According to David W. Anthony the Afanasevan population was descended from people who migrated c. 3700–3300 BCE across the Eurasian Steppe from the pre-YamnayaRepin culture of the Don-Volga region.[11] It is considered as "intrusive from the west", in respect to previous local Siberian cultures.[12] According to Anthony, "The Afanasievo culture migration to the Altai was carried out by people with a Repin-type material culture, probably from the middle Volga-Ural region."[11]
A 2021 study by F. Zhang and others found that early Tarim mummies from the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia BCE were unrelated to the Afanasevians, and came from a genetically isolated population derived from Ancient North Eurasians, that had borrowed agricultural and pastoral practices from neighboring peoples.[13]
Because of its geographical location and dating, Anthony and earlier scholars such as Leo Klejn, J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair have linked the Afanasevans to the Proto-Tocharian language.[14][15][16][17] Afanasievan ancestry persisted in Dzungaria at least until the second half of the 1st millennium BCE.[13] The Shirenzigou culture (410–190 BC), just northeast of the Tarim Basin, also appears to have been derived from the Afanasievans, which, in addition to linguistics, further reinforces an Afanasievo hypothesis for the Tocharians.[18]
The first Afanasievo archaeological site was found near the mountain of Gora Afanasieva (Minusinsk Basin). It was excavated in 1920-1929 by Russian archaeologist Sergei Teploukhov, and the newly discovered culture was named after the mountain.[7] The original Afanasievo site was on the first floodplain terrace of the Yenisei river near Gora Afanasieva, 1 km to the southeast from the village of Bateni-Yarki, and is now submerged in the flood zone of the Krasnoyarsk Reservoir since 1960-67.[19][20]
The area from the Minusinsk Basin to Dzungaria is the main area of Afanasievo occupation, but recently, Afanasievo burials were found as far east as Altan Sandal and Shatar Chuluu in central Mongolia, confirming an eastward expansion about 1,500 km beyond the Altai mountains and beyond the previously known area of occupation.[5][6][21]
Datation
Conventional archaeological understanding tended to date the Afanasievo culture at around 2500–2000 BC. However radiocarbon gave dates as early as 3705 BC on wooden tools and 2874 BC on human remains.[22] The earliest of these dates have now been rejected, giving a date of around 3300 BC for the start of the culture, and 2500 BC for its termination.[23]
Mass graves were not usual for this culture.[26] Afanasievo cemeteries include both single and small collective burials with the deceased usually flexed on their back in a pit. The burial pits are arranged in rectangular, sometimes circular, enclosures marked by stone walls. It has been argued that the burials represent family burial plots with four or five enclosures constituting the local social group.
The Afanasievo economy included cattle, sheep, and goat. Horse remains, either wild or domestic, have also been found. The Afanasievo people became the first food-producers in the area. Tools were manufactured from stone (axes, arrowheads), bone (fish-hooks, points) and antler. Among the antler pieces are objects that have been identified as possible cheek-pieces for horses. Artistic representations of wheeled vehicles found in the area has been attributed to the Afanasievo culture. Ornaments of copper, silver and gold have also been found.[14]
The Afanasievans are now considered as the earliest herders of East Asia, who were instrumental in the establishment of the long tradition of pastorialism in Mongolia.[27] Their rise also corresponds with the appareance of domesticated sheep, goats, and cattle, which marks the earliest spread of Near Eastern domesticated animals and pastoralism to Inner Asia.[28]
They also introduced the initial practice of copper and bronze metallurgy.[27] Afanasievo burials include metal artifacts in copper, bronze (awls, knives), gold and silver, as well the remains of disassembled carts.[29][30][31] The Afanasievos may have used cattle-drawn wagons, as did Yamanaya communities.[32][33]
Petroglyphs of animals are associated to the area and period of the Afanasievo culture and share similarities with petroglyphs found in western and central Asia.[36][37]
2900 BC: North-westward migrations carrying Corded Ware culture, transforming into Bell Beaker; according to Anthony, westward migration west of Carpatians into Hungary as Yamnaya, transforming into Bell Beaker, possibly ancestral to Indo-Celtic (disputed).
