Bulan-Koba culture

The Bulan-Koba culture (2nd century BCE to 5th century CE) is an archaeological culture in the Altai Mountains which replaced the Pazyryk culture.^[1] The time period of this culture occurs in the so-called Huno-Sarmatian period in Russian archaeology (2nd century BC to 5th century AD).^[2] The bearers of this culture lived during the time of Xiongnu Empire, Xianbei state and Rouran Khaganate. this culture was replaced by Turkic burial traditions in Altai ^[3]

V.V. Radlov was the first to scientifically study the monuments of the Bulan-Koba culture in 1865 with excavations near the village Katanda and near the village Berel. absence of settlements in this culture points to a nomadic lifestyle.^[4] The burial tradition of Bulan-Koba culture consists of oval shaped mounds over stone cists and sacrificed horses were buried along with the deceased in most of the adult burials ^[5] The Bulan-Koba bearers erected cenotaphs for warriors who died in distant battles.^[6] The Bulan-Koba culture was a part of Xiongnu, Xianbei and Rouran political unions and received material influence from all aforementioned cultural cores. The burial practices of the Bulan-Koba culture greatly influenced the following Turkic burial traditions of the first Turkic Khaganate.^[7]

Analysis of skeletal remains suggests that the Bulan-Koba culture bearers were anthropologically mainly of Europoid stock,^[8] similar to preceding Iron age Eastern Scythians and different from Mongoloid groups such as Slab Grave and Xiongnu. At the end of the period of this culture, the Bulan-Koba people engaged in heavy clashes with foreign peoples.^[9]

A genetic study published in Nature in 2015 examined the remains of three Bulan-Koba samples,^[10] the three Y-DNA samples extracted belonged to Q1a-M25/YP844 (samples RISE600 and RISE601^[11] from Verkh-Uimon site dated to 350-450 CE) and J2a-PH358 (sample RISE602^[12] from Sary-Bel site dated to 200 BCE to 100 CE) and three mtDNA belonged to K2a5, M8a1 and C4+152.^[13] the autosomal composition of the Bulan-Koba samples resemble preceding Iron age Eastern Scythians (50% RUS_Sintashta_MLBA, 40% RUS_Baikal_EBA, 10% BMAC) with few gene flow from Xiongnu and Slab Grave.

• Konstantinov, Nikita; Soenov, Vasilii; Trifanova, Synaru; Svyatko, Svetlana (29 June 2018). "History and culture of the early Türkic period: A review of archaeological monuments in the Russian Altai from the 4th–6th century AD". Archaeological Research in Asia. 16: 103–115. doi:10.1016/j.ara.2018.06.002.
• Tishkin, Alexey Alekseevich (2019). History of Altai: in 3 volumes. T. 1: The most ancient era, antiquity and the Middle Ages (in Russian) (PDF). Издательство Алтайского государственного университета. ISBN 978-5-7904-2333-8.
• Pozdnyakov, D.V.; Chikisheva, T.A. (2021). "Population of the Bulan-Koba culture according to anthropological data". SciUp (in Russian). XXVII: 594–599. doi:10.17746/2658-6193.2021.27.0594-0599.
• Svetlana, Tur; Matrenin, S.S.; Soenov, Vasilii (December 2018). "Armed Violence Among the Altai Mountains Pastoralists of the Xiongnu-Sarmatian Age". Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia. 46 (4): 132–139. doi:10.17746/1563-0102.2018.46.4.132-139.
• Allentoft, Morten E.; Sikora, Martin; Sjögren, Karl-Göran; Rasmussen, Simon (10 June 2015). "Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia". Nature. 552 (7555): 167–172. Bibcode:2015Natur.522..167A. doi:10.1038/nature14507.
• "Family Tree DNA". FamilyTreeDNA. 2024.