Burial mound ‘Kurgan Shilikty 16’ in Kazakhstan before the excavation works took place. Credit: © Rinat Zhumatayev.

A new genomic study has uncovered family ties that link Scythian elite burials across the Eurasian steppe.

Ancient DNA reveals how political power and elite status may have been maintained among Iron Age nomadic societies

A new ancient DNA study provides evidence that political power among Scythian elites may have been inherited through family lineages that extended across multiple burial sites.

By combining archaeology, anthropology and genetics, the new study offers fresh insight into how social inequality and political authority developed among ancient nomadic societies.

Nomads

The Scytho-Siberian archaeological horizon emerged during the first millennium BCE and stretched from the Altai mountains to the Black Sea.

The Scythians have been portrayed as highly mobile horse-riding nomads who travelled the vast Eurasian steppe during the Iron Age.

Across the Eurasian steppe, the Iron Age witnessed the appearance of large burial mounds, built for high-status individuals.

These elaborately constructed monumental graves often contained richly adorned women and men accompanied by gold ornaments, weapons and scarified animals.

In contrast, other individuals were buried in much smaller and simpler mounds with few or no grave goods.

Such striking differences have long been interpreted as evidence of growing social inequality and the emergence of powerful elites among the Iron Age population.

However, one essential question has remained unanswered: how was elite status maintained and transmitted? Were positions of power earned through individual achievement or were they inherited?

The new study analyses genome-wide DNA from 85 Iron Age individuals, including 38 elite and 47 non-elite individuals from across Central Eurasia.

The study includes 46 newly sequenced genomes and the first genome-wide data from the famous Scythian Saka ‘Golden Man’ of the Issyk archaeological site in Kazakhstan, one of the most outstanding archaeological discoveries of the Central Eurasian steppe.

Reconstruction of the ‘Golden Man’. Credit: © Gulmira Mukhtarova.

The Golden Man

One of the most significant discoveries from the Central Eurasian steppe is the Issyk kurgans in Kazakhstan, located about 50km east of Almaty.

Excavations of this royal burial complex associated with the Iron Age Saka culture revealed the ‘Golden Man’ burial dating to 400–300 BCE.

The individual was buried in a wooden chamber containing more than 4,000 gold ornaments, weapons, gold embroidered headdress, zoomorphic artefacts, and a silver bowl with unknown writing.

In this study, genome-wide data from the ‘Golden Man’ provide the first genetic insight from this iconic individual.

The results place him within the genetic variation of Iron Age Saka individuals and also help to resolve a long-standing question by indicating that the individual was most likely male rather than female.

Eleke Sazy gold artifacts. Credit: © Zainolla Samashev.

Family ties across elite burials

By analysing ancient genomes from individuals buried in elite Scythian graves and comparing them to non-elite burials, a team of international researchers have identified evidence of close family relationships linking elite individuals across multiple cemeteries, in some cases more than 100km apart, as well as signs of unions between relatives.

These results indicate that elite status was maintained within interconnected family lineages that shaped political authority and social organisation across the Central Eurasian steppe.

Ainash Childebayeva, assistant professor of anthropology at UT Austin and a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Institute of Genetics and Physiology, said: “We did not expect to find that social status was passed down from generation to generation but it was clear that high-status individuals were more related to each other, even when buried at different archaeological sites, than to people of lower status who were buried at the same sites with the elites.”

The researchers found no clear evidence that elite status was associated with either patrilocal or matrilocal residence patterns, suggesting that social organising among Scythian elites was more complex and not based on gender differentiation.

Elite women in Scythian society

The study also sheds new light on the role of elite women in Scythian society.

Ayshin Ghalichi, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the University of Texas at Austin, said: “An important observation from our study was the noticeable presence of elite women.

“Nearly half of the elite individuals in our dataset were female, indicating that women held high social status within Iron Age Scythian society.”

Burial mound ‘Kurgan Shilikty 16’ in Kazakhstan after the excavation works took place. Credit: © Rinat Zhumatayev.

Closely connected

The presence of elite women in richly furnished graves, together with genomic evidence linking high-status individuals across burial sites, points to a social world in which status, authority and kinship were closely connected.

The findings suggest that political authority among Iron Age Scythian groups may have been organised through extended elite family networks rather than through simple residence patterns based on either male or female lines.

Leyla Djansugurova from the Institute of Genetics and Physiology in Almaty, Kazakhstan, explained the broader cultural significance of the study: “Scythians and Sakas are collective names for nomadic tribes of the early Iron Age who inhabited the Central Eurasian region from the Danube to the Altai.

“The ancient Greeks called them ‘Scythians’ (Herodotus coined the term), while Persian and Indian sources called them ‘Sakas’. Historically, the term ‘Scythians’ more often refers to the western tribes (Black Sea region), and Sakas to the eastern ones (Central Asia, Altai).

“All these tribes were united by the so-called Scythian-Saka animal style in art, a distinctive military skill, and nomadic herding.

“They did not have their own written language, but they left behind grand burial mounds, the study of which has shaped the global understanding of the culture of the nomadic peoples of Eurasia during this period.”

She added: “The value of this genetic study not only estimated by the fact of obtaining the first reliable DNA data on numerous objects belonging to the Saka elite, such as the Golden Man from the Issyk burial mound, the Urzhar Princess, the Shilikty Golden Man, and others, but also by the fact that Scythian-Saka elite individuals were being examined alongside non-elite individuals found at the same sites.

“This approach has allowed to determine the specifics of elite marital relationships and identify related necropolises.

“Thus, this genetic study significantly enriches our knowledge of the Scythian-Saka culture.”

Shaped by family ties

By integrating archaeological, anthropological and genomic evidence, the study reveals that Scythian elite society was shaped by family ties extending across burial sites and regions.

These findings provide new insight into how high status was maintained, how political authority developed, and how social inequality emerged among ancient nomadic societies of the Eurasian steppe.

The study is published in Science Advances.