Ancestry populations · Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer
Eastern Hunter Gatherer
Mesolithic foragers of the East European forest and steppe, from Karelia to Samara, who carried ancient North Eurasian ancestry into the steppe gene pool. One of the 13 curated source populations in the Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer era of the Ancestrify qpAdm ancient-DNA analysis.
Who they were
- Period
- 12000 – 5000 BC
- Era in the analysis
- Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer
- Region
- Eastern Europe, Karelia to the Volga
- Role in the model
- Source (left) population — a reference qpAdm tests against
Eastern hunter-gatherers (EHG) are the Mesolithic foragers of the East European plain, sampled from sites such as Yuzhnyy Oleni Ostrov in Karelia and Lebyazhinka near Samara (Haak et al. 2015; Mathieson et al. 2015). They differ from the hunter-gatherers of western Europe in carrying a large share of ancestry related to the Ancient North Eurasians of Siberia, the Upper Palaeolithic population also ancestral to Native Americans, layered onto a western hunter-gatherer base.
EHG is the northern ingredient of Bronze Age steppe ancestry: the Yamnaya and their relatives are modelled as EHG mixed with a Caucasus-related population. It is also a substantial direct component in the Baltic and Fennoscandian Mesolithic and survives at its highest levels today in north-eastern Europe. In the model it lies between the Western Hunter Gatherer and the Northeast Asian sources and shares a large part of its ancestry with the Western Steppe Herder source.
In Ancestrify's qpAdm service, Eastern Hunter Gatherer is a source in the "Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer" era. The report shows its weight with a standard error and a Z-score, so you can see not only how much of the model it carries but how confidently that share is separated from zero, and a model that cannot support it is rejected rather than published. For most European genomes its signal is absorbed by the Western Steppe Herder source; a separate EHG weight is most often seen in genomes from the Baltic, Finland and northern Russia.
Y haplogroups R1a and R1b, alongside J and Q, and mtDNA U4, U5a and U2e are typical of these samples. A haplogroup alone is never evidence of a share.
In your reportArtwork is an AI-generated artistic interpretation informed by the archaeological record — not documentary evidence.Represents the Mesolithic forager populations of Eastern Europe (~12,000–5,000 BCE), inhabiting the forest-steppe and taiga belt from Karelia and the eastern Baltic across the Volga basin to the western Urals. EHGs were first directly characterised through the landmark Haak et al. (2015) and Mathieson et al. (2015) studies of individuals from Yuzhny Oleny Ostrov on Lake Onega in Karelia (~7,500 BP), Popovo in Vologda, and the Sidelkino (~10,700 BP) and Lebyazhinka burials in the Samara region. Their genetic profile combines a deeply divergent western forager component related to Western Hunter-Gatherers with substantial Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) ancestry traceable to the Mal'ta-Buret' culture of south-central Siberia (~24,000 BP). EHGs showed mixed pigmentation, with derived alleles for lighter skin colour appearing at higher frequencies than in contemporary Western Hunter-Gatherers and eye colour varying from blue to brown alongside predominantly dark hair. EHG ancestry was the foundational source of the Western Steppe Herder gene pool through admixture with Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers around the 5th millennium BCE, and persists at substantial proportions in modern populations of Northern and Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, and Volga-Uralic peoples, as well as indirectly across Eurasia through Bronze Age steppe-derived migrations. Y-chromosome haplogroups R1a-M459 and J were prevalent among EHG individuals, with descendant lineages contributing ancestrally to the dominant modern European R1a and R1b clades.
Where this population sits in the model
The Ancestrify qpAdm analysis models your genome once per era. The Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer era has 13 curated source populations, and Eastern Hunter Gatherer is one of them: every candidate model for that era is a combination of these sources, tested against a fixed set of outgroup populations, and only a model that passes the statistical fit check is published — with a p-value, and a standard error on every proportion.
A reference, not a verdict: every population on this page is a source the model tests your genome against — a well-sampled point in ancient genetic space that a mixture of ancestries can be expressed in terms of. A weight on it means your genome is well described as partly resembling those people; it is never a statement that they, specifically, were your ancestors, and a population that fits well is not the only one that could.
Read how the method works on the qpAdm analysis page, or the definitions in the glossary.
Model it yourself for free
The Ancestrify Lab runs in your browser, with no account. Paste a Global25 row into an admixture calculator that covers the Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer era, rank the closest ancient populations in the distance tool, or run f4, qpWave and qpAdm on the public panel in the AdmixTools 2 workbench. These are Global25 fits and exploratory statistics, not the formal qpAdm model of the paid analysis.
Questions
Who were the Eastern Hunter Gatherer (12000 – 5000 BC)?
Eastern Hunter Gatherer is one of the 13 curated source populations in the Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer era of the Ancestrify qpAdm analysis: a group of published ancient genomes from one archaeological context, pooled as a single reference the model can test your genome against.
Does Eastern Hunter Gatherer in my result mean they were my ancestors?
No. A source population is a reference the model tests against, never a statement about who your ancestors were. A coefficient on this source means the ancestry those burials represent helps explain your genome to within statistical noise — similar ancestry composition, not descent from those individuals. Ancestrify never claims a population is your ancestor.
What does a Eastern Hunter Gatherer percentage in a qpAdm model mean?
qpAdm estimates the mixture proportions that best explain your genome as a combination of the chosen sources, given a fixed set of outgroup (right) populations, and reports a p-value for whether the model is statistically acceptable together with a standard error for every proportion. The percentage is that estimated share, with its uncertainty published beside it.
How do I get a qpAdm model that uses Eastern Hunter Gatherer?
Order the Ancestrify qpAdm analysis (€29.99, one-time) and upload the raw file you already have from a consumer test. Your genome is merged into the AADR reference panel and modelled across both eras; each era's model is built from that era's source populations, so a model for the Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer era draws on Eastern Hunter Gatherer where it improves the fit.
Can I model Eastern Hunter Gatherer ancestry for free first?
Yes. The Ancestrify Lab runs Global25 admixture calculators, a nearest-populations distance tool and an AdmixTools 2 workbench in your browser with no account, and several calculators cover the Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer era. Those are G25 fits, not formal qpAdm models — the paid analysis is the one with a p-value.
More populations from the Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer era
Browse the full directory of source populations, or continue with another population from the same era:
Anatolian Neolithic Farmer8500 – 6000 BC
Ancestral South Indian10000 – 2000 BC
Caucasian Hunter Gatherer13000 – 7000 BC
Iberomaurusian15000 – 8000 BC
Iranian Neolithic Farmer8000 – 5000 BC
Native American15000 – 1500 BC
Natufian12000 – 8000 BC
North African Farmer5200 – 4000 BC
Northeast Asian6000 – 2000 BC
Sub Saharan African
Western Hunter Gatherer12000 – 6000 BC
Western Steppe Herder5000 – 2800 BC