PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Michael A. Woodley Menie
AU  - Shameem Younuskunja
AU  - Balan Bipin
AU  - Piffer Davide
TI  - Holocene selection for variants associated with cognitive ability: Comparing ancient and modern genomes
AID  - 10.1101/109678
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 109678
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/20/109678.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/20/109678.full
AB  - Human populations living in Eurasia during the Holocene experienced significant evolutionary change. It has been predicted that the transition of Holocene populations into agrarianism and urbanization brought about culture-gene co-evolution that favoured via directional selection genetic variants associated with higher general cognitive ability (GCA). Population expansion and replacement has also been proposed as an important source of GCA gene-frequency change during this time period. To examine whether GCA might have risen during the Holocene, we compare a sample of 99 ancient Eurasian genomes (ranging from 4,557 to 1,208 years of age) with a sample of 503 modern European genomes, using three different cognitive polygenic scores. Significant differences favouring the modern genomes were found for all three polygenic scores (Odds Ratio=0.92, p=0.037; 0.81, p=0.001 and 0.81, p=0.02). Furthermore, a significant increase in positive allele count over 3,249 years was found using a sample of 66 ancient genomes (r=0.217, pone-tailed=0.04). These observations are consistent with the expectation that GCA rose during the Holocene.