Biological Sciences Division
Published January 30, 2024 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Stable population structure in Europe since the Iron Age, despite high mobility

Creators

  • 1. Stanford University
  • 2. University of Pennsylvania
  • 3. University of Vienna
  • 4. University of Chicago
  • 5. Utrecht University
  • 6. Sapienza University
  • 7. Archaeological Museum Zadar
  • 8. University of Sciences and Technology Houari Boumediene
  • 9. Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography
  • 10. French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research
  • 11. Institute for Anthropological Research

Description

Ancient DNA research in the past decade has revealed that European population structure changed dramatically in the prehistoric period (14,000-3000 years before present, YBP), reflecting the widespread introduction of Neolithic farmer and Bronze Age Steppe ancestries. However, little is known about how population structure changed from the historical period onward (3000 YBP - present). To address this, we collected whole genomes from 204 individuals from Europe and the Mediterranean, many of which are the first historical period genomes from their region (e.g. Armenia and France). We found that most regions show remarkable inter-individual heterogeneity. At least 7% of historical individuals carry ancestry uncommon in the region where they were sampled, some indicating cross-Mediterranean contacts. Despite this high level of mobility, overall population structure across western Eurasia is relatively stable through the historical period up to the present, mirroring geography. We show that, under standard population genetics models with local panmixia, the observed level of dispersal would lead to a collapse of population structure. Persistent population structure thus suggests a lower effective migration rate than indicated by the observed dispersal. We hypothesize that this phenomenon can be explained by extensive transient dispersal arising from drastically improved transportation networks and the Roman Empire's mobilization of people for trade, labor, and military. This work highlights the utility of ancient DNA in elucidating finer scale human population dynamics in recent history.

Notes

Due to the large number of authors, only the first 20 and the University of Chicago authors are included on the above author list. Please download the article for the complete list of authors.

Data availability

All sequence data newly generated for this study are available at the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) database. Raw sequencing data is available under the accession number PRJEB53565. Sequences mapped to the human reference genome are available under accession number PRJEB53564. Sequences previously reported by Moots et al., 2022 are available under accession number PRJEB49419. All published data used in this study is listed in Supplementary file 4, and can be retrieved from primary sources (see Materials and methods, 'Combining new genotypes with ancient and present-day published data') or from the Allen Ancient Data Resource (Mallick et al., 2023).

The following data sets were generated:

Antonio, Weiß, Weiß, Sawyer et al. (2022) EBI European Nucleotide Archive ID PRJEB53565. Historical Period Genomes from West Eurasia and the Mediterranean - Raw reads. https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB53565

Antonio, Weiß, Weiß, Sawyer et al. (2022) EBI European Nucleotide Archive ID PRJEB53564. Historical Period Genomes from West Eurasia and the Mediterranean - Mapped reads. https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB53564

The following previously published data sets were used:

Moots et al. (2022) EBI European Nucleotide Archive ID PRJEB49419. Mobility in the Iron Age Central Mediterranean. https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB49419

Mallick et al. (2021) Harvard Dataverse Allen Ancient DNA Resource (AADR) v44.3. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/FFIDCW

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Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.7554/eLife.79714
Other
oai:uchicago.tind.io:11084

Related works

Cites
https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.15.491973 (URL)

UChicago Information

Division(s)
Biological Sciences Division
Department(s)
Human Genetics