Abstract

Situated at over 5,000 meters above sea level in the Himalayan Mountains, Roopkund Lake is home to the scattered skeletal remains of several hundred individuals of unknown origin. We report genome-wide ancient DNA for 38 skeletons from Roopkund Lake, and find that they cluster into three distinct groups. A group of 23 individuals have ancestry that falls within the range of variation of present-day South Asians. A further 14 have ancestry typical of the eastern Mediterranean. We also identify one individual with Southeast Asian-related ancestry. Radiocarbon dating indicates that these remains were not deposited simultaneously. Instead, all of the individuals with South Asian-related ancestry date to ~800 CE (but with evidence of being deposited in more than one event), while all other individuals date to ~1800 CE. These differences are also reflected in stable isotope measurements, which reveal a distinct dietary profile for the two main groups.

Details

Title
Ancient DNA from the skeletons of Roopkund Lake reveals Mediterranean migrants in India
Author
Harney, Éadaoin 1 ; Nayak, Ayushi 2 ; Patterson, Nick 3 ; Joglekar, Pramod 4 ; Mushrif-Tripathy, Veena 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Mallick, Swapan 5 ; Rohland, Nadin 6 ; Sedig, Jakob 6   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Adamski, Nicole 7 ; Bernardos, Rebecca 6 ; Broomandkhoshbacht, Nasreen 7   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Culleton, Brendan J 8 ; Ferry, Matthew 7 ; Harper, Thomas K 9 ; Michel, Megan 10 ; Oppenheimer, Jonas 7 ; Stewardson, Kristin 7 ; Zhang, Zhao 6 ; Harashawaradhana 11 ; Maanwendra Singh Bartwal 11 ; Kumar, Sachin 12 ; Diyundi, Subhash Chandra 13   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Roberts, Patrick 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Boivin, Nicole 2 ; Kennett, Douglas J 14 ; Thangaraj, Kumarasamy 15 ; Reich, David 16 ; Rai, Niraj 12 

 Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA; The Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, Cambridge, MA, USA; Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA 
 Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany 
 Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA; Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA 
 Deccan College, Pune, India 
 Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA 
 Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA 
 Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA 
 Institutes of Energy and the Environment, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA; Department of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA 
 Department of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA 
10  Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; The Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, Jena, Germany 
11  Anthropological Survey of India, North West Regional Centre, Dehradun, India 
12  CSIR Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, Telangana, India; Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India 
13  Gautam Budh Health Care Foundation, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India 
14  Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA 
15  CSIR Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, Telangana, India 
16  The Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, Cambridge, MA, USA; Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA 
Pages
1-10
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Aug 2019
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2276821740
Copyright
© 2019. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.