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We assembled genome-wide data from 16 prehistoric Africans. We show that the anciently divergent lineage that comprises the primary ancestry of the southern African San had a wider distribution in the past, contributing approximately two-thirds of the ancestry of Malawi hunter-gatherers â¼8,100-2,500 years ago and approximately one-third of the ancestry of Tanzanian hunter-gatherers â¼1,400 years ago. We document how the spread of farmers from western Africa involved complete replacement of local hunter-gatherers in some regions, and we track the spread of herders by showing that the population of a â¼3,100-year-old pastoralist from Tanzania contributed ancestry to people from northeastern to southern Africa, including a â¼1,200-year-old southern African pastoralist. The deepest diversifications of African lineages were complex, involving either repeated gene flow among geographically disparate groups or a lineage more deeply diverging than that of the San contributing more to some western African populations than to others. We finally leverage ancient genomes to document episodes of natural selection in southern African populations. PAPERCLIP.
Assuntos
População Negra/genética , Genoma Humano , África , Osso e Ossos/química , DNA Antigo/análise , Feminino , Fósseis , Genética Médica , Genética Populacional , Estudo de Associação Genômica Ampla , Humanos , Estilo de Vida , MasculinoRESUMO
Trade and colonization caused an unprecedented increase in Mediterranean human mobility in the first millennium BCE. Often seen as a dividing force, warfare is in fact another catalyst of culture contact. We provide insight into the demographic dynamics of ancient warfare by reporting genome-wide data from fifth-century soldiers who fought for the army of the Greek Sicilian colony of Himera, along with representatives of the civilian population, nearby indigenous settlements, and 96 present-day individuals from Italy and Greece. Unlike the rest of the sample, many soldiers had ancestral origins in northern Europe, the Steppe, and the Caucasus. Integrating genetic, archaeological, isotopic, and historical data, these results illustrate the significant role mercenaries played in ancient Greek armies and highlight how participation in war contributed to continental-scale human mobility in the Classical world.
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Arqueologia , Militares , Arqueologia/métodos , Europa (Continente) , Grécia , História Antiga , Humanos , GuerraRESUMO
The bacterial pathogen Yersinia pestis gave rise to devastating outbreaks throughout human history, and ancient DNA evidence has shown it afflicted human populations as far back as the Neolithic. Y. pestis genomes recovered from the Eurasian Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age (LNBA) period have uncovered key evolutionary steps that led to its emergence from a Yersinia pseudotuberculosis-like progenitor; however, the number of reconstructed LNBA genomes are too few to explore its diversity during this critical period of development. Here, we present 17 Y. pestis genomes dating to 5,000 to 2,500 y BP from a wide geographic expanse across Eurasia. This increased dataset enabled us to explore correlations between temporal, geographical, and genetic distance. Our results suggest a nonflea-adapted and potentially extinct single lineage that persisted over millennia without significant parallel diversification, accompanied by rapid dispersal across continents throughout this period, a trend not observed in other pathogens for which ancient genomes are available. A stepwise pattern of gene loss provides further clues on its early evolution and potential adaptation. We also discover the presence of the flea-adapted form of Y. pestis in Bronze Age Iberia, previously only identified in in the Caucasus and the Volga regions, suggesting a much wider geographic spread of this form of Y. pestis. Together, these data reveal the dynamic nature of plague's formative years in terms of its early evolution and ecology.
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Genoma Bacteriano , Peste , Yersinia pestis , Criação de Animais Domésticos/história , Animais , DNA Antigo , Variação Genética , História Antiga , Migração Humana/história , Humanos , Filogenia , Peste/epidemiologia , Peste/história , Peste/microbiologia , Yersinia pestis/classificação , Yersinia pestis/genética , Yersinia pestis/isolamento & purificaçãoRESUMO
This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/nature25738.
