The rise and transformation of Bronze Age pastoralists in the Caucasus
The Caucasus and surrounding areas, with their rich metal resources, became a crucible of the Bronze Age and the birthplace of the earliest steppe pastoralist societies. Yet, despite having an outsized influence on the subsequent development of Europe and Asia, questions remain regarding the region's hunter-gatherer past and its formation of expansionist mobile steppe societies. Here, we present new genome-wide data of 131 individuals from 38 archaeological sites spanning 6,000 years. We find an initially strong genetic differentiation between populations north and south of the Caucasus mountains during the Mesolithic, with Eastern hunter-gatherer ancestry in the north, and a distinct Caucasus hunter-gatherer ancestry with increasing East Anatolian farmer admixture in the south. During the subsequent Eneolithic period, we observe the formation of the characteristic West Eurasian steppe ancestry and heightened interaction between the mountain and steppe regions, facilitated by technological developments of the Maykop cultural complex. In contrast, the height of pastoralist activities and territorial expansions during the Early and Middle Bronze Age is characterised by long-term genetic stability. The Late Bronze Age marks another period of gene flow from multiple distinct sources that coincides with a decline of steppe cultures, followed by a transformation and absorption of the steppe ancestry into highland populations.