Extensive farming in Estonia started through a sex-biased migration from the Steppe

Abstract

12 Farming-based economies appear relatively late in Northeast Europe and the extent to which 13 they involve genetic ancestry change is still poorly understood. Here we present the analyses 14 of low coverage whole genome sequence data from five hunter-gatherers and five farmers of 15 Estonia dated to 4,500 to 6,300 years before present. We find evidence of significant differences 16 between the two groups in the composition of autosomal as well as mtDNA, X and Y 17 chromosome ancestries. We find that Estonian hunter-gatherers of Comb Ceramic Culture are 18 closest to Eastern hunter-gatherers. The Estonian first farmers of Corded Ware Culture show 19 high similarity in their autosomes with Steppe Belt Late Neolithic/Bronze Age individuals, 20 Caucasus hunter-gatherers and Iranian farmers while their X chromosomes are most closely 21 related with the European Early Farmers of Anatolian descent. These findings suggest that the 22 shift to intensive cultivation and animal husbandry in Estonia was triggered by the arrival of Department of Evolutionary Biology, Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, University of bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/112714; this version posted March 2, 2017. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 2 23 new people with predominantly Steppe ancestry, but whose ancestors had undergone sex- 24 specific admixture with early farmers with Anatolian ancestry. 25