Genome flux and stasis in a five millennium transect of European prehistory

TLDR

The Great Hungarian Plain has been a crossroads of cultural transformations shaping European prehistory. The study aims to investigate how 5,000 years of human genomes from the Great Hungarian Plain have impacted Europe’s genetic landscape. The authors analyze petrous bone genomes from 13 burials spanning Neolithic to Iron Age, with coverage ranging from ~1× to ~22×, to assess genetic shifts. The genomes reveal shifts at the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages with periods of stability, early hunter‑gatherer signatures, later Steppe influence, a move toward lighter pigmentation, and absence of lactase persistence in the Neolithic.

Abstract

Abstract The Great Hungarian Plain was a crossroads of cultural transformations that have shaped European prehistory. Here we analyse a 5,000-year transect of human genomes, sampled from petrous bones giving consistently excellent endogenous DNA yields, from 13 Hungarian Neolithic, Copper, Bronze and Iron Age burials including two to high (~22 × ) and seven to ~1 × coverage, to investigate the impact of these on Europe’s genetic landscape. These data suggest genomic shifts with the advent of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages, with interleaved periods of genome stability. The earliest Neolithic context genome shows a European hunter-gatherer genetic signature and a restricted ancestral population size, suggesting direct contact between cultures after the arrival of the first farmers into Europe. The latest, Iron Age, sample reveals an eastern genomic influence concordant with introduced Steppe burial rites. We observe transition towards lighter pigmentation and surprisingly, no Neolithic presence of lactase persistence.