Y Chromosome Story-Ancient Genetic Data as a Supplementary Tool for the Analysis of Modern Croatian Genetic Pool

Abstract

Due to its turbulent demographic history, marked by extensive settlement and gene flow from diverse regions of Eurasia, Southeastern Europe (SEE) has consistently served as a genetic crossroads between East and West and a junction for the migrations that reshaped Europe's population. SEE, including modern Croatian territory, was a crucial passage from the Near East and even more distant regions and human populations in this region, as almost any other European population represents a remarkable genetic mixture. Modern humans have continuously occupied this region since the Upper Paleolithic era, and different (pre)historical events have left a distinctive genetic signature on the historical narrative of this region. Our views of its history have been mostly renewed in the last few decades by extraordinary data obtained from Y-chromosome studies. In recent times, the international research community, bringing together geneticists and archaeologists, has steadily released a growing number of ancient genomes from this region, shedding more light on its complex past population dynamics and shaping the genetic pool in Croatia and this part of Europe.

Keywords: Croatia; SEE; Y chromosome; ancient genetic data; modern genetic data.

Figure 1

Proposed historic migration episodes in Southeastern Europe since the Neolithic period.

Figure 2

Proposed migration routes for the main observed haplogroups in the modern Croatian population [36].

Figure 3

Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) plot showing genetic similarities between different SEE countries based on Y chromosome [39].

Figure 4

Y-chromosome haplogroup distribution in SEE from Neolithic to contemporary period based on ancient ([8,11,14,15,19], Pinhasi R. and Novak M., personal communication) and modern genomes [39].