Pig domestication and human-mediated dispersal in western Eurasia revealed through ancient DNA and geometric morphometrics - PubMed (original) (raw)

doi: 10.1093/molbev/mss261. Epub 2012 Nov 22.

Linus Girdland Flink, Allowen Evin, Christina Geörg, Bea De Cupere, Wim Van Neer, László Bartosiewicz, Anna Linderholm, Ross Barnett, Joris Peters, Ronny Decorte, Marc Waelkens, Nancy Vanderheyden, François-Xavier Ricaut, Canan Cakirlar, Ozlem Cevik, A Rus Hoelzel, Marjan Mashkour, Azadeh Fatemeh Mohaseb Karimlu, Shiva Sheikhi Seno, Julie Daujat, Fiona Brock, Ron Pinhasi, Hitomi Hongo, Miguel Perez-Enciso, Morten Rasmussen, Laurent Frantz, Hendrik-Jan Megens, Richard Crooijmans, Martien Groenen, Benjamin Arbuckle, Nobert Benecke, Una Strand Vidarsdottir, Joachim Burger, Thomas Cucchi, Keith Dobney, Greger Larson

Affiliations

Pig domestication and human-mediated dispersal in western Eurasia revealed through ancient DNA and geometric morphometrics

Claudio Ottoni et al. Mol Biol Evol. 2013 Apr.

Abstract

Zooarcheological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated in Southwest Asia ~8,500 BC. They then spread across the Middle and Near East and westward into Europe alongside early agriculturalists. European pigs were either domesticated independently or more likely appeared so as a result of admixture between introduced pigs and European wild boar. As a result, European wild boar mtDNA lineages replaced Near Eastern/Anatolian mtDNA signatures in Europe and subsequently replaced indigenous domestic pig lineages in Anatolia. The specific details of these processes, however, remain unknown. To address questions related to early pig domestication, dispersal, and turnover in the Near East, we analyzed ancient mitochondrial DNA and dental geometric morphometric variation in 393 ancient pig specimens representing 48 archeological sites (from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic to the Medieval period) from Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Our results reveal the first genetic signatures of early domestic pigs in the Near Eastern Neolithic core zone. We also demonstrate that these early pigs differed genetically from those in western Anatolia that were introduced to Europe during the Neolithic expansion. In addition, we present a significantly more refined chronology for the introduction of European domestic pigs into Asia Minor that took place during the Bronze Age, at least 900 years earlier than previously detected. By the 5th century AD, European signatures completely replaced the endemic lineages possibly coinciding with the widespread demographic and societal changes that occurred during the Anatolian Bronze and Iron Ages.

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Figures

F<sc>ig</sc>. 1.

Fig. 1.

A spatiotemporal depiction of ancient pig haplotypes. Rows represent eight chronological periods, and columns pertain to sites organized along a longitudinal axis from west to east. Approximate locations of the archeological sites from which the samples are derived are shown as numbered circles on maps beneath the horizontal axis. Asterisks indicate directly AMS-dated samples. The question mark signifies not enough material was available for AMS dating. Slashed boxes indicate samples on which GMM analyses were performed. Pie charts to the right of each row summarize the haplotype frequencies for each chronological period across all sites. Columns pertain to one or two sites except for two columns that consist of several sites: Armenia (Sevkar-4, Areni-1, Khatunarkh, Shengevit, Lchashen, Tmbatir, Pilorpat, Beniamin, and Tsakaektsi) and Iran (Qaleh Rostam, Qare Doyub, Qelīch Qōīneq, Dasht Qal’eh, Doshan Tepe, Malyan, Mehr Ali, Chogha Gavaneh, and Gohar Tepe).

F<sc>ig</sc>. 2.

Fig. 2.

Panel (a) depicts a schematic phylogenetic tree derived from an alignment of 267 modern wild boar from western Eurasia. Red, green, and gray triangles refer to the well-supported European, Near Eastern 1 (NE1), and Near Eastern 2 (NE2) clades, respectively. Branches supported by P > 0.99 are indicated by a black circle. A more detailed representation of the tree including support values is presented in

supplementary figure S2_a_

,

Supplementary Material

online. The NE2 clade includes all ancient Near Eastern haplotypes depicted in figure 1. Panel (a) also shows the approximate geographic distribution of modern wild boar belonging to these clades. Areas with overlapping distributions are represented in dark. A more detailed depiction is presented in

supplementary figure S2_b_

,

Supplementary Material

online. Panel (b) presents molar size (M2) and shape (M2 and M3) differences between ancient pigs assigned to European (red) and Near Eastern (gray) mtDNA clades. Differences in shape calculated along linear discriminant analysis (LDA) axes are displayed in overlapping shapes in the upper right. The arrow indicates a statistically significant size reduction in the M2 between European and Near Eastern pigs. Numbers following “_N_=” represent sample sizes, and single and triple asterisks represent significance to the P < 0.05 and P < 0.01 levels.

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