Ancient DNA upends European prehistory

[Donkees]

Genes reveal striking diversity within similar ice age cultures

1 MAR 2023 BY ANDREW CURRY


The Gravettians, as shown in this reconstruction, had a common culture with sophisticated art and artifacts. But they were two distinct populations.TOM BJOERKLUND

Excerpt:

New DNA evidence, published today in Nature, shows Gravettians in France and Spain were genetically distinct from groups living in what is now the Czech Republic and Italy. “What we thought was one homogenous thing in Europe 30,000 years ago is actually two distinct groups,” says Mateja Hajdinjak, a molecular biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology who was not part of the new study.

The Gravettian data are part of a larger trove of ancient European DNA that reveals striking genetic diversity within apparently unified prehistoric cultures. The sweeping study analyzed 116 newly sequenced genomes and hundreds of previously published ones, ranging from about 45,000 years ago, when the first modern humans reached the continent, to about 6000 B.C.E., and from the Iberian Peninsula to the western steppes of modern-day Russia. It “fill[s] gaps in space and time,” says the study’s lead author, Cosimo Posth, a geneticist at Tübingen.

... Genetic data suggest that before the arrival of farmers in northern Europe around 6000 B.C.E., hunter-gatherers in Western Europe had dark skin and light eyes. People in Eastern Europe and Russia, meanwhile, had light skin and dark eyes. Most surprising, despite the lack of geographic barriers between modern-day Germany and Russia, the two groups spent millennia not mingling. “From 14,000 years ago to 8000 years ago, they do not mix at all,” Posth says. But he acknowledges that the team’s samples don’t cover the continent completely, and the likely contact zones—in Poland and Belarus, for example—lack samples. More genetic data from those areas might show the two populations mixing locally.

The study also looked at the final era of hunter-gatherers in Europe, beginning 10,000 years ago as warming continued to transform the open steppe to dense forests and rich wetlands. Here, again, the genes revealed a surprising wrinkle: Despite broadly similar hunting and gathering lifestyles, people in Western Europe remain genetically distinct from those east of the Baltic Sea.

Archaeologists are expected to welcome the new genetic data, even though they may force many to re-examine old ideas, says Jennifer French, an archaeologist at the University of Liverpool who was not part of the study. “This genetic data shows we’ve oversimplified what was going on in terms of population interaction,” she says. “It provides a lot more nuance than we’ve been able to with archaeological data alone.”

https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-dna-upends-european-prehistory


People across Europe crafted figurines similar to the so-called Venus of Brassempouy.