TY - JOUR T1 - The Beaker Phenomenon and the Genomic Transformation of Northwest Europe JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/135962 SP - 135962 AU - Iñigo Olalde AU - Selina Brace AU - Morten E. Allentoft AU - Ian Armit AU - Kristian Kristiansen AU - Nadin Rohland AU - Swapan Mallick AU - Thomas Booth AU - Anna Szécsényi-Nagy AU - Alissa Mittnik AU - Eveline Altena AU - Mark Lipson AU - Iosif Lazaridis AU - Nick Patterson AU - Nasreen Broomandkhoshbacht AU - Yoan Diekmann AU - Zuzana Faltyskova AU - Daniel Fernandes AU - Matthew Ferry AU - Eadaoin Harney AU - Peter de Knijff AU - Megan Michel AU - Jonas Oppenheimer AU - Kristin Stewardson AU - Alistair Barclay AU - Kurt W. Alt AU - Azucena Avilés Fernández AU - Eszter Bánffy AU - Maria Bernabò-Brea AU - David Billoin AU - Concepción Blasco AU - Clive Bonsall AU - Laura Bonsall AU - Tim Allen AU - Lindsey Büster AU - Sophie Carver AU - Laura Castells Navarro AU - Oliver Edward Craig AU - Gordon T. Cook AU - Barry Cunliffe AU - Anthony Denaire AU - Kirsten Egging Dinwiddy AU - Natasha Dodwell AU - Michal Ernée AU - Christopher Evans AU - Milan Kuchařík AU - Joan Francès Farré AU - Harry Fokkens AU - Chris Fowler AU - Michiel Gazenbeek AU - Rafael Garrido Pena AU - María Haber-Uriarte AU - Elżbieta Haduch AU - Gill Hey AU - Nick Jowett AU - Timothy Knowles AU - Ken Massy AU - Saskia Pfrengle AU - Philippe Lefranc AU - Olivier Lemercier AU - Arnaud Lefebvre AU - Joaquín Lomba Maurandi AU - Tona Majó AU - Jacqueline I. McKinley AU - Kathleen McSweeney AU - Mende Balázs Gusztáv AU - Alessandra Modi AU - Gabriella Kulcsár AU - Viktória Kiss AU - András Czene AU - Róbert Patay AU - Anna Endrődi AU - Kitti Köhler AU - Tamás Hajdu AU - João Luís Cardoso AU - Corina Liesau AU - Michael Parker Pearson AU - Piotr Włodarczak AU - T. Douglas Price AU - Pilar Prieto AU - Pierre-Jérôme Rey AU - Patricia Ríos AU - Roberto Risch AU - Manuel A. Rojo Guerra AU - Aurore Schmitt AU - Joël Serralongue AU - Ana Maria Silva AU - Václav Smrčka AU - Luc Vergnaud AU - João Zilhão AU - David Caramelli AU - Thomas Higham AU - Volker Heyd AU - Alison Sheridan AU - Karl-Göran Sjögren AU - Mark G. Thomas AU - Philipp W. Stockhammer AU - Ron Pinhasi AU - Johannes Krause AU - Wolfgang Haak AU - Ian Barnes AU - Carles Lalueza-Fox AU - David Reich Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/09/135962.abstract N2 - Bell Beaker pottery spread across western and central Europe beginning around 2750 BCE before disappearing between 2200–1800 BCE. The mechanism of its expansion is a topic of long-standing debate, with support for both cultural diffusion and human migration. We present new genome-wide ancient DNA data from 170 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 100 Beaker-associated individuals. In contrast to the Corded Ware Complex, which has previously been identified as arriving in central Europe following migration from the east, we observe limited genetic affinity between Iberian and central European Beaker Complex-associated individuals, and thus exclude migration as a significant mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, human migration did have an important role in the further dissemination of the Beaker Complex, which we document most clearly in Britain using data from 80 newly reported individuals dating to 3900–1200 BCE. British Neolithic farmers were genetically similar to contemporary populations in continental Europe and in particular to Neolithic Iberians, suggesting that a portion of the farmer ancestry in Britain came from the Mediterranean rather than the Danubian route of farming expansion. Beginning with the Beaker period, and continuing through the Bronze Age, all British individuals harboured high proportions of Steppe ancestry and were genetically closely related to Beaker-associated individuals from the Lower Rhine area. We use these observations to show that the spread of the Beaker Complex to Britain was mediated by migration from the continent that replaced >90% of Britain’s Neolithic gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the process that brought Steppe ancestry into central and northern Europe 400 years earlier. ER -