For thousands of years the Eurasian steppes have been a centre of human migrations and cultural change. Here we sequence the genomes of 137 ancient humans (about 1× average coverage), covering a period of 4,000 years, to understand the population history of the Eurasian steppes after the Bronze Age migrations. We find that the genetics of the Scythian groups that dominated the Eurasian steppes throughout the Iron Age were highly structured, with diverse origins comprising Late Bronze Age herders, European farmers and southern Siberian hunter-gatherers. Later, Scythians admixed with the eastern steppe nomads who formed the Xiongnu confederations, and moved westward in about the second or third century BC, forming the Hun traditions in the fourth-fifth century AD, and carrying with them plague that was basal to the Justinian plague. These nomads were further admixed with East Asian groups during several short-term khanates in the Medieval period. These historical events transformed the Eurasian steppes from being inhabited by Indo-European speakers of largely West Eurasian ancestry to the mostly Turkic-speaking groups of the present day, who are primarily of East Asian ancestry.
Steppe communities have traditionally been viewed as pastoralist groups with similar herdbased economies. Recent scholarship, however, warns against assumptions of homogeneity and new scientific techniques are providing a more nuanced approach to steppe archaeology, with increasing indications of diversity. This recent evidence further suggests that considering these communities as primarily pastoralist may hide a variety of subsistence strategies, such as fishing and cultivation. Here, we consider direct evidence for diet (in the form of stable isotope analysis) from Bronze Age communities from central Kazakhstan, in the semi-arid steppe zone. We find that the diversity recently suggested for communities across the steppe zone can be found within sites in the Karaganda region. This suggests that individuals exercised choice in their dietary habits that led to dietary differences large enough to be detectable isotopically. The results also highlight the inclusion of fish in the diet of these 'pastoral' populations, with indications that some individuals in the Final Bronze Age consumed notable amounts of millet. This shows that these 'pastoralist' economies also engaged in fishing throughout the Bronze Age, with millet cultivation becoming increasingly important in the Final Bronze Age. As such, our understanding of what it means, in this context, to be a pastoralist requires further consideration.
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