Afanasievo culture

Culture

Mass graves were not usual for this culture. 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.

The Afanasievans are now considered to be the earliest herders of East Asia, who were instrumental in the establishment of the long tradition of pastoralism in Mongolia. Their rise also corresponds with the appearance of domesticated sheep, goats, and cattle, which marks the earliest spread of Near Eastern domesticated animals and pastoralism to Inner Asia.

They also introduced the initial practice of copper and bronze metallurgy. Afanasievo burials include metal artifacts in copper, bronze (awls, knives), gold and silver, as well the remains of disassembled carts. The Afanasievos may have used cattle-drawn wagons, as did Yamnaya communities.

Genetics

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. 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.

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.

The Afanasievo people, accompanied by their pastoralist technologies, are one of the major foreign contributors to the genetic profile of the modern northwestern Chinese.

Paternal haplogroups

The genetic closeness of the Yamnaya and Afanasievo populations is also mirrored in the uniparental haplogroups, especially in the predominance of the Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b.

Maternal haplogroups

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.

Populations east of the Afanasievans

Afanasievo burials are recorded as far as central Mongolia, at the sites of Altan Sandal and Shatar Chuluu. 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.

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. This strain's genes express flagellin, which triggers the human immune response; so it was not a bubonic plague.

Possible links to other cultures

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. They were genetically similar to the Yamnaya populations of Western Steppe Herders. 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. 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. Recent genetic studies have shown that individuals from the early Bronze Age of Dzungaria are largely descended from Afanasievo herders, with additional ancestry from Afontova Gora, Tarim_EMBA and Baikal_EBA. The Chemurchek pastoral culture of the early Bronze Age, which succeeded the Afanasievo in both the Dzungar Basin and the Altai Mountains, derived about two-thirds of its ancestry from the aforementioned Bronze Age individuals of Dzungaria, while the rest came from sources related to Tarim_EMBA and BMAC.

Numerous scholars have suggested that the Afanasievo culture may be responsible for the introduction of metallurgy to China. In particular, contacts between the Afanasievo culture and the Majiayao culture and the Qijia culture are considered for the transmission of bronze technology.

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.

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.

To the north, the Afanasievo culture was succeeded by the Okunev culture, which is considered to be an extension of the Paleosiberian local non-Indo-European forest culture into the region. The Okunev culture nevertheless displays influences from the earlier Afanasievo culture. The region was subsequently occupied by the Andronovo, Karasuk, Tagar and Tashtyk cultures, respectively.

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. The Andronovo population was found to be genetically related, but clearly distinct from the Afanasievo population.

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. 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)

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. The West Eurasian component was Yamnaya-related, while the East Eurasian component was Northeast Asian-related. The Yamnaya component suggest a strong probability that the Shirenzigou populations were derived from the Afanasievo culture to the north, and spoke an Indo-European language. This reinforces an Afanasievo hypothesis for the Tocharians, often called the "Steppe hypotheses", rather than a hypotheses favouring BMAC and Andronovo Culture origins, the "Bactrian Oasis hypotheses".