Early Neolithic Genomes from the Eastern Fertile Crescent

Overview

Journal Science

Specialty Science

Date 2016 Jul 16

PMID 27417496

Citations 114

Authors

Farnaz Broushaki

Mark G Thomas

Vivian Link

Saioa Lopez

Lucy van Dorp

Karola Kirsanow

Zuzana Hofmanova

Yoan Diekmann

Lara M Cassidy

David Diez-Del-Molino

Athanasios Kousathanas

Christian Sell

Harry K Robson

Rui Martiniano

Jens Blocher

Amelie Scheu

Susanne Kreutzer

Ruth Bollongino

Dean Bobo

Hossein Davudi

Olivia Munoz

Mathias Currat

Kamyar Abdi

Fereidoun Biglari

Oliver E Craig

Daniel G Bradley

Stephen Shennan

Krishna Veeramah

Marjan Mashkour

Daniel Wegmann

Garrett Hellenthal

Joachim Burger

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

We sequenced Early Neolithic genomes from the Zagros region of Iran (eastern Fertile Crescent), where some of the earliest evidence for farming is found, and identify a previously uncharacterized population that is neither ancestral to the first European farmers nor has contributed substantially to the ancestry of modern Europeans. These people are estimated to have separated from Early Neolithic farmers in Anatolia some 46,000 to 77,000 years ago and show affinities to modern-day Pakistani and Afghan populations, but particularly to Iranian Zoroastrians. We conclude that multiple, genetically differentiated hunter-gatherer populations adopted farming in southwestern Asia, that components of pre-Neolithic population structure were preserved as farming spread into neighboring regions, and that the Zagros region was the cradle of eastward expansion.

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