Ancient DNA reveals admixture history and endogamy in the prehistoric Aegean

Abstract

The Neolithic and Bronze Ages were highly transformative periods for the genetic history of Europe but for the Aegean—a region fundamental to Europe’s prehistory—the biological dimensions of cultural transitions have been elucidated only to a limited extent so far. We have analysed newly generated genome-wide data from 102 ancient individuals from Crete, the Greek mainland and the Aegean Islands, spanning from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. We found that the early farmers from Crete shared the same ancestry as other contemporaneous Neolithic Aegeans. In contrast, the end of the Neolithic period and the following Early Bronze Age were marked by ‘eastern’ gene flow, which was predominantly of Anatolian origin in Crete. Confirming previous findings for additional Central/Eastern European ancestry in the Greek mainland by the Middle Bronze Age, we additionally show that such genetic signatures appeared in Crete gradually from the seventeenth to twelfth centuries bc, a period when the influence of the mainland over the island intensified. Biological and cultural connectedness within the Aegean is also supported by the finding of consanguineous endogamy practiced at high frequencies, unprecedented in the global ancient DNA record. Our results highlight the potential of archaeogenomic approaches in the Aegean for unravelling the interplay of genetic admixture, marital and other cultural practices.

A Genetic History of Continuity and Mobility in the Iron Age Central Mediterranean

“…S9). While it has been shown that endogamous marriage practices were common in the contemporaneous ancient Greek world 28 , less is known about such practices in the Carthaginian world, due to fewer surviving written records 29 .…”

A genomic history of the North Pontic Region from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age

“…Evidence presented in 7 argues for a YAC origin in the Dnipro-Don area of the northeastern NPR. Yamna ancestry became a feature of almost all individuals in southeast Europe postdating the Yamna expansion, except for the southernmost corner of the Balkan Peninsula in the Aegean 10,[38][39][40] . The expansion of the YAC eastward brought its bearers to near the foot of the Urals (where the Samara Yamna were sampled) and to west Siberia, where they formed the Afanasievo culture of the Altai.…”

Testing Times: Challenges in Disentangling Admixture Histories in Recent and Complex Demographies

“…A number of different qpAdm plausibility criteria are employed in empirical aDNA analysis such as P-value thresholds of 0.01 (e.g., Skoglund et al 2017, Narasimhan et al 2019, Lazaridis et al 2022, Bergström et al 2022, Koptekin et al 2023, Skourtanioti et al 2023) and 0.05 e.g., (Olalde et al 2019;Sirak et al 2021;Salazar et al 2023), the use of two-standard error constraint (S.E.) on the admixture weights (Narasimhan et al 2019), the requirement of the rejection of all single-source models, and favoring simpler models over more complex ones (Lazaridis et al 2016(Lazaridis et al , 2022aSkoglund et al 2017;Narasimhan et al 2019;Salazar et al 2023).…”

“…The historical period, particularly in Southwest Asia, is broadly demarcated to begin somewhere around the earlymid-3rd millennium BCE (Bartash 2020) and is characterized by the invention of writing, and intermittent periods of intensified inter-regional trade, diplomacy, and human mobility (Kristiansen 2016). From this body of research, hypotheses about gene flows between ancient settlements amenable to aDNA can involve groups separated by very short periods and thought to have descended from a complex web of migration and population structure (Haak et al 2015;Lazaridis et al 2016Lazaridis et al , 2017Lazaridis et al , 2022aHaber et al 2017Haber et al , 2020de Barros Damgaard et al 2018;Harney et al 2018;Wang et al 2019;Narasimhan et al 2019;Antonio et al 2019;3 Fernandes et al 2020;Agranat-Tamir et al 2020;Skourtanioti et al 2020Skourtanioti et al , 2023Clemente et al 2021;Koptekin et al 2023;Schmid and Schiffels 2023;Moots et al 2023). These can range from questions regarding the degree of population continuity between periods of cultural change or settlement hiatus in the archaeological record to determining if cultural links between regions are indicative of inter-regional migration, and assessing if historical records of mass migrations and forced relocations result in observable signals of increased interregional gene flow.…”