At the End of the Earth: The Ancient North Siberians

Original art by Ettore Mazza

Ice.

It was all one could see for miles upon miles. Even the trees blended in with the white surroundings, covered in snow. Even the gray sky seemed to blend in so that all one saw at any point was a field of white and gray. However, one feature stuck out like a sore thumb. A herd of woolly mammoth was trudging its way through the snow and ice, the animal's brown hair signaling to anybody in the vicinity that they were there. While other animals had adapted to the climate with white fur, the ranging mammoth had not. They didn't need to rely on camouflage for protection. Their humongous size, sharp tusks and group-based movements were sufficient protection for the mammoth. 

However, a pack of other living beings slowly approach the mammoths without their knowing. Covered in white pelts from previous victims of the hunt, these humans were prepared to take down the ultimate game. Mammoth hunting was not an every-day occurrence. Rather, it was a special occasion. They readied their spears tipped with horns from woolly rhinoceros in preparation for the charge. 

And indeed, after a bloody confrontation that saw members of their own group be slain, the hunters had managed to get their kill—a young female mammoth. After catching their breaths, the hunters prepared to get to work on their objective— taking the large tusks of the mammoth. The goal of the hunt was not for food, no. The hunters already had plenty of different types of food. The goal was the tusk which could be used for more building material.

A woolly mammoth in the Ice Age, c.32,000 ya

Art by Leonello Calvetti

However, as the hunters work through the bloody affair, the howling of wolves freeze them and chill them to the bone. Or, at least, it would have if they weren't already in what was possibly the iciest conditions one could live in. A pack of wolves hesitantly approached the hunters. Locked in by glaciers on all sides, the wolves and the humans had found themselves encountering each other time and time again. In order to survive, the two species had to come to a sort of understanding. The hunters tore off a piece of meat from the mammoth and tossed it to the wolves who eagerly swallowed up their meal. After the feeding time, the wolves dashed away but one hunter could swear he could see the pack through the corner of his eye, stalking them as they made their way back home. 

The hunters reached their settlement that was thriving more than one would expect in this region. Hundreds of people were going about their business, building dwellings, cooking, stoking fires, and so on. Dancers celebrated the arrival of the new building resources. A woman, wearing a sort of bone crown or tiara, runs to her partner for a hug as she is happy to see him again and she wishes to congratulate him on a successful hunt. Other members of the tribe mourned those who were unable to return. As the sun set and the people settled down to sleep, the howl of wolves spelled uncertainty for the future. Day by day, it seemed to be getting colder and food was becoming more scarce.

Origins

While this was an imagined scenario, there is much about these people that might seem too fictitious to be true. But, in fact, during the global, fiercely cold Ice Age of the Paleolithic Period, a group of humans lived in a refugium between the glaciers all the way in the Arctic Circle. These were the Yana people, also known as the Ancient North Siberians, and this is their story. 

In order to understand the people who lived on what is today the bank of the Yana River in the Arctic Circle, we must first move our attention further away to Central Asia. 50,000 years ago, while the Ice Age continued, a group of hunter-gatherer people entered the region from the southwest, possibly from somewhere in the Iranian Plateau. These people, represented by recently-admixed Neanderthal hybrid specimens found at Zlatý kůň ("Golden Horse") in Czechia, entered not only Central Asia but became widespread as far as eastern Europe and possibly as far as Ust'-Ishim in Central Asia. These people migrated even further northwards into Siberia. Siberia, a region that brings up imagery of barren wastelands, was actually relatively habitable during the Ice Age. This habitable climate facilitated this migration. 

A reconstruction of the Zlatý kůň woman from c.47,000 YA.
By DeviantArt user PhilipEdwin

