PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Michael A. Woodley Menie
AU  - Shameem Younuskunju
AU  - Bipin Balan
AU  - Davide Piffer
TI  - Holocene selection for variants associated with cognitive ability: Comparing ancient and modern genomes
AID  - 10.1101/109678
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 109678
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/28/109678.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/28/109678.full
AB  - Human populations living in Eurasia during the Holocene experienced considerable microevolutionary change. It has been predicted that the transition of Holocene populations into agrarianism and urbanization brought about culture-gene coevolution that favoured via directional selection genetic variants associated with higher general cognitive ability (GCA). To examine whether GCA might have risen during the Holocene, we compare a sample of 99 ancient Eurasian genomes (ranging from 4.56 to 1.21 kyr BP) with a sample of 503 modern European genomes, using three different cognitive polygenic scores. Significant differences favouring the modern genomes were found for all three polygenic scores (Odds Ratios=0.92, p=0.037; 0.81, p=0.001 and 0.81, p=0.02). Furthermore, a significant increase in positive allele count over 3.25 kyr was found using a subsample of 66 ancient genomes (r=0.217, pone-taiied=0.04). These observations are consistent with the expectation that GCA rose during the Holocene.