Since prehistoric times, southern Central Asia has been at the crossroads of the movement of people, culture, and goods. Today, the Central Asian populations are divided into two cultural and ...linguistic groups: the Indo-Iranian and the Turko-Mongolian groups. Previous genetic studies unveiled that migrations from East Asia contributed to the spread of Turko-Mongolian populations in Central Asia and the partial replacement of the Indo-Iranian populations. However, little is known about the origin of the latters. To shed light on this, we compare the genetic data on two current-day Indo-Iranian populations - Yaghnobis and Tajiks - with genome-wide data from published ancient individuals. The present Indo-Iranian populations from Central Asia display a strong genetic continuity with Iron Age samples from Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. We model Yaghnobis as a mixture of 93% Iron Age individual from Turkmenistan and 7% from Baikal. For the Tajiks, we observe a higher Baikal ancestry and an additional admixture event with a South Asian population. Our results, therefore, suggest that in addition to a complex history, Central Asia shows a remarkable genetic continuity since the Iron Age, with only limited gene flow.
En Asie centrale méridionale, l’apparition de la Civilisation de l’Oxus à l’âge du Bronze Moyen (2350-1750 av. n. è.), marque l’émergence d’une société proto-urbaine composée d’agriculteurs et ...d’éleveurs sédentaires. Le développement concomitant des grands centres et des établissements ruraux au sein d’un large territoire scindé en trois régions – Kopet Dagh, Margiane, Bactriane – atteste d’une unité technologique, culturelle et religieuse, liée en partie à des contacts commerciaux, ainsi qu’...
The Oxus Civilisation (or Bactrio-Margian Archaeological Complex, BMAC) was the main archaeological culture of the Bronze Age in southern Central Asia. Paleogenetic analyses were previously conducted ...mainly on samples from the eastern part of BMAC. The population associated with BMAC descends from local Chalcolithic populations, with some outliers of steppe or South-Asian descent. Here, we present new genome-wide data for one individual from Ulug-depe (Turkmenistan), one of the main BMAC sites, located at the southwestern edge of the BMAC. We demonstrate that this individual genetically belongs to the BMAC cluster. Using this genome, we confirm that modern Indo-Iranian–speaking populations from Central Asia derive their ancestry from BMAC populations, with additional gene flow from the western and the Altai steppes in higher proportions among the Tajiks than the Yagnobi ethnic group.
By sequencing 523 ancient humans, we show that the primary source of ancestry in modern South Asians is a prehistoric genetic gradient between people related to early hunter-gatherers of Iran and ...Southeast Asia. After the Indus Valley Civilization's decline, its people mixed with individuals in the southeast to form one of the two main ancestral populations of South Asia, whose direct descendants live in southern India. Simultaneously, they mixed with descendants of Steppe pastoralists who, starting around 4000 years ago, spread via Central Asia to form the other main ancestral population. The Steppe ancestry in South Asia has the same profile as that in Bronze Age Eastern Europe, tracking a movement of people that affected both regions and that likely spread the distinctive features shared between Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages.
Issues of chronology and cultural evolution lie at the heart of the main themes of study of Protohistoric Southern Central Asia, especially for the transition period between the Bronze and Iron Ages, ...which can be dated in its broadest sense between 1800 and 1300 BCE. This is a key period in the evolution of societies in this part of the world, which witnessed the decline and disappearance of the Oxus Civilisation, and the subsequent formation of the Handmade Painted Ware Cultures during the late Bronze and early Iron Ages. The questions concerning the decadence, collapse and resilience of societies, approached here through an overview of the specificities of the changes that occurred within the Oxus Civilisation, allow us to question in a renewed way the processes linked to the disappearance and the formation of a civilisation.
For the last thirty years, Afghanistan has been associated with images of war, of the Soviet occupation, civil strife, and the Taliban—to the point of concealing the extent to which the country once ...fired the imagination of archaeologists and adventurers of every sort. Is in this country, one of the most unstable in the world , where for nearly a century, the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (DAFA) has been drawing up an inventory of the archaeological heritage. Thousands of sites have been already discovered and many of them excavated by the French archaeologists. They reveal Afghanistan’s remarkable archaeological wealth, including protohistoric, Greek, Buddhist and Islamic remains among others.
Les questions de chronologie et d’évolution culturelle se trouvent au cœur des principales thématiques d’étude de l’Asie centrale méridionale protohistorique, notamment pour la période de transition ...entre les âges du Bronze et du Fer, que l’on peut situer dans son acception la plus large entre 1800 et 1300 avant notre ère. Il s’agit d’un laps de temps clé dans l’évolution des sociétés de cette partie du monde, témoin du déclin et de la disparition de la civilisation de l’Oxus puis de la formation des cultures à céramique modelée peinte durant la fin de l’âge du Bronze et le début de l’âge du Fer. Les interrogations concernant la décadence, l’effondrement et la résilience des sociétés, abordées ici à travers un aperçu des spécificités des changements survenus au sein de la civilisation de l’Oxus, permettent de questionner de manière renouvelée les processus liés à la disparition et à la formation d’une civilisation.
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