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THE ANCIENT CULTURES OF THE EXTREME NORTHEAST ASIA AND ETHNOGENETIC RECONSTRUCTIONS // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2019. Issue 2 (24). P. 110-136

This paper explores the main features of development of ancient archaeological cultures of the extreme Northeast of Asia in the context of reconstruction of ethnogenetic processes in this region in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. Based on researches of previous years and recent results the aim of the present study was to give the complex view of problems of ethnic identification of ancient cultures, reconstruction of the directions of migrations and episodes of ethnic interaction. The wide spread of the Beringian tradition could be associated with the «Ancient Paleosiberian» population, which largely became ancestral to many populations of the Holocene of the extreme Northeast Asia and North America, including Paleoeskimos, Neoeskimos and Chukotka-Kamchatkian clade, and appear as a common ancestor for Kets and Athabascans. Haplotype D2a'b of the mitochondrial genome, discovered in the burial on the lake Nozhyj (Trans-Baikal), may indicate carriers of the Kitoy tradition as a population associated with the Asian ancestors of the Paleoeskimo people. At least two large waves of the back migration from America to the extreme Northeast Asia since the Holocene were identified. Migration of the Paleoeskoimo and Aleutian groups is observed starting at ~3,500 cal. BP and expressed in the emergence of the Paleoeskimo tradition in Chukotka and the Tokarev culture in Northern Priokhotye. Starting at ~2,100 cal. BP the Neoeskimo populations expanded to Chukotka, which evinced in the development of Neoeskimo cultures of the Bering Sea.

Keywords: Northeast Asia, archeological cultures, ethnogenesis, haplogroups, Beringian tradition, Sumnagin culture, Belkachi culture, Ymyyakhtakh culture, Tokarev culture, Paleoeskimos, Neoeskimos, Chukchi, Koryaks