A History of the Iberian Peninsula, as Told by Its Skeletons - The New York Times - 0 views
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With a total of 419 ancient human genomes obtained by various laboratories, Iberia offers a rich trove. Scientists have recovered only 174 ancient genomes in Britain, and just eight in Japan.
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researchers have also uncovered evidence of migrations that were previously unknown. Iberia, it now seems, was a crossroads long before recorded history, as far back as the last ice age.
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Iberian hunter-gatherers had a remarkable mix of genes, showing that they descended from two profoundly distinct groups of early European hunter-gatherers.
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One of these groups can be traced as far back as 35,000 years, thanks to a skeleton discovered at a site in Belgium called Goyet. The Goyet-related people spread across Europe, only to be replaced on much of the continent near the end of the Ice Age by a genetically distinct population. The earliest sign of the second group appears 14,000 years ago, known to researchers by DNA in a skeleton at an Italian site called Villabruna.
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the Goyet and Villabruna people coexisted. Hunter-gatherers across the peninsula had a mixture of ancestry from the two peoples.
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But whatever solitude Iberia might have offered came to an end about 7,500 years ago, when new people arrived with crops and livestock. These first farmers, originally from Anatolia, brought with them a distinctive genetic signature.
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Ninety percent of the DNA from the later skeletons derives from the Anatolian farmers; 10 percent comes from the hunter-gatherers.
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Starting about 6,000 years ago, Dr. Olalde and his colleagues found, hunter-gatherer ancestry in Iberian farmers actually increased to 20 percent.
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A skeleton from an elaborate grave in central Spain about 4,400 years old belonged to a man whose ancestry was 100 percent North African
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findings suggest that people were moving into Iberia from Africa more than 3,000 years before the rise of the Roman Empire. “These are cosmopolitan places,”
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About 4,500 years ago, still another wave of people arrived, profoundly altering the makeup of Iberia.A few centuries earlier, nomads from the steppes of what is now Russia turned up in Eastern Europe with horses and wagons. They spread across the continent, giving up nomadic life and intermarrying with European farmers.
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When they finally reached Iberia, these people spread out far and wide. “They really have an impact on the whole peninsula,”
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DNA from the men, however, all traced back to the steppes. The Y chromosomes from the male farmers disappeared from the gene pool.
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Iberian farmers originally lived in egalitarian societies, storing their wealth together and burying their dead in group graves.
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over several centuries, palaces and fortresses began to rise, and power became concentrated in the hands of a few. Dr. Risch speculated that the cultural shift had something to do with the genetic shift
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Iron Age Iberians could trace some of their ancestry to new waves of people arriving from northern and Central Europe, possibly marking the rise of so-called Celtiberian culture on the peninsula.
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scientists found a growing amount of North African ancestry in skeletons from the Iron Age. That may reflect trade around the Mediterranean, which brought North Africans to Iberian towns, where they settled down.
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North African ancestry increased in Iberia even more after Romans took control. Now the peninsula was part of an empire that thrived on widespread trade. At the same time, people from southern Europe and the Near East also began leaving an imprint
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The Basque speak a language that is unrelated to other European tongues. Some researchers have speculated that they descended from a population that had been distinct since the Bronze Age or earlier.Genetically, at least, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Before the Roman era, the Basque had DNA that was indistinguishable from that of other Iron Age Iberians
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After the fall of Rome, ancient DNA in Iberia reflects its medieval history. Skeletons from the Muslim era show growing ancestry from both North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.
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The researchers were also able to group Spaniards into five genetic clusters. On a map, these groups form five strips running north to south. Those strips line up neatly with history.