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You are here: Home / Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2023 / Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers

Cosimo Posth, He Yu, Ayshin Ghalichi, Hélène Rougier, Isabelle Crevecoeur, Yilei Huang, Harald Ringbauer, Adam Rohrlach, Kathrin Nägele, Vanessa Villalba-Mouco, Rita Radzeviciute, Tiago Ferraz, Alexander Stoessel, Rezeda Tukhbatova, Dorothée Drucker, Martina Lari, Alessandra Modi, Stefania Vai, Tina Saupe, Christiana Scheib, Giulio Catalano, Luca Pagani, Sahra Talamo, Helen Fewlass, Laurent Klaric, André Morala, Mathieu Rué, Stéphane Madelaine, Laurent Crépin, Jean-Baptiste Caverne, Emmy Bocaege, Stefano Ricci, Francesco Boschin, Priscilla Bayle, Bruno Maureille, Foni Le Brun-Ricalens, Jean-Guillaume Bordes, Gregorio Oxilia, Eugenio Bortolini, Olivier Bignon-Lau, Grégory Debout, Michel Orliac, Antoine Zazzo, Vitale Sparacello, Elisabetta Starnini, Luca Sineo, Johannes van der Plicht, Laure Pecqueur, Gildas Merceron, Géraldine Garcia, Jean-Michel Leuvrey, Coralie Garcia, Asier Gómez-Olivencia, Marta Połtowicz-Bobak, Dariusz Bobak, Mona Le Luyer, Paul Storm, Claudia Hoffmann, Jacek Kabaciński, Tatiana Filimonova, Svetlana Shnaider, Natalia Berezina, Borja González-Rabanal, Manuel González Morales, Ana Marín-Arroyo, Belén López, Carmen Alonso-Llamazares, Annamaria Ronchitelli, Caroline Polet, Ivan Jadin, Nicolas Cauwe, Joaquim Soler, Neus Coromina, Isaac Rufí, Richard Cottiaux, Geoffrey Clark, Lawrence Straus, Marie-Anne Julien, Silvia Renhart, Dorothea Talaa, Stefano Benazzi, Matteo Romandini, Luc Amkreutz, Hervé Bocherens, Christoph Wißing, Sébastien Villotte, Javier de Pablo, Magdalena Gómez-Puche, Marco Esquembre-Bebia, Pierre Bodu, Liesbeth Smits, Bénédicte Souffi, Rimantas Jankauskas, Justina Kozakaitė, Christophe Cupillard, Hartmut Benthien, Kurt Wehrberger, Ralf Schmitz, Susanne Feine, Tim Schüler, Corinne Thevenet, Dan Grigorescu, Friedrich Lüth, Andreas Kotula, Henny Piezonka, Franz Schopper, Jiří Svoboda, Sandra Sázelová, Andrey Chizhevsky, Aleksandr Khokhlov, Nicholas Conard, Frédérique Valentin, Katerina Harvati, Patrick Semal, Bettina Jungklaus, Alexander Suvorov, Rick Schulting, Vyacheslav Moiseyev, Kristiina Mannermaa, Alexandra Buzhilova, Thomas Terberger, David Caramelli, Eveline Altena, Wolfgang Haak, and Johannes Krause (2023)

Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers

Nature, 615(7950):117--126.

Modern humans have populated Europe for more than 45,000 years1,2. Our knowledge of the genetic relatedness and structure of ancient hunter-gatherers is however limited, owing to the scarceness and poor molecular preservation of human remains from that period3. Here we analyse 356 ancient hunter-gatherer genomes, including new genomic data for 116 individuals from 14 countries in western and central Eurasia, spanning between 35,000 and 5,000 years ago. We identify a genetic ancestry profile in individuals associated with Upper Palaeolithic Gravettian assemblages from western Europe that is distinct from contemporaneous groups related to this archaeological culture in central and southern Europe4, but resembles that of preceding individuals associated with the Aurignacian culture. This ancestry profile survived during the Last Glacial Maximum (25,000 to 19,000 years ago) in human populations from southwestern Europe associated with the Solutrean culture, and with the following Magdalenian culture that re-expanded northeastward after the Last Glacial Maximum. Conversely, we reveal a genetic turnover in southern Europe suggesting a local replacement of human groups around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, accompanied by a north-to-south dispersal of populations associated with the Epigravettian culture. From at least 14,000 years ago, an ancestry related to this culture spread from the south across the rest of Europe, largely replacing the Magdalenian-associated gene pool. After a period of limited admixture that spanned the beginning of the Mesolithic, we find genetic interactions between western and eastern European hunter-gatherers, who were also characterized by marked differences in phenotypically relevant variants.

RBINS Collection(s), PDF available, Open Access, Impact Factor, Peer Review
  • DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05726-0
  • ISSN: 1476-4687

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