A new study of the continent’s ancestry shows that modern Europeans can trace their heritage to three ‘tribes’ in the last 10,000 years.
Whether you’re overweight, sleep well or like coffee could all be down to whether you’ve got more hunter/gatherer, Steppe sheep herder or Anatolian farmer in your genetic makeup.
Interbreeding moulded the characteristics we see today — from physique to health and lifestyle.
For example, tall stature with a strong build and wider hips and waist indicates Steppe ancestry.
High cholesterol is also more common in this group — which tends to be lower in individuals carrying specific genes from hunter-gatherers.
The latter are also linked to a higher body mass index (BMI), say scientists.
Migrants who introduced agriculture also brought a reduced waist-hip ratio — and lower heart rate.
Senior author Professor Luca Pagani, of the University of Padova, Italy, said: ‘Our results show the ancient populations were differentiated enough to contribute their own signature to the physiology and appearance of contemporary Europeans.’
They were separated for thousands of years and evolved in different directions.
Mass movements then led to them having children with each other, shaping most of the genetic make-up.
Previous analyses have relied on the information contained in ancient genomes — a human’s blueprint contained within the nucleus of every cell.
They described some biological traits such as milk digestion, height and skin, eye or hair colour.
First author Dr Davide Marnetto, of the University of Tartu, Estonia, said: ‘With our study, instead, we asked how the physiology and appearance of contemporary Europeans are influenced by these ancient footprints that are still embedded in their genomes.’
The findings in Current Biology are based on data from 50,000 individuals who volunteered their DNA for the Estonian Biobank.
Dr Marnetto explained: ‘We specifically measured whether having a certain feature, such as high cholesterol, is coupled with having inherited more variants from a specific ancestry, exactly in those DNA regions influencing cholesterol levels.’
The international team also identified significant differences ranging from eye and hair pigmentation to sleep patterns, a girl’s first period — and coffee consumption.
They observed subtle effects by contrasting particular mutations — using the rest of the genome as a control.
Co-author Prof Mait Metspalu, also from Tartu, said: ‘This means it is misleading and naive at best to use any given trait to guess the dominant ancestry across one’s genome.’
To give a biological outcome, it does not just matter how much of a certain ancestry one has in their genome.
Where and which genes it contributed also counts — even for complex traits encoded by many.
It is also simplistic to interpret patterns across Europe only as the abundance of an ancestry without considering environment and other evolutionary forces.
Prof Metspalu went on: ‘Furthermore, it is important to remark the link we made between a given trait and a given ancestry does not imply such a trait was predominant in a particular ancient population or absent in all other groups.’
Focus on the Estonian and ultimately European population was due to the sheer amount of data available compared with other ethnicities.
Dr Marnetto added: ‘There is absolutely no evidence indicating Europe encompasses higher genetic diversity and more complex heritage than other continents.
‘An increased coverage of samples from across the world is crucial to enhance our understanding on how past human history shaped the trait variability displayed by contemporary individuals.’
The first layer of European ancestry occurred before the Ice Age 40,000 years ago with the indigenous hunter-gatherers.
But 7,000 years ago they were swept up in a migration of people from the Middle East, who introduced farming.
About 5,000 years ago, herders called the Yamnaya came from the eastern Steppe region, in present day Ukraine and Russia.
These horse-riding metal workers may have brought Indo-European languages with them.
Today this language family comprises most of the tongues spoken in Europe.
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