TY - JOUR T1 - Eight thousand years of natural selection in Europe JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/016477 SP - 016477 AU - Iain Mathieson AU - Iosif Lazaridis AU - Nadin Rohland AU - Swapan Mallick AU - Nick Patterson AU - Songül Alpaslan Roodenberg AU - Eadaoin Harney AU - Kristin Stewardson AU - Daniel Fernandes AU - Mario Novak AU - Kendra Sirak AU - Cristina Gamba AU - Eppie R. Jones AU - Bastien Llamas AU - Stanislav Dryomov AU - Joseph Pickrell AU - Juan Luís Arsuaga AU - José María Bermúdez de Castro AU - Eudald Carbonell AU - Fokke Gerritsen AU - Aleksandr Khokhlov AU - Pavel Kuznetsov AU - Marina Lozano AU - Harald Meller AU - Oleg Mochalov AU - Vayacheslav Moiseyev AU - Manuel A. Rojo Guerra AU - Jacob Roodenberg AU - Josep Maria Vergès AU - Johannes Krause AU - Alan Cooper AU - Kurt W. Alt AU - Dorcas Brown AU - David Anthony AU - Carles Lalueza-Fox AU - Wolfgang Haak AU - Ron Pinhasi AU - David Reich Y1 - 2015/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/10/10/016477.abstract N2 - The arrival of farming in Europe around 8,500 years ago necessitated adaptation to new environments, pathogens, diets, and social organizations. While indirect evidence of adaptation can be detected in patterns of genetic variation in present-day people, ancient DNA makes it possible to witness selection directly by analyzing samples from populations before, during and after adaptation events. Here we report the first genome-wide scan for selection using ancient DNA, capitalizing on the largest genome-wide dataset yet assembled: 230 West Eurasians dating to between 6500 and 1000 BCE, including 163 with newly reported data. The new samples include the first genome-wide data from the Anatolian Neolithic culture, who we show were members of the population that was the source of Europe’s first farmers, and whose genetic material we extracted by focusing on the DNA-rich petrous bone. We identify genome-wide significant signatures of selection at loci associated with diet, pigmentation and immunity, and two independent episodes of selection on height. ER -