Elite families ruled nomadic Scythian society 2,500 years ago, DNA analysis reveals
mysterious ScythiansA diverse group of nomadic tribes, known for their ferocity in warfare, organized around elite dynasties of powerful men and women 2,500 years ago, a new dna The study shows. The results show that social inequality arose among these nomadic groups during the Iron Age, around 900 BC.
Much of what archaeologists know about the Scythians comes from ancient Greek and Roman accounts of skilled horsemen and their large, mound-shaped tombs, called kurgans, located in the Eurasian steppe grasslands. Scythian’ tattooed mummies And Intricate, animal-themed ornaments In ancient times they were as famous as their female warriors, who may have inspired the myth of the amazon. But the Scythians left no written records of themselves and were probably absorbed into other cultural groups around 200 BC after suffering several military defeats.
In a study published Friday (July 3) in the journal science advancementResearchers sequenced the DNA of 85 Iron Age Scythians to better understand how these geographically dispersed groups were related and how their society was politically structured. He found that elite family dynasties ruled nomadic groups from centralized locations, revealing the origins of social inequality among the Scythians.
The researchers prepared genomes from the skeletons of 38 elite and 47 non-elite people buried in kurgan tombs in 20 archaeological sites between 900 and 200 BC. Non-elite tombs were smaller than elite tombs, and lacked the impressive weapons and gold artifacts of elite tombs.
Based on DNA, the researchers found that elite people were 11 times more likely to be related to each other than they were to non-elite people, suggesting that there was a powerful extended family group that ruled over the steppe nomads.
Among the elite, they discovered two pairs of biological siblings, a brother and a sister, and a parent and child. In one case, both brothers were buried in different places at some distance. They also found two aristocratic grandfathers and grandsons buried in different cemeteries. But elite people were still buried closer together than non-elites.
One of the tombs, called a kurgan before excavation.
(Image credit: Rinat Zhumatayev)
“It is possible that this indicates some degree of geographic centralization of elite burials in close proximity to each other,” said the study’s co-authors. Ainash Childebayevaa genetic anthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin told Live Science in an email. “For example, there is an area in Siberia known as ‘Valley of the Kings‘It includes several large mounds that are probably typical of the same time period as our study.
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Researchers also examined historical claims by Greek authors such as herodotus That women held high status positions.
“An important observation of our study was the noticeable presence of elite females,” said the study’s first author. Ayshin GalichiAn archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany said in a statement. “Almost half of the unique individuals in our dataset were female, indicating that women had high social status in Iron Age Scythian society.”
Mysterious “Golden Man”
Reconstruction of the “Golden Man”, whose DNA was sequenced in the study.
The DNA evidence also “resolved a long-standing question about”golden man.” This skeleton of a teenager, discovered in Kurgan, Kazakhstan in 1969, was found along with more than 4,000 pieces of gold jewelery and a silver bowl with an inscription that could never be deciphered. However skeleton penis While this could not be determined based on the bones, experts assumed the man was a powerful male warrior, even though women had roughly equal power among the Scythians.
“Although the data we were able to generate has low coverage, we found that the individual was much more likely to be genetically male than female,” Childebaeva said, but “we did not identify any connection to the Golden Man.”
Childebayeva said that the Golden Man’s young age – 17 years old based on his bones – and his elite burial status together provide clear evidence of elite dynastic rule. An additional example that is “even more surprising,” Childebayeva said, comes from a pair of a grandfather and his 1-year-old grandson, both buried in elite kurgans. These burials of elite children reinforce the conclusion that Iron Age steppe nomads inherited their social status.
“The results presented here advance our understanding of how social inequality and discrimination grew among ancient Eurasian nomadic groups and highlight the practices of early nomadic groups in Central Eurasia in the first millennium BC,” the researchers wrote in the study.
Galichi, A., Seduali, M., Rohrlach, MB, Musarlina, L., Ganci-Ruscon, G., Hermes, T., Khusainova, E., Kahbatkizi, N., Bekmanov, B., Iksan, O., Altyanova, N., Tuke, J., Roughan, M., Baitanayev, B., Onggaruli, A., Mukhtarova, G., Tolyubayev, A., Zhumatayev, R., Risbach, B., … Childebayev, A. (2026). Ancient DNA reveals elite dynastic rule among Iron Age Eurasian steppe nomads. science advancement. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aef0108
