Late Neolithic collective burial reveals admixture dynamics during the third millennium BCE and the shaping of the European genome
The 3rd millennium BCE was a pivotal period of profound cultural and genomic transformations in Europe associated with migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, which shaped the ancestry patterns in the present-day European genome. We performed a high-resolution whole-genome analysis including haplotype phasing of seven individuals of a collective burial from ~2500 cal BCE and of a Bell Beaker individual from ~2300 cal BCE in the Paris Basin in France. The collective burial revealed the arrival in real-time of steppe ancestry in France. We reconstructed the genome of an unsampled individual through its relatives' genomes, enabling us to shed light on the early-stage admixture patterns, dynamics and propagation of steppe-ancestry in Late Neolithic Europe. We identified two major Neolithic/steppe-related ancestry admixture pulses around 3000/2900 BCE and 2600 BCE. These pulses suggest different population-expansion dynamics with striking links to the Corded Ware and Bell Beaker cultural complexes.