European skeleton found
in ancient Mongolian tomb
It has long been known that
Indo-Europeans once lived in what is now Xinjiang
province in northwestern China.
Now researchers have found yet another bit
of evidence confirming the ancient
Aryan presence in this distant land.
Skeleton of Western man found in ancient Mongolian
tomb
DNA
from 2,000-year-old skeleton may put Indo-Europeans in East Asia
Consider an older gentleman whose skeleton lay in one of more
than 200 tombs
recently excavated at a 2,000-year-old cemetery in eastern
Mongolia, near China’s
northern border. DNA extracted from this man’s bones pegs him as
a descendant of
Europeans or western Asians. Yet he still assumed a prominent
position in ancient
Mongolia’s Xiongnu Empire, say geneticist Kyung-Yong Kim of
Chung-Ang University
in Seoul, South Korea, and his colleagues.
On the basis of previous excavations and descriptions in ancient
Chinese texts,
researchers suspect that the Xiongnu Empire — which ruled a vast
territory in and
around Mongolia from 209 B.C. to A.D. 93 — included ethnically
and linguistically
diverse nomadic tribes. The Xiongnu Empire once ruled the major
trading route known
as the Asian Silk Road, opening it to both Western and Chinese
influences.
Researchers have yet to pin down the language spoken by Xiongnu
rulers and political
elites, says archaeologist David Anthony of Hartwick College in
Oneonta, N.Y. But the
new genetic evidence shows that the 2,000-year-old man “was
multi-ethnic, like the
Xiongnu polity itself,” Anthony remarks.
NORDIC IN REPOSE — This ancient Tocharian
man
was found, along with hundreds of other Aryan
mummies, in the Tarim Basin of northwestern China.
This long-dead individual possessed a set of genetic
mutations on his Y chromosome,
which is inherited from paternal ancestors, that commonly
appears today among male
speakers of Indo-European languages in eastern Europe, central
Asia and northern
India, Kim’s team reports in an upcoming American Journal of
Physical Anthropology.
The same man displayed a pattern of mitochondrial DNA mutations,
inherited from
maternal ancestors, characteristic of speakers of modern
Indo-European languages
in central Asia, the researchers say.
“We don’t know if this 60- to 70-year-old man reached Mongolia
on his own or if his
family had already lived there for many generations,” says study
coauthor Charles
Brenner, a DNA analyst based in Oakland, Calif.
Two other skeletons from the Xiongnu cemetery in Duurlig Nars
show genetic links
to people who live in northeastern Asia, according to Kim’s
team. Other team
members include Kijeong Kim of Chung-Ang University and Eregzen
Gelegdorj of
the National Museum of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar.
The Duurlig Nars man’s genetic signature supports the idea that
Indo-European
migrations to northeastern Asia started before 2,000 years ago.
This notion is plausible,
but not confirmed, says geneticist Peter Underhill of Stanford
University. Further
investigations of Y chromosome mutation frequencies in modern
populations will allow
for a more precise tracing of the Duurlig Nars man’s geographic
roots, Underhill predicts.
Origin of ancient Indo-Europeans
Scholars have long sought to
trace the origin and spread of related languages now
found in Europe, India and other parts of Asia. One hypothesis holds
that Indo-European
languages proliferated via several waves of expansion and conquest
by nomads known
as Kurgans who had domesticated horses and thus could travel long
distances. In this
scenario, Kurgans left a homeland north of the Black Sea, in what’s
now Russia, around
6,400 years ago.
Another view holds that farmers from ancient Turkey spread
Indo-European tongues as
they swallowed up one parcel of land after another, beginning around
9,000 years ago.
Since 1978, discoveries of 2,400- to 4,000-year-old mummified
corpses with European
features in northwestern China, not far from Mongolia, have fueled
the Kurgan hypothesis
(SN: 2/25/95, p. 120). Remains of large wheels found with
these blond-haired individuals
raise the controversial possibility that these foreigners introduced
carts and chariots to
the Chinese.
Eastward
expansion of early Aryans
Add to those discoveries a report in the September 2009 Human
Genetics. Geneticist
Christine Keyser of the University of Strasbourg in France and her
colleagues found that
nine of 26 skeletons previously excavated at 11 Kurgan sites in
northeastern Russia
possess a Y chromosome mutation pattern thought to mark the eastward
expansion of
early Indo-Europeans. That same genetic signature characterizes the
Duurlig Nars man.
By 2,000 years ago, the easternmost Indo-European languages were
probably spoken
in northwestern China, Anthony holds. So an Indo-European speaker
could have aligned
himself with Xiongnu political big shots and earned an eternal
resting place in an elite
Xiongnu cemetery, in his opinion.
Kim agrees. The Duurlig Nars man’s tomb lies close to the tomb of an
especially
high-ranking Xiongnu man whom he may have served in some way, he
suggests.
Kim’s group plans to extract and study DNA from additional Duurlig
Nars skeletons.
For now, Anthony remarks, “this new study from Mongolia is important
because it adds
one more point of light to a largely dark prehistoric sky.”