At some point between 50,000 years ago and 45,000 years ago, a split began to take place within these Zlatý kůň communities. To the eastern range of their domain, the Zlatý kůň became what we consider to be "Eastern Eurasians." They will go on to be a genetic component in the formation of East Asians. To the west, however, these Zlatý kůň communities diverged into the "Western Eurasians," a lineage that included the famous Cro-Magnon of Europe. This clean correlation between geography and genetics on an east-west cline would not last.  At some point, around 38,000 years ago, a group of West Eurasian hunter-gatherers had split off from their fellow West Eurasians and instead they began to make their way east. Given how remote in the past this event was, the reason for this eastward migration is unclear. Perhaps some competition for resources or other issues gave way to a group making their own way into the east. Perhaps they had cultivated ties with the Eastern Eurasians which sparked their movement east. Maybe it was just the result of the wanderings of a people with no map and no meaningful sense of large-scale direction. Perhaps it was a gradual split due to geographic and climatic features like glaciers. How and why it happened is unknown, but by 32,000 years ago, these Western Eurasian hunter-gatherers were living on the edge of the habitable world in a refugium around what is the Arctic Yana River today in northeastern Siberia.

Location of the Yana site in northeast Siberia.
By Mariela Ganeva, MailOnline

They were surrounded by glaciers. They were possibly trapped in the refugium with other species of megafauna like woolly mammoths, reindeer and wolves. Forgotten by the world, this population of around 500 people (who by this point in time had picked up Eastern Eurasian mates possessed a genome that 22% consisted of East Eurasian components) would go on to produce descendants with remarkable impacts on the world. Being of the ancestral mitochondrial Haplogroup U and Y Haplogroup P1, many groups can trace their genetic ancestry back to these people who are known archaeologically as the Yana and genetically as the Ancient North Siberians or ANS. They are a component in the ancestry to the American Indians who will one day make their own trek into glaciers to populate a new land. They would be a genetic component to the Japanese who would develop a unique culture on their island before exploding forth in a flurry of industrialization. Their DNA can be found in the Mongols who built the largest contiguous land empire the world will ever see. The Indian, the Turk, the Iranian, the Tatar. Siberians like the Uralic Nganasan or the Paleosiberian Ket. All of these groups can claim to descend from this Arctic population. And, of course, possibly holding the most Yana DNA, are the Europeans from Portugal to Russia, from Scandinavia to Greece where there are legends of a land called Hyperborea, an arctic land inhabited by people blessed by the gods. While there is no evidence of the Yana basin being a tropical paradise in the Arctic Circle, one can't help but wonder if the Greek myths of Hyperborea are somehow a passed down story of the Yana, altered through the sands of time after tens of thousands of years. 

Life in the Ice

Caught in the refugia of the Arctic, during the Last Glacial Maximum which began 33,000 years ago no less, the resilient Yana thrived more than one might expect. In their region, the Yana had a large variety of game to hunt and use for materials. Based on Yana artifacts, the Yana had access to and hunted woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoths, Pleistocene hares, steppe bison, horses, musk oxen, wolves, polar foxes, brown bears, Pleistocene lions, wolverines, rock ptarmigans, as well as their primary source of food—reindeer. While some of these animals were hunted for food, many were used for their fur for warmth in the harsh Arctic. Indeed, throughout the Yana habitation of the Arctic Circle, the Last Glacial Maximum only intensified until the inevitable end of the Yana.  Mammoth hunting appears to not be the Yana's primary source of game. Hunting mammoth was something that apparently happened every few years. When hunting mammoth, it is said that the Yana specifically targeted adolescent female mammoths for their large tusk sizes. These tusks would then be used for things like building materials or weapons. The woolly rhinoceros' horn, for example, would be heated by something like steam and then shaped to become the tip of the hunters' spears. Hunting for mammoth is evident through a location known as something archaeologists call the "Yana Mass Accumulation of Mammoth" which has over 1,000 mammoth bones from 26 mammoths organized according to type with 95% of the bones found there belonging to mammoths. At other Yana sites, mammoth bones make up 50% to 3.3% of the pile. The Yana hunting of mammoth is the first confirmed record of Homo sapiens hunting the great beasts, a deadly affair and something that would become a defining feature of the Ice Age. 

Yana Mass Accumulation of Mammoth
From Journal of Archaeological Science Volume 38, issue 9, September 2011 article Woolly mammoth mass acumulation next to the Paleolithic Yana RHS site, Arctic Siberia: its geology, age, and relation to past human activity by A.E. Basilyan, M.A. Anisimov, P.A. Nikolskiy, and V.V. Pitulko.