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Farming was first introduced to Europe in the mid-seventh millennium bc, and was associated with migrants from Anatolia who settled in the southeast before spreading throughout Europe. Here, to understand the dynamics of this process, we analysed genome-wide ancient DNA data from 225 individuals who lived in southeastern Europe and surrounding regions between 12000 and 500 bc. We document a west-east cline of ancestry in indigenous hunter-gatherers and, in eastern Europe, the early stages in the formation of Bronze Age steppe ancestry. We show that the first farmers of northern and western Europe dispersed through southeastern Europe with limited hunter-gatherer admixture, but that some early groups in the southeast mixed extensively with hunter-gatherers without the sex-biased admixture that prevailed later in the north and west. We also show that southeastern Europe continued to be a nexus between east and west after the arrival of farmers, with intermittent genetic contact with steppe populations occurring up to 2,000 years earlier than the migrations from the steppe that ultimately replaced much of the population of northern Europe.
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Fazendeiros/história , Genoma Humano/genética , Genômica , Migração Humana/história , Agricultura/história , Ásia/etnologia , DNA Antigo , Europa (Continente) , Feminino , Genética Populacional , Pradaria , História Antiga , Humanos , Masculino , Distribuição por SexoRESUMO
From around 2750 to 2500 bc, Bell Beaker pottery became widespread across western and central Europe, before it disappeared between 2200 and 1800 bc. The forces that propelled its expansion are a matter of long-standing debate, and there is support for both cultural diffusion and migration having a role in this process. Here we present genome-wide data from 400 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 226 individuals associated with Beaker-complex artefacts. We detected limited genetic affinity between Beaker-complex-associated individuals from Iberia and central Europe, and thus exclude migration as an important mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, migration had a key role in the further dissemination of the Beaker complex. We document this phenomenon most clearly in Britain, where the spread of the Beaker complex introduced high levels of steppe-related ancestry and was associated with the replacement of approximately 90% of Britain's gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the east-to-west expansion that had brought steppe-related ancestry into central and northern Europe over the previous centuries.
Assuntos
Evolução Cultural/história , Genoma Humano/genética , Genômica , Migração Humana/história , Cromossomos Humanos Y/genética , DNA Antigo , Europa (Continente) , Pool Gênico , Genética Populacional , Haplótipos , História Antiga , Humanos , Masculino , Análise Espaço-TemporalRESUMO
The origins of the Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean cultures have puzzled archaeologists for more than a century. We have assembled genome-wide data from 19 ancient individuals, including Minoans from Crete, Mycenaeans from mainland Greece, and their eastern neighbours from southwestern Anatolia. Here we show that Minoans and Mycenaeans were genetically similar, having at least three-quarters of their ancestry from the first Neolithic farmers of western Anatolia and the Aegean, and most of the remainder from ancient populations related to those of the Caucasus and Iran. However, the Mycenaeans differed from Minoans in deriving additional ancestry from an ultimate source related to the hunter-gatherers of eastern Europe and Siberia, introduced via a proximal source related to the inhabitants of either the Eurasian steppe or Armenia. Modern Greeks resemble the Mycenaeans, but with some additional dilution of the Early Neolithic ancestry. Our results support the idea of continuity but not isolation in the history of populations of the Aegean, before and after the time of its earliest civilizations.
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Etnicidade/genética , Filogenia , Cromossomos Humanos X/genética , Etnicidade/história , Feminino , Grécia , História Antiga , Migração Humana/história , Humanos , Masculino , Polimorfismo de Nucleotídeo Único/genética , Análise de Componente PrincipalRESUMO
Modern humans arrived in Europe ~45,000 years ago, but little is known about their genetic composition before the start of farming ~8,500 years ago. Here we analyse genome-wide data from 51 Eurasians from ~45,000-7,000 years ago. Over this time, the proportion of Neanderthal DNA decreased from 3-6% to around 2%, consistent with natural selection against Neanderthal variants in modern humans. Whereas there is no evidence of the earliest modern humans in Europe contributing to the genetic composition of present-day Europeans, all individuals between ~37,000 and ~14,000 years ago descended from a single founder population which forms part of the ancestry of present-day Europeans. An ~35,000-year-old individual from northwest Europe represents an early branch of this founder population which was then displaced across a broad region, before reappearing in southwest Europe at the height of the last Ice Age ~19,000 years ago. During the major warming period after ~14,000 years ago, a genetic component related to present-day Near Easterners became widespread in Europe. These results document how population turnover and migration have been recurring themes of European prehistory.
