(...) Paleogenetics in Kazakhstan
- Did this successful experience of collaborative interdisciplinary research by geneticists and historians continue?
- Yes. Moreover, on the basis of our Institute of General genetics and Cytology in cooperation with the Institute of archaeology named after A. Kh. Margulan in 2014, the laboratory of population genetics was created. Its goal is to study the genetic structure of modern populations of Kazakhstan and determination of genetic relationships with the ancient nomadic tribes of Central Asia. To start we have compiled a directory of ancient human skeletal remains and important archaeological finds in Kazakhstan, related to the ethnogenesis of the Kazakhs and available for paleogenetics research.
- What are the achievements in Kazakhstan paleogenetics?
- I want to note that DNA analysis of bone remains from ancient graves very complicated and expensive method. It requires high tech equipment, supersterility of the experiment and staff development. Therefore, the selection of the bone material is very important. At first, we concentrated on artifacts representing ancient periods of the settlement of the territory of Kazakhstan and available for DNA analysis: it is a human skull from the settlement of Botai in Northern Kazakhstan, the skeleton of the Hun period from the natural history Museum (Budapest) and the remains of the so-called Urdzhar Princess. As you know, in 2014, in Urdzhar district of East Kazakhstan region in one of the kurgans, in a zone of reconstruction of the road Taskesken - Bakta, was found undisturbed burial of women of the Saka period. Under the kurgan in a stone sarcophagus there were remains of a young woman of noble birth. Analysis of ancient DNA showed that the age of burial - III-IV century BC, while mtDNA haplogroup of Urdzhar Princess - D4o. Haplogroup belongs to the “Asian branch”, who left a wide trail in the Eastern Altai, Siberia, the far North of Eurasia and among the indigenous population of America. The mother of the founder of this haplogroup lived between 9300 - 18 400 years ago in Northern Asia.
As for the ancient Hun from Hungary, dated to the middle third of the V century, the type of burial and his outfit showed that this young man belonged to the Hun elite and may have been related by the origin to the ancient Turkic tribes of Kazakhstan. DNA analysis of an ancient Hun of the skeleton determined the haplogroup L of Y-chromosome and mtDNA D4j12, which is evidence of the Asian origin of the paternal and maternal lines of this ancient find from Europe. And, what is most interesting: the type of the Y-chromosome (L-haplogroup) was found among Kazakh tribe of Argyns!
Exploring the skull from Botai, we found that it was a man, his mtDNA haplogroup is K1b2, which is of Eastern European origin and is very common in the modern population of Western Europe and America.
- Most interesting - his Y chromosome.
- Unfortunately, haplogroup on the Y-chromosome, we did not have time to identify. We ran out of expensive reagents and the money allocated for research. In addition, we have assembled a genetic Bank that represents the current population of Kazakhstan is 1,524 with a detailed ancestry tree(shezhere), so the ethnic picture of the present, we can compare with the ancient finds. This is something we will work on.
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