BERN, SWITZERLAND—Nature News reports that population geneticist Laurent Excoffier of the University of Bern and his colleagues sequenced the high-quality genomes of 15 hunter-gatherers and early farmers whose remains were recovered in southwest Asia, along the migration route of the Danube River, and in western Anatolia, and found that the ancient Anatolian farmers descended from the repeated mixing of hunter-gatherer groups from Europe and the Middle East. Some of these groups nearly died out some 25,000 years ago, at the height of the last Ice Age, but as the climate warmed, the populations recovered. Then, some 8,000 years ago, early farmers began to spread from Anatolia into Europe, where they occasionally mixed with local hunter-gatherers. “It’s really the spread of people, of farming communities, that brought farming further west,” Excoffier explained. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Cell. For more, go to "Europe's First Farmers."
Genetic Study Clarifies Spread of Farming Into Europe
News May 12, 2022
Recommended Articles
Top 10 Discoveries of the Decade January/February 2021
Neanderthal Genome
Vindija Cave, Croatia, 2010
Top 10 Discoveries of 2020 January/February 2021
Largest Viking DNA Study
Northern Europe and Greenland
Off the Grid September/October 2012
Aquincum, Hungary
Off the Grid July/August 2012
Pucará de Tilcara, Argentina
-
Features March/April 2022
The Last King of Babylon
Investigating the reign of Mesopotamia’s most eccentric ruler
(iStock/HomoCosmicos) -
Features March/April 2022
Paradise Lost
Archaeologists in Nova Scotia are uncovering evidence of thriving seventeenth-century French colonists and their brutal expulsion
(© Jamie Robertson) -
Features March/April 2022
Exploring Notre Dame's Hidden Past
The devastating 2019 fire is providing an unprecedented look at the secrets of the great cathedral
(Patrick Zachmann) -
Letter from Doggerland March/April 2022
Mapping a Vanished Landscape
Evidence of a lost Mesolithic world lies deep beneath the dark waters of the North Sea
(M.J. Thomas)