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A western route of prehistoric human migration from Africa into the Iberian Peninsula.

ABSTRACT: Being at the western fringe of Europe, Iberia had a peculiar prehistory and a complex pattern of Neolithization. A few studies, all based on modern populations, reported the presence of DNA of likely African origin in this region, generally concluding it was the result of recent gene flow, probably during the Islamic period. Here, we provide evidence of much older gene flow from Africa to Iberia by sequencing whole genomes from four human remains from northern Portugal and southern Spain dated around 4000 years BP (from the Middle Neolithic to the Bronze Age). We found one of them to carry an unequivocal sub-Saharan mitogenome of most probably West or West-Central African origin, to our knowledge never reported before in prehistoric remains outside Africa. Our analyses of ancient nuclear genomes show small but significant levels of sub-Saharan African affinity in several ancient Iberian samples, which indicates that what we detected was not an occasional individual phenomenon, but an admixture event recognizable at the population level. We interpret this result as evidence of an early migration process from Africa into the Iberian Peninsula through a western route, possibly across the Strait of Gibraltar.

SUBMITTER: Gonzalez-Fortes G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6364581 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A western route of prehistoric human migration from Africa into the Iberian Peninsula.

González-Fortes G G Tassi F F Trucchi E E Henneberger K K Paijmans J L A JLA Díez-Del-Molino D D Schroeder H H Susca R R RR Barroso-Ruíz C C Bermudez F J FJ Barroso-Medina C C Bettencourt A M S AMS Sampaio H A HA Grandal-d'Anglade A A Salas A A de Lombera-Hermida A A Fabregas Valcarce R R Vaquero M M Alonso S S Lozano M M Rodríguez-Alvarez X P XP Fernández-Rodríguez C C Manica A A Hofreiter M M Barbujani G G

Proceedings. Biological sciences 20190101 1895

Being at the western fringe of Europe, Iberia had a peculiar prehistory and a complex pattern of Neolithization. A few studies, all based on modern populations, reported the presence of DNA of likely African origin in this region, generally concluding it was the result of recent gene flow, probably during the Islamic period. Here, we provide evidence of much older gene flow from Africa to Iberia by sequencing whole genomes from four human remains from northern Portugal and southern Spain dated a ...[more]

PMID: 30963949

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Project description:The Iberian Peninsula has been the focus of attention of numerous studies dealing with mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation, most of them targeting the control region segment. In the present study we sequenced the control region of 3,024 Spanish individuals from areas where available data were still limited. We also compiled mtDNA haplotypes from the literature involving 4,588 sequences and 28 population groups or small regions. We meta-analyzed all these data in order to shed further light on patterns of geographic variation, taking advantage of the large sample size and geographic coverage, in contrast with the atomized sampling strategy of previous work. The results indicate that the main mtDNA haplogroups show primarily clinal geographic patterns across the Iberian geography, roughly along a North-South axis. Haplogroup HV0 (where haplogroup U is nested) is more prevalent in the Franco Cantabrian region, in good agreement with previous findings that identified this area as a climate refuge during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), prior to a subsequent demographic re-expansion towards Central Europe and the Mediterranean. Typical sub-Saharan and North African lineages are slightly more prevalent in South Iberia, although at low frequencies; this pattern has been shaped mainly by the transatlantic slave trade and the Arab invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. The results also indicate that summary statistics that aim to measure molecular variation, or AMOVA, have limited sensitivity to detect population substructure, in contrast to patterns revealed by phylogeographic analysis. Overall, the results suggest that mtDNA variation in Iberia is substantially stratified. These patterns might be relevant in biomedical studies given that stratification is a common cause of false positives in case-control mtDNA association studies, and should be also considered when weighting the DNA evidence in forensic casework, which is strongly dependent on haplotype frequencies.

Dataset Information

A western route of prehistoric human migration from Africa into the Iberian Peninsula.

Publications

A western route of prehistoric human migration from Africa into the Iberian Peninsula.

Similar Datasets

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