title: Genomic affinities of two 7,000-year-old Iberian hunter-gatherers.
abstract: The genetic background of the European Mesolithic and the extent of population replacement during the Neolithic is poorly understood, both due to the scarcity of human remains from that period and the inherent methodological difficulties of ancient DNA research. However, advances in sequencing technologies are both increasing data yields and providing supporting evidence for data authenticity, such as nucleotide misincorporation patterns. We use these methods to characterize both the mitochondrial DNA genome and generate shotgun genomic data from two exceptionally well-preserved 7,000-year-old Mesolithic individuals from La Braña-Arintero site in León (Northwestern Spain). The mitochondria of both individuals are assigned to U5b2c1, a haplotype common among the small number of other previously studied Mesolithic individuals from Northern and Central Europe. This suggests a remarkable genetic uniformity and little phylogeographic structure over a large geographic area of the pre-Neolithic populations. Using Approximate Bayesian Computation, a model of genetic continuity from Mesolithic to Neolithic populations is poorly supported. Furthermore, analyses of 1.34% and 0.53% of their nuclear genomes, containing about 50,000 and 20,000 ancestry informative SNPs, respectively, show that these two Mesolithic individuals are not related to current populations from either the Iberian Peninsula or Southern Europe.
authors: Institut de Biologia Evolutiva, CSIC-UPF, Dr. Aiguader 88, 08003 Barcelona, Spain.
authors: Federico
authors: F
authors: Sánchez-Quinto
authors: Hannes
authors: H
authors: Schroeder
authors: Oscar
authors: O
authors: Ramirez
authors: María C
authors: MC
authors: Avila-Arcos
authors: Marc
authors: M
authors: Pybus
authors: Iñigo
authors: I
authors: Olalde
authors: Amhed M V
authors: AM
authors: Velazquez
authors: María Encina Prada
authors: ME
authors: Marcos
authors: Julio Manuel Vidal
authors: JM
authors: Encinas
authors: Jaume
authors: J
authors: Bertranpetit
authors: Ludovic
authors: L
authors: Orlando
authors: M Thomas P
authors: MT
authors: Gilbert
authors: Carles
authors: C
authors: Lalueza-Fox
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial; D005580:Fossils; D015894:Genome, Human; D054629:Genome, Mitochondrial; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D013030:Spain
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial