TY - JOUR

T1 - Ancient Maltese genomes and the genetic geography of Neolithic Europe

AU - Ariano, Bruno

AU - Mattiangeli, Valeria

AU - Breslin, Emily M.

AU - Parkinson, Eóin W.

AU - McLaughlin, T. Rowan

AU - Thompson, Jess E.

AU - Power, Ronika K.

AU - Stock, Jay T.

AU - Mercieca-Spiteri, Bernardette

AU - Stoddart, Simon

AU - Malone, Caroline

AU - Gopalakrishnan, Shyam

AU - Cassidy, Lara M.

AU - Bradley, Daniel G.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Archaeological consideration of maritime connectivity has ranged from a biogeographical perspective that considers the sea as a barrier to a view of seaways as ancient highways that facilitate exchange. Our results illustrate the former. We report three Late Neolithic human genomes from the Mediterranean island of Malta that are markedly enriched for runs of homozygosity, indicating inbreeding in their ancestry and an effective population size of only hundreds, a striking illustration of maritime isolation in this agricultural society. In the Late Neolithic, communities across mainland Europe experienced a resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry, pointing toward the persistence of different ancestral strands that subsequently admixed. This is absent in the Maltese genomes, giving a further indication of their genomic insularity. Imputation of genome-wide genotypes in our new and 258 published ancient individuals allowed shared identity-by-descent segment analysis, giving a fine-grained genetic geography of Neolithic Europe. This highlights the differentiating effects of seafaring Mediterranean expansion and also island colonization, including that of Ireland, Britain, and Orkney. These maritime effects contrast profoundly with a lack of migratory barriers in the establishment of Central European farming populations from Anatolia and the Balkans.

AB - Archaeological consideration of maritime connectivity has ranged from a biogeographical perspective that considers the sea as a barrier to a view of seaways as ancient highways that facilitate exchange. Our results illustrate the former. We report three Late Neolithic human genomes from the Mediterranean island of Malta that are markedly enriched for runs of homozygosity, indicating inbreeding in their ancestry and an effective population size of only hundreds, a striking illustration of maritime isolation in this agricultural society. In the Late Neolithic, communities across mainland Europe experienced a resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry, pointing toward the persistence of different ancestral strands that subsequently admixed. This is absent in the Maltese genomes, giving a further indication of their genomic insularity. Imputation of genome-wide genotypes in our new and 258 published ancient individuals allowed shared identity-by-descent segment analysis, giving a fine-grained genetic geography of Neolithic Europe. This highlights the differentiating effects of seafaring Mediterranean expansion and also island colonization, including that of Ireland, Britain, and Orkney. These maritime effects contrast profoundly with a lack of migratory barriers in the establishment of Central European farming populations from Anatolia and the Balkans.

KW - ancient DNA

KW - island archaeology

KW - migration

KW - Neolithic

KW - population genomics

U2 - 10.1016/j.cub.2022.04.069

DO - 10.1016/j.cub.2022.04.069

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 35588742

AN - SCOPUS:85130976538

VL - 32

SP - 2668-2680.e6

JO - Current Biology

JF - Current Biology

SN - 0960-9822

IS - 12

ER -