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Camada de Gelo , População Branca/genética , População Branca/história , Animais , Evolução Biológica , DNA/análise , DNA/genética , DNA/isolamento & purificação , Europa (Continente) , Feminino , Efeito Fundador , Genética Populacional , História Antiga , Migração Humana/história , Humanos , Masculino , Oriente Médio , Homem de Neandertal/genética , Filogenia , Dinâmica Populacional , Seleção Genética , Análise de Sequência de DNA , Fatores de TempoRESUMO
We generated genome-wide data from 69 Europeans who lived between 8,000-3,000 years ago by enriching ancient DNA libraries for a target set of almost 400,000 polymorphisms. Enrichment of these positions decreases the sequencing required for genome-wide ancient DNA analysis by a median of around 250-fold, allowing us to study an order of magnitude more individuals than previous studies and to obtain new insights about the past. We show that the populations of Western and Far Eastern Europe followed opposite trajectories between 8,000-5,000 years ago. At the beginning of the Neolithic period in Europe, â¼8,000-7,000 years ago, closely related groups of early farmers appeared in Germany, Hungary and Spain, different from indigenous hunter-gatherers, whereas Russia was inhabited by a distinctive population of hunter-gatherers with high affinity to a â¼24,000-year-old Siberian. By â¼6,000-5,000 years ago, farmers throughout much of Europe had more hunter-gatherer ancestry than their predecessors, but in Russia, the Yamnaya steppe herders of this time were descended not only from the preceding eastern European hunter-gatherers, but also from a population of Near Eastern ancestry. Western and Eastern Europe came into contact â¼4,500 years ago, as the Late Neolithic Corded Ware people from Germany traced â¼75% of their ancestry to the Yamnaya, documenting a massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery. This steppe ancestry persisted in all sampled central Europeans until at least â¼3,000 years ago, and is ubiquitous in present-day Europeans. These results provide support for a steppe origin of at least some of the Indo-European languages of Europe.
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Evolução Cultural/história , Pradaria , Migração Humana/história , Idioma/história , Europa (Continente)/etnologia , Genoma Humano/genética , História Antiga , Humanos , Masculino , Polimorfismo Genético/genética , Dinâmica Populacional , Federação RussaRESUMO
We sequenced the genomes of a â¼7,000-year-old farmer from Germany and eight â¼8,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Luxembourg and Sweden. We analysed these and other ancient genomes with 2,345 contemporary humans to show that most present-day Europeans derive from at least three highly differentiated populations: west European hunter-gatherers, who contributed ancestry to all Europeans but not to Near Easterners; ancient north Eurasians related to Upper Palaeolithic Siberians, who contributed to both Europeans and Near Easterners; and early European farmers, who were mainly of Near Eastern origin but also harboured west European hunter-gatherer related ancestry. We model these populations' deep relationships and show that early European farmers had â¼44% ancestry from a 'basal Eurasian' population that split before the diversification of other non-African lineages.