2700 BC: Second eastward migration starting east of Carpatian mountains as Corded Ware, transforming into Fatyanovo-Balanova (2800 BCE) -> Abashevo (2200 BCE)-> Sintashta (2100-1900 BCE)-> Andronovo (1900-1700 BCE) -> Indo-Aryans.
The analysis of the full genome of Afanasievo individuals has shown that they were genetically very close to the Yamnaya population of the Pontic–Caspian steppe.[8][42][43] The Afanasievo and Yamnaya populations were much more similar to each other than to groups geographically located between the two (which unlike Afanasievo samples carried a large amount of ancestry from eastern Siberian hunter-gatherers). This indicates that the Afanasievo culture was brought to the Altai region via migration from the western Eurasian steppe, which occurred with little admixture from local populations.[43][44]
From the Altai mountains, steppe-derived Afanasievo ancestry spread to the east into Mongolia and to the south into Xinjiang. The Yamnaya-related lineages and ancestry in Afanasievo disappeared in the course of the Bronze Age in the Altai region and Mongolia, being replaced by the migrating populations from the Sintashta culture arriving from the west. In Dzungaria, Afanasievo-related ancestry persisted at least into the late first millennium BCE.[45][46]
The Afanasievo people, accompanied by their pastoralist technologies, are one of the major foreign contributors to the genetic profile of the modern northwestern Chinese.[47]
A 2018 study analyzed the maternal haplogroups of 7 Afanasievo specimens. 71% belonged to West Eurasian maternal haplogroups U, H and R, while 29% belonged to the East Eurasian maternal haplogroup C.[48]
Populations east of the Afanasievans
Afanasievo burials are recorded as far as central Mongolia, at the sites of Altan Sandal and Shatar Chuluu.[5][6] To their east, in the modern area of eastern Mongolia and beyond, resided Neolithic cultures of Prehistoric Mongolia, probably derived from the Ancient Northeast Asians, who were the predecessors of the Slab Grave culture of eastern Mongolia.[49][50]
Paleoepidemiology
At Afanasevo Gora, two strains of Yersinia pestis have been extracted from human teeth. One is dated 2909–2679 BCE; the other, 2887–2677 BCE. Both are from the same (mass) grave of seven people, and are presumed near-contemporary.[26] This strain's genes express flagellin, which triggers the human immune response; so it was not a bubonic plague.[51]
Possible links to other cultures
Genetic proximity of the Afanasievo culture () with ancient (color) and modern (grey) populations. Primary Component Analysis (detail).[13]Admixture proportions of Afanasievo populations. They combined Eastern Hunter Gatherer ( EHG), Caucasian Hunter-Gatherer ( CHG) and Anatolian Neolithic () ancestry, and were almost indentical with Yamnaya people.[52]
Because of its numerous traits attributed to the early Indo-Europeans, like metal-use, horses and wheeled vehicles, and cultural relations with Kurgan steppe cultures, the Afanasevans are believed to have been Indo-European-speaking.[14] They were genetically similar to the Yamnaya populations of Western Steppe Herders.[53] Genetic studies have demonstrated a discontinuity between Afanasievo and the succeeding Siberian-originating Okunevo culture, as well as genetic differences between Afanasievo and the Tarim mummies.[54] A genomic study published in 2021 found that the population of earliest Tarim Basin cultures (the Tarim mummies, dated to c. 2000 BCE) had high levels of Ancient North Eurasian ancestry and no connection with Afanasievo populations.[55]
Numerous scholars have suggested that the Afanasievo culture may be responsible for the introduction of metallurgy to China.[56][57][58] In particular, contacts between the Afanasievo culture and the Majiayao culture and the Qijia culture are considered for the transmission of bronze technology.[59][60]
The Afanasievo culture may also display cultural borrowings from the earlier Banpo culture (c. 4000 BCE), particularly in the area of painted pottery, suggesting influence from the Far East, specifically from Neolithic China, on the Afanasievo culture and other cultural complexes in the Middle Yenisei region.[61][62]
Successors
In the Altai Mountains and to the southeast, Afanasievans seem to have coexisted with the early period of the Chemurchek culture for some time, as some of their burials are contemporary and some of the artifacts of the burials coincide.[63]
To the north, the Afanasievo culture was succeeded by the Okunev culture, which is considered as an extension of the Paleosiberian local non-Indo-European forest culture into the region.[14] The Okunev culture nevertheless displays influences from the earlier Afanasievo culture.[8] The region was subsequently occupied by the Andronovo, Karasuk, Tagar and Tashtyk cultures, respectively.[64][65]
Allentoft et al. (2015) confirmed that the Afanasevo culture was replaced by the second wave of Indo-European migrations from the Andronovo culture during late Bronze Age and early Iron Age.[8][note 2] The Andronovo population was found to be genetically related, but clearly distinct from the Afanasievo population.[8]
Several scholars propose the Afanasievo culture as the ancestors of the Tocharians, who lived on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (in present-day Xinjiang, China) in the first millennium AD.[8] The Tocharian languages are believed to have become extinct during the 9th century AD. The Indo-European speaking Tocharian peoples of the Tarim city-states then intermixed with the Uyghurs, whose Old Uyghur language spread through the region.
