Ancient DNA from Mesopotamia suggests distinct Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic migrations into Anatolia
Iosif Lazaridis, Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg, Ayşe Acar, Ayşen Açıkkol, Anagnostis P. Agelarakis, Levon Aghikyan, Uğur Akyüz, Desislava Andreeva, Gojko Andrijašević, Dragana Antonović, Ian Armit, Alper Atmaca, Pavel Avetisyan, Ahmet İhsan Aytek, Krum Bacvarov, Ruben Badalyan, Stefan Bakardzhiev, Jacqueline Balen, Lorenc Bejko, Rebecca Bernardos, Andreas Bertsatos, Hanifi Biber, Ahmet Bilir, Mario Bodružić, Michelle Bonogofsky, Clive Bonsall, Dušan Borić, Nikola Borovinić, Guillermo Bravo Morante, Katharina Buttinger, Kimberly Callan, Francesca Candilio, Mario Carić, Olivia Cheronet, Stefan Chohadzhiev, Maria‐Eleni Chovalopoulou, Stella Chryssoulaki, Ion Ciobanu, Natalija Čondić, Mihai Constantinescu, Emanuela Cristiani, Brendan J. Culleton, Elizabeth Curtis, Jack Davis, Ruben Davtyan, Tatiana I. Demcenco, V. A. Dergachev, Zafer Derin, Sylvia Deskaj, Seda Devejyan, Vojislav Djordjević, Kellie Sara Duffett Carlson, Laurie Eccles, Nedko Elenski, Atilla Engi̇n, Nihat Erdoğan, Sabiha Erir-Pazarcı, Daniel Fernandes, Matthew Ferry, Suzanne Freilich, Alin Frînculeasa, Michael L. Galaty, Beatriz Gamarra, Boris Gasparyan, Bisserka Gaydarska, Elif Genç, Timur Gülteki̇n, Serkan Gündüz, Tamás Hajdu, Volker Heyd, Suren Hobosyan, Nelli Hovhannisyan, Iliya Iliev, Lora Iliev, Stanislav Iliev, İlkay İvgin, Ivor Janković, Lenče Jovanova, Panagiotis Karkanas, Berna KAVAZ KINDIĞILI, Esra Hilal Kaya, Denise Keating, Douglas J. Kennett, Seda Deniz Kesici, Anahit Yu. Khudaverdyan, Krisztián Kiss, Sinan Kılıç, Paul Klostermann, Sinem Kostak Boca Negra Valdes, Saša Kovačević, Marta Krenz‐Niedbała, Maja Krznarić Škrivanko, Rovena Kurti, Pasko Kuzman, Ann Marie Lawson, Cǎtǎlin Lazăr, Krassimir Leshtakov, Thomas E. Levy, Ioannis Liritzis, Kirsi O. Lorentz
Abstract
We present the first ancient DNA data from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Mesopotamia (Southeastern Turkey and Northern Iraq), Cyprus, and the Northwestern Zagros, along with the first data from Neolithic Armenia. We show that these and neighboring populations were formed through admixture of pre-Neolithic sources related to Anatolian, Caucasus, and Levantine hunter-gatherers, forming a Neolithic continuum of ancestry mirroring the geography of West Asia. By analyzing Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic populations of Anatolia, we show that the former were derived from admixture between Mesopotamian-related and local Epipaleolithic-related sources, but the latter experienced additional Levantine-related gene flow, thus documenting at least two pulses of migration from the Fertile Crescent heartland to the early farmers of Anatolia.