They found out that the man probably came from Sardinia. He also suffered from tuberculosis of the spine, writes the group led by Gabriele Scorrano from the University of Tor Vergata in Rome in the journal “Scientific Reports”.
The scientists found well-preserved DNA in the dead man’s petrous bone – dubbed Individual A. The petrous bone is part of the skull and is one of the hardest bones in the body. The DNA was enough to reconstruct 41 percent of the genome of the 35 to 40-year-old man. Both the genome of the mitochondria, the cell power plants, inherited from the mother’s line, and the Y chromosome inherited from the father’s side showed some characteristics that are typically found in inhabitants of the island of Sardinia.
Comparisons of the reconstructed genome with genomes in various gene databases revealed that the man carried 30.5 percent genes from the Iranian Neolithic period and 51.6 percent genes from the Anatolian Neolithic period. In addition, 4.4 percent came from western hunter-gatherers and 13.5 percent from the Yamnaya culture, which spread from the region north of the Black Sea to far into Europe in the Bronze Age.
Source: Nachrichten
