RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Human inbreeding has decreased in time through the Holocene
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.09.24.311597
DO 10.1101/2020.09.24.311597
A1 Francisco C. Ceballos
A1 Kanat Gürün
A1 N. Ezgi Altınışık
A1 Hasan Can Gemici
A1 Cansu Karamurat
A1 Dilek Koptekin
A1 Kıvılcım Başak Vural
A1 Elif Sürer
A1 Yılmaz Selim Erdal
A1 Anders Götherström
A1 Füsun Özer
A1 Çiğdem Atakuman
A1 Mehmet Somel
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/09/24/2020.09.24.311597.1.abstract
AB The history of human inbreeding is controversial. The development of sedentary agricultural societies may have had opposite influences on inbreeding levels. On the one hand, agriculture and food surplus may have diminished inbreeding by increasing population sizes and lowering endogamy, i.e. inbreeding due to population isolation. On the other hand, increased sedentism, as well as the advent of private property may have promoted inbreeding through the emergence of consanguineous marriage customs or via ethnic and caste endogamy. The net impact is unknown, and to date, no systematic study on the temporal frequency of inbreeding in human societies has been conducted. Here we present a new approach for reliable estimation of runs of homozygosity (ROH) in genomes with ≥3x mean coverage across >1 million SNPs, and apply this to 440 ancient Eurasian genomes from the last 15,000 years. We show that the frequency of inbreeding, as measured by ROH, has decreased over time. The strongest effect is associated with the Neolithic transition, but the trend has since continued, indicating a population size effect on inbreeding prevalence. We further show that most inbreeding in our historical sample can be attributed to endogamy, although singular cases of high consanguinity can also be found in the archaeogenomic record.Highlights A study of 440 ancient genomes shows inbreeding decreased over time.The decrease appears linked with population size increase due to farming.Extreme consanguineous matings did occur among farmers, but rarely.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.