NEO · Living in Europe in the late Neolithic: A trans-disciplinary temporal perspective on present-day Europeans
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-05-01 → 2020-04-30
- EU contribution
- €185,076
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Living in Europe in the late Neolithic: A trans-disciplinary temporal perspective on present-day Europeans
Genomic studies on ancient humans have revealed that the process that shaped the population structure of Europe cannot be understood from the analysis of present-day populations only. The Neolithisation process, by which a population of hunter-gatherers shifted to pastoralism and farming, was mainly the result of migrations from Anatolia, starting some ~9,000 years ago, and expanding through both a Danubian and a Mediterranean route. Due to its geographic location, France was also on the way of both routes underlying Neolithic expansions, therefore, French archaeological remains provide a unique opportunity to study both expansion processes within a single country. By the second half of the Vth millennium BC in western Europe, as Neolithisation has completed and social stratification is emerging, Neolithic individuals started to bury their deceased in collective burials, which can host the remains of dozen if not hundreds, of individuals. On present-day France, more than 3,000 of these collective burials have been excavated, each of them potentially representing one community. In the NEO project, ancient DNA extracted from bones and teeth of Neolithic individuals interred in some of these collective burials were investigated to assess their genetic ancestry as well as the diet, health, mobility patterns, residential and funerary rules characterising western European Neolithic societies. Within NEO, a multi-disciplinary approach combining archaeology, physical anthropology and molecular analyses was applied to a rich collection of remains from the late Neolithic, excavated both in northern and southern parts of France, potentially representing the ending points of the Danubian and Mediterranean neolithisation routes, respectively. The general objective of the NEO project was to observe how almost contemporary Neolithic societies developed, with regards to possible regional specificities, in order to advance our knowledge on the building of European populations in prehistory.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The genetic landscape of Europe has been extremely dynamic through time, in particular during the Neolithic transitions, and is thus difficult to redraw from the analysis of present-day populations only. Our understanding of the population migrations and cultural diffusion processes underlying the peopling of Europe has greatly advanced with recent developments in ancient DNA high-throughput sequencing. Surprisingly, despite the presence of large Neolithic human groups and its geographic location bridging Southern and Northern Europe, France is extremely under-represented in current Neolithic genomic dataset. Moreover, most recent studies focus on population migration at a global scale only, while epigenomes and oral microbiomes, which are impacted by external factors and influence the individual health and phenotype, can now be retrieved from ancient DNA sequences. NEO proposes to apply a multidisciplinary approach combining the latest advances in physical anthropology, isotopic methods, ancient genomics, metagenomics and epigenomics to two exceptional Neolithic human groups from France (Cave I of Treilles and Mont Aimé). NEO will enable us to decipher not only migration patterns and genetic ancestry, but also important aspects about life in past society, such as residential rules, funerary practices, health and diet. The success of NEO will be based on the excellent synergy between the experienced researcher and the host institution, as the applicant will benefit from state-of-the-art facilities and expertise to gain advanced training in physical anthropology methods, while applying her genomic skills to a sample set available at no other research institution in the world. By acquiring these new skills in an international context, the experienced researcher will become a fully trained evolutionary anthropo-genomicist at the interface of physical and molecular anthropology, which will place her in ideal conditions to develop as a mature and independent researcher.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITE PAUL SABATIER TOULOUSE III · Toulouse Cedex 9CoordinatorFrance
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union