When Two Worlds Met on the Steppe

In the wind-swept heart of Mongolia’s Orkhon Valley, two distinct cultures¹ buried their dead side by side for centuries. One group built monumental stone mounds. The other favored smaller, figure-shaped graves. Despite their proximity, new genomic research shows they rarely intermarried. This precarious balance ended with the arrival of a new tradition of stone-slab burials that would reshape the human landscape of the steppe.

Interdisciplinary research at the Maikhan Tolgoi burial site in central Mongolia is providing new insights into social organization and population dynamics during the Late Bronze Age (approximately 1500 to 1000 BCE). Credit: Ursula Brosseder