Looking at the Yana site itself, it was a relatively well-developed site with locations separated by tens or hundreds of meters over an area of over 3,500 square meters. Unlike other hunter-gatherers, the Yana appeared to be relatively settled as the Yana settlement was made for long-term human habitation and served as a homebase for thousands of years. Elements of advanced technology (for the time) and a developed culture can also be found. In their earliest stages, the Yana have very few blades, especially microblades. However, they do have a flake-based stone tool making industry. Hunting tools were usually made from bone and ivory while non-hunting tools could be found made out of stone. Shaft wrenches, utensils, points, bone needles, decorations and personal ornaments could all be found at Yana sites. Decoration is also intriguing as the Yana had animal figurines representing mammoth or reindeer, pieces of ivory with engraved drawings of hunters or dancers and even a piece of anthraxolite shaped like the head of a horse or mammoth.  Personal decoration also appears in Yana culture like ivory hair band ornaments, pendants created by reindeer teeth and beads made from hare bones (some of which were even painted). Not only that, the Yana used non-local amber to make some of their decorations which is either a sign of high mobility or, more likely given the permanent state of the settlement, the Yana participated on a large-scale Stone Age trading network. The existence of this trade network suggests that, despite being isolated in a refugium, the Yana did have some sort of contact with the outside world. This makes us question why they didn't leave the harsh Arctic Circle anytime sooner than when they did.  Living in a refugium with so many forms of megafauna, a unique situation was created where humans and wolves had to live closer than usual. Very often, these two species would proverbially step on each other's toes as they both hunted the same types of prey. Especially as the Last Glacial Maximum reached its height 26,000 years ago, both humans and wolves may have started to become desperate with wolves stalking the humans and consuming the prey the humans left behind. Over time, the wolves and the humans came closer to each other and there is some evidence of the Yana even cohabiting with wolves. Over time, it became clear that the intelligent wolves could be used for things like cross-species collaborative hunting. By roughly 23,000 years ago, the relationship between man and wolf (or dog, rather) had changed forever. What had once been a rival species that kept humans awake at night in fear had become man's best friend. It was the Yana who domesticated the dog. 

Illustration of "pre-contact" American dogs by John James Audubon and John Bachman.

Dispersal

When the Last Glacial Maximum's height was reached 26,000 years ago, the situation in the Yana homeland was becoming unbearable and the Ancient North Siberians slowly began to go their separate ways as they were pushed south by the glaciers. It is around this time that a group of Yana move south, down through Sakhalin and northeast Asia connected by the land bridge (created by the lower sea levels during the Ice Age), developing new technologies as they went like microblades before finally arriving in Hokkaido by 25,000 years ago. These Hokkaido Ancient North Siberians would move down into Honshu by 20,000 years ago and begin interactions with the local Hoabinhian-like Minatogawa people that led to the ethnogenesis of the Jomon of Japan. 

Meanwhile, the Yana settlement shows evidence of a massive scale replacement by Eastern Eurasians. Around the time of the domestication of the dog, the Yana themselves had increased admixture with the East Eurasians as the Yana moved south. Around 24,000 years ago, the Yana inhabiting the Yana region were now genetically around 63% Eastern Eurasian and a chunk of the population went off to the east, becoming a key component to the Ancestral Native Americans. Later, the inhabitants were around 75% East Eurasian, replacing the Ancient North Siberians with a new descendant population we know as the Ancient Paleosiberians (APS). Meanwhile, at the same time, another group of Ancient North Siberians maintained their genetic makeup of only around 22% East Eurasian with some minor contributions of a West Eurasian lineage known as the Caucasian Hunter-Gatherers (CHG), becoming a dominant force in Central Asia and Siberia. They were called the Ancient North Eurasians (ANE) and they would go one to create a legacy that would change the world forever. 

A reconstruction of an Ancient North Eurasian by Ancestral Whispers

Of course, everywhere the descendants of the Yana went whether it be the Americas, northern Siberia or Central Asia, they brought a remnant of their time in the Arctic with them. A reminder of the harsh situations they once lived in and the achievements they were able to make. These people brought dogs with them. 

