Late Danubian mitochondrial genomes shed light into the Neolithisation of Central Europe in the 5th millennium BC

Abstract

BackgroundRecent aDNA studies are progressively focusing on various Neolithic and Hunter - Gatherer (HG) populations, providing arguments in favor of major migrations accompanying European Neolithisation. The major focus was so far on the Linear Pottery Culture (LBK), which introduced the Neolithic way of life in Central Europe in the second half of 6th millennium BC. It is widely agreed that people of this culture were genetically different from local HGs and no genetic exchange is seen between the two groups. From the other hand some degree of resurgence of HGs genetic component is seen in late Neolithic groups belonging to the complex of the Funnel Beaker Cultures (TRB). Less attention is brought to various middle Neolithic cultures belonging to Late Danubian sequence which chronologically fall in between those two abovementioned groups. We suspected that genetic influx from HG to farming communities might have happened in Late Danubian cultures since archaeologists see extensive contacts between those two communities.ResultsHere we address this issue by presenting 5 complete mitochondrial genomes of various late Danubian individuals from modern-day Poland and combining it with available published data. Our data show that Late Danubian cultures are maternally closely related to Funnel Beaker groups instead of culturally similar LBK.ConclusionsWe assume that it is an effect of the presence of individuals belonging to U5 haplogroup both in Late Danubians and the TRB. The U5 haplogroup is thought to be a typical for HGs of Europe and therefore we argue that it is an additional evidence of genetic exchange between farming and HG groups taking place at least as far back as in middle Neolithic, in the Late Danubian communities.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-017-0924-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

A genomic Neolithic time transect of hunter-farmer admixture in central Poland

“…The proportion of haplogroup U5 already present in the earliest of the analysed Neolithic groups from the examined area differs from the expected pattern of diversity of mtDNA lineages based on a previous archaeological view and on the aDNA findings from the neighbouring regions which were settled by post-Linear farmers similar to BKG at that time 31 , 32 . A large proportion of Mesolithic haplogroups in late-Danubian farmers in Kuyavia was also shown in previous studies concerning BKG samples based on mtDNA only 33 , 34 , although these frequencies were derived on the basis of very small sample sizes.…”

“…This model is supported by archaeological data which points to cultural, social, economic, and ideological transformations 28 , 29 . However, nuclear aDNA studies show that Scandinavian TRB farmers are genetically similar to today’s southern Europeans (particularly Sardinians), like other Early Neolithic farmers from central Europe 6 , 30 , albeit with the appearance of hunter-gatherer mitochondrial DNA haplogroups 31 – 34 . The results raise interesting questions about how and when did this admixture occur.…”

Mitochondrial genomes from Bronze Age Poland reveal genetic continuity from the Late Neolithic and additional genetic affinities with the steppe populations

“…Consensus sequences were build using ANGSD v0.910 (Korneliussen, Albrechtsen, & Nielsen, 2014). We only accepted positions with mapping scores of above 30, a minimum base quality of 20, and covered by at least 3 reads as in Chyleński et al (2017). Each individual was assigned to a particular mitochondrial haplogroup using the PhyloTree phylogenetic tree build 17 (van Oven & Kayser, 2009) and Mitomaster (Lott et al, 2013).…”

Mitochondrial genomes reveal an east to west cline of steppe ancestry in Corded Ware populations

“…Cutadapt v.1.8.1 34 was then used to remove long (−M 110), short (−m 35), and low-quality sequences (−q 20). The filtered reads were analyzed with FastQC v 0.11.3 35 using the options described previously 36 . The sequences were mapped against the rCRS using TMAP v3.4.1 37 .…”