RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Extensive farming in Estonia started through a sex-biased migration from the Steppe
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 112714
DO 10.1101/112714
A1 Lehti Saag
A1 Liivi Varul
A1 Christiana Lyn Scheib
A1 Jesper Stenderup
A1 Morten E. Allentoft
A1 Lauri Saag
A1 Luca Pagani
A1 Maere Reidla
A1 Kristiina Tambets
A1 Ene Metspalu
A1 Aivar Kriiska
A1 Eske Willerslev
A1 Toomas Kivisild
A1 Mait Metspalu
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/03/02/112714.abstract
AB Farming-based economies appear relatively late in Northeast Europe and the extent to which they involve genetic ancestry change is still poorly understood. Here we present the analyses of low coverage whole genome sequence data from five hunter-gatherers and five farmers of Estonia dated to 4,500 to 6,300 years before present. We find evidence of significant differences between the two groups in the composition of autosomal as well as mtDNA, X and Y chromosome ancestries. We find that Estonian hunter-gatherers of Comb Ceramic Culture are closest to Eastern hunter-gatherers. The Estonian first farmers of Corded Ware Culture show high similarity in their autosomes with Steppe Belt Late Neolithic/Bronze Age individuals, Caucasus hunter-gatherers and Iranian farmers while their X chromosomes are most closely related with the European Early Farmers of Anatolian descent. These findings suggest that the shift to intensive cultivation and animal husbandry in Estonia was triggered by the arrival of new people with predominantly Steppe ancestry, but whose ancestors had undergone sex-specific admixture with early farmers with Anatolian ancestry.