Shirenzigou culture (410-190 BCE)
Surroundings of the Shirenzigou archaeological site in Barkol County
Genetic studies on Iron Age individuals of the Shirenzigou site dated to circa 200 BCE have shown a fairly balanced admixture between the West Eurasian and East Eurasian genetic pools.[18] The West Eurasian component was Yamnaya-related, while the East Eurasian component was Northeast Asian-related. The Yamanaya component suggest a strong probability that the Shirenzigou populations were derived from the Afanasievo culture to the north, and spoke an Indo-European language.[18] This reinforces an Afanasievo hypothesis for the Tocharians, often called the "Steppe hypotheses", rather than an hypotheses favouring BMAC and Andronovo Culture origins, the "Bactrian Oasis hypotheses".[18]
Notes
Timeline of Afanasievo and later cultures in western and central Mongolia
^Allentoft et al. (2015) sampled four females from the Afanasievo culture, two individuals carried mtDNA haplogroup J2a2a, one carried T2c1a2, and one carried U5a1a1. Narasimhan et al. (2019) analyzed the remains of 24 individuals ascribed to the Afanasievo culture. Of the 14 samples of Y-DNA extracted, 10 belonged to R1b1a1a2a2, 1 to R1b1a1a2a, and 3 belonged to Q1a2. The mtDNA samples belonged to subclades of U (particularly of U5), along with T, J, H and K.
^According to Allentoft and coauthors (2015): "Afanasievo culture persisted in central Asia and, perhaps, Mongolia and China until they themselves were replaced by fierce warriors in chariots called the Sintashta (also known as the Andronovo culture)".
^ abcdJeong, Choongwon (12 November 2020). "A Dynamic 6,000-Year Genetic History of Eurasia's Eastern Steppe". Cell. 183 (4): 890–904.e29. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2020.10.015. ISSN0092-8674. PMC7664836. PMID33157037. Although the majority of Afanasievo burials reported to date are located in the Altai mountains and Upper Yenisei regions, the Early Bronze Age (EBA) site of Shatar Chuluu in the southern Khangai Mountains of central Mongolia has yielded Afanasievo-style graves with proteomic evidence of ruminant milk consumption (Wilkin et al., 2020a) and a western Eurasian mitochondrial haplogroup (Rogers et al., 2020). Analyzing two of these individuals (Afanasievo_Mongolia, 3112–2917 cal. BCE), we find that their genetic profiles are indistinguishable from that of published Afanasievo individuals from the Yenisei region (Allentoft et al., 2015; Narasimhan et al., 2019) (Figure 2; Figure S5C; Table S5B), and thus these two Afanasievo individuals confirm that the EBA expansion of Western Steppe herders (WSH) extended a further 1,500 km eastward beyond the Altai into the heart of central Mongolia
^Клейн Л. С. Миграция тохаров в свете археологии // Stratum plus. Т. 2. С. 178—187.
