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Okunevo culture
The ancestral makeup of the population of the Okunevo culture differed sharply from that of the western steppe-derived Afanasievo population. Based on a large sample of individuals, the Okunevo genepool has been shown to be mostly derived from a local population, with only ~25% admixture of Afanasievo western steppe ancestry. The local ancestry component can be successfully proxied with a pre-Okunevo Early Bronze Age individual from a site at the banks of the Bazaikha river, and displays much continuity from earlier hunter-gatherers in the Altai region, with some additional geneflow from Ancient Northeast Asians (ANA). Wang et al. (2023) model the Okunevo population as 26% Afanasievo, 61% Altai hunter-gatherer, and 13% Lake Baikal hunter-gatherer (= ANA), with the latter two representing the distal sources of the local ancestry component. The Altai hunter-gatherer ancestry itself is modeled as derived from an admixture of Ancient Paleo-Siberians (58%) and Western Siberian hunter-gatherers (42%).

CHG – Origins
The CHG gene pool is for the most part derived from a West Eurasian source. Among ancient pre-Neolithic European populations, the Villabruna cluster (also: Western hunter-gatherer, WHG) has the highest affinity to CHG. Among ancient West Asian populations, Caucasus hunter-gatherer show a high genetic resemblance to early western Iranian Neolithic farmers from the Zagros Mountains.

Additionally, Caucasus hunter-gatherers derived a significant part of their ancestry from the Basal Eurasian lineage, a hypothetical unsampled population that split from the main Eurasian lineage ancestral to all extant Out-of-Africa-populations, and which contributed at high levels also to other ancient populations of West Asia, such as Natufians, Anatolian hunter-gatherers (the main ancestral source of later Anatolian farmers and their European Neolithic descendants) and early western Iranian Neolithic farmers. This Basal Eurasian ancestry has been directly linked to the lower rates of Neanderthal admixture observed in Caucasus hunter-gatherers (and other ancient West Asian populations) when compared to ancient and contemporary East Asians and pre-Neolithic Europeans, since Basal Eurasians are assumed to have carried little or no Neanderthal admixture.

CHG ancestry in West Asia and Bronze Age Greece
Following the Neolithic, bi-directional geneflow can be observed between the three poles Caucasus/Zagros, Anatolia and the Levant. Populations in Anatolia and the Levant see an increase of Caucasus/Zagros-related ancestry, while the Caucasus/Zagros areas received Anatolian and Levantine geneflow. The westward expansion of CHG ancestry went beyond Anatolia and reached southern Greece in the Bronze Age. Subsequent CHG geneflow into Europe was transmitted indirectly through Bronze Age migrations of Western Steppe Herders (see below).