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Ancient DNA from the First European Farmers in 7500-Year-Old Neolithic Sites
Wolfgang Haak,1*Peter Forster,2Barbara Bramanti,1Shuichi Matsumura,2Guido Brandt,1Marc Tänzer,1Richard Villems,3Colin Renfrew,2Detlef Gronenborn,4Kurt Werner Alt,1Joachim Burger1
The ancestry of modern Europeans is a subject of debate amonggeneticists, archaeologists, and anthropologists. A crucialquestion is the extent to which Europeans are descended fromthe first European farmers in the Neolithic Age 7500 years agoor from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers who were present in Europesince 40,000 years ago. Here we present an analysis of ancientDNA from early European farmers. We successfully extracted andsequenced intact stretches of maternally inherited mitochondrialDNA (mtDNA) from 24 out of 57 Neolithic skeletons from variouslocations in Germany, Austria, and Hungary. We found that 25%of the Neolithic farmers had one characteristic mtDNA type andthat this type formerly was widespread among Neolithic farmersin Central Europe. Europeans today have a 150-times lower frequency(0.2%) of this mtDNA type, revealing that these first Neolithicfarmers did not have a strong genetic influence on modern Europeanfemale lineages. Our finding lends weight to a proposed Paleolithicancestry for modern Europeans.
1 Institut für Anthropologie, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Saarstrasse 21, D-55099 Mainz, Germany. 2 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK. 3 Estonian Biocentre, Tartu University, 23 Riia Str, Tartu, 51010, Estonia. 4 Römisch-Germanisches Zentral-museum, Ernst-Ludwig-Platz 2, D-55116 Mainz, Germany.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed at the Molecular Archaeology Group, Institute of Anthropology, Colonel Kleinmann Weg 2, SBII 02, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz D-55128, Mainz, Germany. E-mail: haakw{at}uni-mainz.de
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