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Genoma Humano/genética , População Branca/classificação , População Branca/genética , Agricultura/história , Ásia/etnologia , Europa (Continente) , História Antiga , Humanos , Dinâmica Populacional , Análise de Componente Principal , Recursos HumanosRESUMO
Human mobility has been vigorously debated as a key factor for the spread of bronze technology and profound changes in burial practices as well as material culture in central Europe at the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. However, the relevance of individual residential changes and their importance among specific age and sex groups are still poorly understood. Here, we present ancient DNA analysis, stable isotope data of oxygen, and radiogenic isotope ratios of strontium for 84 radiocarbon-dated skeletons from seven archaeological sites of the Late Neolithic Bell Beaker Complex and the Early Bronze Age from the Lech River valley in southern Bavaria, Germany. Complete mitochondrial genomes documented a diversification of maternal lineages over time. The isotope ratios disclosed the majority of the females to be nonlocal, while this is the case for only a few males and subadults. Most nonlocal females arrived in the study area as adults, but we do not detect their offspring among the sampled individuals. The striking patterns of patrilocality and female exogamy prevailed over at least 800 y between about 2500 and 1700 BC. The persisting residential rules and even a direct kinship relation across the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age add to the archaeological evidence of continuing traditions from the Bell Beaker Complex to the Early Bronze Age. The results also attest to female mobility as a driving force for regional and supraregional communication and exchange at the dawn of the European metal ages.
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Antropologia Cultural , Pool Gênico , Genoma Mitocondrial , Europa (Continente) , Feminino , História Antiga , Humanos , MasculinoRESUMO
Although investigations of medieval plague victims have identified Yersinia pestis as the putative etiologic agent of the pandemic, methodological limitations have prevented large-scale genomic investigations to evaluate changes in the pathogen's virulence over time. We screened over 100 skeletal remains from Black Death victims of the East Smithfield mass burial site (1348-1350, London, England). Recent methods of DNA enrichment coupled with high-throughput DNA sequencing subsequently permitted reconstruction of ten full human mitochondrial genomes (16 kb each) and the full pPCP1 (9.6 kb) virulence-associated plasmid at high coverage. Comparisons of molecular damage profiles between endogenous human and Y. pestis DNA confirmed its authenticity as an ancient pathogen, thus representing the longest contiguous genomic sequence for an ancient pathogen to date. Comparison of our reconstructed plasmid against modern Y. pestis shows identity with several isolates matching the Medievalis biovar; however, our chromosomal sequences indicate the victims were infected with a Y. pestis variant that has not been previously reported. Our data reveal that the Black Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of Y. pestis that may no longer exist, and genetic data carried on its pPCP1 plasmid were not responsible for the purported epidemiological differences between ancient and modern forms of Y. pestis infections.
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DNA Bacteriano/genética , Peste/microbiologia , Plasmídeos/genética , Yersinia pestis/genética , Adulto , Técnicas de Tipagem Bacteriana , Sequência de Bases , Osso e Ossos/metabolismo , Osso e Ossos/microbiologia , DNA Bacteriano/química , DNA Mitocondrial/química , DNA Mitocondrial/genética , Europa (Continente)/epidemiologia , Feminino , Variação Genética , História Medieval , Humanos , Masculino , Dados de Sequência Molecular , Pandemias/história , Peste/epidemiologia , Peste/genética , Análise de Sequência de DNA , Homologia de Sequência do Ácido Nucleico , Especificidade da Espécie , Dente/metabolismo , Dente/microbiologia , Virulência/genética , Yersinia pestis/classificação , Yersinia pestis/patogenicidadeRESUMO
Within the last decade, archaeogenetic analysis has revolutionized archaeological research and enabled novel insights into mobility, relatedness and health of past societies. Now, it is possible to develop these results further and integrate archaeogenetic insights into biological relatedness with radiocarbon dates as means of chronologically sequenced information. In our article, we demonstrate the potential of combining relative chronological information with absolute radiocarbon dates by Bayesian interpretation in order to improve age determinations. Using artificial pedigrees with four sets of simulated radiocarbon dates we show that the combination of relationship information with radiocarbon dates improves the age determination in many cases at least between 20 to 50%. Calibrated age ranges are more constrained than simply calibrating radiocarbon ages independently from each other. Thereby, the precision of modelled ages depends on the precision of the single radiocarbon dates, the number of modelled generations, the shape of the calibration curve and the availability of samples that can be precisely fixed in time due to specific patterns in the calibration curve ("anchor points"). Ambiguous calibrated radiocarbon dates, which are caused by inversions of the calibration curve, can be partly or almost entirely resolved through Bayesian modelling based upon information from pedigrees. Finally, we discuss selected case studies of biological pedigrees achieved for Early Bronze Age Southern Germany by recent archaeogenetic analysis, whereby the sites and pedigrees differ with regard to the quality of information, which can be used for a Bayesian model of the radiocarbon dates. In accordance with the abstract models, radiocarbon dates can again be better constrained and are therefore more applicable for archaeological interpretation and chronological placement of the dated individuals.
