Blood groups in ancient Europe 21 September 2017 Human blood groups are interesting from both medical and evolutionary perspectives. Different blood groups confer resistance or susceptibility to a wide range of infectious disease and, likely as a result of this, have been under long-term balancing selection across primates. They also vary dramatically in frequency across human populations and, probably, across time as well. Here, we use ancient DNA to estimate the frequencies of the two most commonly discussed groups – specifically the ABO and Rhesus systems – in Europe over the past ten thousand years. We show that some ancient populations of Europe had blood group frequencies that were more extreme than any present-day population. In particular, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers had a higher frequency … Continue reading Blood groups in ancient Europe