Archaeogenetics of Late Iron Age Çemialo Sırtı, Batman: Investigating maternal genetic continuity in north Mesopotamia since the Neolithic

Spatial and temporal heterogeneity in human mobility patterns in Holocene Southwest Asia and the East Mediterranean

We present a spatiotemporal picture of human genetic diversity in Anatolia, Iran, Levant, South Caucasus, and the Aegean, a broad region that experienced the earliest Neolithic transition and the emergence of complex hierarchical societies. Combining 35 new ancient shotgun genomes with 382 ancient and 23 present-day published genomes, we found that genetic diversity within each region steadily increased through the Holocene. We further observed that the inferred sources of gene flow shifted in time. In the first half of the Holocene, Southwest Asian and the East Mediterranean populations homogenized among themselves. Starting with the Bronze Age, however, regional populations diverged from each other, most likely driven by gene flow from external sources, which we term "the expanding mobility model." Interestingly, this increase in inter-regional divergence can be captured by outgroup-f₃-based genetic distances, but not by the commonly used F_ST statistic, due to the sensitivity of F_ST, but not outgroup-f₃, to within-population diversity. Finally, we report a temporal trend of increasing male bias in admixture events through the Holocene.

Variable kinship patterns in Neolithic Anatolia revealed by ancient genomes

The social organization of the first fully sedentary societies that emerged during the Neolithic period in Southwest Asia remains enigmatic,¹ mainly because material culture studies provide limited insight into this issue. However, because Neolithic Anatolian communities often buried their dead beneath domestic buildings,² household composition and social structure can be studied through these human remains. Here, we describe genetic relatedness among co-burials associated with domestic buildings in Neolithic Anatolia using 59 ancient genomes, including 22 new genomes from Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük. We infer pedigree relationships by simultaneously analyzing multiple types of information, including autosomal and X chromosome kinship coefficients, maternal markers, and radiocarbon dating. In two early Neolithic villages dating to the 9th and 8th millennia BCE, Aşıklı Höyük and Boncuklu, we discover that siblings and parent-offspring pairings were frequent within domestic structures, which provides the first direct indication of close genetic relationships among co-burials. In contrast, in the 7th millennium BCE sites of Çatalhöyük and Barcın, where we study subadults interred within and around houses, we find close genetic relatives to be rare. Hence, genetic relatedness may not have played a major role in the choice of burial location at these latter two sites, at least for subadults. This supports the hypothesis that in Çatalhöyük,3, 4, 5 and possibly in some other Neolithic communities, domestic structures may have served as burial location for social units incorporating biologically unrelated individuals. Our results underscore the diversity of kin structures in Neolithic communities during this important phase of sociocultural development.

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Genetic kinship estimated from co-buried individuals’ genomes in Neolithic Anatolia

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Close relatives are common among co-burials in Aşıklı and Boncuklu

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Many unrelated infants found buried in the same building in Çatalhöyük and Barcın

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Neolithic societies in Southwest Asia may have held diverse concepts of kinship

Rare human mitochondrial HV lineages spread from the Near East and Caucasus during post-LGM and Neolithic expansions

Of particular significance to human population history in Eurasia are the migratory events that connected the Near East to Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Utilizing 315 HV*(xH,V) mitogenomes, including 27 contemporary lineages first reported here, we found the genetic signatures for distinctive movements out of the Near East and South Caucasus both westward into Europe and eastward into South Asia. The parallel phylogeographies of rare, yet widely distributed HV*(xH,V) subclades reveal a connection between the Italian Peninsula and South Caucasus, resulting from at least two (post-LGM, Neolithic) waves of migration. Many of these subclades originated in a population ancestral to contemporary Armenians and Assyrians. One such subclade, HV1b-152, supports a postexilic, northern Mesopotamian origin for the Ashkenazi HV1b2 lineages. In agreement with ancient DNA findings, our phylogenetic analysis of HV12 and HV14, the two exclusively Asian subclades of HV*(xH,V), point to the migration of lineages originating in Iran to South Asia before and during the Neolithic period. With HV12 being one of the oldest HV subclades, our results support an origin of HV haplogroup in the region defined by Western Iran, Mesopotamia, and the South Caucasus, where the highest prevalence of HV has been found.