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Arqueologia , Datação Radiométrica , Arqueologia/métodos , Teorema de Bayes , Calibragem , Alemanha , Humanos , Datação Radiométrica/métodosRESUMO
We undertook a large-scale study of Neolithic and Bronze Age human mobility on Crete using biomolecular methods (isotope analysis, DNA), with a particular focus on sites dating to the Late Bronze Age ('Late Minoan') period. We measured the strontium and sulphur isotope values of animal remains from archaeological sites around the island of Crete to determine the local baseline values. We then measured the strontium and sulphur values of humans from Late Neolithic and Bronze Age sites. Our results indicate that most of the humans have sulphur and strontium isotope values consistent with being local to Crete, showing no evidence for a wide-scale movement of people from the Greek mainland or other areas away from Crete in these time periods. However, we found four individuals from the late Bronze Age (Late Minoan III) cemetery of Armenoi with sulphur isotope values not typically found in Crete and are instead consistent with an origin elsewhere. This cemetery at Armenoi also has one of only a few examples of the newly adopted Mycenaean Linear B script on Crete found outside of the palace sites, pointing to an influence (trade and possible migration) from the mainland, which may then be the place of origin of these four individuals. DNA (mtDNA) studies of eight Late Bronze Age individuals from Armenoi have results consistent with people living in Aegean region at this time and cannot be used to distinguish between individuals from Crete ('Minoans') and the Greek mainland ['Mycenaeans']).
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Arqueologia , Isótopos , Grécia , História Antiga , Migração Humana , Humanos , Isótopos de Estrôncio/análise , Enxofre , Isótopos de EnxofreRESUMO
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) has been infecting humans for millennia and remains a global health problem, but its past diversity and dispersal routes are largely unknown. We generated HBV genomic data from 137 Eurasians and Native Americans dated between ~10,500 and ~400 years ago. We date the most recent common ancestor of all HBV lineages to between ~20,000 and 12,000 years ago, with the virus present in European and South American hunter-gatherers during the early Holocene. After the European Neolithic transition, Mesolithic HBV strains were replaced by a lineage likely disseminated by early farmers that prevailed throughout western Eurasia for ~4000 years, declining around the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. The only remnant of this prehistoric HBV diversity is the rare genotype G, which appears to have reemerged during the HIV pandemic.
