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Five centuries of consanguinity, isolation, health, and conflict in Las Gobas: A Northern Medieval Iberian necropolis - PubMed

  • ️Mon Jan 01 2024

Five centuries of consanguinity, isolation, health, and conflict in Las Gobas: A Northern Medieval Iberian necropolis

Ricardo Rodríguez-Varela et al. Sci Adv. 2024.

Abstract

Between the 8th and 11th centuries CE, the Iberian Peninsula underwent profound upheaval due to the Umayyad invasion against the Visigoths, resulting in population shifts and lasting demographic impacts. Our understanding of this period is hindered by limited written sources and few archaeogenetic studies. We analyzed 33 individuals from Las Gobas, a necropolis in northern Spain, spanning the 7th to 11th centuries. By combining archaeological and osteological data with kinship, metagenomics, and ancestry analyses, we investigate conflicts, health, and demography of these individuals. We reveal intricate family relationships and genetic continuity within a consanguineous population while also identifying several zoonoses indicative of close interactions with animals. Notably, one individual was infected with a variola virus phylogenetically clustering with the northern European variola complex between ~885 and 1000 CE. Last, we did not detect a significant increase of North African or Middle East ancestries over time since the Islamic conquest of Iberia, possibly because this community remained relatively isolated.

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Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.. Map of the Iberian Peninsula.

In red, the location of the necropolis of Las Gobas. City names are shown in italics. (A) The Iberian Peninsula around the year 569 CE. (B) The different kingdoms and border with the Caliphate of Córdoba in the 10th century [maps based on (103)].

Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.. Kinship and burial distributions at Las Gobas.

We represent here one of the possible pedigrees of the related individuals according to their autosomal, uniparental, archaeological, and anthropological data (see tables S1 to S4). The inbreeding information is listed in table S5, while the isotopic and osteological information was taken from (15, 16), respectively. Each bacteria species is uniquely represented by a distinct color. In addition, the variola virus is symbolized with a virus symbol. In the individual with a direct radiocarbon date, we display the 2-sigma date interval.

Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.. Runs of homozygosity (ROH).

(A) ROH analysis for individuals from Las Gobas, exhibiting cumulative ROH lengths exceeding 4 cM and coverage of more than 400,000 SNPs from the 1240K dataset (23). The numbers on the x axis represent individual codes. (B) ROH lengths and expected densities of ROH for certain degrees of parental relationships (22) for the Las Gobas individual with the highest sum of inferred ROH.

Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.. Reduced maximum likelihood tree of variola virus.

All samples were mapped to the consensus sequence of aVARV from a Viking from Öland (VK382). Taxon name fields indicate site/clade, three-letter country code, and date/time. Historical variola virus is shown in purple, ancient VARV in blue, and the ancient VARV from Las Gobas in red. We collapsed the modern clades and kept the closest outgroups: the taterapox virus (TATV) and the camelpox virus (CMLV) (for full tree, see fig. S22). Node confidence values (bootstrap support) are shown at each node. The scale bar shows the average number of nucleotide substitutions per site.

Fig. 5.
Fig. 5.. PCA of Las Gobas individuals.

Genetic data from Las Gobas (n = 28) and other ancient individuals projected onto the first two principal components of modern North Africans and West Eurasians.

Fig. 6.
Fig. 6.. Ancestry components.

(A) ADMIXTURE analysis at K = 5 of 19 unrelated individuals and a selection of modern populations from the 1240K+HO dataset together with published ancient genomes (table S10). (B) A bar plot illustrating qpAdm results depicting the composition of European ancestry, represented by northern Iberian Visigoths or Iron Age individuals from north Iberia, and North African ancestry, represented by Canary Islands aborigines, across 33 individuals from Las Gobas. The individuals are ordered by ID and radiocarbon age on the x axis. The y axis represents qpAdm values (table S11). European and North African components are distinguished by color (purple and orange, respectively). For individuals 35 and 47, Iron Age populations from north Iberia were used instead of northern Iberian Visigoths as the latter did not provide a feasible model. Error bars indicate the upper and lower SEs. The P value for each analysis is displayed on the plot.

Fig. 7.
Fig. 7.. Correlation between age and ancestry.

Linear regression lines (solid lines) provide an overview of the trends. The P values for each ancestry’s correlation are annotated on the plot. Related individuals and individuals that cannot be linked to a direct radiocarbon date were removed from these analyses. The vertical dashed line indicates the beginning of the Umayyad Caliphate. (A) The scatterplot illustrates the relationship between age (in years) and the percentage of Western Asia Caucasus (red), Europe (purple), and North Africa (orange) ancestries from the ADMIXTURE results (table S10). (B) The scatterplot illustrates the relationship between age (in years) and the percentage of Europe represented by north Iberian Visigoths (purple) and North Africa represented by Canary Islands aborigines (orange) ancestries from the qpAdm results (table S11).

Fig. 8.
Fig. 8.. f3-statistic MDS plot.

Pairwise genetic distance matrix from inverted f3 values (1-f3) of the form f3 (ancient group A and ancient group B; Mbuti) between ancient Iberian groups from different periods and cultures (goodness of fit r2 = 0.999).

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