TY - JOUR T1 - The genetic structure of the world’s first farmers JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/059311 SP - 059311 AU - Iosif Lazaridis AU - Dani Nadel AU - Gary Rollefson AU - Deborah C. Merrett AU - Nadin Rohland AU - Swapan Mallick AU - Daniel Fernandes AU - Mario Novak AU - Beatriz Gamarra AU - Kendra Sirak AU - Sarah Connell AU - Kristin Stewardson AU - Eadaoin Harney AU - Qiaomei Fu AU - Gloria Gonzalez-Fortes AU - Songül Alpaslan Roodenberg AU - György Lengyel AU - Fanny Bocquentin AU - Boris Gasparian AU - Janet M. Monge AU - Michael Gregg AU - Vered Eshed AU - Ahuva-Sivan Mizrahi AU - Christopher Meiklejohn AU - Fokke Gerritsen AU - Luminita Bejenaru AU - Matthias Blueher AU - Archie Campbell AU - Gianpero Cavalleri AU - David Comas AU - Philippe Froguel AU - Edmund Gilbert AU - Shona M. Kerr AU - Peter Kovacs AU - Johannes Krause AU - Darren McGettigan AU - Michael Merrigan AU - D. Andrew Merriwether AU - Seamus O’Reilly AU - Martin B. Richards AU - Ornella Semino AU - Michel Shamoon-Pour AU - Gheorghe Stefanescu AU - Michael Stumvoll AU - Anke Tönjes AU - Antonio Torroni AU - James F. Wilson AU - Loic Yengo AU - Nelli A. Hovhannisyan AU - Nick Patterson AU - Ron Pinhasi AU - David Reich Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/16/059311.abstract N2 - We report genome-wide ancient DNA from 44 ancient Near Easterners ranging in time between ~12,000-1,400 BCE, from Natufian hunter-gatherers to Bronze Age farmers. We show that the earliest populations of the Near East derived around half their ancestry from a ‘Basal Eurasian’ lineage that had little if any Neanderthal admixture and that separated from other non-African lineages prior to their separation from each other. The first farmers of the southern Levant (Israel and Jordan) and Zagros Mountains (Iran) were strongly genetically differentiated, and each descended from local hunter-gatherers. By the time of the Bronze Age, these two populations and Anatolian-related farmers had mixed with each other and with the hunter-gatherers of Europe to drastically reduce genetic differentiation. The impact of the Near Eastern farmers extended beyond the Near East: farmers related to those of Anatolia spread westward into Europe; farmers related to those of the Levant spread southward into East Africa; farmers related to those from Iran spread northward into the Eurasian steppe; and people related to both the early farmers of Iran and to the pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe spread eastward into South Asia. ER -