Genomic data of Uzzo ancient individuals

Southern Italy is a key region for understanding the agricultural transition in the Mediterranean due to its central geographic location. Here, we present a joint analysis of genomic and stable isotopic data for a time transect of 19 prehistoric Sicilians covering the Early Mesolithic to Early Bronze Age period (10,700-4,100 yBP). We find that the Early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (HGs) from Sicily are a highly drifted lineage of the Early Holocene western European HGs, while Late Mesolithic Sicilian HGs have ~20% of their ancestry related to northern and (south)eastern European HGs, indicating substantial gene flow into Sicily after the Early Mesolithic. The Early Neolithic farmers are genetically most similar to farmers from the Balkans and Greece, and carry only ~7% ancestry from local Mesolithic HGs. The genetic discontinuities during the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic correspond to changes in material culture and dietary profiles, except for three individuals dated to ~8,000 yBP, who carried HG genetic profiles and had forager/farming/fishing diets, or a farmer genetic profile with foraging diet. These outliers reveals a more complex subsistence economy at Grotta dell'Uzzo, suggesting cultural interaction between the earliest farmers and local HGs or mobility during the transitional phase between the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic.