Ancient DNA from Chalcolithic Israel Reveals the Role of Population Mixture in Cultural Transformation

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2018 Aug 22

PMID 30127404

Citations 41

Authors

Eadaoin Harney

Hila May

Dina Shalem

Nadin Rohland

Swapan Mallick

Iosif Lazaridis

Rachel Sarig

Kristin Stewardson

Susanne Nordenfelt

Nick Patterson

Israel Hershkovitz

David Reich

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The material culture of the Late Chalcolithic period in the southern Levant (4500-3900/3800 BCE) is qualitatively distinct from previous and subsequent periods. Here, to test the hypothesis that the advent and decline of this culture was influenced by movements of people, we generated genome-wide ancient DNA from 22 individuals from Peqi'in Cave, Israel. These individuals were part of a homogeneous population that can be modeled as deriving ~57% of its ancestry from groups related to those of the local Levant Neolithic, ~17% from groups related to those of the Iran Chalcolithic, and ~26% from groups related to those of the Anatolian Neolithic. The Peqi'in population also appears to have contributed differently to later Bronze Age groups, one of which we show cannot plausibly have descended from the same population as that of Peqi'in Cave. These results provide an example of how population movements propelled cultural changes in the deep past.

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