Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Paleolithic DNA from the Caucasus reveals core of West Eurasian ancestry

Iosif Lazaridis, Anna Belfer-Cohen, Swapan Mallick, Nick Patterson, Olivia Cheronet, Nadin Rohland, Guy Bar-Oz, Ofer Bar-Yosef, Nino Jakeli, Eliso Kvavadze, David Lordkipanidze, Zinovi Matzkevich, Tengiz Meshveliani, Brendan J. Culleton, Douglas J. Kennett, Ron Pinhasi, David Reich
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/423079
Iosif Lazaridis
1Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, New Research Building, 77 Ave. Louis Pasteur, Boston, MA 02115, USA
2Broad Institute of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02141, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Anna Belfer-Cohen
3Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Swapan Mallick
1Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, New Research Building, 77 Ave. Louis Pasteur, Boston, MA 02115, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Nick Patterson
2Broad Institute of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02141, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Olivia Cheronet
4Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria
5Earth Institute, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland
6School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Nadin Rohland
1Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, New Research Building, 77 Ave. Louis Pasteur, Boston, MA 02115, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Guy Bar-Oz
7Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Haifa 3498838, Israel
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Ofer Bar-Yosef
8Department of Anthropology, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Nino Jakeli
9Georgian National Museum, 3 Purtseladze St., Tbilisi 0105, Georgia
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Eliso Kvavadze
9Georgian National Museum, 3 Purtseladze St., Tbilisi 0105, Georgia
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
David Lordkipanidze
9Georgian National Museum, 3 Purtseladze St., Tbilisi 0105, Georgia
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Zinovi Matzkevich
10Israel Antiquities Authority, PO Box 586, Jerusalem 9100402, Israel
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Tengiz Meshveliani
9Georgian National Museum, 3 Purtseladze St., Tbilisi 0105, Georgia
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Brendan J. Culleton
11Department of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Douglas J. Kennett
11Department of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Ron Pinhasi
4Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
David Reich
1Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, New Research Building, 77 Ave. Louis Pasteur, Boston, MA 02115, USA
2Broad Institute of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02141, USA
12Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

The earliest ancient DNA data of modern humans from Europe dates to ∼40 thousand years ago1-4, but that from the Caucasus and the Near East to only ∼14 thousand years ago5,6, from populations who lived long after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ∼26.5-19 thousand years ago7. To address this imbalance and to better understand the relationship of Europeans and Near Easterners, we report genome-wide data from two ∼26 thousand year old individuals from Dzudzuana Cave in Georgia in the Caucasus from around the beginning of the LGM. Surprisingly, the Dzudzuana population was more closely related to early agriculturalists from western Anatolia ∼8 thousand years ago8 than to the hunter-gatherers of the Caucasus from the same region of western Georgia of ∼13-10 thousand years ago5. Most of the Dzudzuana population’s ancestry was deeply related to the post-glacial western European hunter-gatherers of the ‘Villabruna cluster’3, but it also had ancestry from a lineage that had separated from the great majority of non-African populations before they separated from each other, proving that such ‘Basal Eurasians’6,9 were present in West Eurasia twice as early as previously recorded5,6. We document major population turnover in the Near East after the time of Dzudzuana, showing that the highly differentiated Holocene populations of the region6 were formed by ‘Ancient North Eurasian’3,9,10 admixture into the Caucasus and Iran and North African11,12 admixture into the Natufians of the Levant. We finally show that the Dzudzuana population contributed the majority of the ancestry of post-Ice Age people in the Near East, North Africa, and even parts of Europe, thereby becoming the largest single contributor of ancestry of all present-day West Eurasians.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted September 21, 2018.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Paleolithic DNA from the Caucasus reveals core of West Eurasian ancestry
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Paleolithic DNA from the Caucasus reveals core of West Eurasian ancestry
Iosif Lazaridis, Anna Belfer-Cohen, Swapan Mallick, Nick Patterson, Olivia Cheronet, Nadin Rohland, Guy Bar-Oz, Ofer Bar-Yosef, Nino Jakeli, Eliso Kvavadze, David Lordkipanidze, Zinovi Matzkevich, Tengiz Meshveliani, Brendan J. Culleton, Douglas J. Kennett, Ron Pinhasi, David Reich
bioRxiv 423079; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/423079
Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Paleolithic DNA from the Caucasus reveals core of West Eurasian ancestry
Iosif Lazaridis, Anna Belfer-Cohen, Swapan Mallick, Nick Patterson, Olivia Cheronet, Nadin Rohland, Guy Bar-Oz, Ofer Bar-Yosef, Nino Jakeli, Eliso Kvavadze, David Lordkipanidze, Zinovi Matzkevich, Tengiz Meshveliani, Brendan J. Culleton, Douglas J. Kennett, Ron Pinhasi, David Reich
bioRxiv 423079; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/423079

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Genetics
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4658)
  • Biochemistry (10313)
  • Bioengineering (7636)
  • Bioinformatics (26241)
  • Biophysics (13481)
  • Cancer Biology (10648)
  • Cell Biology (15361)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (8463)
  • Ecology (12776)
  • Epidemiology (2067)
  • Evolutionary Biology (16794)
  • Genetics (11372)
  • Genomics (15431)
  • Immunology (10580)
  • Microbiology (25087)
  • Molecular Biology (10172)
  • Neuroscience (54233)
  • Paleontology (398)
  • Pathology (1660)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2883)
  • Physiology (4326)
  • Plant Biology (9213)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1582)
  • Synthetic Biology (2545)
  • Systems Biology (6761)
  • Zoology (1458)