The Tagar culture was preceded by theKarasuk culture.[2][3][4] They are usually considered as descendants of theAndronovo culture, and are frequently linked toIndo-Iranians.[5] However, theTurkicDinlin tribe was also a part of the Tagar culture.[6] The Tagar people possessed a mixture of West and East Eurasian ancestry, with East Asian ancestry increasing in to theIron Age.[7]
From the 2nd century BCE, the Tagar period was succeeded by a period Hunnic influence linked to the rise of theXiongnu. The "Tesinsky culture" was a culture of the Minusinsk basin, from the 1st century BCE to the 1st century CE.[8] The Tesinsky culture was at the junction between the Tagar culture and the culture of theXiongnu and theXianbei, and artistic evolutions can be traced to that period.[9]
The Minusinsk basin was first excavated byDaniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt in 1722. Messerschmidt andPhilip Johan von Strahlenberg were the first to point out similarities between the Tagar and Scythian cultures further west. The first archaeological descriptions of the Tagar were made bySergei Teploukhov. His periodization have formed the basis for later research.[5]
The Tagar lived in timber dwellings heated by clay ovens and large hearths. Some settlements were surrounded by fortifications. They made a living by raising livestock, predominantly large horned livestock and horses, goats and sheep. There are evidence of farming with irrigation.[5]
Perhaps the most striking feature of the culture are huge royalkurgans fenced by stone plaques, with four verticalstelae marking the corners. Burials from the early Tagar period are characterized as single burials. In the later Tagar period, collective burials become more common. This has been interpreted as a sign of social evolution in Tagar society.[5]
The Tagar people have been the subject of numerous studies byphysical anthropologists.[5] The Tagars have been described by researchers as havingEuropoid features.[11]
In 2009, a genetic study of ancientSiberian cultures, theAndronovo culture, theKarasuk culture, the Tagar culture and theTashtyk culture, was published inHuman Genetics.[3] Twelve individuals of the Tagar culture from 800 BC to 100 AD were surveyed.[3] Extractions ofmtDNA from ten individuals were determined to represent three samples of haplogroupT3, one sample ofI4, one sampleG2a, one sample ofC, one sample ofF1b and three samples ofH (including one sample of H5).[3] Extractions ofY-DNA from six individuals were all determined to be of Y-chromosome haplogroupR1a1, which is thought to mark the eastwardmigration of the earlyIndo-Europeans.[3] Based on an analysis of 10SNPs, the majority of Tagar individuals were classified as being primarily of European ancestry, with the exception of one mixed ancestry individual. Of the specimens yielding a pigmentation phenotype, slightly more than half (5) were assignedblue eye color, while 4 were possibly blue or brown eyed. Most were assigned blond or light brown hair color.[3]
In 2018, a study ofmtDNA from remains of the Tagar culture was published inPLOS One. Remains from the early years of the Tagar culture were found to be closely related to those of contemporaryScythians on thePontic steppe. The authors of the study suggested that the source of this genetic similarity was a substantial increase in the frequency ofEast Asianmaternal haplogroups in the Tagar population, which occurred during theIron Age. Nearly 46% of Tagar samples carried an East Asian maternal haplogroup in the Iron Age, with lineagesD andC more than tripling in frequency compared to the Early Tagar period.[14]
^abcdefghKeyser, Christine; Bouakaze, Caroline; Crubézy, Eric; Nikolaev, Valery G.; Montagnon, Daniel; Reis, Tatiana; Ludes, Bertrand (16 May 2009). "Ancient DNA provides new insights into the history of south Siberian Kurgan people".Human Genetics.126 (3):395–410.doi:10.1007/s00439-009-0683-0.PMID19449030.S2CID21347353.
^Hartley, Charles W.; Yazicioğlu, G. Bike; Smith, Adam T. (19 November 2012).The Archaeology of Power and Politics in Eurasia: Regimes and Revolutions. Cambridge University Press. p. 245.ISBN978-1-139-78938-7. "The Dinlin are considered to have been part of the Tagar Culture and are mentioned in the written sources as being among the acquired "possessions" of the Huns (Mannai—Ool 1970: 107; Sulimirski 1970: 112)."