Remembering the ANS

21,000 years ago, the land that was once the Yana settlement had been abandoned. Its original Ancient North Siberian inhabitants had migrated and admixed with other populations. The last to inhabit the region would be considered Ancient Paleosiberians rather than ANS proper. Memories of the region my linger on; an empty patch where ceremonial dances were held, the shade under an old tree with where a wolf decided it would live with man, the Paleolithic forge of sorts where heat was used to temper tools from bone. The settlement gradually disappeared as the glaciers moved forward, turning the refugium into an uninhabitable wasteland under the ice and its original inhabitants scattered to the winds.  But just because the Yana settlement was under the ice did not mean that the ANS did not carry on. Just a bit to the east, we have a woman archaeologically identified as "Kolyma1" from 24,000 years ago whose DNA is around 25% ANS, beginning the Ancient Paleosiberian genome. In Japan, the descendants of Yana play a role in the formation of the Jomon people. To the southwest near Lake Baikal, a new culture will flourish known as the Mal'ta-Buret' culture consisting of a people known genetically as the Ancient North Eurasians with 75% ANS DNA. The descendants of the Yana will become worldwide explorers as, even 13,000 years ago, the Clovis culture of North America will  be using flaking technology very similar to their Yana ancestors thousands of years earlier. Siberians will begin to use their dog companions to pull sleds across the region and even into the Americas. The Ancient North Eurasians will become a key component in the heritage of many other peoples including the Proto-Indo-Europeans who will conquer the world in waves of expansion. 

A reconstruction of the Kennewick Man, a 9,000-year-old American Indian descended from the ANS.
Photo by Brittney Tatchell of the Smithsonian Institute

Though they are but a footnote in history, just a few hundred people living in an outpost in the Arctic we call the Yana, the Ancient North Siberians, have left a lasting impact on the world. For the what is possibly the most visible evidence of their hardships, just take a look at your dog and know that your dog is descent from those wolves that, under exceptional circumstances, lived with humans. In addition, especially if you have the tiniest amount of Mongolian, Indo-European, Turkic, Siberian, Uralic, Japanese, or American Indian blood in you, your ancestors were part of the unique world that domesticated these animal friends as well.   

References

1. Ancient Arctic DNA Gives Unprecedented Insight into Human History by Tara Yarlagadda, 2021 (https://bit.ly/3OvDSeq)

2. Ancient Fennoscandian genomes reveal origin and spread of Siberian ancestry in Europe by Thiseas C Lamnidis, 2018 (https://go.nature.com/3vaFpPy)

3. Ancient Siberia was home to previously unknown humans, say scientists by Nicola Davis, 2019 (https://bit.ly/3KaDfUe)

4. Dog domestication and the dual dispersal of people and dogs into the Americas by Angela R Perri, 2021 (https://bit.ly/3v8dgs5)

5. A Dynamic 6,000-Year Genetic History of Eurasia’s Eastern Steppe by Choongwon Jeong, 2020 (https://bit.ly/3vwLyEk)

6. Evidence from the Yana Palaeolithic site, Arctic Siberia, yields clues to the riddle of mammoth hunting by Pavel Nikolskiy, 2013 (https://bit.ly/3EH6gWr)

7. The oldest art of the Eurasian Arctic: personal ornaments and symbolic objects from Yana RHS, Arctic Siberia by Vladimir V Pitulko, 2012 (https://bit.ly/3k5FUnq)

8. The Oxford Handbook of the Prehistoric Arctic by T. Max Friesen, 2016

9. The population history of northeastern Siberia since the Pleistocene by Martin Sikora, 2019 (https://bit.ly/3rLCAlC)

10. Reconstructing genetic history of Siberian and Northeastern European populations by Emily H.M. Wong, 2016 (https://bit.ly/3LfxEgD)

11. Scientists Discover Ancient Siberian Population That Is The Ancestors Of Modern Native Americans by Natasha Ishak, 2019 (https://bit.ly/3MmvFY0)

12. Wooly mammoth mass accumulation next to the Paleolithic Yana RHS site, Arctic Siberia: its geology, age, and relation to past human activity by A.E. Basilyan, 2011 (https://bit.ly/3EUlPu9)

13. The Yana RHS Site: Humans in the Arctic Before the Last Glacial Maximum by V. V. Pitulko, 2004 (https://bit.ly/3Oz7VBI)

By Andrew Eubanks