Dragon age origins natural bodies
The Yamnaya/Afanasievo steppe hypothesis posits that the Afanasievo-related EBA populations in the Altai–Sayan mountains spread via the Dzungarian Basin into the Tarim Basin and subsequently founded the agropastoralist communities making up the Xiaohe horizon around 2000 bc (refs. Multiple contrasting hypotheses have been suggested by scholars to explain the origins and Western elements of the Xiaohe horizon, including the Yamnaya/Afanasievo steppe hypothesis 16, the Bactrian oasis hypothesis 21 and the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC) island biogeography hypothesis 4. These and related Bronze Age sites are grouped within the Xiaohe archaeological horizon on the basis of their shared material culture 13, 16, 20. Such mummies have now been found throughout the Tarim Basin, among which the earliest are those found in the lowest layers of the cemeteries at Gumugou (2135–1939 bc), Xiaohe (1884–1736 bc) and Beifang (1785–1664 bc) (Fig. Since the late 1990s, the discovery of hundreds of naturally mummified human remains dating to around 2000 bc to ad 200 in the Tarim Basin has attracted international attention due to their so-called Western physical appearance, their felted and woven woollen clothing, and their agropastoral economy that included cattle, sheep/goats, wheat, barley, millet and even kefir cheese 16, 17, 18, 19. 13), little is known about earlier Xinjiang populations and their possible genetic relationships with the Afanasievo or other groups. However, although Afanasievo-related ancestry has been confirmed among Iron Age Dzungarian populations (around 200–400 bc) 7, and Tocharian is recorded in Buddhist texts from the Tarim Basin dating to ad 500–1000 (ref. Linguists have hypothesized that the Afanasievo dispersal brought the now extinct Tocharian branch of the Indo-European language family eastwards, separating it from other Indo-European languages by the third or fourth millennium bc (ref. Within and around the Dzungarian Basin, pastoralist Early Bronze Age (EBA) Afanasievo (3000–2600 bc) and Chemurchek (or Qiemu’erqieke) (2500–1700 bc) 12 sites have been plausibly linked to the Afanasievo herders of the Altai–Sayan region in southern Siberia (3150–2750 bc), who in turn have close genetic ties with the Yamnaya (3500–2500 bc) of the Pontic–Caspian steppe located 3,000 km to the west 13, 14, 15. Instead, although Tocharian may have been plausibly introduced to the Dzungarian Basin by Afanasievo migrants during the Early Bronze Age, we find that the earliest Tarim Basin cultures appear to have arisen from a genetically isolated local population that adopted neighbouring pastoralist and agriculturalist practices, which allowed them to settle and thrive along the shifting riverine oases of the Taklamakan Desert. Our results do not support previous hypotheses for the origin of the Tarim mummies, who were argued to be Proto-Tocharian-speaking pastoralists descended from the Afanasievo 1, 2 or to have originated among the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex 3 or Inner Asian Mountain Corridor cultures 4. The Tarim individuals from the site of Xiaohe further exhibit strong evidence of milk proteins in their dental calculus, indicating a reliance on dairy pastoralism at the site since its founding. We find that the Early Bronze Age Dzungarian individuals exhibit a predominantly Afanasievo ancestry with an additional local contribution, and the Early–Middle Bronze Age Tarim individuals contain only a local ancestry. Here we present genomic data from 5 individuals dating to around 3000–2800 bc from the Dzungarian Basin and 13 individuals dating to around 2100–1700 bc from the Tarim Basin, representing the earliest yet discovered human remains from North and South Xinjiang, respectively.
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The identity of the earliest inhabitants of Xinjiang, in the heart of Inner Asia, and the languages that they spoke have long been debated and remain contentious 1. The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies