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

在南乌拉尔山脉，在公元前第二个千年结束时，一种技术先进的文化已经发展起来，在接下来的几个世纪里，从青铜时代过渡到铁器时代，经历了深刻的文化变革。这种转变在多大程度上伴随着遗传群体结构的变化，几乎没有研究过。最近，人们把文化变迁等同于移民。虽然移徙在这种情况下也可能起作用，但必须另外寻找人口发展的内在人口因素。然而，人口统计过程只能在深度测序基因组的基础上推断出来。不幸的是，目前可获得的大多数古代基因组覆盖率很低，无法对任何给定时间的过去种群的遗传多样性进行无偏估计；因此，在与从青铜时代到铁器时代的基本文化和经济过渡相关的关键时期，基因多样性如何随着时间的推移而演变的特征，只有在高质量的全基因组的基础上才是可行的。我们正计划从南乌拉尔山脉生产20个覆盖良好的基因组（10X）。这使我们能够使用一套最新的人口统计推断方法，这将提供这一文化重要时期和地区遗传种群动态的准确图景。

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.