Middle Holocene Siberian genomes reveal highly connected gene pools throughout North Asia.

The peopling history of North Asia remains largely unexplored due to the limited number of ancient genomes analyzed from this region. Here, we report genome-wide data of ten individuals dated to as early as 7,500 years before present from three regions in North Asia, namely Altai-Sayan, Russian Far East, and the Kamchatka Peninsula. Our analysis reveals a previously undescribed Middle Holocene Siberian gene pool in Neolithic Altai-Sayan hunter-gatherers as a genetic mixture between paleo-Siberian and ancient North Eurasian (ANE) ancestries. This distinctive gene pool represents an optimal source for the inferred ANE-related population that contributed to Bronze Age groups from North and Inner Asia, such as Lake Baikal hunter-gatherers, Okunevo-associated pastoralists, and possibly Tarim Basin populations. We find the presence of ancient Northeast Asian (ANA) ancestry-initially described in Neolithic groups from the Russian Far East-in another Neolithic Altai-Sayan individual associated with different cultural features, revealing the spread of ANA ancestry ∼1,500 km further to the west than previously observed. In the Russian Far East, we identify 7,000-year-old individuals that carry Jomon-associated ancestry indicating genetic links with hunter-gatherers in the Japanese archipelago. We also report multiple phases of Native American-related gene flow into northeastern Asia over the past 5,000 years, reaching the Kamchatka Peninsula and central Siberia. Our findings highlight largely interconnected population dynamics throughout North Asia from the Early Holocene onward.

Fossil birds from the Roof of the World: The first avian fauna from High Asia and its implications for late Quaternary environments in Eastern Pamir.

The Eastern Pamir (eastern Tajikistan) is a high-mountain plateau with elevations up to 7000 m, currently characterized by extremely severe environmental conditions and harboring a specialized montane fauna, which in part is shared with that of the Tibetan Plateau. The modern bird fauna of High Asia comprises a diversity of both ancient and recently diverged endemics, and thus is of general importance for historical biogeography and understanding the origin of modern high mountain ecosystems. However, the past history of the Central Asian highland avian communities remains practically unknown, as no fossil bird assemblages from high elevation areas were previously reported. In particular, it remains completely unexplored how birds responded to late Quaternary climatic fluctuations. Here we report the first fossil bird fauna from the High Asia and the first fossil birds from Tajikistan. An assemblage from the late Pleistocene through middle Holocene of Istykskaya cave (4060 m) in Eastern Pamir surprisingly comprises a remarkable diversity of waterbirds, including a few species that are completely absent from High Asia today and that were not reported globally from such high altitudes. The diversity of waterbirds incudes taxa of various ecological preferences (shorebirds, underwater and surface feeders, both zoophagous and phytophagous), strongly indicating the presence of a productive waterbody at the vicinity of the site in the past. These observations correspond to recent palaeoclimatic data, implying increased water availability in this region, currently occupied by high mountain semi-deserts. Our findings for the first time show that milder environmental conditions of late Quaternary attracted lowland species to the Central Asian highland wetlands. The reported assemblage yet contains several characteristic highland taxa, indicating a long-time persistence of some Central Asian montane faunistic elements. In particular, it includes the Tibetan Sandgrouse (Syrrhaptes tibetanus), a highly-specialized montane dweller, which is for the first time found in the fossil record.