Eveline Altena

Twenty-three new Yersinia pestis genomes from Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Iceland and Armenia extend the Second Plague Pandemic phylogeny, with the first Icelandic plague genome and eastward-spreading pestis secunda strains.

The paper shows that hunter-gatherer continuity persisted in the Rhine-Meuse region longer than in continental Europe, with Bell Beaker groups later disrupting this pattern through mixture.

This study uses ancient DNA data to show that the spread of the Beaker Complex to Britain was primarily due to migration, replacing most Neolithic gene pool and introducing Steppe ancestry.