Ancient DNA, pig domestication, and the spread of the Neolithic into Europe

The Neolithic Revolution began 11,000 years ago in the Near East and preceded a westward migration into Europe of distinctive cultural groups and their agricultural economies, including domesticated animals and plants. Despite decades of research, no consensus has emerged about the extent of admixture between the indigenous and exotic populations or the degree to which the appearance of specific components of the “Neolithic cultural package” in Europe reflects truly independent development. Here, through the use of mitochondrial DNA from 323 modern and 221 ancient pig specimens sampled across western Eurasia, we demonstrate that domestic pigs of Near Eastern ancestry were definitely introduced into Europe during the Neolithic (potentially along two separate routes), reaching the Paris Basin by at least the early 4th millennium B.C. Local European wild boar were also domesticated by this time, possibly as a direct consequence of the introduction of Near Eastern domestic pigs. Once domesticated, European pigs rapidly replaced the introduced domestic pigs of Near Eastern origin throughout Europe. Domestic pigs formed a key component of the Neolithic Revolution, and this detailed genetic record of their origins reveals a complex set of interactions and processes during the spread of early farmers into Europe.

[1]  Beth Shapiro,et al.  Rise and Fall of the Beringian Steppe Bison , 2004, Science.

[2]  Chris Stringer,et al.  University of Birmingham The thermal history of human fossils and the likelihood of successful DNA amplification , 2003 .

[3]  Beth Shapiro,et al.  Mitochondrial DNA analysis shows a Near Eastern Neolithic origin for domestic cattle and no indication of domestication of European aurochs , 2007, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[4]  K. Dobney,et al.  Pig Hunting and Husbandry in Prehistoric Italy: a Contribution to the Domestication Debate , 2006, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.

[5]  S. Payne,et al.  Neolithic pigs from Durrington Walls, Wiltshire, England: a biometrical database , 2005 .

[6]  H. Bandelt,et al.  Median-joining networks for inferring intraspecific phylogenies. , 1999, Molecular biology and evolution.

[7]  P. Taberlet,et al.  Divergent mtDNA lineages of goats in an Early Neolithic site, far from the initial domestication areas , 2006, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[8]  C. Renfrew,et al.  Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis , 2003 .

[9]  J. Schibler,et al.  Near East mtDNA haplotype variants in Roman cattle from Augusta Raurica, Switzerland, and in the Swiss Evolène breed. , 2006, Animal genetics.

[10]  U. Albarella Pigs and humans : 10,000 years of interaction , 2007 .

[11]  A. Whittle,et al.  Going over : the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in north-west Europe , 2007 .

[12]  M. Balasse,et al.  Early Weaning of Neolithic Domestic Cattle (Bercy, France) Revealed by Intra-tooth Variation in Nitrogen Isotope Ratios , 2002 .

[13]  David Glenn Smith,et al.  Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis. , 2005 .

[14]  David Posada,et al.  MODELTEST: testing the model of DNA substitution , 1998, Bioinform..

[15]  John P. Huelsenbeck,et al.  MrBayes 3: Bayesian phylogenetic inference under mixed models , 2003, Bioinform..

[16]  P. Taberlet,et al.  The origin of European cattle: evidence from modern and ancient DNA. , 2006, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[17]  C. Lalueza-Fox,et al.  Palaeogenetic evidence supports a dual model of Neolithic spreading into Europe , 2007, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[18]  Stephen Shennan,et al.  Archaeobotanical Evidence for the Spread of Farming in the Eastern Mediterranean1 , 2004, Current Anthropology.

[19]  Ron Pinhasi,et al.  Tracing the Origin and Spread of Agriculture in Europe , 2005, PLoS biology.

[20]  M. Mccarthy,et al.  The Irish quaternary fauna project , 1997 .

[21]  M. Zeder Documenting Domestication: New Genetic and Archaeological Paradigms , 2006 .

[22]  G. Clark The Invasion Hypothesis in British Archaeology , 1965, Antiquity.

[23]  Shuichi Matsumura,et al.  Ancient DNA from the First European Farmers in 7500-Year-Old Neolithic Sites , 1975, Science.

[24]  V. Gordon Childe,et al.  The Dawn of European Civilization , 1926 .

[25]  H. Ellegren,et al.  Cattle domestication in the Near East was followed by hybridization with aurochs bulls in Europe , 2005, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[26]  J. Vigne,et al.  The first steps of animal domestication : new archaeozoological approaches , 2005 .

[27]  S. Davis The archaeology of animals , 1989 .

[28]  B. Hesse The First Steps of Animal Domestication , 2006 .

[29]  J. Vigne Zooarchaeology and the biogeographical history of the mammals of Corsica and Sardinia since the last ice age , 1992 .

[30]  H. Poinar,et al.  Ancient DNA: Do It Right or Not at All , 2000, Science.

[31]  H. Uerpmann Probleme der Neolithisierung des Mittelmeerraums , 1979 .

[32]  Adam T. Smith The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities , 2003 .

[33]  L. Excoffier,et al.  Multiple maternal origins and weak phylogeographic structure in domestic goats , 2001, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[34]  Colin Renfrew,et al.  Before civilization: The radiocarbon revolution and prehistoric Europe , 1973 .

[35]  M. Hofreiter,et al.  Assessing ancient DNA studies. , 2005, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[36]  D. Bradley,et al.  Ancient DNA analysis of 101 cattle remains: limits and prospects , 2004 .

[37]  Ursula Maier Morphological studies of free-threshing wheat ears from a Neolithic site in southwest Germany, and the history of the naked wheats , 1996 .

[38]  K W Alt,et al.  Early history of European domestic cattle as revealed by ancient DNA , 2006, Biology Letters.

[39]  P. Bogucki,et al.  Ancient Europe 8000 B.C.-A.D. 1000 : encyclopedia of the barbarian world , 2004 .

[40]  G. Barbujani,et al.  Origins and evolution of the Europeans' genome: evidence from multiple microsatellite loci , 2006, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[41]  E. Matisoo-Smith,et al.  Worldwide Phylogeography of Wild Boar Reveals Multiple Centers of Pig Domestication , 2005, Science.

[42]  S. Shennan,et al.  The evolution of Neolithic farming from SW Asian origins to NW European limits , 2005, European Journal of Archaeology.