Ancient DNA from Chalcolithic Israel reveals the role of population mixture in cultural transformation

Abstract

The material culture of the Late Chalcolithic period in the southern Levant (4500–3900/3800 BCE) is qualitatively distinct from previous and subsequent periods. Here, to test the hypothesis that the advent and decline of this culture was influenced by movements of people, we generated genome-wide ancient DNA from 22 individuals from Peqi’in Cave, Israel. These individuals were part of a homogeneous population that can be modeled as deriving ~57% of its ancestry from groups related to those of the local Levant Neolithic, ~17% from groups related to those of the Iran Chalcolithic, and ~26% from groups related to those of the Anatolian Neolithic. The Peqi’in population also appears to have contributed differently to later Bronze Age groups, one of which we show cannot plausibly have descended from the same population as that of Peqi’in Cave. These results provide an example of how population movements propelled cultural changes in the deep past.

A dynamic 6,000-year genetic history of Eurasia’s Eastern Steppe

“…To analyse our dataset in the context of known ancient and modern genetic diversity, we merged it with previous published modern genomic data from i) 225 worldwide populations genotyped on the Human Origins array (Jeong et al, 2019; Lazaridis et al, 2014), ii) 300 high-coverage genomes in the Simons Genome Diversity Project (“SGDP”) (Mallick et al, 2016), and currently available ancient genomic data across Eurasian continent (Allentoft et al, 2015; de Barros Damgaard et al, 2018; Damgaard et al, 2018; Fu et al, 2014, 2016; Haak et al, 2015; Haber et al, 2017; Harney et al, 2018; Jeong et al, 2016, 2018; Jones et al, 2015; Kilinç et al, 2016; Lazaridis et al, 2016, 2017; Mathieson et al, 2015, 2018; McColl et al, 2018; Narasimhan et al, 2019; Raghavan et al, 2014, 2015; Rasmussen et al, 2010, 2014, 2015; Sikora et al, 2019; Unterländer et al, 2017; Yang et al, 2017). We obtained 1,233,013 SNP sites (1,150,639 of which on autosomes) across our dataset when intersecting with the SGDP dataset, and 597,573 sites (593,124 of which on autosomes) when intersecting with the Human Origins array.…”

West Asian sources of the Eurasian component in Ethiopians: a reassessment

“… Summary Previous genome-scale studies of populations living today in Ethiopia have found evidence of recent gene flow from an Eurasian source, dating to the last 3,000 years 1,2,3,4 . Haplotype 1 and genotype data based analyses of modern 2,4 and ancient data (aDNA) 3,5 have considered Sardinia-like proxy 2 , broadly Levantine 1,4 or Neolithic Levantine 3 populations as a range of possible sources for this gene flow. Given the ancient nature of this gene flow and the extent of population movements and replacements that affected West Asia in the last 3000 years, aDNA evidence would seem as the best proxy for determining the putative population source.…”

Beyond broad strokes: sociocultural insights from the study of ancient genomes

“…Studies of cultural transformations can also benefit from archaeogenomic research, as they can reveal whether the influx of new cultures was mediated by admixture 35 . An example of this is the spread of Bell Beaker pottery across western and central Europe between 2,750 and 2,500 BCE, and its subsequent disappearance around 2,000 BCE.…”