A massive team effort has resulted in a new study on Mesolithic Scandinavians published in PLoS Biology. The study reveals that two migration routes built the foundation for a very diverse Mesolithic human population in Scandinavia and also highlights loci under selection in accordance with life in the high North.
Author summary
The Scandinavian peninsula was the last part of Europe to be colonized after the Last Glacial Maximum. The migration routes, cultural networks, and the genetic makeup of the first Scandinavians remain elusive and several hypotheses exist based on archaeology, climate modeling, and genetics. By analyzing the genomes of early Scandinavian hunter-gatherers, we show that their migrations followed two routes: one from the south and another from the northeast along the ice-free Norwegian Atlantic coast. These groups met and mixed in Scandinavia, creating a population more diverse than contemporaneous central and western European hunter-gatherers. As northern Europe is associated with cold and low light conditions, we investigated genomic patterns of adaptation to these conditions and genes known to be involved in skin pigmentation. We demonstrate that Mesolithic Scandinavians had higher levels of light pigmentation variants compared to the respective source populations of the migrations, suggesting adaptation to low light levels and a surprising signal of genetic continuity in TMEM131, a gene that may be involved in long-term adaptation to the cold.
The Atlas project
This study is part of The Atlas Project, a multidisciplinary effort to understand Eurasian and Scandinavian prehistory, funded by the Swedish Research Council, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation.
Contact information
Torsten Günther, Uppsala University (English, German)
tel: +46 18 4714637, +46 70 3905295, email: torsten.gunther@ebc.uu.se
Mattias Jakobsson, Uppsala University (English, Swedish, Danish)
tel: +46 18 4716449, +46 70-167 97 57, email: Mattias.jakobsson@ebc.uu.se
Jan Storå, Stockholm University (English, Swedish, Finnish)
tel: +46 8 16 12 87, email: jan.stora@ofl.su.se
Birgitte Skar, NTNU University Museum Trondheim (English, Norwegian)
tel: +47 73592173, +47 93466214, email: birgitte.skar@ntnu.no
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