A Genetic Atlas of Human Admixture History

Research article by:

Garrett Hellenthal1,
George B. J. Busby2,
Gavin Band3,
James F. Wilson4,
Cristian Capelli2,
Daniel Falush5,*,
Simon Myers3,6,*,†


1UCL Genetics Institute, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
2Department of Zoology, Oxford University, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK.
3Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Oxford University, Roosevelt Drive, Oxford OX3 7BN, UK.
4Centre for Population Health Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Teviot Place, Edinburgh EH8 9AG, UK.
5Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
6Department of Statistics, Oxford University, 1 South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3TG, UK.
↵†Corresponding author. E-mail: myers{at}stats.ox.ac.uk


↵* These authors contributed equally to this work.



ABSTRACT
Modern genetic data combined with appropriate statistical methods have the potential to contribute substantially to our understanding of human history. We have developed an approach that exploits the genomic structure of admixed populations to date and characterize historical mixture events at fine scales. We used this to produce an atlas of worldwide human admixture history, constructed by using genetic data alone and encompassing over 100 events occurring over the past 4000 years. We identified events whose dates and participants suggest they describe genetic impacts of the Mongol empire, Arab slave trade, Bantu expansion, first millennium CE migrations in Eastern Europe, and European colonialism, as well as unrecorded events, revealing admixture to be an almost universal force shaping human populations.

The in-Laws Through History
Admixture, the result of previously distant populations meeting and breeding, leaves a genetic signal within the descendants' genomes. However, over time the signal decays and can be hard to trace. Hellenthal et al. (p. 747) describe a method, using a technique called chromosome painting, to follow the genetic traces of admixture back to the nearest extant population. The approach revealed details of worldwide human admixture history over the past 4000 years.

Received for publication 22 July 2013.
Accepted for publication 20 December 2013.

For full text, follow the link here.

For the genetic atlas of human admixture history website, click here.