Human DNA from the oldest Eneolithic cemetery in Nalchik points the spread of farming from the Caucasus to the Eastern European steppes.

Abstract

The Darkveti-Meshoko culture (c.5000–3500/3300 BCE) is the earliest known farming community in the Northern Caucasus, but its contribution to the genetic profile of the neighbouring steppe herders has remained unclear. We present analysis of human DNA from the Nalchik cemetery— the oldest Eneolithic site in the Northern Caucasus— which shows a link with the LowerVolga’s first herders of the Khvalynsk culture. The Nalchik male genotype combines the genes of the Caucasus hunter-gatherers, the Eastern Hunter-Gatherers and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic farmers of western Asia. Improved comparative analysis suggests that the genetic profile of certain Khvalynsk individuals shares the genetic ancestry of the Unakozovo-Nalchik type population of the Northern Caucasus’ Eneolithic. Therefore, it seems that in the first half of the 5th millennium BCE cultural and mating networks helped agriculture and pastoralism spread from West Asia across the Caucasian, into the steppes between the Don and the Volga in Eastern Europe.