Abstract
The Altai Mountains have been a long-term boundary zone between the Eurasian Steppe
populations and South and East Asian populations. To disentangle some of the historical
population movements in this area, 14 ancient human specimens excavated in the westernmost
part of the Mongolian Altai were studied. Thirteen of them were dated from the Middle
to the End of the Bronze Age and one of them to the Eneolithic period. The environmental
conditions encountered in this region led to the good preservation of DNA in the human
remains. Therefore, a multi-markers approach was adopted for the genetic analysis
of identity, ancestry and phenotype markers. Mitochondrial DNA analyses revealed that
the ancient Altaians studied carried both Western (H, U, T) and Eastern (A, C, D)
Eurasian lineages. In the same way, the patrilineal gene pool revealed the presence
of different haplogroups (Q1a2a1-L54, R1a1a1b2-Z93 and C), probably marking different
origins for the male paternal lineages. To go further in the search of the origin
of these ancient specimens, phenotypical characters (i.e. hair and eye color) were
determined. For this purpose, we adapted the HIrisPlex assay recently described to
MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. In addition, some ancestry informative markers were analyzed
with this assay. The results revealed mixed phenotypes among this group confirming
the probable admixed ancestry of the studied Altaian population at the Middle Bronze
Age. The good results obtained from ancient DNA samples suggest that this approach
might be relevant for forensic casework too.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 02, 2014
Accepted:
May 25,
2014
Received in revised form:
May 21,
2014
Received:
January 2,
2014
Identification
Copyright
© 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
