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Mar 14, 2019 · An international team of researchers have analyzed ancient DNA from almost 300 individuals from the Iberian Peninsula, spanning more than 12,000 years, in two studies published concurrently in Current Biology and Science. The first study looked at hunter-gatherers and early farmers living in Iberia between 13,000 and 6000 years ago.
Mar 14, 2019 · The oldest known human DNA in Iberia comes from a 19,000-year-old skeleton found in 2010 in a cave called El Mirón, in northern Spain. The skeleton belonged to a woman, a member of a band of...
Jul 28, 2022 · The Iberian civilisation that vanished. 28 July 2022. By Andrew Lofthouse,Features correspondent. Alamy/ WHPics. (Credit: Alamy/ WHPics) Mystery and myth surround the ancient society of Tartessos ...
- Overview
- The men from the steppes
- Ice Age diversity
A study of 8,000 years of genetics from Spain and Portugal yields a surprisingly complex picture of the inhabitants' ancestry.
Since the beginning of human migration, the Iberian Peninsula—home of modern-day Spain and Portugal—has been a place where the cultures of Africa, Europe, and the Mediterranean have mingled.
In a new paper in the journal Science, a group of 111 population geneticists and archaeologists charted 8,000 years of genetics in the region. They paint a picture that shows plenty of genetic complexity, but that also hints at a single mysterious migration about 4,500 years ago that completely shook up ancient Iberians’ DNA.
The team searched DNA evidence for clues to how and when various populations became part of the Iberian Peninsula’s gene pool. They sequenced the genomes of 271 ancient Iberians, then combined that information with previously published data about 132 other ancient peninsula dwellers.
Beginning in the Bronze Age, the genetic makeup of the area changed dramatically. Starting in about 2,500 B.C., genes associated with people from the steppes near the Black and Caspian seas, in what is now Russia, can be detected in the Iberin gene pool. And from about 2,500 B.C. much of the population’s DNA was replaced with that of steppe people.
The “Steppe Hypothesis” holds that this group spread east into Asia and west into Europe at around the same time—and the current study shows that they made it to Iberia, too. Though 60 percent of the region’s total DNA remained the same, the Y chromosomes of the inhabitants were almost entirely replaced by 2,000 B.C. That suggests a massive influx of men from the steppes, since Y chromosomes are carried only by men.
“It looks like the influence was very male dominated,” says Miguel Vilar, a genetic anthropologist who serves as senior program officer for the National Geographic Society.
Who were these men—and did they come in peace? Vilar, who was not involved with the study, speculates that the steppe men may have come on horses bearing bronze weapons, hence ushering in the Bronze Age to the area. He compares the migration to the one the indigenous peoples of North and South America faced when the first Europeans landed in the 1490s.
“It shows that you could have a migration all the way across the whole continent (of Europe) and still have a heavy influence on this far extreme,” he says.
Although bronze came into use in Iberia around that time, no other distinct traces of steppe culture have yet been found. The study did show that people in present-day Basque, who speak Western Europe’s only non-Indo-European language, carry genetic markers closely related to those of the steppe people. And unlike modern Spaniards, modern-day Basques don’t show the same amount of genetic mixing that happened on the peninsula over the centuries.
The study forms a complex picture of the genetic history of Spain—one that’s reinforced in a companion piece published in the journal Current Biology. In that study, researchers from Spain and Germany found that hunter-gatherers and farmers living on the Iberian Peninsula also were more genetically diverse than previously thought. They found evidence that different hunter-gatherer cultures mixed on the warm Iberian Peninsula, which they used as an Ice Age refuge 19,000 years ago. Newer farmers to the area mixed with the hunter-gatherers later.
”The DNA was a surprise,” says doctoral student Vanessa Villalba-Mouco, an archaeogeneticist who led the research for the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany and the University of Zaragoza in Spain. “Clues about what happened in that moment help us understand the evolution of the next period. We need to sample more individuals to know their history in a more accurate way.”
Ancient DNA work “is helping us deconstruct the idea that that we have distinct geographic populations like Africans or Asians or Europeans,” says Vilar. “Not only are people living in areas like Iberia heterogeneous, but they were the product of different waves of migration themselves.”
For Olalde, the work was an unprecedented chance to explore the genetic history of the place he calls home. “Being able to do this study was a dream for me,” he says.
The ancestry of modern Iberians (comprising the Spanish and Portuguese) is consistent with the geographical situation of the Iberian Peninsula in the South-west corner of Europe, showing characteristics that are largely typical in Southern and Western Europeans. As is the case for most of the rest of Southern Europe, the principal ancestral ...
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Sep 24, 2021 · Tuesday 7th of March 2023. I had my dna done and it shows 62.9% English, 19.2% Irish, Scottish, Wales and 17.8% Iberian which was a surprise to me because I have done quite a bit on my family ancestry and tree and have yet to find a connection. Not a bad surprise, just unexpected. My maternal haplogroup is I2.
Nov 10, 2019 · While mainland fauna have incredible diversity, it would be a biological crime to ignore the wildlife which resides on the islands found off the coast of these countries. AnimalWised looks into some of the most important animals of the Iberian Peninsula .
