CRANIOMETRIC EVIDENCE OF THE EARLY CAUCASOID MIGRATIONS TO SIBERIA AND CENTRAL ASIA

**Lucas** · 09-20-2019, 01:56 PM

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/1...ae.2010.02.014

Measurements of 220 male Neolithic and Bronze Age cranial series from Eurasia were subjected to multivariate statistical analysis. The results support the idea that people associated with the Catacomb culture played a major role in the origin of the Afanasyev culture. Okunev people of the Minusinsk Basin, those associated with Karakol, Ust-Tartas, and Krotovo cultures, and those buried in the Andronov-type cemeteries at Cherno-ozerye and Yelovka were of predominantly local Siberian origin. The Samus series resembles that from Poltavka burials. The Okunev people of Tuva and probably Yelunino people were likely descendants of the Pit Grave (Yamnaya) and early Catacomb populations of the Ukraine. The same is true of the Alakul people of western Kazakhstan, who in addition, have numerous af¿ nities amongst Neolithic and Early Bronze Age groups of Central and Western Europe. The probable ancestors of certain Fedorov populations were the Afanasyev tribes of the Altai, whereas other Fedorov groups apparently descended from late Pit Grave and Catacomb tribes of the Northern Caucasus and the northwestern Caspian. People of Gumugou are closest to Fedorov groups of northeastern Kazakhstan and Rudny Altai, suggesting that Caucasoids migrated to Xinjiang from the north rather than from the west. Describing the gracile Caucasoids of Siberia and Eastern Central Asia as “Mediterraneans” is misleading since they display virtually no craniometric ties with the Near Eastern, Southwestern Central Asian or Transcaucasian groups. The totality of evidence suggests that they were Nordics.

Routes of the early Caucasoid migrations to Siberia and Eastern Central Asia have become a focus of scholarly interest in recent years since this issue is closely related to that of the Indo-European homelands. Certain archaeologists believe that migrants from the Near East played a major role in the origin of Southern Siberian, and these theories are supported by those physical anthropologists who claim that all gracile Caucasoids are Mediterraneans, i.e. southerners by origin (see especially (Khudaverdyan, 2009)). Not long ago I expressed a similar view (Kozintsev, 2000).

Recently, thanks to the work of a number of craniologists, S.I. Kruts in particular, the craniometric database related to the Bronze Age steppe populations of the Ukraine and Southern Russia has grown manifold. Its statistical analysis has led to the revision of earlier views. A more detailed craniometric comparison of each gracile Southern Siberian group with all others suggests that there is no reason to speak of migrations to Southern Siberia from the Near East, Southwestern Central Asia or the Transcaucasia, where Southern Caucasoids (Mediterraneans) were distributed (Kozintsev, 2007, 2008).

Recently, an article by a group of French geneticists was published (Keyser et al., 2009), which reported on the analysis of DNA extracted from the bone samples taken from Andronov, Karasuk, Tagar, and Tashtyk human remains. Six genes controlling eye and hair color were studied. Most individuals buried in Bronze and Iron Age mounds in Southern Siberia (15 of 23, or 65 %) had light or mixed eye color, and 8 out of 12 (67 %) had fair or chestnut hair. Given that the Bronze Age people of the Tarim Basin (the likely proto-Tocharians), whose bodies are excellently preserved thanks to natural mummification (Mallory, Mair, 2000), had the same hair color, and that a Russian admixture alone can by no means account for the depigmentation observed in modern natives of Southern Siberia and Kazakhstan, the conclusion is obvious.
The principal source of early Caucasoid migrations to Siberia and Eastern Central Asia was located not in the Near East, but in Europe, moreover not in its southern part but in areas affected by the depigmentation process. Nearly eighty years ago this conclusion was reached by G.F. Debetz (1931), who compared cranial data on the Tagar people with the evidence of Chinese written sources. Apparently, the principal migration route of Caucasoid pastoralists from Europe to the east passed mainly along the steppe belt, and judging from archaeological data, the migration process continued throughout the 3rd millennium BC (Merpert, 1982; Semenov, 1993).

(7) None of the gracile Caucasoid groups of Siberia or Eastern Central Asia can be regarded as Mediterranean since none of them have distinct ties with populations of the Near East, Southwestern Central Asia or Transcaucasia. The Kura-Araxes parallels to Yelunino are vague and incomparable with numerous striking af¿ nities between the gracile Caucasoids of Southern Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Eastern Central Asia on the one hand, and the Bronze Age people of the Eastern European steppes on the other. The totality of data suggests that these people were lightly pigmented Northern Caucasoids.