Female exogamy and gene pool diversification at the transition from the Final Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age in central Europe

Abstract

of steppe pastoralists to the west and east are currently unknown. Recent studies, however, suggest that a possible pandemic might have triggered this process by spreading a close relative of Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of bubonic plague (9, 10). On a smaller geographical scale, stable isotope data exhibited the crucial role of individual mobility, often connected with females (11, 12). This paper focuses on the transition from the BBC to the EBA. Archeological evidence of the BBC includes burials with distinct bell-shaped ceramic cups, archery equipment, and occasionally gold, amber, and bronze objects (13, 14). Causes for its panEuropean distribution from the Iberian Peninsula to the Carpathian Basin may have included human mobility, increasing transregional connectivity, or social differentiation accompanied by widely recognized symbols of prestige or status (15, 16). Consequently, the BBC was subject to one of the earliest large-scale Sr isotope studies (17, 18). It revealed multidirectional residential moves, which were related to subsistence practices rather than to actual mass migrations (19–21). In the subsequent EBA, human mobility was essential to distribute copper and tin ores, which do Significance Paleogenetic and isotope data from human remains shed new light on residential rules revealing patrilocality and high female mobility in European prehistory. We show the crucial role of this institution and its impact on the transformation of population compositions over several hundred years. Evidence for an epochtransgressing maternal relationship between two individuals demonstrates long-debated population continuity from the central European Neolithic to the Bronze Age. We demonstrate that a simple notion of “migration” cannot explain the complex human mobility of third millennium BCE societies in Eurasia. On the contrary, it appears that part of what archaeologists understand as migration is the result of large-scale institutionalized and possibly sex- and age-related individual mobility.