Cranioscopic data on the population of the steppe and the forest-steppe belts in Eastern Europe of IV-III mill. bc

The paper explores six cranioscopic attributes on 487 skulls dating to the early and the middle stages of the Bronze Age. The skulls originate from the steppe and the forest-steppe belts in Eastern Europe. The samples were selected mostly based on the cultural and regional principle. The inter-group variability of the attributes was analyzed with the help of contingency tables, the Fisher exact test and the principal components method. The analysis revealed substantial morphological diversity of the Yamnaya local groups which is comparable with the differences between modern geographically remote Caucasian populations of different origin. The paper highlights resemblance between the Poltavka individuals and the individuals from the Catacomb cultures who lived north of the Lower Don region. The origin of the Catacomb individuals inhabiting the regions located further to the south along the left tributaries of the Lower Don, the Volga-Don interfluve and the northwestern Caspian region is apparently linked to the population of the Caucasus and Transcaucasia.