Thank you for visiting nature. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer. In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 18 January Western Eurasia witnessed several large-scale human migrations during the Holocene 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.
Here, to investigate the cross-continental effects of these migrations, we shotgun-sequenced genomes—mainly from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods—from across northern and western Eurasia. These were imputed alongside published data to obtain diploid genotypes from more than 1, ancient humans. Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were highly genetically differentiated east and west of this zone, and the effect of the neolithization was equally disparate.
Large-scale ancestry shifts occurred in the west as farming was introduced, including near-total replacement of hunter-gatherers in many areas, whereas no substantial ancestry shifts happened east of the zone during the same period.
Similarly, relatedness decreased in the west from the Neolithic transition onwards, whereas, east of the Urals, relatedness remained high until around 4, bp , consistent with the persistence of localized groups of hunter-gatherers. The boundary dissolved when Yamnaya-related ancestry spread across western Eurasia around 5, bp , resulting in a second major turnover that reached most parts of Europe within a 1,year span.
The genetic origin and fate of the Yamnaya have remained elusive, but we show that hunter-gatherers from the Middle Don region contributed ancestry to them. Yamnaya groups later admixed with individuals associated with the Globular Amphora culture before expanding into Europe. These prehistoric migrations had profound and lasting effects on the genetic diversity of Eurasian populations. Genetic diversity in west Eurasian human populations was largely shaped by three major prehistoric migrations: anatomically modern hunter-gatherers HGs occupying the area from around 45, bp refs.
