Craniofacial variation of the Xiongnu Iron Age nomads of Mongolia reveals their possible origins and population history

Abstract

This paper examines Iron Age Mongolia during a time when nomadic tribes created the world's first steppe empire in Inner Asia. These aggregated tribes, known as Xiongnu (3rd century BC to the 2nd century AD), came to define steppe polity construction, later used by the Mongol Empire under the reign of Genghis Khan. They moved extensively over the eastern steppe and interacted, both in trade and intermarriage, with peoples from southern Siberia to Xinjiang. However, the Xiongnu as a people are relatively unknown to scholars, as they did not possess a written language. This study assesses Xiongnu population history and biological structure by analyzing craniofacial diversity via geometric morphometrics. Twenty-four coordinate cranial landmarks were used to test relationships among groups in the region and infer potential biological origins. The Relethford-Blangero R-matrix method was used to test hypotheses of phenotypic variation resulting from microevolutionary processes. This study hypothesizes biological continuity among Xiongnu individuals extending into modern Mongolian populations. Alternatively, long-range gene flow from adjacent geographic regions might suggest a complex

Diachronic changes in craniofacial morphology among the middle–late Holocene populations from Hehuang region, Northwest China

“…Those data were chosen because they were all diachronic population groups from specific regions during the Holocene, similar in temporal and geographic spread to the three groups from the Hehuang region. As information regarding effective population sizes was not available, all groups were given equal weighting in the analyses (Powell & Neves, ; Schmidt & Seguchi, ).…”

Prehistoric Mongolian Archaeology in the Early 21st Century: Developments in the Steppe and Beyond

“…From this corpus of skeletons, we see that Xiongnu people fell off their horses and suffered from arthritis and many similar complaints of active premodern people but were not exceptionally prone to violent death (Eng 2016;Mon-Sol 2003;Naran 2003). All analyses of the bioarchaeology of Xiongnu populations have revealed diversity in measures meant to establish East Asian or European physiologies (Kradin 2005;Lee 2009;Lee and Zhang 2011;Schmidt and Seguchi 2016;Yun 2009). The skeletal morphology and genetics of these populations have shown multigenerational spatial stability in local cemeteries (Keyser-Tracqui et al 2003;Ricaut et al 2010) and within regions (Lee 2009;Lee and Zhang 2011).…”

The quantitative genetic analysis of craniometric phenotype of Yinxu population, Anyang

“…, 来计算人群间的遗传距离 [15] . 尽管 表型变异通常都要大于与之相应的遗传变异, 但上 述计算是在完全遗传率(h 2 =1)的假设下获得的, 因此 该距离为人群间的最小遗传距离, 即使在不知道确 切遗传性的情况下, 也可将其用作不同人群间遗传 距离的比较分析 [16,17] . 遗传关系矩阵模型及其衍生方法的应用非常广 泛, 不仅可以用于研究现生人群 [11,12] , 考古遗址出土 古代居民遗骸 [18,19] , 古人类化石 [20] , 还常被用于研 究现代人的起源 [21,22] .…”