RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The mixed genetic origin of the first farmers of Europe
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.11.23.394502
DO 10.1101/2020.11.23.394502
A1 Nina Marchi
A1 Laura Winkelbach
A1 Ilektra Schulz
A1 Maxime Brami
A1 Zuzana Hofmanová
A1 Jens Blöcher
A1 Carlos S. Reyna-Blanco
A1 Yoan Diekmann
A1 Alexandre Thiéry
A1 Adamandia Kapopoulou
A1 Vivian Link
A1 Valérie Piuz
A1 Susanne Kreutzer
A1 Sylwia M. Figarska
A1 Elissavet Ganiatsou
A1 Albert Pukaj
A1 Necmi Karul
A1 Fokke Gerritsen
A1 Joachim Pechtl
A1 Joris Peters
A1 Andrea Zeeb-Lanz
A1 Eva Lenneis
A1 Maria Teschler-Nicola
A1 Sevasti Triantaphyllou
A1 Sofija Stefanović
A1 Christina Papageorgopoulou
A1 Daniel Wegmann
A1 Joachim Burger
A1 Laurent Excoffier
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/11/23/2020.11.23.394502.abstract
AB While the Neolithic expansion in Europe is well described archaeologically, the genetic origins of European first farmers and their affinities with local hunter-gatherers (HGs) remain unclear. To infer the demographic history of these populations, the genomes of 15 ancient individuals located between Western Anatolia and Southern Germany were sequenced to high quality, allowing us to perform population genomics analyses formerly restricted to modern genomes. We find that all European and Anatolian early farmers descend from the merging of a European and a Near Eastern group of HGs, possibly in the Near East, shortly after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Western and Southeastern European HG are shown to split during the LGM, and share signals of a very strong LGM bottleneck that drastically reduced their genetic diversity. Early Neolithic Central Anatolians seem only indirectly related to ancestors of European farmers, who probably originated in the Near East and dispersed later on from the Aegean along the Danubian corridor following a stepwise demic process with only limited (2-6%) but additive input from local HGs.Our analyses provide a time frame and resolve the genetic origins of early European farmers. They highlight the impact of Late Pleistocene climatic fluctuations that caused the fragmentation, merging and reexpansion of human populations in SW Asia and Europe, and eventually led to the world's first agricultural populations.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.