Dissecting mitochondrial dna variability of balearic populations from the bronze age to the current era

Abstract

We characterized five Balearic necropolises in the context of their geographic and cultural characteristics. The similarity between ancient Balearic and ancient Catalan gene pools reinforces their known historic interactions, while the lack of a consistent genetic continuity with Ancient Sardinians suggests that Talaiotic and Nuragic cultures arose in differentiated populations. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 29:e22883, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Ancient DNA of Phoenician remains indicates discontinuity in the settlement history of Ibiza

“…It is possible that the mtDNA frequencies are so different from the ancient samples due to random genetic drift, which is common in small island populations. The small sample size (n = 18) could also be a factor, though our result indicating that the modern Ibizans are genetically quite different to mainland populations is consistent with previous studies 13 , 14 , 16 , 39 .…”

“… 62 found L2c in both 17 th and 18 th century historic and modern individuals. Another sub-Saharan lineage, L1b has also been identified in a Late Chalcolithic population in central Iberia 38 and in one 7 th century CE sample from Mallorca 39 .…”

“…To investigate the similarities between our Ibizans and other ancient samples from the Iberian mainland and the other Balearic islands we reduced our data to the comparable, publicly available HVR regions of 383 bp for Neolithic and Bronze age Iberian samples 38 and 156 bp of data from Neolithic and Iron Age samples from Mallorca and Menorca 39 and constructed Median Joining (MJ) networks shown in Fig. 2 .…”

“…2 .

Figure 2 Median Joining (MJ) Networks for ancient and modern Ibizans with mtDNA HVR sequences of ( A ) 383 bp from Neolithic and Bronze Age Iberian samples (Ancient Iberians) 38 , modern Spanish 34 Phoenician samples from Lebanon and Sardinia 3 and ( B ) 156 bp of data from the Ancient Iberians and from Neolithic and Iron Aged samples from Mallorca and Menorca 39 .

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“…In their analyses of mtDNA hypervariable region sequences obtained from ancient samples from Neolithic and Iron-Age necropoli from Mallorca and Menorca, Simón et al . 39 found that 4.34% belonged to Haplogroup K, with the highest frequency (10%) in the oldest (Neolithic) necropolis, Cova des Pas, on Minorca. Our K1a1b result may indicate that the initial settlement of Formentera, prior to the arrival of the Phoenicians, also likely came from the mainland or via Mallorca, an observation presented by Bellard 4 .…”