Recent paleogenetic research places the Fatyanovo culture on the Russian Plain and the Middle Volga region about 5,500 years ago. Reports from TASS, citing the MIPT Center for Scientific Communication, highlight this geographic beginning and its significance for understanding early European connections in northeastern Europe.
The culture emerged when a group from Central Europe carried livestock husbandry into what is now Russia. Scientists note that this group carried relatively low genetic diversity, a sign of strict social rules and strong community cohesion that helped steer their shared way of life across distant lands.
A team of Russian paleogeneticists, led by Kharis Mustafin of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, investigated the roots of the Fatyanovo tradition. They have long pursued paleogenetic methods to map the development of the Russian Plain and the Middle Volga, aiming to shed light on how early populations moved and settled in diverse landscapes.
In the third millennium BCE, the Fatyanovo culture extended through the basins of the Oka, Volga, and Kama rivers. Its people were among the first to adopt animal husbandry in the forested zones of the Russian Plain, and scholars regard them as closely related to some of the earliest proto-European communities linked to the Corded Ware culture. By extracting DNA from skeletal remains and sequencing the genomes of 25 Fatyanovo individuals, researchers traced possible ancestral homes and migration routes. The study supports a European origin for these early pastoralists and outlines a plausible path of movement from Central Europe toward the eastern regions of the Russian Plain.
In earlier projects, researchers noted attempts to introduce new bison lineages in Bashkiria for breeding purposes, reflecting a broader pattern of animal exchange and husbandry linked to this era’s movements across the region.