Tracking Gene Flow Between Wild Boar and Domestic Pigs in (Time and) Space

Pork is the most widely eaten meat in the world and yet the path of domestication taken by wild boar has yet to be fully deciphered. It is well established that European Pigs were first domesticated in Anatolia around 9000 years ago, and then were spread throughout the rest of Europe by early farmers. Yet after only a few thousand years, domestic pigs in Europe had completely lost their Near Eastern mtDNA signatures and instead acquired the mtDNA haplotypes found in local European wild boar. Through the analysis of hundreds of ancient mitochondrial pig genomes, we confirm the previous finding of Near Eastern mtDNA replacement, and via the generation of a dozen high-quality ancient pig genomes reveal the complexity of recurrent gene flow between introduced domesticated pigs and endogenous wild boar. Furthermore, by analyses of these multiple genomes we test whether artificial selection has acted on Near Eastern haplotype and assess whether the admixture from wild to domestic was sex biased (and possibly linked to husbandry practices).