Abstract
From around 4,000 to 2,000 BC the forest-steppe north-western Pontic region was occupied by people
who shared a nomadic lifestyle, pastoral economy and barrow burial rituals. It has been shown that these
groups, especially those associated with the Yamnaya culture, played an important role in shaping the
gene pool of Bronze Age Europeans, which extends into present-day patterns of genetic variation in
Europe. Although the genetic impact of these migrations from the forest-steppe Pontic region into central
Europe have previously been addressed in several studies, the contribution of mitochondrial lineages
to the people associated with the Corded Ware culture in the eastern part of the North European Plain
remains contentious. In this study, we present mitochondrial genomes from 23 Late Eneolithic and Bronze
Age individuals, including representatives of the north-western Pontic region and the Corded Ware culture
from the eastern part of the North European Plain. We identified, for the first time in ancient populations,
the rare mitochondrial haplogroup X4 in two Bronze Age Catacomb culture-associated individuals.
Genetic similarity analyses show close maternal genetic affinities between populations associated with
both eastern and Baltic Corded Ware culture, and the Yamnaya horizon, in contrast to larger genetic
differentiation between populations associated with western Corded Ware culture and the Yamnaya
horizon. This indicates that females with steppe ancestry contributed to the formation of populations
associated with the eastern Corded Ware culture while more local people, likely of Neolithic farmer
ancestry, contributed to the formation of populations associated with western Corded Ware culture.