The genomic history of southeastern Europe

Abstract

Farming was first introduced to Europe in the mid-7th millennium BCE–associated with migrants from Anatolia who settled in the Southeast before spreading throughout Europe. To understand the dynamics of this process, we analyzed genome-wide ancient DNA data from 225 individuals who lived in southeastern Europe and surrounding regions between 12,000 and 500 BCE. We document a West-East cline of ancestry in indigenous hunter-gatherers and–in far-eastern Europe–early stages in the formation of Bronze Age Steppe ancestry. We show that the first farmers of northern and western Europe passed through southeastern Europe with limited hunter-gatherer admixture, but that some groups that remained mixed extensively, without the male-biased hunter-gatherer admixture that prevailed later in the North and West. Southeastern Europe continued to be a nexus between East and West, with intermittent genetic contact with the Steppe up to 2000 years before the migrations that replaced much of northern Europe’s population.

High-Resolution AMS Dating of Architecture, Boulder Artworks and the Transition to Farming at Lepenski Vir

“…8.13). This fish hook was made with a newly introduced mechanical drilling technique (bow or pump drill) that might have arrived in the Danube Gorges area with migrant women who appeared at Lepenski Vir during the transition phase based on strontium isotope 25 and aDNA evidence 46 , and who might have transmitted to the indigenous population this new technique, a range of new osseous tool types (e.g. flat symmetrical awls with half-worked distal metapodial epiphysis manufactured from longitudinal halves [Fig.…”

“…All this suggests that at this pivotal historical moment Lepenski Vir became an important hub of cultural exchanges and mixing between indigenous foragers and the first farming groups. Evidence that some of the individuals were buried inside trapezoidal buildings following typical Mesolithic rites of extended supine inhumations despite of their “pure” Anatolian Neolithic ancestry (AMS-dated burials 61 and 54e 46 , Fig. 4) may suggest that during this phase the power relationship was in favour of the indigenous forager community.…”

“…The observed and now dated changes in the technological production sequence with the introduction of novel, Neolithic materials and techniques during phase I-II, may suggest that new material culture practices and aesthetics of living and crafting were introduced during phase I-II by immigrant women 10,25,46 and transmitted through processes of vertical and horizontal learning. After only two to four lifespans from the first contacts and interactions with Early Neolithic farming groups and a short flourishing of this indigenous forager stronghold in the region, the local cultural specificity was entirely subsumed by novel, Neolithic subsistence, material practices and beliefs.…”

Investigating the likely association between genetic ancestry and COVID-19 manifestations

“…European Mesolithic hunter gatherers (WHGs) [8]. At the same time Eastern Europe was in the rudimentary stages of the formation of Bronze Age steppe ancestry, which later spread into Central and Northern Europe through East-West expansion [9].…”

“…Further, we found significant association between the combination of WHG ancestry and 15 days' mean temperature and COVID-19 death/recovery ratio (R 2 =0.39, p=0.042). Previously it has been shown that European genomes evolved uniquely with regards to immune responsiveness, particularly pertaining to responses against viral infections [8]. Admixture with Neanderthals is believed to have introduced unique regulatory variants into European genomes, which likely modulated immune responses in European populations [7].We surmise that the European genome architecture has been extensively modulated by the complex origin and migration history of modern-day Europeans during Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods that in turn contributed via introduction of novel variants in European genomes.…”