Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 36 (4) 2008

Annotation:  Environmental Changes in the Mongolian Altai during the Holocene New Data on Radiocarbon Chronology of Neolithic Ceramics from the Volga-Kama Region 1929 Year Tree-Ring Chronology for the Altai-Sayan Region (Western Tuva) Early Urilsky Culture Assemblage from Bukinsky Kluch, Bureya River Representations of Warriors on Early Medieval Turkic Bronze Plaques from Eastern Central Asia New Categories of Wooden Artifacts of the Mid 1st Millennium AD from the site of Vis II (Vychegda Ba The Han Chariot from Noin Ula Mound 20 (Mongolia) Defense Constructions of Fort Umrevinsky (Based on 2002–2004 Archaeological Excavations) Petroglyph Sites of Kazakhstan and Western Central Asia as Part of the Archaeological Landscape: Ne Zoomorphic Images in Eastern Slavic Embroidery of Southwestern Siberia New Ethnic Holidays in the Sayan-Altai The Origin of the Early Nomadic Populations of Tuva: Craniometrical Evidence The “Mediterraneans” of Southern Siberia and Kazakhstan, Indo-European Migrations, and the Origin of Human Humerus from Khoroshevsky Island: History and Context   

The “Mediterraneans” of Southern Siberia and Kazakhstan, Indo-European Migrations, and the Origin of the Scythians: A Multivariate Craniometric Analysis

A.G. Kozintsev.

The article presents some results of a multivariate analysis of 245 male Eurasian cranial series dating to various periods from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age. These results contradict the commonly held view that certain comparatively gracile (narrow-faced) Bronze Age populations of Southern Siberia and Kazakhstan were “Mediterranean” in the anthropological sense, i.e. Southern Caucasoid. Craniometry provides no support for the theory that those people migrated to Southern Siberia or Kazakhstan from Southwestern Central Asia, the Near East, or Trans-Caucasia. Populations described as “Mediterranean” (the Okunev people of Tuva, the Yelunino, the Samus, and some Afanasiev and Andronov groups) display craniometric resemblance with the Bronze Age people of Southern Russian and Ukrainian steppes, as well as with certain Late Neolithic and Bronze Age groups of Central and Western Europe. These affi nities are apparently caused by migrations of Indo-Europeans (specifi cally Indo-Iranians) from their European homeland eastward, as far as Eastern Central Asia. The return from Eastern Central Asia to Europe of the descendents of one of these groups during the Early Iron Age was probably the principal cause for the emergence of the Scythians on the historical arena.