News from the ancient world
Ancient DNA is genetic material recovered from the remains of people, animals and plants that lived long ago, most often from bone and teeth. Advances in sequencing since the 2000s have made it possible to read whole genomes from skeletons thousands of years old. Archaeologists and geneticists use these genomes to study how populations moved and mixed, how people were related to one another, and how diseases spread, alongside the evidence of excavation and radiocarbon dating.
Recent studies cover periods from the end of the Ice Age to the early Middle Ages. In Cumbria, DNA identified the Ossick Lass, a child buried between 9290 and 8925 BC, as northern Britain's oldest burial. Genomes of 132 people from a megalithic tomb near Paris show its first community collapsed around 3000 BC and was replaced by newcomers with ancestry from southern France and Iberia. In Iberia, a study of 243 people from the 1st to 8th centuries AD puts the Visigoths' genetic share at 12 to 22 percent, and finds Roman rule changed the population more.
Greece & Rome · 1st–8th centuries AD · Mérida, Iberian Peninsula, Spain
A study of 243 people who lived between the 1st and 8th centuries AD puts the Germanic newcomers' genetic share at 12 to 22 percent, depending on region and social context.
Iron Age · c. 900–200 BC · Issyk, Almaty Region, Kazakhstan
Genomes from 85 Iron Age steppe nomads show that high-status people were related across cemeteries more than 100 km apart, and nearly half of them were women.
Stone Age · 4th millennium BC · Eurasian steppe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia
A Science Advances study argues that people rode, milked and managed horses in the 4th millennium BC, long before the spread of the DOM2 lineage around 2200 BC.
Greece & Rome · AD 400–700 · Altheim near Landshut, Bavaria and Hesse, Germany
Genomes from 258 people buried in Bavaria and Hesse between AD 400 and 700 show northern Europeans arrived before Rome's collapse and merged with provincial populations after about 470.
Stone Age · Late 4th to 3rd millennium BC · Bury, Oise, Hauts-de-France, France
Genomes of 132 people buried near Paris show the tomb's first community collapsed around 3000 BC and was replaced by newcomers with ancestry from southern France and Iberia.
Stone Age · c. 3800–3200 BC · Caithness and Orkney, Highland and Orkney, Scotland, United Kingdom
Genetic study of chambered tombs in Caithness and Orkney, used between about 3800 and 3200 BC, finds many men buried together were paternal relatives.
Bronze Age · c. 1300–800 BC · Esperstedt, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Most people studied in Central Germany grew up locally, and communities seem to have tried millet for a time before going back to wheat and barley.
Stone Age · 9290–8925 BC · Heaning Wood Bone Cave, Great Urswick, Cumbria, England, United Kingdom
The child, aged 2.5 to 3.5 and named the Ossick Lass, was buried between 9290 and 8925 BC in a cave later reused by Neolithic and Bronze Age communities.
Stone Age · c. 4500–2500 BC · Rhine-Meuse region, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany
A Nature study of 112 genomes finds farmer ancestry entered Rhine-Meuse forager groups mainly through incoming women, until steppe newcomers arrived around 2500 BC.
Byzantium · 7th–15th century AD · Deep Mani, Peloponnese, Greece
Over half of men in the remote Peloponnese region descend from one man who lived around the 7th century AD, which researchers read as a sign of a severe population collapse.
Byzantium · AD 541–750 · Jerash, Jerash Governorate, Jordan
Bodies were laid in the disused arena within days, and the University of South Florida team says the dead were part of a mobile population within the city.