Genetic ancestry changes in Stone to Bronze Age transition in the East European plain

The transition from Stone to Bronze Age in Central and Western Europe was a period of major population movements originating from the Ponto-Caspian Steppe. Here, we report new genome-wide sequence data from 30 individuals from the territory north of this area – from the under-studied Western part of present-day Russia, including 3 Stone Age hunter-gatherers (10,800–4,250 cal BCE) and 26 Bronze Age farmers from the Corded Ware complex called Fatyanovo Culture (2,900–2,050 cal BCE). We show that Eastern hunter-gatherer ancestry was present in Northwestern Russia already from around 10,000 BCE. Furthermore, we see a change in ancestry with the arrival of farming – Fatyanovo Culture individuals were genetically similar to other Corded Ware cultures, carrying a mixture of Steppe and European early farmer ancestry and thus likely originating from a fast migration towards the northeast from somewhere near modern-day Ukraine, which is the closest area where these ancestries coexisted from around 3,000 BCE.