>>515072413
>Eastern Scythians did not belong to a single genetic or cultural cluster, while Western Scythians fall in or close to the European cluster
>A later different Eastern influx, starting during the Middle Iron Age to post-Iron Age period, is evident in three outlier samples of the Tasmola culture (Tasmola Birlik) and one of the Pazyryk culture (Pazyryk Berel), which displayed c. 70–83% additional Ancient Northeast Asian ancestry represented by the Neolithic Devil’s Gate Cave specimen, suggesting them to be recent migrants from further east
>The same additional eastern ancestry is found among the later groups of Huns (Hun Berel 300CE, Hun elite 350CE), and the Karakaba remains (830CE). At the same time, western Sarmatian-like and minor additional BMAC-like ancestry spread eastwards, with a Saka-associated sample from southeastern Kazakhstan (Konyr Tobe 300CE) displaying around 85% Sarmatian and 15% BMAC ancestry
>Sarmatians are modeled to derive primarily from the preceding Western Steppe Herders of the Pontic–Caspian steppe
>Initially, the Western Scythians carried only West Eurasian maternal haplogroups, but the frequency of East Eurasian haplogroups rises to 26% in samples dated to the 2nd century BC. Among the Western Scythians discovered at Rostov-on-Don, in European Russia, East Eurasian maternal haplogroups make up 37.5% of the total. These results possibly suggest the increasing presence of East Eurasian women in Western Scythian populations, although autosomal genetic evidence is needed to confirm this observation