Life history and ancestry of the Late Upper Palaeolithic infant from Grotta delle Mura (southern Italy, 17 ka)
At the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), a general climate improvement determined a period of great transformation, with new human expansions and changes in material culture across Europe. Despite recent works on social and population dynamics, the role of southern refugia and the biological aspects related to early life history of late Upper Palaeolithic individuals are still not well understood. This study presents a multidisciplinary, high temporal resolution investigation of an Upper Palaeolithic infant from Grotta delle Mura (Apulia, Italy) combining palaeogenomics, dental palaeohistology, spatially-resolved geochemical analyses, and direct AMS radiocarbon dating. The skeletal remains of the infant – Le Mura 1 – were directly dated to 17,079-16,990 cal BP. The results portray a biological history of the development, early life, health and death of the infant. They reveal mobility patterns during gestation, identify several phenotypic traits and a potential congenital disease, and indicate a high level of endogamy. Furthermore, they remark an early spread of the Villabruna-like components along the Italian peninsula, confirming a population turnover around the time of the LGM, and highlight a general reduction in genetic variability from northern to southern Italy. Overall, Le Mura 1 contributes to our better understanding of the early stages of life and the genetic puzzle in the Italian peninsula at the end of the LGM.