^ abcdNing, Chao; Wang, Chuan-Chao; Gao, Shizhu; Yang, Yang; Zhang, Xue; Wu, Xiyan; Zhang, Fan; Nie, Zhongzhi; Tang, Yunpeng; Robbeets, Martine; Ma, Jian; Krause, Johannes; Cui, Yinqiu (5 August 2019). "Ancient Genomes Reveal Yamnaya-Related Ancestry and a Potential Source of Indo-European Speakers in Iron Age Tianshan". Current Biology. 29 (15): 2526–2532.e4. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2019.06.044. ISSN0960-9822. Our results suggest that the Yamnaya and/or Afanasievo-related ancestry expanded further south through the Dzungarian Basin into the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang since at least the second millennium BCE and thus support the "Steppe hypothesis" for the early peopling of Xinjiang.
^ abRasmussen, S15-16. These samples are marked "RISE509" and "RISE511".
^ abHoneychurch, William; Rogers, Leland; Amartuvshin, Chunag; Diimaajav, Erdenebaatar; Erdene-Ochir, Nasan-Ochir; Hall, Mark E.; Hrivnyak, Michelle (1 June 2021). "The earliest herders of East Asia: Examining Afanasievo entry to Central Mongolia". Archaeological Research in Asia. 26: 100264. doi:10.1016/j.ara.2021.100264. The Afanasievo world reportedly overlaps the borders of five nations including two countries of East Asia: Mongolia and China. Across these several regions, the first appearance of domestic herd animals (sheep, goat, cattle) and the initial practice of copper and bronze metallurgy are associated with Afanasievo communities. Since mobile pastoralism has long been a significant part of the Mongolian cultural tradition the question of when, where, and how Afanasievo groups entered Mongolia is of extreme interest to archaeologists.(...) We argue that the impact of Afanasievo entry into East Asia was a transformative process but must be understood in the context of significant innovations made by East Asian indigenous communities, eventually leading to a unique form of eastern steppe pastoralism in Mongolia.
^Taylor, William Timothy Treal; Clark, Julia; Bayarsaikhan, Jamsranjav; Tuvshinjargal, Tumurbaatar; Jobe, Jessica Thompson; Fitzhugh, William; Kortum, Richard; Spengler, Robert N.; Shnaider, Svetlana; Seersholm, Frederik Valeur; Hart, Isaac; Case, Nicholas; Wilkin, Shevan; Hendy, Jessica; Thuering, Ulrike; Miller, Bryan; Miller, Alicia R. Ventresca; Picin, Andrea; Vanwezer, Nils; Irmer, Franziska; Brown, Samantha; Abdykanova, Aida; Shultz, Daniel R.; Pham, Victoria; Bunce, Michael; Douka, Katerina; Jones, Emily Lena; Boivin, Nicole (22 January 2020). "Early Pastoral Economies and Herding Transitions in Eastern Eurasia". Scientific Reports. 10 (1): 1001. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-57735-y. hdl:21.11116/0000-0005-8939-1. ISSN2045-2322. The earliest circumstantial evidence for herding lifeways in Mongolia can be traced to ca. 3000 BCE, when burials attributed to the Afanasievo cultural horizon can be found in some areas of western and central Mongolia. These tombs contain the remains of disassembled carts as well as sheep and cattle bones, findings that has been drawn upon to infer that western animal domesticates were likely introduced to the Eastern Steppes of Mongolia at this time, although some scholars suggest that domestic sheep may have already been present in some areas of northern China as early as ca. 3700 BCE. Petroglyphs depicting tethered cattle, cattle carts, and horses have been found depicted on stones used to construct ritual and funerary sites from the Middle Bronze Age Chemurchek culture in western Mongolia and at least one of these features, dated to the early second millennium BCE, contains equine skeletal remains.
^Augustinová, Anna (1 January 2018). "IBEXES ON BLACK STONES: NEW PETROGLYPHS IN SURKHANDARYA (South Uzbekistan)". Art of the Orient. Yet another analogy comes from the more distant region—Ukok Plateau in the Altai Mountains—the stylistic similarity is obvious and in the context of the nomadic societies that cover long distances, it is not incomprehensible. Here, depicted goats and ibexes, similar to those in the piedmonts of the Kugitang, have been dated to the south Siberian Late Bronze Age, represented in the area by the Afanasievo culture.
