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Thread: Migrants from the Near East 'brought farming to Europe'

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    Default Migrants from the Near East 'brought farming to Europe'

    Farming in Europe did not just spread by word-of-mouth, but was introduced by migrants from the ancient Near East, a study suggests.

    Scientists analysed DNA from the 8,000 year-old remains of early farmers found at an ancient graveyard in Germany.

    They compared the genetic signatures to those of modern populations and found similarities with the DNA of people living in today's Turkey and Iraq.

    The study appears in the journal PLoS Biology.

    Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide in Australia led the team of international researchers from Germany, Russia and Australia.

    Up until now, many scientists believed that the concept of farming was brought to Europe merely by the transfer of ideas. They thought that European hunter-gatherers living in close proximity to ancient farmers in the Near East were spreading the information about more settled ways and agriculture further north.

    But the recent study challenges that hypothesis.

    "We have shown that the first farmers in Europe had a much greater genetic input from the Near East and Anatolia, than from populations of Stone Age hunter-gatherers who already existed in the area," said Dr Haak.

    A co-author, Professor Alan Cooper, also of the University of Adelaide, agreed.

    "This helps to overturn current thinking, which accepts that the first European farming populations were constructed largely from existing populations of hunter-gatherers, who had either rapidly learned to farm or interbred with the invaders," he said.

    Common ancestors

    The scientists used the most modern techniques to extract the mitochondrial DNA - genetic code that is passed down via the maternal line - from the 8,000-year-old bones of 22 people buried at a graveyard at the town of Derenburg in Saxony-Anhalt in central Germany.

    Past studies had already confirmed that the remains belonged to ancient European farmers from the Early Neolithic "Linear Pottery Culture"

    The researchers then compared defining DNA segments known as halotypes with those of people living across Eurasia today.

    The existence of the same haplotypes in people from different regions shows that they share a common ancestor.

    And that was exactly what Dr Haak's team found.

    Richard Villems from the University of Tartu and Estonian Biocentre in Estonia, a co-author of the study, called the results exciting, but said that further studies might yield even more important results.

    "The ancient DNA is much better preserved in cold Europe than in warmer places," he told BBC News.

    "But if it were possible, and hopefully it will be possible in the future, to match it with some 8,000-10,000 year-old samples from the Near East, then it would really be perfect."

    The analysis also revealed that the hunter-gatherer population living in Europe did not die out as a result of the "invasion" of the migrants from the Near East.

    Instead, the two groups mingled together, which resulted in "mixed" ancestry, signs of which the team discovered at the graveyard

    Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project, a large-scale genetic survey of human migration, explained to BBC News that the farmers moved via a route from the Near East and Anatolia, where farming evolved around 11,000 years ago, to south-eastern and then Central Europe.

    They then continued moving further north, possibly because of climate change, mixing with the indigenous population along the way.

    These conclusions, he added, are an important argument in the nearly half-century long debate about the origins of farming in Europe.

    "It seems to point to a natural migration of human beings out of the Near East moving into Europe, spreading the farming culture," said Dr Wells.

    Source

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    Interesting.

    Fits well into the ongoing discussions on the 'Aesir' and 'March of the Titans' threads regarding the debate over whether there was contact between northern Europe and west Asia thousands of years ago.

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    The important part of the study is that it backs up the idea that you can associate specific racial/genetic types with specific pottery/technological cultures. This has been a mainstay of Physical Anthropology and especially Coon's works; but in recent times, no-racers have tried to argue that cultures, technology, and language spread through peaceful diffusion. Which is ludicrous for anyone who's actually studied history.

    It also shows that most of Europe's genetics was formed in the Neolithic and not the Paleolithic, pretty much sinking Bryan Sykes and Stephen Oppenheimer's theories.

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    Quote Originally Posted by SwordoftheVistula View Post
    Interesting.

    Fits well into the ongoing discussions on the 'Aesir' and 'March of the Titans' threads regarding the debate over whether there was contact between northern Europe and west Asia thousands of years ago.
    My mtDNA is N1a1... does that mean I'm an "Aesir"
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_N1a_(mtDNA)
    Six of 24 skeletons from Linear Pottery Culture sites were found to be members of the N1a haplogroup (see Neolithic European section). N1a was also identified in remains from a 6200 year-old megalithic long mound near Prissé-la-Charričre, France. A 2500 year old fossil of a Scytho-Siberian in the Altai Republic, easternmost representative of the Scythians, was found to be a member of N1a1.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Curtis24 View Post
    The important part of the study is that it backs up the idea that you can associate specific racial/genetic types with specific pottery/technological cultures. This has been a mainstay of Physical Anthropology and especially Coon's works; but in recent times, no-racers have tried to argue that cultures, technology, and language spread through peaceful diffusion. Which is ludicrous for anyone who's actually studied history.

    It also shows that most of Europe's genetics was formed in the Neolithic and not the Paleolithic, pretty much sinking Bryan Sykes and Stephen Oppenheimer's theories.
    Exactly, such studies are breakthroughs on various levels and interestingly, by studying those populations, we might even be able to conclude something about the "Indo-European" impact too, because if the Corded Ware people were neither close to Mesolithic Central Europeans, nor that much to LBK, but rather show Eastern connections and their haplogroups spread throughout most of Europe then, we can even prove the Indo-European expansion as a biological expansion too.

    I remember very well many academics talking about "how stupid the idea is, to use pottery and artefacts in general for identifying a people, because that would be like looking at Coca Cola or Jeans..."

    Well, not exactly, not THEN.

    Some even tried to say that the Bell Beaker were no people on their own, though they were so completely different from many older and local populations.

    Or that ethnic cleansing and male dominance - killing hostile males and taking the women, never took place, but it was always about "climate and cultural change" if something changed at all.

    In some years from now, if there is an open debate, all those thoughts will be as ridiculous as the idea of the "peaceful Indians", even more idiotic, the "peaceful civilisation of the Mayan people".

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