Comparing maternal genetic variation across two millennia reveals the demographic history of an ancient human population in southwest Turkey
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More than two decades of archaeological research at the site of Sagalassos, in southwest Turkey, resulted in the study of the former urban settlement in all its features. Originally settled in late Classical/early Hellenistic times, possibly from the later fifth century BCE onwards, the city of Sagalassos and its surrounding territory saw empires come and go. The Plague of Justinian in the sixth century CE, which is considered to have caused the death of up to a third of the population in Anatolia, and an earthquake in the seventh century CE, which is attested to have devastated many monuments in the city, may have severely affected the contemporary Sagalassos community. Human occupation continued, however, and Byzantine Sagalassos was eventually abandoned around 1200 CE. In order to investigate whether these historical events resulted in demographic changes across time, we compared the mitochondrial DNA variation of two population samples from Sagalassos (Roman and Middle Byzantine) and a modern sample from the nearby town of Ağlasun. Our analyses revealed no genetic discontinuity across two millennia in the region and Bayesian coalescence-based simulations indicated that a major population decline in the area coincided with the final abandonment of Sagalassos, rather than with the Plague of Justinian or the mentioned earthquake.
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Comparative data from a contemporary population under Roman rule in Asia Minor did not reveal a closer relationship to the ancient Egyptians from the Roman period.
“However, comparative data from a contemporary population under Roman rule in Asia Minor, from the Roman city Ağlasun today in Turkey31, did not reveal a closer relationship to the ancient Egyptians from the Roman period (Fig. 3b,c).”
From Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest an increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods (2017) · cites this paper as [31]
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Schuenemann, V. J., Peltzer, A., Welte, B., van Pelt, W. P., Molak, M., Wang, C.-C., Furtwängler, A., Urban, C., Reiter, E., Nieselt, K., et al. (2017) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/ncomms15694 · Cited by 201 · see citing works
- Authors
- Ottoni, C., Rasteiro, R., Willet, R., Claeys, J., Talloen, P., Van de Vijver, K., Chikhi, L., Poblome, J., & Decorte, R.
- Affiliations
- Universitair Ziekenhuis Leuven (BE)
- University of Leicester (GB)
- Leiden University (NL)
- KU Leuven (BE)
- Center for Archaeological Sciences, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Ottoni, Claudio
- ORCID
- Venue
- Royal Society Open Science
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2016-02
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 150250
- ISSN
- 2054-5703 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4785964
- OpenAlex
- W2285810044
- Cited by
- 17
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 2 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 2
- FWCI
- 1.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Royal Society Open Science (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Bristol Research (University of Bristol) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Explore Bristol Research (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- IRIS Research product catalog (Sapienza University of Rome) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Cineca Institutional Research Information System (Tor Vergata University) (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Lirias (KU Leuven) (submittedVersion)
- Leicester Research Archive (University of Leicester) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Belgian Programme on Interuniversity Poles of Attraction (IAP 07/09)
- University of Leuven (GOA 13/04)
- KU Leuven BOF Centre of Excellence Financing
- Research Foundation Flanders (G. 0637.15, G.0562.11)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Forensic and Genetic Research
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic diversity and population structure
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
- Keywords
- Sagalassos, mitochondrial DNA, ancient human populations, demographic history, Justinianic Plague, population decline, urban abandonment, Anatolia, population continuity
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