Around 5,000 years ago, the herders of old, who traveled west on horseback and pulled carts pulled by oxen, eliminated a genetic gap between distant farmers and hunters, gatherers, and fishers. They came from grassland homelands in southwest Asia.
These ancient herders, called the Yamnaya people, left behind a molecular legacy that altered the genetic profile of Eurasians, affecting everything from the height to the susceptibility to certain diseases of their descendants (SN: 3/3/23). For example, it made people today who are primarily descended from northern Europe more susceptible to multiple sclerosis. In four publications published on January 10 in Nature, an international team of researchers presents these findings—which are based on DNA examinations of over 1,600 ancient individuals—as well as fresh insights into the Yamnaya’s origins.
What is already known about the genetic range of Yamnaya people is expanded upon by the new DNA findings. Evolutionary biologist Morten Allentoft of Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and colleagues say that it reveals that the Yamnaya mated with members of a distinctive eastern European culture, named the Globular Amphora Culture for its large, globe-shaped vessels, before expanding into northern Europe. According to Allentoft’s group’s hypothesis (SN: 11/15/17), the hybrid population quickly adapted to its new environment and developed into a dominating culture known to archaeologists as the Corded Ware Culture.
Not involved in the current research, Volker Heyd, an archaeologist at the University of Helsinki, adds that these genetic findings are consistent with earlier archaeological data. According to Heyd, objects from the Corded Ware Culture also show stylistic influences from non-Yamnaya people who originated in northern, forested regions of western Asia.
Allentoft and colleagues used previously collected genetic data from over 1,300 ancient Europeans with recently retrieved DNA from the bones and teeth of 317 Europeans and western Asians to conduct their investigation. The majority of the sampled people were alive between 11,000 and 3,000 years ago.
The new DNA evidence links the Yamnaya herders to hunter-gatherers who lived close to the Don River in western Russia, even if there is still much unknown about their lineage. The researchers estimate that the hunter-gatherer skeletons discovered during excavations at Golubaya Krinitsa, an old Russian cemetery, date to approximately 7,300 years ago.
According to archaeological discoveries, Yamnaya culture began to emerge between 5,400 and 5,300 years ago, therefore the discovery that genetic heritage for the group emerged two millennia earlier is “quite surprising,” according to Heyd. He believes that Yamnaya genetic origins were influenced by hunter-gatherers, whose over 7,000-year-old remains and artifacts have been discovered throughout a significant portion of southern Asia, not just in the Russian graves.
The herders’ ancient expansion over Europe left a significant genetic legacy. According to William Barrie and colleagues at the University of Cambridge, computational biologist, Yamnaya people have contributed to a higher genetic risk of multiple sclerosis, or MS, a condition in which the immune system attacks the brain and spinal cord, among northern Europeans.
Over 2.5 million people worldwide suffer from MS. It is unknown exactly how viruses, environmental variables, and genes combine to cause MS (SN: 8/11/22). MS rates are approximately twice as high as those reported for most southern Europeans and can reach as high as 303 per 100,000 people among northwest Europeans, including Scandinavians.
Barrie’s team compared the DNA of extinct Eurasians with DNA already gathered from about 410,000 white British people. The scientists estimated that among Yamnaya herders, particular gene alterations that had previously been connected to an increased risk of MS originated about 5,000 years ago. These gene variations are still highly correlated in northern Europe, where they were carried there by Yamnaya migrations.
At an online press conference the researchers hosted in Copenhagen on January 9, Barrie stated, “Our analyses indicate that MS gene variants helped people survive in the past.” Researchers speculate that Yamnaya herders’ immune systems were strengthened against infections spread by their horses, cattle, sheep, and goats due to gene alterations associated with multiple sclerosis.
They think that inheriting these historically favorable genes for herders has raised the likelihood of MS for those who inherit modern, sanitized surroundings’ alteration of immune systems. Barrie stated, “This is the first indication of this [evolutionary process] in an autoimmune disorder.”
The latest ancient DNA analysis also revealed additional hereditary illness concerns. For example, Barrie’s research finds that modern eastern Europeans, who show significant ancestry from ancient hunter-gatherers in that area, inherited high levels of APOE4, a risk gene for Alzheimer’s disease, from those tribes (SN: 9/22/17). The gene variant’s historical advantages are unknown.
In a different study, geneticist Evan Irving-Pease of the University of Copenhagen and associates found that Yamnaya ancestry was linked to taller adult heights and lighter skin tones in both ancient and contemporary northern Europeans compared to their southern counterparts.
In a further surprise, Allentoft and colleagues describe in a second publication that tall, light-skinned Yamnaya people, or their direct descendants, served as the forebears of modern Danes after they arrived in what is now Denmark approximately 4,850 years ago. According to the researchers, farmers who had moved into the area after driving out local hunter-gatherer tribes around 1,000 years ago were replaced by Yamnaya ancestors.
According to Allentoft’s group, Danish archaeologists frequently believe that modern Danes are derived from hunter-gatherers who lived in what is now Denmark 14,000–15,000 years ago while the last Ice Age was ending.
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