Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 54 (1) 2026   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2026.54.1.143-153

Annotation:  A Climatostratigraphy of Pleistocene Deposits in the East Chamber of Denisova Cave Variation of Lithic Assemblages and Lithic Technologies at Late Upper Paleolithic Horizons 6–2Б of K An Absolute Chronology of Mesolithic Sites of the Volga Forest-Steppe Dogs in Funerary Practices of Bronze Age Populations of the Ural-Kazakhstan Steppes: The Case of Sin Karasuk People in the Aley Steppe A Microbiological Study of the Content of Vessels from a 6th Century BC Burial at Nor Armavir, Armen The Ondol Heating Systems in Dwellings on Neukdo Island, Korea, and at the Krounovka Sites in Primor Archaeological and Pedological Studies of the Ust-Tersyuk Fortifi cations, Forest-Steppe Trans-Urals The Technological Analysis of Earrings from a Burial with a Horse Skin at the Koybaly Cemetery, Khak Coins from the Taskeshu Caravanserai Archaeological Sites Under the System of Governmental Audit of Cultural Heritage: The Case of Krasno Possibilities and Limitations of Dendrochronological Dating: The Case of Historical Wooden Buildings From Hare Skin to Silk Scrap: The Origin and Evolution of the Symbolic Design of Traditional Buryat Settlement Pattern of Siberian Tatars and Bokharans of the Irtysh-Osha Interfl uve in the 18th to Mi Diet of the Early Iron Age People in the Novosibirsk Stretch of the Ob: A Case Study from the Bystro Uralians and Yeniseians: The Dialog Between Craniometry and Genomics   

Uralians and Yeniseians: The Dialog Between Craniometry and Genomics

A.G. Kozintsev

Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya nab. 3, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia

To assess the agreement between recent paleogenomic data concerning the origin of Uralic- and Yeniseianspeaking populations and craniometric data, measurements of 109 recent and ancient male cranial samples were compared using multivariate statistics. Results do not contradict the conclusions reached by geneticists and partly support them by revealing ties between the Neolithic sample from Yakutia and the Bronze Age group from Tatarka Hill in the southern Chulym basin, and between the latter and modern Uralic-speaking groups. Also, the sample from Tatarka Hill exhibits ties with Yukaghirs. As in the case of genomics, Nganasans are the “easternmost” Uralic population. The other Northern Samoyedic group, Nenets, may have migrated from the Altai, in agreement with certain ethnographic facts. Likewise, craniometry does not contradict genomics by showing that Late Neolithic and Bronze Age Cisbaikalians could have been the earliest known ancestors of the Kets. N.L. Chhlenova's hypothesis about the Yeniseian affinities of the Karasuk people is directly upheld by genetics, but only indirectly by craniometry. The latter supports L.A. Chindina's idea that Kulaika people spoke Samoyedic. Other claims of archaeologists and linguists about the Samoyedic or Yeniseian attribution of various Siberian Bronze and Early Iron Age cultures are unsupported by craniometric data. The accretion of morphologically “western” traits in Uralians in the east-to-west direction was caused by two “western” components—steppe and Mesolithic Northeast European. In the west of the Uralic distribution area, both these components were substratal. An important factor in the origin of Baltic Finns and Komi was the adoption of Finnic languages by pre-Finnic populations of Northeastern Europe.

Keywords: Uralians, Yeniseians, Samoyeds, paleogenomics, craniometry, multivariate statistics