Ancient North Eurasians (ANE) and their origin

In archaeogenetics, the term Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) is the name given to an ancestral component that represents the lineage of the people of the Mal’ta–Buret’ culture (c. 24,000 BP) and populations closely related to them, such as the Upper Paleolithic individuals from Afontova Gora in Siberia, and to two earlier specimens from the Yana Culture (c. 32,000 BP), collectively referred to as Ancient North Siberians (ANS).

The Ancient North Eurasians represent a distinct cluster of genetic diversity within the larger Eurasian gene pool.

Origins and contribution to later populations

The formation of the Ancient North Eurasian/Siberian (ANS/ANE) gene pool likely occurred during the Upper Paleolithic period, by the merger of an ‘Early West Eurasian’ Upper Paleolithic (UP) lineage, deeply related to ‘European hunter-gatherers’, migrating along the “Northern route” into Siberia via Europe or the Caucasus, and an ‘Early East Eurasian’ Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) lineage, basal to contemporary East and Southeast Asian populations, and best represented by the c. 40,000 year old Tianyuan specimen from Northern China.

The ANS/ANE lineage derived around 32% of their ancestry from the Basal East Asian Tianyuan lineage, and around 68% from an Early West Eurasian lineage, forming a sister lineage to Kostenki14/Sunghir. The ANS/ANE samples carried the Y-chromosome haplogroups belonging or downstream to P-M45 (P1 and Q/R; downstream of K2b among Tianyuan) and the Mt-chromosome U (observed among Paleolithic and modern West Eurasians).

ANS/ANE ancestry has spread throughout Eurasia and the Americas in various migrations since the Upper Paleolithic, and around half of the world’s modern population derives between 5% to 41% of their genomes from the Ancient North Eurasians. Significant ANE ancestry can be found in Native Americans, as well as in regions of northern Europe, South Asia, Central Asia, and Siberia. Modern East/Southeast Asian populations were found to lack ANE-related admixture, suggesting “resistance of those groups to the incoming UP population movements”, or alternatively a subsequent reexpansion from a genetically East Asian-like population reservoir.

Below we can see the formation of the ANS/ANE associated “Siberia UP” lineage in different models:

Genomic studies by Raghavan et al. (2014) and Fu et al. (2016) suggested that the ANE (represented by the genome of the Mal’ta boy) may have had brown eyes, and relatively dark hair and dark skin, while cautioning that this analysis was based on an extremely low coverage of DNA that might not give an accurate prediction of pigmentation. Mathieson, et al. (2018) could not determine if the Mal’ta 1 boy carried the derived allele associated with blond hair in certain later ANE-derived descendants, as they could obtain no coverage for this SNP.

Today, the highest amounts of ANE-like ancestry is found among Native Americans. They derive between 30-40% from an ANE-like population and around 60–70% from an Neo-East Asian population which expanded northwards, best represented by the Amur19K sample (a 19,000 year old samples from the Amur Basin).

In Europe, the Eastern Hunter-gatherers formed via admixture between primarily Western hunter-gatherers and ANE-derived geneflow:

The EHG were among the few European groups which displayed an increased affinity to the Basal East Asian Tianyuan specimen, which is suggested to be explained by their high ANE ancestry. The ‘Basal East Asian’ (Tianyuan-like) ancestry among EHGs has been estimated to be around 13%.

Currently, the strongest affinity to Tianyuan in Holocene European HGs was reported for Eastern European HGs (EHG). This is because the ancestry found in Mal’ta and Afontova Gora individuals (Ancient North Eurasian ancestry) received ancestry from UP East Asian/Southeast Asian populations54, who then contributed substantially to EHG55.

Via these groups, the ANE legacy lives on among modern populations. Eg. the EHG contributed around 50% to the later Yamnaya people, which are regarded as Proto-Indo-Europeans, while Paleo-Siberians, such as the Yeniseians may have played an important role among the Xiongnu and Huns.

Conclusion

The Ancient North Eurasians can be described as forming their own cluster of early Eurasian diversity. They formed from around 32% Basal East Asian and 68% Early European ancestry, and contributed through various layers to modern populations, with a maximum peak among modern Native Americans.

I hope this post was informative and clarified some questions regarding the Ancient North Eurasians.

Some sources: https://doi.org/10.1126%2Fscience.aba0909, https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.cub.2017.09.030, https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fgbe%2Fevac045, https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41586-023-06865-0

Thank you for reading. Jacob