^Nordgvist; Heyd (2020), "The Forgotten Child of the Wider Corded Ware Family: Russian Fatyanovo Culture in Context", Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 86: 65–93, doi:10.1017/ppr.2020.9, S2CID228923806
^Narasimhan2019, Supplementary Information, p. 235: "Based on the PCA and ADMIXTURE plots, we observe that the individuals from Kanai_MBA, Okunevo_BA.AG, and Central_Steppe_EMBA.SG are genetically homogenous, and as expected based on the geography, more closely related to ESHGs than to WSHGs. In contrast to these individuals, individuals from the Afanasievo culture appear to be genetically similar to those from the western Steppe, consistent with the hypothesis of population movement from the west to the east that leapfrogged the intervening groups with primarily ancestry related to Central_Steppe_EMBA."
^Zhang & Ning 2021: "Taken together, these results indicate that the early dispersal of the Afanasievo herders into Dzungaria was accompanied by a substantial level of genetic mixing with local autochthonous populations, a pattern distinct from that of the initial formation of the Afanasievo culture in southern Siberia."
^Wang, Chuan-Chao; Yeh, Hui-Yuan; Popov, Alexander N.; Zhang, Hu-Qin; Matsumura, Hirofumi; Sirak, Kendra; Cheronet, Olivia; Kovalev, Alexey; Rohland, Nadin; Kim, Alexander M.; Mallick, Swapan (March 2021). "Genomic insights into the formation of human populations in East Asia". Nature. 591 (7850): 413–419. Bibcode:2021Natur.591..413W. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03336-2. ISSN1476-4687. PMC7993749. PMID33618348. "Beginning in the Middle Bronze Age, there is no compelling evidence in the Mongolian time transect data for a persistence of the Yamnaya-derived lineages that spread with Afanasievo. Instead the Yamnaya-related ancestry can only be modelled as deriving from a later spread related to people of the Middle to Late Bronze Age Sintashta and Andronovo horizons who were themselves a mixture of ~2/3 Yamnaya-related and 1/3 European farmer-related ancestry4,5,6. The Sintashta-related ancestry is detected in proportions of 0–57% in groups from this time onward, with substantial proportions of Sintashta-related ancestry only in western Mongolia (Figure 3, Online Table 25). For all these groups, qpAdm ancestry models pass with Afanasievo in the outgroups while models with Afanasievo as the source and Sintashta in the outgroups are all rejected (Figure 3, Online Table 25)."
^Hollard, Clémence; et al. (2018). "New genetic evidence of affinities and discontinuities between bronze age Siberian populations". Am J Phys Anthropol. 167 (1): 97–107. doi:10.1002/ajpa.23607. PMID29900529. S2CID205337212.
^Rawson, Jessica (April 2017). "China and the steppe: reception and resistance". Antiquity. 91 (356): 375–388. doi:10.15184/aqy.2016.276. The development of several key technologies in China —bronze and iron metallurgy and horse-drawn chariots— arose out of the relations of central China, of the Erlitou period (c. 1700–1500 BC), the Shang (c.1500–1046 BC) and the Zhou (1046–771 BC) dynasties, with their neighbours in the steppe. Intermediaries in these exchanges were disparate groups in a broad border area of relatively high land around the heart of China, the Central Plains. The societies of central China were already so advanced that, when these foreign innovations were adopted, they were transformed within highly organised social and cultural systems.
^JIANJUN, MEI (2003). "Cultural Interaction between China and Central Asia during the Bronze Age"(PDF). Proceedings of the British Academy. 121: 1–39. the argument for possible Afanasievo-Xinjiang contact based on the finds at the Gumugou cemetery in the north-eastern rim of the Tarim basin would seem reasonable and needs to be kept open for the future archaeological finds. In other words, the possibility for the dispersal of early copperbased metallurgy from the Eurasian steppe into Xinjiang and further east to Gansu cannot be excluded at present and will have to be considered when further archaeological evidence becomes available.
^Wan, Xiang (2011). "Early development of bronze metallurgy in Eastern Eurasia". Sino-Platonic Papers. 213: 4–5. The metal-using Afanasievo culture is probably the origin of bronze metallurgy in Northwest China." (...) "Therefore it is conspicuous that one of the earliest bronze cultures in China, the Qijia culture, might well have borrowed its bronze metallurgy from the Steppe, via Siba, Tianshanbeilu, and cultures in the Altai region.
