Local ancestry inference identifies robust evidence of selection in Neolithic Europe

Abstract

Abstract During the European Neolithic, migrating Anatolian farmers admixed with local hunter-gatherers, coinciding with major shifts in diet, environment, and lifestyle that imposed strong selective pressures. Local ancestry inference is widely used to detect selection following admixture, but most methods were developed and validated on present-day populations. Their performance in ancient DNA—where reference panels are smaller, data are sparser, and admixture is more ancient—remains unresolved. We benchmarked eight local ancestry inference methods on 176 imputed Neolithic genomes. While individual-level ancestry estimates are highly correlated across methods, inferred tract lengths and admixture time estimates vary by an order of magnitude. Overall, we recommend Gnomix or RFMix for general use. We also investigated our ability to detect natural selection using LAI. Integrating results across methods and replicating in two independent datasets (n = 378 and 1,121), we identified a robust ancestry deviation at FADS1/2, consistent with adaptation in metabolism. We also identified IRAK4 (innate immunity) as a candidate locus, but with less consistent signals across methods. Finally, we replicate previous reports of excess hunter-gatherer ancestry at the HLA, but these results are inconsistent across methods and suggest that they may be affected by bias in local ancestry inference. Our findings demonstrate that while local ancestry inference recovers biologically meaningful signals in ancient genomes, results can be sensitive to the methods used for inference, particularly in complex regions like the HLA. Method choice critically influences inferred ancestry patterns and selection signals, underscoring the importance of multimethod validation.