King Tutankhamun: Y-DNA Haplogroup R1b1a2

Analysis of mitochondrial genomes
The 90 mitochondrial genomes fulfilling our criteria (>10-fold coverage and <3% contamination) were grouped into three temporal categories based on their radiocarbon dates (Supplementary Data 1), corresponding to Pre-Ptolemaic Periods (n=44), the Ptolemaic Period (n=27) and the Roman Period (n=19) (Supplementary Data 1). To test for genetic differentiation and homogeneity we compared haplogroup composition, calculated FST-statistics28 and applied a test for population continuity29 (Supplementary Table 2, Supplementary Data 3,4) on mitochondrial genome data from the three ancient and two modern-day populations from Egypt and Ethiopia, published by Pagani and colleagues17, including 100 modern Egyptian and 125 modern Ethiopian samples (Fig. 3a). We furthermore included data from the El-Hayez oasis published by Kujanová and colleagues30. We observe highly similar haplogroup profiles between the three ancient groups (Fig. 3a), supported by low FST values (<0.05) and P values >0.1 for the continuity test. Modern Egyptians share this profile but in addition show a marked increase of African mtDNA lineages L0–L4 up to 20% (consistent with nuclear estimates of 80% non-African ancestry reported in Pagani et al.17). Genetic continuity between ancient and modern Egyptians cannot be ruled out by our formal test despite this sub-Saharan African influx, while continuity with modern Ethiopians17, who carry >60% African L lineages, is not supported (Supplementary Data 5). To further test genetic affinities and shared ancestry with modern-day African and West Eurasian populations we performed a principal component analysis (PCA) based on haplogroup frequencies and Multidimensional Scaling of pairwise genetic distances. We find that all three ancient Egyptian groups cluster together (Fig. 3b), supporting genetic continuity across our 1,300-year transect. Both analyses reveal higher affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant compared to modern Egyptians (Fig. 3b,c). The affinity to the Middle East finds further support by the Y-chromosome haplogroups of the three individuals for which genome-wide data was obtained, two of which could be assigned to the Middle-Eastern haplogroup J, and one to haplogroup E1b1b1 common in North Africa (Supplementary Table 3). However, comparative data from a contemporary population under Roman rule in Asia Minor, from the Roman city Ağlasun today in Turkey31, did not reveal a closer relationship to the ancient Egyptians from the Roman period (Fig. 3b,c).


Figure 3: Analysis of 90 ancient Egyptian mitochondrial genomes.

(a) Mitochondrial DNA haplogroup frequencies of three ancient and two modern-day populations, (b) Principal Component Analysis based on haplogroup frequencies: (sub-Saharan Africa (green), North Africa (light green), Near East (orange), Europe (yellow), ancient (blue), (c) MDS of HVR-I sequence data: colour scheme as above; note that ancient groups were pooled, (d) Skygrid plot depicting effective population size estimates over the last 5,000 years in Egypt. Vertical bars indicate the ages of the analysed 90 mitochondrial genomes (three samples with genome-wide data highlighted in red). Note that the values on y axis are given in female effective population size times generation time and were rescaled by 1:14.5 for the estimation of the studied population size (assuming 29-year generation time and equal male and female effective population sizes) (images by Kerttu Majander).

Population genetic analysis of nuclear DNA
On the nuclear level we merged the SNP data of our three ancient individuals with 2,367 modern individuals34,35 and 294 ancient genomes36 and performed PCA on the joined data set. We found the ancient Egyptian samples falling distinct from modern Egyptians, and closer towards Near Eastern and European samples (Fig. 4a, Supplementary Fig. 3, Supplementary Table 5). In contrast, modern Egyptians are shifted towards sub-Saharan African populations. Model-based clustering using ADMIXTURE37 (Fig. 4b, Supplementary Fig. 4) further supports these results and reveals that the three ancient Egyptians differ from modern Egyptians by a relatively larger Near Eastern genetic component, in particular a component found in Neolithic Levantine ancient individuals36 (Fig. 4b). In contrast, a substantially larger sub-Saharan African component, found primarily in West-African Yoruba, is seen in modern Egyptians compared to the ancient samples. In both PCA and ADMIXTURE analyses, we did not find significant differences between the three ancient samples, despite two of them having nuclear contamination estimates over 5%, which indicates no larger impact of modern DNA contamination. We used outgroup f3-statistics38 (Fig. 5a,b) for the ancient and modern Egyptians to measure shared genetic drift with other ancient and modern populations, using Mbuti as outgroup. We find that ancient Egyptians are most closely related to Neolithic and Bronze Age samples in the Levant, as well as to Neolithic Anatolian and European populations (Fig. 5a,b). When comparing this pattern with modern Egyptians, we find that the ancient Egyptians are more closely related to all modern and ancient European populations that we tested (Fig. 5b), likely due to the additional African component in the modern population observed above. By computing f3-statistics38, we determined whether modern Egyptians could be modelled as a mixture of ancient Egyptian and other populations. Our results point towards sub-Saharan African populations as the missing component (Fig. 5c), confirming the results of the ADMIXTURE analysis. We replicated the results based on f3-statistics using only the least contaminated sample (with <1% contamination estimate) and find very similar results (Supplementary Fig. 5), confirming that the moderate levels of modern DNA contamination in two of our samples did not affect our analyses. Finally, we used two methods to estimate the fractions of sub-Saharan African ancestry in ancient and modern Egyptians. Both qpAdm35 and the f4-ratio test39 reveal that modern Egyptians inherit 8% more ancestry from African ancestors than the three ancient Egyptians do, which is also consistent with the ADMIXTURE results discussed above. Absolute estimates of African ancestry using these two methods in the three ancient individuals range from 6 to 15%, and in the modern samples from 14 to 21% depending on method and choice of reference populations (see Supplementary Note 1, Supplementary Fig. 6, Supplementary Tables 5–8). We then used ALDER40 to estimate the time of a putative pulse-like admixture event, which was estimated to have occurred 24 generations ago (700 years ago), consistent with previous results from Henn and colleagues16. While this result by itself does not exclude the possibility of much older and continuous gene flow from African sources, the substantially lower African component in our ∼2,000-year-old ancient samples suggests that African gene flow in modern Egyptians occurred indeed predominantly within the last 2,000 years.


