Genetic history from the Middle Neolithic to present on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia

The island of Sardinia has been of particular interest to geneticists for decades. The current model for Sardinia's genetic history describes the island as harboring a founder population that was established largely from the Neolithic peoples of southern Europe and remained isolated from later Bronze Age expansions on the mainland. To evaluate this model, we generate genome-wide ancient DNA data for 70 individuals from 21 Sardinian archaeological sites spanning the Middle Neolithic through the Medieval period. The earliest individuals show a strong affinity to western Mediterranean Neolithic populations, followed by an extended period of genetic continuity on the island through the Nuragic period (second millennium BCE). Beginning with individuals from Phoenician/Punic sites (first millennium BCE), we observe spatially-varying signals of admixture with sources principally from the eastern and northern Mediterranean. Overall, our analysis sheds light on the genetic history of Sardinia, revealing how relationships to mainland populations shifted over time.Joseph H. Marcus ... Wolfgang Haak ... et al

The cultural life of caves in Seulo, central Sardinia

This paper seeks to refine understandings of the cultural life of caves—especially later prehistoric caves—in Sardinia, with particular reference to the themes of landscape and ritual performance. It also highlights significant local diversity within this category of archaeological site, drawing upon the results of archaeological research into an extraordinary group of over ten ritual caves in the territory of Seulo in central Sardinia, including a series of twenty new radiocarbon dates

Emergence of human-adapted Salmonella enterica is linked to the Neolithization process

© 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. It has been hypothesized that the Neolithic transition towards an agricultural and pastoralist economy facilitated the emergence of human-adapted pathogens. Here, we recovered eight Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica genomes from human skeletons of transitional foragers, pastoralists and agropastoralists in western Eurasia that were up to 6,500 yr old. Despite the high genetic diversity of S. enterica, all ancient bacterial genomes clustered in a single previously uncharacterized branch that contains S. enterica adapted to multiple mammalian species. All ancient bacterial genomes from prehistoric (agro-)pastoralists fall within a part of this branch that also includes the human-specific S. enterica Paratyphi C, illustrating the evolution of a human pathogen over a period of 5,000 yr. Bacterial genomic comparisons suggest that the earlier ancient strains were not host specific, differed in pathogenic potential and experienced convergent pseudogenization that accompanied their downstream host adaptation. These observations support the concept that the emergence of human-adapted S. enterica is linked to human cultural transformations