Pre-Slavic and Slavic Interaction at Eastern Periphery of Slavic Expansion in Northeastern Europe (Y-Gene Pools of Volga-Oka Region)

About half of the R1a haplogroup carriers among modern Ryazan Russians and Finnic populations in the Volga-Oka region descend from a pre-Slavic population, indicating that Slavs did not fully replace but culturally assimilated autochthonous tribes like the Meshchyora. This finding stems from analyzing Y-STR clusters within R1a haplogroups using ancient DNA samples from the Ryazan-Oka culture (6–7th centuries), Suzdal (12–13th centuries), and Vladimir (13th century). The study employed two independent methods of phylogeny analysis to identify 10 informative Y-STR clusters, some linked to ancient Baltic populations, suggesting deep historical connections across northeastern Europe. These clusters, shared between modern and ancient samples, imply that pre-Slavic tribes significantly influenced the genetic makeup of the urban population in Vladimir and Suzdal during the Rus period.

Adamov, D., Shlykov, A., Potanina, A., Voronina, M., Gorin, I., Ponomarev, G., Kabaev, D., Chernyaeva, L., Gavrilov, A., Rusakov, D., Pocheshkhova, E., Zhur, K., Prokhortchouk, E., Goncharova, N., & Balanovska, E. (2025). Pre-Slavic and Slavic Interaction at Eastern Periphery of Slavic Expansion in Northeastern Europe (Y-Gene Pools of Volga-Oka Region). Genes, 16(10), 1149. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes16101149