Urbanization and genetic homogenization in the medieval Low Countries revealed through a ten-century paleogenomic study of the city of Sint-Truiden.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Processes shaping the formation of the present-day population structure in highly urbanized Northern Europe are still poorly understood. Gaps remain in our understanding of when and how currently observable regional differences emerged and what impact city growth, migration, and disease pandemics during and after the Middle Ages had on these processes.

Results

We perform low-coverage sequencing of the genomes of 338 individuals spanning the eighth to the eighteenth centuries in the city of Sint-Truiden in Flanders, in the northern part of Belgium. The early/high medieval Sint-Truiden population was more heterogeneous, having received migrants from Scotland or Ireland, and displayed less genetic relatedness than observed today between individuals in present-day Fla

SUBMITTER: Beneker O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12090598 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature