Inferring the demographic history of the southern Trans-Urals from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age by sequencing palaeogenomes along a chronological transect

在乌拉尔南部，在公元前第二个千年末期，一种技术先进的文化已经发展起来，在从青铜时代向铁器时代过渡的接下来的几个世纪里，这种文化经历了深刻的变化。这种过渡在多大程度上伴随着遗传种群结构的变化，很难调查。最近，文化变迁被等同于迁徙。虽然移徙也可能在这种情况下发挥作用，但另外寻找人口发展的内在人口因素也是必不可少的。然而，人口统计过程只能根据深度测序的基因组来推断。不幸的是，目前可用的大多数古代基因组覆盖率很低，不允许在任何给定时间对过去种群的遗传多样性进行公正的估计；因此，只有在高质量的全基因组的基础上，才能表征遗传多样性如何在青铜时代到铁器时代的基本文化和经济转型的关键时期随时间演变。我们计划从南乌拉尔地区生产20个覆盖良好的基因组(10倍)。这使我们能够使用一套最新的人口统计推断方法，从而准确地描绘出这个具有重要文化意义的时期和地区的遗传种群动态。

In the southern Trans-Urals, towards the end of the second millennium BC, a technologically advanced culture has developed, which undergoes profound cultural change in the following centuries of the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.The extent to which this transition is accompanied by a change in the genetic population structure is hardly investigated. Recently, cultural changes have been equated with migrations. While migration may play a role also in this case, it is indispensable to additionally look for intrinsic demographic factors of population development. However, demographic processes can only be inferred on the basis of deeply sequenced genomes.Unfortunately, most of the currently available ancient genomes are low coverage and do not permit unbiased estimation of genetic diversity in past populations at any given time; therefore the characterization of how genetic diversity has evolved over time during the key period associated with the fundamental cultural and economic transitions from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age is only feasibly on the basis of high quality full genomes.We are planning to produce 20 well-covered genomes (10X) from the southern Trans-Urals. This allows us to use a suite of the latest demographic inference methods, which will provide an accurate picture of the genetic population dynamics in this culturally important period and area.