Figure 4: Principal component analysis and genetic clustering of genome-wide DNA from three ancient Egyptians.

Estimating phenotypes
Finally, we analysed several functionally relevant SNPs in sample JK2911, which had low contamination and relatively high coverage. This individual had a derived allele at the SLC24A5 locus, which contributes to lighter skin pigmentation and was shown to be at high frequency in Neolithic Anatolia41, consistent with the ancestral affinity shown above. Other relevant SNPs carry the ancestral allele, including HERC2 and LCT, which suggest dark-coloured eyes and lactose intolerance (Supplementary Table 9).

Planetary scientists have finally unraveled the 100-year-old mystery surrounding a piece of yellow glass used as a scarab centerpiece in iconic jewelry created for the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun.

The nearly-pure silica, canary yellow stone was used as part of King Tut’s Pectoral. The large breastplate is decorated in gold, silver and various jewels centered around the yellow, translucent gemstone.



Since the 29-million-year-old piece of glass was discovered inside King Tut’s tomb in the Egyptian desert in 1922, theories as to what it could be, or where it could have come from, have varied wildly.

British archaeologist Howard Carter, who found the stone originally, thought it a common kind of quartz. A decade later, British geographer Patrick Clayton claimed it was a piece of Libyan Desert Glass (LDG), a quartz-rich deposit of a dry lake that’s one of the rarest minerals on Earth.



In the 1990s, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele conducted his own analysis and appeared to confirm the LDG theory – that the material in question formed when a meteorite impacted and melted the quartz-rich desert sand.

The theory, however, had one flaw: no impact crater was ever found. Another study, published in 2013, claimed an ice comet may have exploded above the desert, creating a blast so hot that it melted the upper layers of the desert sand, forming the glass without leaving evidence of a crater.

Now, scientists claim to have solved the mystery once and for all. New analysis found mineral evidence from inside the glass itself that only forms during a meteorite impact, confirming the space rock had to strike Earth to create the hard yellow material.



The latest study by researchers in Curtin University’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and published in the journal Geology, hopes to end the decades-long debate as to whether the glass formed from an asteroid airburst or meteorite impact.

Atmospheric airbursts over Russia at Chelyabinsk in 2013 and Tunguska in 1908 provide dramatic examples of hazards posed by near-Earth objects (NEOs). These two events produced 0.5 and 5 Mt of energy, respectively, which dramatically affected surface environments and, in the case of Chelyabinsk, injured humans. Enigmatic natural glasses have been cited as geologic evidence of the threat posed by large airbursts. Libyan Desert Glass (LDG) is a natural glass found in western Egypt that formed ~29 m.y. ago, however its origin is disputed; the two main formation hypotheses include melting by meteorite impact or melting by a large, 100 Mt–class airburst. High-temperature fusion occurs during both processes, however airbursts do not produce shocked minerals; airbursts generate overpressures at the level of thousands of pascals in the atmosphere, whereas crater-forming impacts generate shockwaves at the level of billions of pascals on the ground. Here we report the presence in LDG of granular zircon grains that are comprised of neoblasts that preserve systematic crystallographic orientation relations that uniquely form during reversion from reidite, a 30 GPa high-pressure ZrSiO4 polymorph, back to zircon. Evidence of former reidite provides the first unequivocal substantiation that LDG was generated during an event that produced high-pressure shock waves; these results thus preclude an origin of LDG by airburst alone. Other glasses of disputed origin that contain zircon with evidence of former reidite, such as Australasian tektites, similarly were also likely made during crater-forming events. Public-policy discussions and planning to mitigate hazards from airbursts caused by NEOs are clearly warranted, but should be cautious about considering LDG or other glasses with evidence of high-pressure shock deformation as products of an airburst. At present, there are no confirmed examples of products from a 100 Mt–class airburst in the geologic record.

Geology (2019)