^Pilipenko, Aleksandr S. (20 September 2018)."Maternal genetic features of the Iron Age Tagar population from Southern Siberia (1st millennium BC)".PLOS ONE.13 (9) e0204062.Bibcode:2018PLoSO..1304062P.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0204062.ISSN1932-6203.PMC6147448.PMID30235269.The Tagar population had a mixed mtDNA pool dominated by Western Eurasian haplogroups and subgroups (H, HV6, HV*, I, K, T, U2e, U4, U5a, and U*) and, to a lesser degree, Eastern Eurasian haplogroups (A*, A8, C*, C5, D, G2a, and F1b). The Tagar population showed a similar mtDNA pool structure to those of other Iron Age populations representing the "Scythian World." We observed particularly high similarity between the Tagar and Classic Scythians from the North Pontic region. Our results support the assumption that genetic components introduced by Bronze Age migrants from Western Eurasia contributed to the formation of the genetic composition of Scythian period populations in Southern Siberia.
^Yang, Jianhua; Shao, Huiqiu; Pan, Ling (2020). "The Northern Zone of China and the Eurasian Steppe in the Early Iron Age".The Metal Road of the Eastern Eurasian Steppe: The Formation of the Xiongnu Confederation and the Silk Road. Springer. p. Fig. 5.43.doi:10.1007/978-981-32-9155-3_5.ISBN978-981-329-155-3.S2CID213480715.
^Keyser, Christine; Bouakaze, Caroline; Crubézy, Eric; Nikolaev, Valery G.; Montagnon, Daniel; Reis, Tatiana; Ludes, Bertrand (16 May 2009). "Ancient DNA provides new insights into the history of south Siberian Kurgan people".Human Genetics.126 (3): 405.doi:10.1007/s00439-009-0683-0.PMID19449030.S2CID21347353.Moreover, the south Siberian tribes under study (Andronovo, Karasuk, Tagar) have been described as exhibiting pronounced Europoid features (Kozintsev et al. 1999; Lebedynsky 2003; Moiseyev 2006).
^Pilipenko, Aleksandr S.; Trapezov, Rostislav O.; Cherdantsev, Stepan V.; Babenko, Vladimir N.; Nesterova, Marina S.; Pozdnyakov, Dmitri V.; Molodin, Vyacheslav I.; Polosmak, Natalia V. (20 September 2018)."Maternal genetic features of the Iron Age Tagar population from Southern Siberia (1st millennium BC)".PLOS ONE.13 (9) e0204062.Bibcode:2018PLoSO..1304062P.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0204062.ISSN1932-6203.PMC6147448.PMID30235269. "According to the results of Unterlander et al. [4], East Eurasian mtDNA components in the Western Eurasian steppe belt increased during the Early Iron Age .... The observed reduction in the genetic distance between the Middle Tagar population and other Scythian-like populations of Southern Siberia (Fig 5; S4 Table), in our opinion, is primarily associated with an increase in the role of East Eurasian mtDNA lineages in the gene pool (up to nearly half of the gene pool) and a substantial increase in the joint frequency of haplogroups C and D (from 8.7% in the Early Tagar series to 37.5% in the Middle Tagar series)." .... "We observed differences in the mtDNA pool structure between the Early and the Middle chronological stages of the Tagar culture population, as evidenced by the change in the ratio of Western to Eastern Eurasian mtDNA components. The contribution of Eastern Eurasian lineages increased from about one-third (34.8%) in the Early Tagar group to almost one-half (45.8%) in the Middle Tagar group."
^Damgaard et al. 2018, "The southern Siberian Tagar show unequal ancestry contributions from Bronze Age herders (83.5%) and southern Siberian hunter-gatherers (7.5%), as well as an additional contribution of Mal'ta (MA1 individual)-like ancestry (9%), indicating differences in the sources of hunter-gatherer admixture across the Sakas.".
^Marsadolov, L. (2014). "The Great Salbyk Barrow in Siberia (Archaeoastronomical Aspects of its Studying)".Archaeoastronomy and Ancient Technologies.2 (2):59–65.S2CID132181643.
^Yang, Jianhua; Shao, Huiqiu; Pan, Ling (2020). "The Northern Zone of China and the Eurasian Steppe in the Early Iron Age".The Metal Road of the Eastern Eurasian Steppe: The Formation of the Xiongnu Confederation and the Silk Road. Springer. p. Fig. 5.37.doi:10.1007/978-981-32-9155-3_5.ISBN978-981-329-155-3.S2CID213480715.
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![Bronze weapons of the Tagar culture, Krasnojarsk, Russia, 7th-5th century BC.[18]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.m.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aMuseum_f%25C3%25BCr_Vor-_und_Fr%25C3%25BChgeschichte_Berlin_007a.JPG)
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