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Genetic variation in prehistoric Sardinia

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Abstract

We sampled teeth from 53 ancient Sardinian (Nuragic) individuals who lived in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, between 3,430 and 2,700 years ago. After eliminating the samples that, in preliminary biochemical tests, did not show a high probability to yield reproducible results, we obtained 23 sequences of the mitochondrial DNA control region, which were associated to haplogroups by comparison with a dataset of modern sequences. The Nuragic samples show a remarkably low genetic diversity, comparable to that observed in ancient Iberians, but much lower than among the Etruscans. Most of these sequences have exact matches in two modern Sardinian populations, supporting a clear genealogical continuity from the Late Bronze Age up to current times. The Nuragic populations appear to be part of a large and geographically unstructured cluster of modern European populations, thus making it difficult to infer their evolutionary relationships. However, the low levels of genetic diversity, both within and among ancient samples, as opposed to the sharp differences among modern Sardinian samples, support the hypothesis of the expansion of a small group of maternally related individuals, and of comparatively recent differentiation of the Sardinian gene pools.

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Acknowledgments

This paper was supported by funds from the Italian Ministry of the Universities (PRIN 2006) and by funds from the Universities of Ferrara and Florence. We thank Antonio Torroni for a thorough preliminary discussion of the results of this study, and three anonymous referees for several useful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Biologia Animale e Genetica, Laboratorio di Antropologia, Università di Firenze, Firenze, Italy

    David Caramelli, Simona Sanna & Martina Lari

  2. Dipartimento di Biologia ed Evoluzione, via Borsari 46, 44100, Ferrara, Italy

    Cristiano Vernesi, Giorgio Bertorelle & Guido Barbujani

  3. Dept. Ciències de la Salut i de la Vida, Unitat de Biologia Evolutiva, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

    Lourdes Sampietro & Jaume Bertranpetit

  4. Dipartimento di Biologia Evoluzionistica e Sperimentale, Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Loredana Castrì

  5. Dipartimento di Biologia Sperimentale, Università di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

    Giuseppe Vona & Rosalba Floris

  6. Dipartimento di Zoologia e Antropologia Biologica, Università di Sassari, Sassari, Italy

    Paolo Francalacci

  7. Department of Anthroopology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

    Robert Tykot

  8. Dipartimento di Chimica generale ed Inorganica, Chimica Analitica e Chimica Fisica, Università di Parma, Parma, Italy

    Antonella Casoli

  9. Unitat d’Antropologia, Dept. Biologia Animal, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Carles Lalueza-Fox

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  1. David Caramelli
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  2. Cristiano Vernesi
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  3. Simona Sanna
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  8. Rosalba Floris
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  9. Paolo Francalacci
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  10. Robert Tykot
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  11. Antonella Casoli
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  12. Jaume Bertranpetit
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  13. Carles Lalueza-Fox
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  14. Giorgio Bertorelle
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  15. Guido Barbujani
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guido Barbujani.

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Caramelli, D., Vernesi, C., Sanna, S. et al. Genetic variation in prehistoric Sardinia. Hum Genet 122, 327–336 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-007-0403-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-007-0403-6

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