TY - JOUR T1 - The genetic prehistory of the Greater Caucasus JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/322347 SP - 322347 AU - Chuan-Chao Wang AU - Sabine Reinhold AU - Alexey Kalmykov AU - Antje Wissgott AU - Guido Brandt AU - Choongwon Jeong AU - Olivia Cheronet AU - Matthew Ferry AU - Eadaoin Harney AU - Denise Keating AU - Swapan Mallick AU - Nadin Rohland AU - Kristin Stewardson AU - Anatoly R. Kantorovich AU - Vladimir E. Maslov AU - Vladimira G. Petrenko AU - Vladimir R. Erlikh AU - Biaslan Ch. Atabiev AU - Rabadan G. Magomedov AU - Philipp L. Kohl AU - Kurt W. Alt AU - Sandra L. Pichler AU - Claudia Gerling AU - Harald Meller AU - Benik Vardanyan AU - Larisa Yeganyan AU - Alexey D. Rezepkin AU - Dirk Mariaschk AU - Natalia Berezina AU - Julia Gresky AU - Katharina Fuchs AU - Corina Knipper AU - Stephan Schiffels AU - Elena Balanovska AU - Oleg Balanovsky AU - Iain Mathieson AU - Thomas Higham AU - Yakov B. Berezin AU - Alexandra Buzhilova AU - Viktor Trifonov AU - Ron Pinhasi AU - Andrej B. Belinskiy AU - David Reich AU - Svend Hansen AU - Johannes Krause AU - Wolfgang Haak Y1 - 2018/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/05/16/322347.abstract N2 - Archaeogenetic studies have described the formation of Eurasian ‘steppe ancestry’ as a mixture of Eastern and Caucasus hunter-gatherers. However, it remains unclear when and where this ancestry arose and whether it was related to a horizon of cultural innovations in the 4th millennium BCE that subsequently facilitated the advance of pastoral societies likely linked to the dispersal of Indo-European languages. To address this, we generated genome-wide SNP data from 45 prehistoric individuals along a 3000-year temporal transect in the North Caucasus. We observe a genetic separation between the groups of the Caucasus and those of the adjacent steppe. The Caucasus groups are genetically similar to contemporaneous populations south of it, suggesting that – unlike today – the Caucasus acted as a bridge rather than an insurmountable barrier to human movement. The steppe groups from Yamnaya and subsequent pastoralist cultures show evidence for previously undetected farmer-related ancestry from different contact zones, while Steppe Maykop individuals harbour additional Upper Palaeolithic Siberian and Native American related ancestry. ER -