Abstract
The precise genetic origins of the first Neolithic farming populations in Europe and Southwest Asia, as well as the processes and the timing of their differentiation, remain largely unknown. Demogenomic modeling of high-quality ancient genomes reveals that the early farmers of Anatolia and Europe emerged from a multiphase mixing of a Southwest Asian population with a strongly bottlenecked western hunter-gatherer population after the last glacial maximum. Moreover, the ancestors of the first farmers of Europe and Anatolia went through a period of extreme genetic drift during their westward range expansion, contributing highly to their genetic distinctiveness. This modeling elucidates the demographic processes at the root of the Neolithic transition and leads to a spatial interpretation of the population history of Southwest Asia and Europe during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1842-1859 |
| Number of pages | 36 |
| Journal | Cell |
| Volume | 185 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| Early online date | 12 May 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 26 May 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2022 The Author(s)
Funding
We are grateful to Martina Unterländer and Aleksandra Žegarac for help with sample preparation. Lara Cassidy and Kay Prüfer kindly provided access to unpublished raw sequencing data. We thank Ourania Palli and Franz Pieler for useful archaeological information. We thank Katie Meheux for her careful proofreading of the manuscript and Jan Grenner for his voice on the soundtrack of Figure360. We thank the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate, the Anthropological Department of the Natural History Museum Vienna, Michaela Harbeck, and the Bavarian State Collection for Anthropology and Palaeoanatomy, Munich, for providing skeletal samples. We also acknowledge the use of the sequencing platform at the University of Berne for whole-genome sequencing services and support, the IBU cluster of the University of Berne for NGS data analysis (https://www.bioinformatics.unibe.ch/), the UBELIX HPC cluster of the University of Berne (http://www.id.unibe.ch/hpc) for the demographic analyses, and the supercomputer Mogon of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (https://hpc.uni-mainz.de). We finally thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which greatly helped us to improve the manuscript. Fundings: Swiss NSF grant no. 310030_188883 (L.E. and N.M.); Swiss NSF grant no. 31003A_173062 (D.W. I.S. V.L. and C.S.R.-B.); Swiss NSF grant no. 310030_200420 (D.W.); German Science Foundation BU 1403/6-1 (J. Burger, C.P. and S.K.); Humboldt foundation (J. Burger and C.P.); Greek-German bilateral agreement (GSRT and BMBF) project “BIOMUSE” 5030121 (C.P. J. Burger, L.W. E.G. and Y.D.); Serbian Ministry of Science project ID III47001 (S.S.); Czech Grant Agency—GACR 21-17092X (Z.H.); National Institutes of Health grant R01GM127348 (R.N.G. T.J.S.), ERC BIRTH project 640557 (S.S.); European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program—ERC-2019-SyG n°856453 (Z.H.); Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions ITN “BEAN” (J. Burger, S.S. S.M.F. C.P. and Z.H.); Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellowship (M.B.: 793893 “ODYSSEA”); EMBO Long-Term Fellowship (Z.H.: ALTF 445-2017); Seal of Excellence Fund grant from the University of Berne (N.M.: SELF2018-04); Mainz University (L.W.). Conceptualization, J. Burger, D.W. and L.E.; resources (samples, archaeological, and anthropological context), S.S. M.B. C.P. S.T. N.K. F.G. A.Z.-L. J. Pechtl, J. Peters, E.L. and M.T.-N.; data production, L.W. S.M.F. and S.K.; data curation, I.S. V.L. A.T. and A.K.; formal analyses, investigation, and visualization, N.M. L.E. A.K. E.G. T.J.S. R.N.G. V.P. J. Burger, J. Blöcher, Y.D. Z.H. I.S. A.P. C.S.R.-B. and D.W.; writing – original draft, N.M. M.B. D.W. J. Burger, and L.E.; writing – review & editing: all co-authors. The authors declare no competing interests. We are grateful to Martina Unterländer and Aleksandra Žegarac for help with sample preparation. Lara Cassidy and Kay Prüfer kindly provided access to unpublished raw sequencing data. We thank Ourania Palli and Franz Pieler for useful archaeological information. We thank Katie Meheux for her careful proofreading of the manuscript and Jan Grenner for his voice on the soundtrack of Figure360. We thank the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate, the Anthropological Department of the Natural History Museum Vienna, Michaela Harbeck, and the Bavarian State Collection for Anthropology and Palaeoanatomy, Munich, for providing skeletal samples. We also acknowledge the use of the sequencing platform at the University of Berne for whole-genome sequencing services and support, the IBU cluster of the University of Berne for NGS data analysis ( https://www.bioinformatics.unibe.ch/ ), the UBELIX HPC cluster of the University of Berne ( http://www.id.unibe.ch/hpc ) for the demographic analyses, and the supercomputer Mogon of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz ( https://hpc.uni-mainz.de ). We finally thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which greatly helped us to improve the manuscript. Fundings: Swiss NSF grant no. 310030_188883 (L.E. and N.M.); Swiss NSF grant no. 31003A_173062 (D.W., I.S., V.L., and C.S.R.-B.); Swiss NSF grant no. 310030_200420 (D.W.); German Science Foundation BU 1403/6-1 (J. Burger, C.P., and S.K.); Humboldt foundation (J. Burger and C.P.); Greek-German bilateral agreement ( GSRT and BMBF ) project “BIOMUSE” 5030121 (C.P., J. Burger, L.W., E.G., and Y.D.); Serbian Ministry of Science project ID III47001 (S.S.); Czech Grant Agency—GACR 21-17092X (Z.H.); National Institutes of Health grant R01GM127348 (R.N.G., T.J.S.), ERC BIRTH project 640557 (S.S.); European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program—ERC-2019-SyG n° 856453 (Z.H.); Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions ITN “BEAN” (J. Burger, S.S., S.M.F., C.P., and Z.H.); Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellowship (M.B.: 793893 “ODYSSEA”); EMBO Long-Term Fellowship (Z.H.: ALTF 445-2017 ); Seal of Excellence Fund grant from the University of Berne (N.M.: SELF2018-04 ); Mainz University (L.W.).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellowship | |
| H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions | |
| Long-Term Fellowship | |
| Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz | |
| National Institutes of Health | |
| Mainz University | |
| IBU cluster of the University of Berne | |
| General Secretariat for Research and Technology | |
| Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung | |
| Horizon 2020 | |
| Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung | 310030_200420, 31003A_173062, 310030_188883 |
| Horizon 2020 Framework Programme | 793893, 856453 |
| Not added | III47001, 47001 |
| National Institute of General Medical Sciences | R01GM127348 |
| Grantová Agentura České Republiky | GACR 21-17092X |
| Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung | 5030121 |
| European Research Council | 640557 |
| Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft | BU 1403/6-1 |
| European Molecular Biology Organization | ALTF 445-2017 |
| University of Bern | SELF2018-04 |
Keywords
- ancient genomics
- demogenomic modeling
- demographic inference
- demographic processes
- human evolution
- Neolithic transition
- population admixture
- upper Palaeolithic