Investigating Early Neolithic gene flow from the Near East into Europe using ancient Sus DNA (Linus Girdland Flink, Keith Dobney, A.R. Hoelzel, Greger Larsen)

Investigating Early Neolithic gene flow from the Near East into Europe using ancient Sus DNA (Linus Girdland Flink, Keith Dobney, A.R. Hoelzel, Greger Larsen)

The spread of domestic plants and animals into Europe from the Near East, and subsequent local European domestication, has recently been the focus of large-scale genetic studies targeting both ancient and modern DNA. For example, Larson et al. (2005, 2007) showed that domestic pigs (Sus scrofa domestica) were first domesticated in the Near East and later brought to Europe with early farming communities, and furthermore that local European domestication/introgression resulted in a complete replacement of the Near Eastern haplotypes. However, the geographical and temporal representation of samples in certain key areas is poor, and our understanding of the process as a whole is therefore fragmentary and incomplete.

Here, we present preliminary results in a project that has the aim to further analyze the ‘first wave’ of domestic pigs into Europe from the Near East, and to extend our understanding of the origins of pig domestication. We have extracted DNA from ancient wild and domestic pig bone remains derived from archaeological sites in Iran, Turkey, Ukraine, Serbia and Central Europe. By sequencing a diagnostic mitochondrial d-loop fragment we can show that the dynamics of the diffusion was more complex than previously suggested. Specifically, our findings suggest that phylogeographic structuring has varied through time and that we need to re-consider the Near Eastern specificity of some lineages associated with early domestic pigs.

Larson, G., K. Dobney, et al. (2005). Worldwide phylogeography of wild boar reveals multiple centers of pig domestication. Science 307(5715): 1618-1621.

Larson, G., U. Albarella, et al. (2007). Ancient DNA, pig domestication, and the spread of the Neolithic into Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104: 15276-15281.

Linus Girdland Flink, Durham University Dept of Archaeology
Keith Dobney, University of Aberdeen
A.R. Hoelzel, Durham University
Greger Larsen, Durham Univeristy

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