New data on the genetic composition of the Andronovo populations from Southern Siberia (the Upper Ob region and Kulunda steppe)

Analysis of the genetic composition of the Andronovo (Fedorovo) population which migrated to Southern Siberia in the first half of the second millennium BC has mainly focused on establishing the position of this population among other Eurasian Bronze Age groups and on reconstructing its origins. However, no representative genetic data on the local Andronovo populations is available so far. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Andronovo migration was a complex multistage process. A detailed reconstruction of this migration is impossible without understanding genetic specificity of the local Andronovo populations. This study presents the preliminary results of a paleogenetic research into the local Andronovo groups from the burial grounds of the Upper Ob region and the Kulunda steppe (Firsovo XIV, Chekanovsky log-2, -10, and Rublevo VIII), including the data on their mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome. New results confirm that the common features of the gene pool of the Andronovo populations before their intensive interaction with the indigenous groups of Siberia was the dominance of the Western Eurasian haplogroups of mitochondrial DNA (T, U5a, H, J, and others) and haplogroup R1a (R1a1a) of the Y-chromosome. Apparently, the populations of the Upper Ob region and Kulunda steppe largely retained genetic features typical of the migrants without interaction with native Siberian populations as opposed to, for example, the Baraba forest-steppe. Further genetic studies of representative local series of the Andronovo population in various regions of Siberia will make it possible to produce more subtle reconstructions of sophisticated migration processes. Large expectations are associated with parallel study of diachronic paleoanthropological evidence using the methods ofpaleogenetics and isotope analysis.