The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe
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
By sequencing 727 ancient individuals from the Southern Arc (Anatolia and its neighbors in Southeastern Europe and West Asia) over 10,000 years, we contextualize its Chalcolithic period and Bronze Age (about 5000 to 1000 BCE), when extensive gene flow entangled it with the Eurasian steppe. Two streams of migration transmitted Caucasus and Anatolian/Levantine ancestry northward, and the Yamnaya pastoralists, formed on the steppe, then spread southward into the Balkans and across the Caucasus into Armenia, where they left numerous patrilineal descendants. Anatolia was transformed by intra-West Asian gene flow, with negligible impact of the later Yamnaya migrations. This contrasts with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken, suggesting that the homeland of the Indo-Anatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian Indo-Europeans from the steppe.