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Doenças Transmissíveis Emergentes/história , Evolução Molecular , Vírus da Hepatite B/classificação , Vírus da Hepatite B/genética , Hepatite B/história , América , Ásia , Povo Asiático , Doenças Transmissíveis Emergentes/virologia , Europa (Continente) , Variação Genética , Genômica , Hepatite B/virologia , História Antiga , Humanos , Paleontologia , Filogenia , População Branca , Indígena Americano ou Nativo do AlascaRESUMO
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
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Steppe-pastoralist-related ancestry reached Central Europe by at least 2500 BC, whereas Iranian farmer-related ancestry was present in Aegean Europe by at least 1900 BC. However, the spread of these ancestries into the western Mediterranean, where they have contributed to many populations that live today, remains poorly understood. Here, we generated genome-wide ancient-DNA data from the Balearic Islands, Sicily and Sardinia, increasing the number of individuals with reported data from 5 to 66. The oldest individual from the Balearic Islands (~2400 BC) carried ancestry from steppe pastoralists that probably derived from west-to-east migration from Iberia, although two later Balearic individuals had less ancestry from steppe pastoralists. In Sicily, steppe pastoralist ancestry arrived by ~2200 BC, in part from Iberia; Iranian-related ancestry arrived by the mid-second millennium BC, contemporary to its previously documented spread to the Aegean; and there was large-scale population replacement after the Bronze Age. In Sardinia, nearly all ancestry derived from the island's early farmers until the first millennium BC, with the exception of an outlier from the third millennium BC, who had primarily North African ancestry and who-along with an approximately contemporary Iberian-documents widespread Africa-to-Europe gene flow in the Chalcolithic. Major immigration into Sardinia began in the first millennium BC and, at present, no more than 56-62% of Sardinian ancestry is from its first farmers. This value is lower than previous estimates, highlighting that Sardinia, similar to every other region in Europe, has been a stage for major movement and mixtures of people.
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Agricultura , DNA Antigo , Estudo de Associação Genômica Ampla , África , Antropologia , Emigração e Imigração , Europa (Continente) , Humanos , Irã (Geográfico) , Ilhas , Sicília , EspanhaRESUMO
The ancient Mediterranean port city of Ashkelon, identified as "Philistine" during the Iron Age, underwent a marked cultural change between the Late Bronze and the early Iron Age. It has been long debated whether this change was driven by a substantial movement of people, possibly linked to a larger migration of the so-called "Sea Peoples." Here, we report genome-wide data of 10 Bronze and Iron Age individuals from Ashkelon. We find that the early Iron Age population was genetically distinct due to a European-related admixture. This genetic signal is no longer detectible in the later Iron Age population. Our results support that a migration event occurred during the Bronze to Iron Age transition in Ashkelon but did not leave a long-lasting genetic signature.
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DNA Antigo , Genética Populacional , Migração Humana , População Branca/legislação & jurisprudência , Estudo de Associação Genômica Ampla , História Antiga , Humanos , População Branca/históriaRESUMO
Revealing and understanding the mechanisms behind social inequality in prehistoric societies is a major challenge. By combining genome-wide data, isotopic evidence, and anthropological and archaeological data, we have gone beyond the dominating supraregional approaches in archaeogenetics to shed light on the complexity of social status, inheritance rules, and mobility during the Bronze Age. We applied a deep microregional approach and analyzed genome-wide data of 104 human individuals deriving from farmstead-related cemeteries from the Late Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age in southern Germany. Our results reveal individual households, lasting several generations, that consisted of a high-status core family and unrelated low-status individuals; a social organization accompanied by patrilocality and female exogamy; and the stability of this system over 700 years.
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Características da Família/história , Classe Social/história , Antropologia , DNA Antigo , Feminino , Alemanha , História Antiga , Humanos , Masculino , Linhagem , Polimorfismo de Nucleotídeo ÚnicoRESUMO
For historic individuals, the outward appearance and other phenotypic characteristics remain often non-resolved. Unfortunately, images or detailed written sources are only scarcely available in many cases. Attempts to study historic individuals with genetic data so far focused on hypervariable regions of mitochondrial DNA and to some extent on complete mitochondrial genomes. To elucidate the potential of in-solution based genome-wide SNP capture methods - as now widely applied in population genetics - we extracted DNA from the 17th century remains of George Bähr, the architect of the Dresdner Frauenkirche. We were able to identify the remains to be of male origin, showing sufficient DNA damage, deriving from a single person and being thus likely authentic. Furthermore, we were able to show that George Bähr had light skin pigmentation and most likely brown eyes. His genomic DNA furthermore points to a Central European origin. We see this analysis as an example to demonstrate the prospects that new in-solution SNP capture methods can provide for historic cases of forensic interest, using methods well established in ancient DNA (aDNA) research and population genetics.