The spread of farming out of the Balkans and into the rest of Europe followed two distinct routes: An initial expansion represented by the Impressa and Cardial traditions, which followed the Northern Mediterranean coastline; and another expansion represented by the LBK (Linearbandkeramik) tradition, which followed the Danube River into Central Europe. Although genomic data now exist from samples representing the second migration, such data have yet to be successfully generated from the initial Mediterranean migration. To address this, we generated the complete genome of a 7,400-year-old Cardial individual (CB13) from Cova Bonica in Vallirana (Barcelona), as well as partial nuclear data from five others excavated from different sites in Spain and Portugal. CB13 clusters with all previously sequenced early European farmers and modern-day Sardinians. Furthermore, our analyses suggest that both Cardial and LBK peoples derived from a common ancient population located in or around the Balkan Peninsula. The Iberian Cardial genome also carries a discernible hunter-gatherer genetic signature that likely was not acquired by admixture with local Iberian foragers. Our results indicate that retrieving ancient genomes from similarly warm Mediterranean environments such as the Near East is technically feasible.

The Centre for GeoGenetics is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF94). Cova Bonica work is supported by Servei d’Arqueologia i Paleontologia (2014/100639), Generalitat de Catalunya (2014SGR-108), and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (HAR2011-26193) projects. H.S. was supported by an ERC Synergy Grant (FP7/2007-2013/319209); C.L.-F. by a FEDER and Spanish Government Grant BFU2012-34157; and S.C. by a grant 2014 SGR 464 from Departament d’Economia i Coneixement (Generalitat de Catalunya). D.C.S-G. acknowledges support from the Generalitat Valenciana (VALi + d APOSTD/2014/123), the BBVA Foundation (I Ayudas a Investigadores, Innovadores y Creadores Culturales), and the European Union (FP7/2007-2013—MSCA-COFUND, no. 245743 via a Braudel-IFERFMSH). I.O. was funded by a predoctoral fellowship from the Basque Government (DEUI), and M.S. and J.D. by postdoctoral grants from Fundaçao para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) and Juan de la Cierva Subprogram (JCI-2011-09543), respectively. Alignment data are available through the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) at the accession code SRP057056.