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Mar 14, 2019 · A skeleton from an elaborate grave in central Spain about 4,400 years old belonged to a man whose ancestry was 100 percent North African. “That’s crazy,” said David Reich, a geneticist at ...
Mar 14, 2019 · The largest study to date of ancient DNA from the Iberian Peninsula (modern-day Portugal and Spain) offers new insights into the populations that lived in this region over the last 8,000 years. The most startling discovery suggests that local Y chromosomes were almost completely replaced during the Bronze Age.
Spain - Iberians, Pyrenees, Mediterranean: The indigenous Bronze Age societies reacted vigorously to the culture of the Phoenicians and then the Greeks, adopting eastern Mediterranean values and technologies. At first the process of assimilation was exclusive, affecting few people; then it gathered pace and volume, drawing entire societies into the transformation. Everywhere the process of ...
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- The men from the steppes
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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.
Nov 30, 2018 · Archaeological research provides us with a broad overview of the past life of cultures and communities. One such culture that has seen extensive archaeological study is the Iberians. We use the generic name Iberians to refer to a group of peoples who inhabited a large part of the Iberian Peninsula for much of the first millennium.
Aug 18, 2019 · Model of one of the characteristic tombs of the prehistoric town of Los Millares, Iberia. (Tuor123 / CC BY-SA 3.0) The unique climate of the Iberian Peninsula, a large part of which has a distinct Mediterranean atmosphere, was always a fertile territory rich in many natural resources. This saw the arrival and rise of the numerous civilizations ...
Mar 15, 2019 · The Iberian Peninsula of modern day Spain and Portugal has long held one of human history’s lingering mysteries. Now, two new studies covering nearly 20,000 years have outlined the region’s transformative genetic influence. “It shows how tremendously powerful such transect through time studies are,” said Wolfgang Haak, an anthropologist ...
