Abstract
The Iron and Classical Ages in the Near East were marked by population expansions carrying cultural transformations that shaped human history, but the genetic impact of these events on the people who lived through them is little-known. Here, we sequenced the whole genomes of 19 individuals who each lived during one of four time periods between 800 BCE and 200 CE in Beirut on the Eastern Mediterranean coast at the center of the ancient world’s great civilizations. We combined these data with published data to traverse eight archaeological periods and observed any genetic changes as they arose. During the Iron Age (∼1000 BCE), people with Anatolian and South-East European ancestry admixed with people in the Near East. The region was then conquered by the Persians (539 BCE), who facilitated movement exemplified in Beirut by an ancient family with Egyptian-Lebanese admixed members. But the genetic impact at a population level does not appear until the time of Alexander the Great (beginning 330 BCE), when a fusion of Asian and Near Easterner ancestry can be seen, paralleling the cultural fusion that appears in the archaeological records from this period. The Romans then conquered the region (31 BCE) but had little genetic impact over their 600 years of rule. Finally, during the Ottoman rule (beginning 1516 CE), Caucasus-related ancestry penetrated the Near East. Thus, in the past 4,000 years, three limited admixture events detectably impacted the population, complementing the historical records of this culturally complex region dominated by the elite with genetic insights from the general population.
Highlights
The Iron and Classical Ages in the Near East were marked by population expansions carrying cultural transformations that shaped human history, but the genetic impact of these events on the people who lived through them is little-known
Their genetic contribution is not as evident: our previous ancient DNA work showed that people who live in the Near East today derive $90% of their ancestry from the local Bronze Age population that preceded all of the aforementioned historical conquests.[1]
Two outstanding questions emerge from the previous ancient DNA (aDNA) studies: (1) were transient admixture events a common occurrence in the history of the Near East, or was the Crusaders period an exception, and (2) because present-day Near Easterners derive most but not all of their ancestry from the local Bronze Age population, which post-Bronze Age events contributed to the genetic diversity we observe today in the Near East
Summary
The Iron and Classical Ages in the Near East were marked by population expansions carrying cultural transformations that shaped human history, but the genetic impact of these events on the people who lived through them is little-known. Beirut_IA included individuals from the Iron Age II and Iron Age III periods and can be modeled as a mixture of the local Bronze Age population and a population related to ancient Anatolians or ancient South-Eastern Europeans.
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