Conny Waters – AncientPages.com – A recent ancient DNA study suggests that Scythian elites may have passed down political power through family lines spanning several burial sites. By bringing together archaeology, anthropology, and genetics, this research sheds new light on how social inequality and political authority took shape in ancient nomadic societies.
Credit: Rinat Zhumatayev, Zainolla Samashev, Eggry – CC BY-SA 2.0 – Image compilation by AncientPages.com
The Scythian And The Golden Man
The Scytho-Siberian archaeological horizon began in the first millennium BCE and stretched from the Altai mountains to the Black Sea. The Scythians are often described as skilled horse-riding nomads who moved across the wide Eurasian steppe during the Iron Age. During this time, large burial mounds called kurgans appeared, built for people of high status. These impressive graves often contained men and women, along with gold, weapons, and sacrificed animals.
In contrast, some people were buried in much smaller, simpler mounds, with little or nothing placed in their graves. These clear differences have often been seen as signs of rising social inequality and the rise of powerful elites during the Iron Age. Still, one key question remains: how was elite status kept and passed on? Did people gain power through their own achievements, or did they inherit it?
Reconstructions of selected high-status individuals and a map of sites included in the study. Credit: Ayshin Ghalichi et al, Science Advances (2026)
The new study analyzes genome-wide DNA from 85 Iron Age individuals across Central Eurasia, including 38 elite and 47 non-elite individuals. It features 46 newly sequenced genomes and presents the first genome-wide data from the renowned Scythian Saka “Golden Man” of the Issyk archaeological site in Kazakhstan, a major discovery of the Central Eurasian steppe.
The Issyk kurgans in Kazakhstan, located about 50 km east of Almaty, are among the most significant discoveries from the Central Eurasian steppe. Excavations of this royal burial complex, linked to the Iron Age Saka culture, uncovered the “Golden Man” burial dating to 400–300 BCE. The individual was interred in a wooden chamber with over 4,000 gold ornaments, weapons, a gold-embroidered headdress, zoomorphic artifacts, and a silver bowl inscribed with unknown writing.
This study provides the first genome-wide genetic insights from the “Golden Man.” The results place him within the genetic variation of Iron Age Saka individuals and help resolve a long-standing question by indicating the individual was most likely male.
Family Lineage Across High-Status Burials
By analyzing ancient genomes from individuals buried in elite Scythian graves and comparing them to non-elite burials, an international research team identified close family relationships among elite individuals across multiple cemeteries, sometimes over 100 km apart, as well as evidence of unions between relatives. These findings suggest that elite status was preserved within interconnected family lineages, shaping political authority and social organization across the Central Eurasian steppe.
Eleke Sazy gold artifacts. Credit: Zainolla Samashev
“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 closely related to each other, even when buried at different archaeological sites, than to lower-status individuals buried at the same sites,” says Ainash Childebayeva, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UT Austin and researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Institute of Genetics and Physiology in Almaty.
The researchers found no clear evidence that elite status was linked to either patrilocal or matrilocal residence patterns, suggesting that social organization 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. “An important observation from our study was the noticeable presence of elite women,” says Ayshin Ghalichi, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the University of Texas at Austin. “Nearly half of the elite individuals in our dataset were female, indicating that women held high social status within Iron Age Scythian society.“
The presence of elite women in richly furnished graves, along with genomic evidence connecting high-status individuals across burial sites, indicates that status, authority, and kinship were closely linked. The findings suggest that political authority among Iron Age Scythian groups was organized through extended elite family networks, rather than by residence patterns based solely on male or female lineage.
Left: Burial mound “Kurgan Shilikty 16” in Kazakhstan after excavation. Credit: Rinat Zhumatayev – Right: Reconstruction of the “Golden Man”. Credit: Gulmira Mukhtarova
Leyla Djansugurova from the Institute of Genetics and Physiology in Almaty, Kazakhstan, explains 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.”
The most striking example of Scythian-Saka culture is the ‘Golden Man’ from the Issyk burial mound, now a national symbol of Kazakhstan.
Many other Golden Men and Women have also been discovered by Kazakh archaeologists. The significance of this genetic study lies not only in providing the first reliable DNA data on numerous Saka elite objects, such as the Golden Man from Issyk, the Urzhar Princess, and the Shilikty Golden Man, but also in examining Scythian-Saka elite individuals alongside non-elite individuals from the same sites.
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This approach has clarified elite marital relationships and identified related necropolises. As a result, the study greatly enhances our understanding of Scythian-Saka culture. Based on archaeological and genomic evidence, the study reveals that Scythian elite society was shaped by family ties that extended 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 was published in the journal Science Advances
Written by Conny Waters – AncientPages.com Staff Writer