Uncovering 10,000 years of hepatitis B virus evolution by analyzing genomes from ancient Eurasians and Native Americans. Ten millennia of hepatitis B virus evolution

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) has been infecting humans for millennia and remains a global health problem, but its past diversity and dispersal routes are largely unknown. We generated HBV genomic data from 137 Eurasians and Native Americans dated between ~10,500 and ~400 years ago. We date the most recent common ancestor of all HBV lineages to between -20,000 and ~12,000 years ago, with the virus present in European and South Americans during the early Holocene. Following the European Neolithic transition, Mesolithic HBV strains were replaced by a lineage likely disseminated by early farmers that prevailed throughout western Eurasia for ~4,000 years; declining around the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. The only remnant of this prehistoric HBV diversity is the rare genotype G, which appears to have re-emerged during the HIV pandemic.