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The Arrival of Siberian Ancestry Connecting the Eastern Baltic to Uralic Speakers further East

Saag, L; Laneman, M; Varul, L; Malve, M; Valk, H; Razzak, MA; Shirobokov, IG; ... Tambets, K; + view all (2019) The Arrival of Siberian Ancestry Connecting the Eastern Baltic to Uralic Speakers further East. Current Biology , 29 (10) 1701-1711.e16. 10.1016/j.cub.2019.04.026. Green open access

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Abstract

In this study, we compare the genetic ancestry of individuals from two as yet genetically unstudied cultural traditions in Estonia in the context of available modern and ancient datasets: 15 from the Late Bronze Age stone-cist graves (1200-400 BC) (EstBA) and 6 from the Pre-Roman Iron Age tarand cemeteries (800/500 BC-50 AD) (EstIA). We also included 5 Pre-Roman to Roman Iron Age Ingrian (500 BC-450 AD) (IngIA) and 7 Middle Age Estonian (1200-1600 AD) (EstMA) individuals to build a dataset for studying the demographic history of the northern parts of the Eastern Baltic from the earliest layer of Mesolithic to modern times. Our findings are consistent with EstBA receiving gene flow from regions with strong Western hunter-gatherer (WHG) affinities and EstIA from populations related to modern Siberians. The latter inference is in accordance with Y chromosome (chrY) distributions in present day populations of the Eastern Baltic, as well as patterns of autosomal variation in the majority of the westernmost Uralic speakers [1-5]. This ancestry reached the coasts of the Baltic Sea no later than the mid-first millennium BC; i.e., in the same time window as the diversification of west Uralic (Finnic) languages [6]. Furthermore, phenotypic traits often associated with modern Northern Europeans, like light eyes, hair, and skin, as well as lactose tolerance, can be traced back to the Bronze Age in the Eastern Baltic. VIDEO ABSTRACT.

Type: Article
Title: The Arrival of Siberian Ancestry Connecting the Eastern Baltic to Uralic Speakers further East
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.04.026
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.04.026
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Bronze Age, Eastern Baltic, Estonia, Iron Age, Middle Ages, ancient DNA, kinship, phenotype, population genetics, shotgun sequencing
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10074498
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