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The Tagar culture was a Bronze Age Saka archeological culture which flourished between the 8th and 1st centuries BC in South Siberia (Khakassia, southern part of Krasnoyarsk Krai, eastern part of Kemerovo Oblast). The culture was named after an island in the Yenisei River opposite Minusinsk. The civilization was one of the largest centres of bronze-smelting in ancient Eurasia.
From the 2nd century BCE, the Tagar period was succeeded by a period Hunnic influence linked to the rise of the Xiongnu. The "Tesinsky culture" was a culture of the Minusinsk basin, from the 1st century BCE to the 1st century CE. The Tesinsky culture was at the junction between the Tagar culture and the culture of the Xiongnu and the Xianbei, and artistic evolutions can be traced to that period.
The Tashtyk culture (1st-4th century CE) then followed.
The Tagar produced animal art motifs (Scythian art) very similar to the Scythians of southern European Russia.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the culture are huge royal fenced by stone plaques, with four vertical Kurgan stelae marking the corners. Burials from the early Tagar period are characterized as single burials. In the later Tagar period, collective burials become more common. This has been interpreted as a sign of social evolution in Tagar society.
In 2018, a study of mtDNA from remains of the Tagar culture was published in PLOS One. Remains from the early years of the Tagar culture were found to be closely related to those of contemporary Scythians on the Pontic steppe. The authors of the study suggested that the source of this genetic similarity was a substantial increase in the frequency of maternal haplogroups in the Tagar population, which occurred during the Iron Age. Nearly 46% of Tagar samples carried an East Asian maternal haplogroup in the Iron Age, with lineages D and C more than tripling in frequency compared to the Early Tagar period. "According to the results of Unterlander et al. 4, East Eurasian mtDNA components in the Western Eurasian steppe belt increased during the Early Iron Age .... The observed reduction in the genetic distance between the Middle Tagar population and other Scythian-like populations of Southern Siberia (Fig 5; S4 Table), in our opinion, is primarily associated with an increase in the role of East Eurasian mtDNA lineages in the gene pool (up to nearly half of the gene pool) and a substantial increase in the joint frequency of haplogroups C and D (from 8.7% in the Early Tagar series to 37.5% in the Middle Tagar series)." .... "We observed differences in the mtDNA pool structure between the Early and the Middle chronological stages of the Tagar culture population, as evidenced by the change in the ratio of Western to Eastern Eurasian mtDNA components. The contribution of Eastern Eurasian lineages increased from about one-third (34.8%) in the Early Tagar group to almost one-half (45.8%) in the Middle Tagar group."
A genetic study published in Nature in May 2018 examined the remains of eight individuals ascribed to the Tagar culture. The three samples of Y-DNA collected all belonged to haplogroup R1. The samples of mtDNA collected were N1a1a1a1, N9a9, H5a1, W1c, U2e2, A8a1, U2e1h and F1b1b. The Tagar had a higher amount of Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) ancestry than all other peoples of the Scythian cultures. They were determined to be of about 83,5% Western Steppe Herder (WSH) ancestry, 9% Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) ancestry, and 7,5% Siberian Hunter-Gather ancestry.
A subsequent genetic study in 2020 modeled the Tagar specimens as deriving around 70% ancestry from the Sintashta culture, 25% from Ancient Northeast Asian (ANA) Baikal hunter-gatherers, and 5% from the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex.
(2025). 9789813291553, Springer. ISBN 9789813291553
File:Karasuk to Tagar knives.png|Evolution of bronze knives, from the Karasuk culture to the Tagar culture
File:Horse Accoutrement LACMA M.76.97.566.jpg|Horse accoutrement
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