^Kiselov (Киселёв), С.В. (1962). Study of the Minusinsk stone sculptures (К изучению минусинских каменных изваяний). Historical and archaeological collection ( Историко-археологический сборник). pp. 53–61. During the excavations of the world-famous Yanshao [Yangshao] culture site near the village of Banpo near Xi'an, among numerous painted vessels, two large open bowls with paintings were found, especially important for comparison with images of masks from the Minusinsk-Khakass basin. Inside these bowls are painted masks that are strikingly similar to Minusinsk ones. They are distinguished by a horizontal division of the face into three zones, the presence of horns and a triangular figure above the head, as well as triangles on the chin (Fig. 2 ). Such coincidences can hardly be explained by mere chance. Even a few years before the discoveries in Ban-po, I had to pay attention to a number of features that bring the Eneolithic Afanasiev culture of the middle Yenisei closer to the culture of painted ceramics of Northern China. Apparently, the finds in Ban-po once again confirm these observations. At the same time, the noted finds and comparisons show that the appearance of images, so characteristic of the ancient stone sculptures of the middle Yenisei, not only goes back to the deep antiquity of the pre-Afanasiev time, but is apparently associated with the complex world of symbolic images of the Far East, now known from monuments of the Neolithic of Ancient China.
^Zhang, Kai (4 February 2021). "The Spread and Integration of Painted pottery Art along the Silk Road". Region - Educational Research and Reviews. 3 (1): 18. doi:10.32629/RERR.V3I1.242. S2CID234007445. The early cultural exchanges between the East and the West are mainly reflected in several aspects: first, in the late Neolithic period of painted pottery culture, the Yangshao culture (5000-3000 BC) from the Central Plains spreadwestward, which had a great impact on Majiayao culture (3000-2000 BC), and then continued to spread to Xinjiang and Central Asia through the transition of Hexi corridor
^Kovalev, A. A., and Erdenebaatar, D. (2009). Discovery of new cultures of the Bronze Age in Mongolia according to the data obtained by the international Central Asian archaeological expedition. In Bemmann, J., Parzinger, H., Pohl, E., and Tseveendorzh, D. (eds.), Current Archaeological Research in Mongolia, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, p.158: "Two 14C-dates that have come from the charcoal found in the earliest (ritual) pit of Chemurchek barrow No. 2 appeared to be in the same period as the four radiocarbon dates from the charcoal in the fi lling of the burial pit of barrow No. 1 that belongs to the Afanasievo culture. It may indicate that during the earliest period of existence of the Chemurchek culture, its population in the Altai region maybe coexisted with
population of the Afanasievo culture. A pillar, erected at the eastern side of an Afanasievo culture barrow (Fig. 1.1), as well as the finding of a bone arrowhead (Fig. 1.4), which is similar to arrowheads from Kulala Ula 1 and Kara Tumsik barrows (Fig. 2.10,12), also confirm this
proposition."
Kozshin, P (1970). "O psaliach is afanasievskih mogil". Sovetskaya Archeologiya. 4: 189–93.
Einführung in die Ethnologie Zentralasiens Marion Linska, Andrea Handl, Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek (2003) (.doc version)
Peyrot, Michaël (2019). "The deviant typological profile of the Tocharian branch of Indo-European may be due to Uralic substrate influence". Indo-European Linguistics. 7: 72–121. doi:10.1163/22125892-00701007. hdl:1887/139205. S2CID213924514..
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: Original site of Gora Afanasieva, Minusinsk Basin.[1]
: Ukok Plateau Afanasievo burials.[2]
: Ürümqi (Tuqiu) Afanasievo burials.[3] The area of Dzungaria also had Afanasievo burials and close genetic connection.[4]
: Afanasievo burials at Altan Sandal and Shatar Chuluu in central Mongolia.[5][6] See Afanasievo sites in Mongolia,_view_1.jpg)
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![Bronze knife and bronze awl from the Afanasievo burial of Khuurai Gobi,[34] Bayan-Ölgii Province, 3000 BCE. National Museum of Mongolia.[35]](/en/File:Early_bronze_Age,_bronze_knife_and_awl,_3000_BCE,_Khuurai_Gobi,_Western_Mongolia.jpg)
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