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. 2018 Nov 27;9(1):5018.
doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-07483-5.

Ancient Fennoscandian genomes reveal origin and spread of Siberian ancestry in Europe

Thiseas C Lamnidis  1 , Kerttu Majander  1   2   3 , Choongwon Jeong  1   4 , Elina Salmela  1   3 , Anna Wessman  5 , Vyacheslav Moiseyev  6 , Valery Khartanovich  6 , Oleg Balanovsky  7   8   9 , Matthias Ongyerth  10 , Antje Weihmann  10 , Antti Sajantila  11 , Janet Kelso  10 , Svante Pääbo  10 , Päivi Onkamo  12   13 , Wolfgang Haak  14 , Johannes Krause  1 , Stephan Schiffels  15
Affiliations

Ancient Fennoscandian genomes reveal origin and spread of Siberian ancestry in Europe

Thiseas C Lamnidis et al. Nat Commun. .

Abstract

European population history has been shaped by migrations of people, and their subsequent admixture. Recently, ancient DNA has brought new insights into European migration events linked to the advent of agriculture, and possibly to the spread of Indo-European languages. However, little is known about the ancient population history of north-eastern Europe, in particular about populations speaking Uralic languages, such as Finns and Saami. Here we analyse ancient genomic data from 11 individuals from Finland and north-western Russia. We show that the genetic makeup of northern Europe was shaped by migrations from Siberia that began at least 3500 years ago. This Siberian ancestry was subsequently admixed into many modern populations in the region, particularly into populations speaking Uralic languages today. Additionally, we show that ancestors of modern Saami inhabited a larger territory during the Iron Age, which adds to the historical and linguistic information about the population history of Finland.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Location and age of archaeological sites used in this study. The location of other sites relevant to this study is also shown. Markers used correspond to the ones used in Fig. 2. Map generated with QGIS 2.18.19 (http://www.qgis.org/) using the Natural Earth country boundary dataset (http://www.naturalearthdata.com) for the basemap. Source data are provided as a Source Data file
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
PCA and ADMIXTURE analysis. a PCA plot of 113 Modern Eurasian populations, with individuals from this study and other relevant ancient genomes projected on the principal components, using the “shrinkmode: YES” option. Uralic-speaking populations are highlighted in dark purple. PCA of Europe can be found in Supplementary Figure 3. b Plot of ADMIXTURE (K = 11) results containing worldwide populations. Ancient individuals from this study (black box) are represented by thicker bars and shown in bold. For a figure of ADMIXTURE results over multiple K values see Supplementary Figure 4a. Source data are provided as a Source Data file
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Calculated f4 (Mbuti, Nganasan; Lithuanian, Test). Modern populations are sorted by f4 magnitude; ancient populations are sorted through time. Populations are coloured based on language family, with Ancient individuals with unknown language shown in blue. “AllSaami” refers to a grouping including the 2 individuals from the SGDP (Saami(SGDP)) and the high-coverage modern Saami shotgun genome in this study (Modern Saami). Individuals from this study are indicated by labels in bold. Error bars represent 3 standard errors, to indicate significant difference from 0. Source data are provided as a Source Data file
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Mixture proportions from five sources estimated using qpAdm. Sources used were Nganasan, WHG, EHG, Yamnaya and LBK (see Methods/Supplementary Data 4). P-values (chi-square) for each model are shown in square brackets next to the test population. Results from the least complex model for each test population/individual are shown. “AllSaami” corresponds to a population consisting of the two genomes from the SGDP and the genome from this study (ModernSaami). Error bars represent one standard error and are plotted to the right of their associated mixture proportion. Populations containing individuals from this study are shown in bold. Source data are provided as a Source Data file
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Dating the introduction of Siberian ancestry using ALDER. a ALDER-inferred admixture dates (filled circles) for different populations, using Nganasan and Lithuanian as sources. Available dates for ancient populations are shown in white diamonds. Error bars represent one standard error provided by ALDER and include the uncertainty surrounding the dating of ancient population samples, calculated using standard propagation. Populations containing individuals from this study are shown in bold. b LD decay curve for Bolshoy, using Nganasan and EHG as sources. The fitted trendline considers a minimum distance of 1 cM. A full set of LD decay plots can be found in Supplementary Figure 5. Source data are provided as a Source Data file
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