Abstract
The historical province of Dobruja, located in southeastern Romania, has experienced intense human population movement, invasions, and conflictual episodes during the Middle Ages, being an important intersection point between Asia and Europe. The most informative source of maternal population histories is the complete mitochondrial genome of archaeological specimens, but currently, there is insufficient ancient DNA data available for the medieval period in this geographical region to complement the archaeological findings. In this study, we reconstructed, by using Next Generation Sequencing, the entire mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) of six medieval individuals neglectfully buried in a multiple burial from Capidava necropolis (Dobruja), some presenting signs of a violent death. Six distinct maternal lineages (H11a1, U4d2, J1c15, U6a1a1, T2b, and N1a3a) with different phylogenetic background were identified, pointing out the heterogeneous genetic aspect of the analyzed medieval group. Using population genetic analysis based on high-resolution mitochondrial data, we inferred the genetic affinities of the available medieval dataset from Capidava to other ancient Eurasian populations. The genetic data were integrated with the archaeological and anthropological information in order to sketch a small, local piece of the mosaic that is the image of medieval European population history.
Highlights
Over thousands of years, the Lower Danube Basin witnessed striking social and cultural changes and several waves of human population migrations that have contributed to the shaping of the current European genetic landscape
Other findings from ancient mitochondrial DNA research revealed the contribution of Hungarian Conquerors to the gene pool of the Carpathian Basin and suggested that most probably they descended from steppe nomadic people[9]
The assemblage of human skeletal remains belonging to the ten individuals was placed in a multiple burial pit (C58) and was not arranged according to the Christian burial customs of the medieval period, as observed in the majority of the graves from this archaeological site
Summary
The Lower Danube Basin witnessed striking social and cultural changes and several waves of human population migrations that have contributed to the shaping of the current European genetic landscape. Most of them shed light on the genomic history of different European regions from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age, whereas the genetic heritage mirrored in more recent time transects remains partly obscured due to the limited number of analyzed samples and/or populations This scenario reflects the situation of southeastern Europe. The analysis and interpretation of genome-wide aDNA data from more than 200 individuals inhabiting southeastern Europe between 12,000 and 500 BC, showed that this geographical region “served as a genetic contact zone between east and west over thousands of years6” This pattern was observed in a www.nature.com/scientificreports/. The aim of the current study is to catch a glimpse into the maternal population history of the Lower Danube Basin by integrating full-length mitochondrial data with archaeological and anthropological evidence of a small group of medieval individuals (C58 archaeological complex) discovered in southeastern Romania (Capidava necropolis). Due to lack of solid archaeological evidence, absence of any grave goods, the individuals from the C58 archaeological complex, the subject of this study, cannot be associated to any invasive ethnic groups or to any local populations (Bulgarians, Vlachs, Byzantines etc.)
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