Dual ancestries and ecologies of the Late Glacial Palaeolithic in Britain

Abstract

Genetic investigations of Upper Palaeolithic Europe have revealed a complex and transformative history of human population movements and ancestries, with evidence of several instances of genetic change across the European continent in the period following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Concurrent with these genetic shifts, the post-LGM period is characterized by a series of significant climatic changes, population expansions and cultural diversification. Britain lies at the extreme northwest corner of post-LGM expansion and its earliest Late Glacial human occupation remains unclear. Here we present genetic data from Palaeolithic human individuals in the United Kingdom and the oldest human DNA thus far obtained from Britain or Ireland. We determine that a Late Upper Palaeolithic individual from Gough's Cave probably traced all its ancestry to Magdalenian-associated individuals closely related to those from sites such as El Mirón Cave, Spain, and Troisième Caverne in Goyet, Belgium. However, an individual from Kendrick's Cave shows no evidence of having ancestry related to the Gough’s Cave individual. Instead, the Kendrick’s Cave individual traces its ancestry to groups who expanded across Europe during the Late Glacial and are represented at sites such as Villabruna, Italy. Furthermore, the individuals differ not only in their genetic ancestry profiles but also in their mortuary practices and their diets and ecologies, as evidenced through stable isotope analyses. This finding mirrors patterns of dual genetic ancestry and admixture previously detected in Iberia but may suggest a more drastic genetic turnover in northwestern Europe than in the southwest.

Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers

“…4b and Supplementary Data 3.C ). The observation that post-14 ka individuals from western and central Europe and also from Britain 41 carry a homogeneous genetic makeup instead of displaying repeated local admixtures with GoyetQ2 ancestry implies that the Oberkassel-ancestry profile was already largely formed before its dispersal. This is in sharp contrast to the genetic history of Iberian hunter-gatherers, where the spread of the Villabruna/Oberkassel ancestry involved multiple local admixture events with groups carrying high proportions of GoyetQ2 ancestry 14 (Fig.…”

Bone tools, carnivore chewing and heavy percussion: assessing conflicting interpretations of Lower and Upper Palaeolithic bone assemblages

“…These excavations recovered a rich Late Upper Palaeolithic (Magdalenian) flint industry along with butchered human and other mammal remains, as reported in studies by Currant et al [ 123 ], Jacobi [ 124 ] and Donovan [ 125 ]. Ultra-high-resolution radiocarbon dating of butchered bones and human remains suggests that the Magdalenian occupation of Gough's Cave occurred during a brief period of arctic conditions at the end of the Late Pleniglacial, specifically Greenland Stadial 2.1a, just before the onset of the Late Glacial warming phase, Greenland Interstadial 1e [ 126 ].…”

“…Open Sci. 11: 231163 remains suggests that the Magdalenian occupation of Gough's Cave occurred during a brief period of arctic conditions at the end of the Late Pleniglacial, specifically Greenland Stadial 2.1a, just before the onset of the Late Glacial warming phase, Greenland Interstadial 1e [126].…”

Dietary 14 C reservoir effects and the chronology of prehistoric burials at Sakhtysh, central European Russia

“…The posterior distribution of each Delta_R indicates whether the estimated DRE is compatible with any dating constraints applied (e.g., the assumption that one sample is exactly contemporaneous with another). When using the dietreconstruction approach, 14 C ages can also be calibrated with OxCal's Mix_Curves function, which applies user-defined mixtures to each 14 C age, based on the FRUITS output, of the atmospheric calibration curve and calibration curve(s) for fish with a user-defined Delta_R, i.e., offset from the atmospheric curve (54,55). In this case, chronological modeling provides posterior distributions for the curve mixture likelihoods, usually specified as normal distributions (mean ± 1σ).…”