Project description:To investigate dairy consumption in ancient Mongolia, we analysed dental calculus samples from four Late Bronze Age (LBA, 1500-1000 BCE) individuals for proteomic evidence of milk proteins. As many archaeological sites before Mongolia's Iron Age suffer from a dearth of occupational materials, looking to biomolecular markers of dietary intake can open new investigational avenues into ancient economies. In this case, we use a previously established method of extracting proteins from calculus to explore the consumption of dairy products at LBA Khirigsuur sites in northern Mongolia's Hovsgol Aimag. Seven of nine individual's calculus contained peptides from the whey protein Beta-lactoglobulin from Ovis, Capra hircus, Bos, and general Bovidae species. Aside from proteomics, these and 16 other individuals from the site were analysed for aDNA. We found that 18 of the 20 were primarily from one genetic ancestral group, and Ancient North Eurasian (ANE). One of the outliers represents a combination of ANE and Western Steppe Herder (WSH), with the other a combination of ANE and Eastern Asian (EE). This finding, while important in its own right, evidences the earliest known dairy consumption in Mongolia, and supports a widely held assumption that pastoralism was a primary subsistence strategy in the ancient Eastern Steppes. The combined proteomic and DNA evidence suggest that Western Steppe dairy animals and technology entered Mongolia before genetic admixture.
2018-10-19 | PXD008217 | Pride
Project description:Ancestry, demography, and descendants of Iron Age nomads of the Eurasian Steppe
Project description:Ancient genomes reveal structural shifts and pinpoint arrival of Steppe-related ancestry during the Chalcolithic/Bronze Age Transition in Italy
Project description:Through the use of proteomic analysis of 32 dental calculus samples from anceint Mongolia, we show that ruminant dairying was present in Mongolia by at least 3000 B.C.E., over 1500 years prior to previously published work. Excitingly, the earliest site with dairy evidence has been identified as archaeologically Afanasievo, supporting the hypothesis that dairy practices and animals likely entered the Eastern steppe with migrating western steppe populations. Furthermore, at 1200 B.C.E. we detect the first direct evidence for horse milk consumption, demonstrating the Bronze Age origins of equine dairying on the eastern steppe which occurred concomitantly with early evidence for horse bridling and riding in the region. The incorporation of horse milk and riding into early Mongolian subsistence strategies led to dramatic economic and demographic shifts that enabled the formation of the well-known steppe empires.
Project description:A large corpus of 112 keratin extracts from archaeological fibres collected in Bronze Age and Iron Age sites of the Keriya valley in the Taklamakan desert (Xinjiang, China) was analyzed by bottom-up proteomics for archaeological purpose.
2019-09-06 | PXD012189 | Pride
Project description:Ancient human genomes from Late Bronze Age Mongolia
Project description:Genotype data for 140 present-day individuals from five populations in Pakistan in The first horse herders and the impact of early Bronze Age steppe expansions into Asia DOI: 10.1126/science.aar7711. Sampling details are presented in supplementary section S2.1 Data generation
Project description:This project explores dietary proteins in human dental calculus through shotgun proteomics. These files are in addition to those accidentally not included in the original publication, Dairying enabled Early Bronze Age Yamnaya steppe expansions . DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03798-4. Files include raw, mgf, and mzid files from the two Botai individuals: DA092 (Botai 2A), DA089 (CII(3) 30-40), and additional files from Russian sites: DA431, DA431 (Lebyazhinka 5, LEB N-0), Z333 (Khvalynsk 2, KHA2 N-12), and Z444 (Murziha 2, MUR2 N-128) as well as the blanks used in the experiments. It also inlcludes the corresponding files for DA436, as in the previous upload an under-injected sample was included as the MDF.