Peer-Reviewed Journal Details
Mandatory Fields
Ariano B;Mattiangeli V;Breslin EM;Parkinson EW;McLaughlin TR;Thompson JE;Power RK;Stock JT;Mercieca-Spiteri B;Stoddart S;Malone C;Gopalakrishnan S;Cassidy LM;Bradley DG;
2022
June
Current Biology
Ancient Maltese genomes and the genetic geography of Neolithic Europe.
Validated
()
Optional Fields
32
12
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.
1879-0445
10.1016/j.cub.2022.04.069
Grant Details