The Ancient Paleo-Siberians () formed from theAncient North Eurasians (ANE,) andAncient Northern East Asian ancestry (ANEA,), and are closely connected to the first wave of humans into the Americas.[1]TheKoryaks are closely related to the Ancient Paleo-Siberians.
Inarchaeogenetics, the termAncient Paleo-Siberian is the name given to an ancestral component that represents the lineage of the hunter-gatherer people of the 15th-10th millennia before present, in northern and northeasternSiberia. The Ancient Paleo-Siberian population is thought to have arisen from anAncient East Asian lineage, which diverged from other East Asian populations sometime between 26kya to 36kya, and merged withAncient North Eurasians (ANE) sometime between 20kya to 25kya. The ANE themselves are described as the "result of a palaeolithic admixture" between ancient West Eurasians andancient East Eurasians.[2][3][4][5] The source for the East Asian component among Ancient Paleo-Siberians is to date best represented byAncient Northern East Asian populations from theAmur region older than 13,000 years, such as AR19K and AR14K, and before theDevil's CaveAncient Northeast Asian specimens.[6]
Phylogenetic position of the Paleo-Siberian lineage among other Eastern Eurasians
The Ancient Paleo-Siberians are mainly defined by two human archaeological specimens: the 14,000-year-oldUst-Kyakhta-3 (UKY) individual found nearLake Baikal in southern Siberia, and the 9-10,000-year-oldKolyma_M individual found in northeastern Siberia.[6][1] Ancient Paleo-Siberians derive between 30–36% ancestry from the Ancient North Eurasians (ANE), deeply related to European hunter-gatherers, with the remainder ancestry (64–70%) being derived from an East Asian source.[7][1][8] The Ancient Paleo-Siberians are closely related to theAncient Beringians, and modern far-northeastern Siberia communities, such as theKoryaks, as well as toNative Americans.[9][10]
QpGraph on the possible formation of Ancient Paleo-Siberians and Native Americans.[7]
Ancient Paleo-Siberians, in conjunction with an Inner Northeast Asian (Yumin-like) lineage, gave rise to the Cisbaikal_LNBA ancestry, which may be associated with ancientYeniseian speakers.[11] Ancient Paleo-Siberians also formed the dominant ancestral source for Altai hunter-gatherers (7500BP), in conjunction with aBotai-like source, as well as for the subsequentOkunev culture, in conjunction with additional Baikal hunter-gatherer andAfanasievo-like sources.[12]
The Paleo-Siberians were later largely replaced by waves of Neo-Siberians and Neolithic Amur populations, which may be associated with the expansion of earlyUralic andYukaghir speakers, followed later on byTungusic,Turkic, andMongolic speakers.[13]
According to a 2025 study, Native American-related Paleosiberian ancestry in continental Siberia mixed with East Asian groups from the Amur River region and Inland East Asia and contributed to the genetic makeup of ancient and present Yeniseian and Uralic-speaking groups. The latter is responsible for spreading haplogroup N throughout Eurasia. They also received input from North Eurasian Hunter-Gatherers, who lived about ~10–4kya and are characterized by distinct West and East Eurasian admixture. Input from these hunter-gatherers, however, is limited in ancient and present Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic-speaking populations from Central and Northern Eurasia, as well as pastoralists from the Late Bronze Age and Iron age such as Scythians, Sarmatians, and Xiongnu.[14]
^Grebenyuk et al. 2022, p. 96: "According to the latest paleogenetic data, East Asian populations migrated to Northeastern Siberia ca. 20,000–18,000 cal BP. The migration was accompanied by their mixing with the descendants of the "Ancient North Siberians", represented by the genome from the Yana and Malta individuals. These processes were reflected in the Beringian tradition's wide proliferation in the region and led to the emergence of several ancestral lineages (Fig. 1) in Extreme Northeastern Asia: the Ancient Paleosiberian population represented by the genome of the individual from Duvanny Yar, and the ancestral Native Americans. The latter type subsequently divided into the Ancient Beringians and all other Native Americans (Moreno-Mayar et al. 2018; Sikora et al. 2019)."
^Sikora et al. 2019, p. 182: "the arrival of East Asian-related peoples, which gave rise to 'Ancient Palaeo-Siberians' who are closely related to contemporary communities from far-northeastern Siberia (such as the Koryaks), as well as Native Americans..."
^Mao 2021: "[they] have been proposed to have descended from Ancient North Eurasian (ANE)-related populations, mixing with newly arriving people carrying East Asian ancestry"
Grebenyuk, Pavel S.; Fedorchenko, Alexander Yu.; Dyakonov, Viktor M.; et al. (2022). "Ancient Cultures and Migrations in Northeastern Siberia". In Bocharnikov, V. N.; Steblyanskaya, A. N. (eds.).Humans in the Siberian Landscapes. Springer.doi:10.1007/978-3-030-90061-8_4.ISBN978-3-030-90060-1.
Zeng, Tian Chen; Vyazov, Leonid A.; Kim, Alexander; et al. (4 October 2023). "Postglacial genomes from foragers across Northern Eurasia reveal prehistoric mobility associated with the spread of the Uralic and Yeniseian languages".bioRxiv10.1101/2023.10.01.560332.
