遺伝学：古代ヨーロッパの祖先に関する洞察

High resolution reconstructions of the genetic history of northern and central Europe from the Iron Age through to the later Viking Age are demonstrated using a new method, presented in Nature. The method provides further insights into the genetic history of the region.

The analysis of ancient genomes allows us to reconstruct migration and expansion events from the recent past and explore how they have impacted present-day genetics. However, using genetics to trace history is challenging owing to the similarities between different ancestries, which makes them hard to distinguish with current methods. One example of this is northern and central Europe since the start of the Iron Age, around 500 BCE, where there are still many unresolved questions in relation to events such as the migrations during the third and fourth centuries CE and their impact on Mediterranean populations, and later patterns of mobility during the Viking Age (750–1050 CE).

Leo Speidel, Pontus Skoglund and colleagues developed Twigstats, a method that can reconstruct genetic ancestries across time periods more precisely than current methods. They applied this method to 1,556 ancient genomes from Europe to infer the population histories of the European populations between 500 BCE and 1000 CE. The analysis revealed that during the first half of the first millennium CE there was an expansion of Scandinavian-related ancestry into western, central and eastern Europe, in two streams. However, during the latter half of the millennium there appears to have been a regional disappearance of this ancestry and substantial mixing with other ancestries. The authors also note that by 800 CE a large proportion of Viking Age individuals carried genetic ancestry from groups in central Europe, which was not observed during the early Iron Age.

The authors suggest that their methods can provide a higher resolution insight into the genetic history of different populations.