The Late Antique and Early Medieval Genomic Legacy of Europeans

该项目的目的是调查从古代晚期到中世纪早期（公元300-600年）过渡时期的基因组变异性，以确定这一时期的人口对今天欧洲人口结构的长期影响。Viminacium是现在塞尔维亚境内的一座古城，作为一个历史大熔炉，非常适合进行这样的调查，因为各种各样的文化群体在这里聚集在一起，骨骼数量众多，生物分子保存完好。在第一步中，将对来自Viminacium不同墓地的坟墓进行考古和人类学调查，以便随后以1倍的测序深度产生总共100个古基因组。其中，将选择20个，代表最重要的文化群体和该地点总体观察到的遗传变异性，然后对更高的测序深度（10倍）进行测序。这些将被用作后续人口建模的锚点，主要使用祖先重组图和fastsimcoal方法。从最好的模型中，可以推断出在不同时间点形成前沿社会的人口参数值。这个由人口遗传学家、人类学家和考古学家组成的小组将调查人口模型和参数的历史含义。在最后一步，历史模型的结果将被转移到今天欧洲人起源的人口模型中，以确定古代晚期和中世纪早期的变异对今天欧洲不同地区基因多样性的长期影响。

The aim of this project is to investigate the genomic variability of the epoch at the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (300-600 AD) in order to determine the long-term effect of the human populations of this period on the population structure of Europe today. Viminacium was an ancient city in what is now Serbia and, as a historical melting pot, is ideally suited for such an investigation, since a wide variety of cultural groups met here in one place, and skeletons are both numerous and excellently preserved biomolecularly. In a first step, graves from different necropolises of Viminacium will be archaeologically and anthropologically investigated in order to subsequently generate a total of 100 palaeogenomes at 1x sequencing depth. Of these, 20 will be selected, representing both the most important cultural groups and the overall observed genetic variability of the site, and then sequenced to a higher sequencing depth (10x). These will be used as anchor points for subsequent demographic modelling, primarily using the ancestral recombination graph and the fastsimcoal approach. From the best models, demographic parameter values that shaped the frontier society at different points in time will be inferred. The team, consisting of population geneticists, anthropologists and archaeologists, will then investigate the historical implications of the demographic models and parameters. In a final step, the results of the historical model will be transferred into a demographic model on the origin of today's Europeans to determine the long-term impact of Late Antique and Early Medieval variability on today's genetic diversity in different parts of Europe.