Indo-European languages. Others interbred with hunter-gatherers from East Asia, crossed the Bering Land bridge and populated the Americas.
Estimated ANE ancestry among modern peoples:
- Indigenous Americans – 14-38 (highest among Andean peoples)
- Modern Europeans – 10-25%
- Ainu – 21%
- South Asians (Indians) – 10 – 20%
- Iranians – 10-20%
The Kets (above), an isolated group of Siberian hunter-gatherers, have 40% Ancient North Eurasian ancestry.
By noting common elements across mythologies, legends and folk beliefs of their descendants, we can theorise what the ANE might have believed. The traditions of India, Scandinavia, Greece, Siberia and the Americas – from the Sioux to the Aztec – have only one ‘mytheme’ in common: a dog who guards the entrance to the afterlife.
Sources: BBC, DNA Consultants, Nature, National Library of Medicine
See Also:
- ANE descended groups:
- Archaeogenetics:
- Norse Mythology
Buried beneath the sands of China’s largest desert, the 2,000-year-old Tarim mummies are better preserved than the pharaohs of Egypt. The arid climate conserved them so well even their eyelashes remain intact. Strangely, they look more European than Chinese.
Who were the Tarim Mummies? The archaeological and genetic record suggests they were Indo-European speakers who migrated east from the Russian steppe around 2,000 BC and took Siberian wives. They are likely Tocharians (or Yuezhi), a nomadic people whom the Chinese describe living in the Tarim Basin in ancient times. The Tocharians spoke an isolated Indo-European tongue closer to Latin than the eastern branches and traded jade with China. Migrations by the Scythians, Xiongnu, Han and Turks followed.
Today the Tarim Basin falls under China’s Xinjiang region. Uyghur separatists claim the mummies as their ancestors, saying they, not the Han Chinese, are Xinjiang’s native inhabitants and rightful rulers. Though the Turkic speaking Uyghurs did not settle the Tarim Basin until 842 AD, they absorbed its earlier inhabitants. Some still have red hair today.
In 1973 scientists discovered a 13,000 year-old skeleton in a cave at Lagoa Santa, Brazil. The ‘Luzia Woman’ was the oldest human remains found in the Western Hemisphere. Curiously the Luzia woman’s skull resembled an Australian Aborigine more than a Native American. 
Some Amerindians carry DNA from Population Y. In 2015 scientists sequenced the genome of three Amazonian tribes – the Xavante (pictured), Karitiana and Surui, who were uncontacted until the 20th century. 1-2% of their DNA was shared with Australasians. Smaller amounts were also found in Mixe people of Mexico and Aleutian Islanders but no other groups. The findings were published in Nature. Population Y comes from Ypykuera – an Amazonian word for ‘ancestor’.
Proto-Australasians or ‘Black Asians’ were the first homo sapiens to leave Africa and the original inhabitants of Australia and Southeast Asia. Their descendants include the Aborigines of Australia, the Negritos of Southeast Asia, Melanesians, and Andaman Islanders. Population Y would suggest they reached South America too.
Ainu are the indigenous people of Japan. 25,000 live on the island of Hokkaido and a further 1,000 in the Russian territories of Sakhalin and Kuril to the north. The Ainu are descendants of the Jomon people, who settled Japan over 20,000 years ago, long before the Yamato (ethnic Japanese) first arrived in 300 BC. Like indigenous people worldwide, centuries of institutional discrimination have critically endangered the Ainu way of life.
Most Ainu men, like their Jomon ancestors, have haplogroup D in their Y chromosomal DNA, shared with Tibetans, Andaman Islanders and Okinawans. By contrast, roughly 10% of Japanese ancestry comes from the Jomon.
Today most Ainu look Japanese, their mixed ancestry the product 20th century assimilation campaigns. An unknown number of Yamato – possibly up to 200,000 – have Ainu ancestry though many do not know it themselves. In the past, people concealed their heritage for fear of discrimination.
Traditionally the Ainu were hunter-gatherers. They hunted deer, foxes, seals, otters and other animals, fished salmon and grew vegetables and millet. One custom involved raising bears from cubs then, after a year, sacrificing and eating them in a public ritual. Bears were central to the Ainu’s animist faith. The Ainu believed spirits inhabited every aspect of the natural world, including animals, streams, mountains and trees, which were to be venerated and respected. The Ainu crafted clothing from furs, fishskin, cotton, bark and woven grass.
In 1868 the Meiji Regime formerly annexed Hokkaido, opening it to Japanese settlers, and started assimilating the Ainu. The 1899 ‘Hokkaido Aboriginal Protection Act’ forced Ainu to abandon hunting and fishing for agriculture and adopt Japanese customs and names. Speaking their native language and traditional practices like tattooing and animal sacrifice were banned. The law was not lifted until 1997.
The Cheddar Man is the oldest complete human skeleton found in Britain. He died a violent death around 7150 BC in Gough’s Cave in Chedder Gorge, Somerset, where his remains were uncovered in 1903. Cheddar Man made headlines when the latest forensic reconstruction from London’s Natural History Museum depicted him as dark skinned, a surprising revelation some criticised as politically motivated.
Europe in Cheddar Man’s time
Modern European Y chromosomal haplogroups
Despite this, scientists have speculated Mesolithic Europeans were dark-skinned for some time. The genes for blue eyes evolved before the genes which determine light skin and blond hair. The Spanish LaBrana man (pictured right), a contemporary of Cheddar Man, exhibited similar traits.
From the Parapet 