Temporal population structure, a genetic dating method for ancient Eurasian genomes from the past 10,000 years

Radiocarbon dating is the gold standard in archeology to estimate the age of skeletons, a key to studying their origins. Many published ancient genomes lack reliable and direct dates, which results in obscure and contradictory reports. Here, we developed the Temporal Population Structure (TPS), the first DNA-based dating method for ancient genomes ranging from the Late Mesolithic to modern-days, and applied it to 3,591 ancient and 1,307 modern Eurasians. We show that TPS predictions align with their known dates and correctly account for kin relationships. TPS dating of poorly dated Eurasian samples resolved conflicting reports in the literature, as illustrated by one test case. We demonstrated how TPS improved the ability to study phenotypic traits over time.

放射性碳定年法（Radiocarbon dating）是考古学领域估算骨骼年代的金标准，而骨骼年代是探究其起源的核心关键。目前诸多已发表的古基因组（ancient genomes）研究均缺乏可靠且直接的定年数据，由此导致相关研究报告模糊不清且相互矛盾。为此，我们开发了时序种群结构（Temporal Population Structure，TPS）——首款适用于从中石器时代晚期至现代的古基因组的基于DNA的定年方法，并将其应用于3591例古代欧亚人群样本与1307例现代欧亚人群样本。研究结果显示，TPS的预测结果与样本已知的年代信息高度吻合，且能正确考量亲属关系的影响。针对定年信息匮乏的欧亚人群样本，TPS定年成功解决了文献中存在的矛盾结论，我们通过一则测试案例对此进行了直观说明。此外，我们还验证了TPS可有效提升针对随时间动态变化的表型性状（phenotypic traits）的研究能力。