Bronze Age East-Central Europe

The post-Neolithic demographic history of East-Central Europe, despite this region being on theconfluence of various ecological zones and cultural entities is poorly explored. Here, the descendantsof societies associated with steppe pastoralists form Early Bronze Age (EBA 2400-1800 BC) werefollowed by Middle Bronze Age (MBA 1800-1200 BC) populations displaying unique characteristics.Particularly, the predominance of collective burials, the scale of which, was previously seen only inthe Neolithic. To study kinship of those MBA societies and to test whether the re-emergence of those old traditionswas a result of genetic shift or social changes, we generated and analyzed 91 genomes fromindividuals associated with EBA and MBA from modern day Poland and Ukraine. Our results indicate that while EBA people in East-Central Europe were most likely directdescendants of the preceding populations, the MBA populations were formed by an additionaladmixture event involving a population with relatively high proportions of genetic componentassociated with European hunter-gatherers. Additionally, our data shows that MBA collective burialscontained numerous individuals related to each other, and the prevalence of close kinship among adultmale descendants over adult female suggests that patrilocality was dominating form of marriagearrangements in these societies.