This is a lot of speculation to hang on scant data. It is what one would expect, but this is
also when data will come along and also surprise. Besides, 5,000 years ago was already at the
end of a 5000 year cycle of agricultural development that included the early
adoption of cattle husbandry that also needs to be better understood. It is hard to define Finns as hunter
gatherers when they ran reindeer herds and the same must be said of early
Europeans who ran cattle.
What was slower coming was grain culture and that was a mutually
beneficial adaptation in which separate cultures would readily merge as they
actually did.
Beyond that a larger southern population would steadily swamp smaller
northern populations through the simple weight of intermarriage. The disappearance of genetically distinct
groups is a constant development in global history.
What evidence we have is that the agricultural tool kit of the Middle
East sprang out into the Mediterranean
littoral some 6000 years ago or contemporaneous with the emergence of
Sumeria. Of course it was fussier than
that, but it is certain that colonies were established and the new methods
became available to local populations.
The actual spread into even Scandinavia took another thousand years.
Recall though that the locals were generally settled in a cattle
herders thus it was a merger.
Stone Age remains chronicle
rise of agriculture in Europe
Analysis of Stone Age remains
shows that farming moved north across the continent
Thursday, April 26, 2012
By Spero News
5,000-year-old Stone Age
remains studied in Sweden.
An analysis of 5,000-year-old
DNA taken from the Stone Age remains of four humans excavated in Sweden is
helping researchers understand how agriculture spread throughout Europe long
ago. According to Pontus Skoglund from Uppsala University
in Sweden and colleagues, the practice of farming appears to have moved with
migrants from southern to northern Europe.
Agricultural know-how wasn't
the only thing that early European farmers introduced to the region. Based on
their genetic data,Skoglund and the researchers say that Europe's first
farmers eventually mixed their genes with the hunter-gatherers who lived there
-- a relationship that set the stage for today's modern European genome.
"We analyzed genetic data
from two different cultures--one of hunter-gatherers and one of farmers--that
existed around the same time, less than 400 kilometers (249 miles) away from
each other," said Skoglund. "After comparing our data to modern
human populations in Europe, we found that the Stone Age hunter-gatherers were
outside the genetic variation of modern populations but most similar to Finnish
individuals, and that the farmer we analyzed closely matched Mediterranean
populations."
These findings likely have
something to do with the expansion of farming across Europe, according to the
researchers.
"When you put these
findings in archaeological context, a picture begins to emerge of Stone Age
farmers migrating from south to north across Europe," said Skoglund.
"And the result of this migration, 5,000 years later, looks like a mixture
of these two groups in the modern population."
The researchers report their
data in the 27 April issue of the journalScience, which is published by AAAS,
the nonprofit international science society.
Most experts agree that the
agricultural way of life originated about 11,000 years ago in the Near East
before it reached the European continent some 5,000 years later. But this new
study should help scientists understand the impact of that agricultural
revolution on human diversity.
Skoglund and his colleagues
performed their analysis with the ancient remains of three hunter-gatherers who
were associated with the Pitted Ware Culture and excavated from the island of
Gotland, Sweden, along with those of a farmer, who was associated with the
Funnel Beaker Culture and excavated from G--m parish, Sweden.
"We know that the
hunter-gatherer remains were buried in flat-bed grave sites, in stark contrast
to the megalithic sites that the farmers built," said Mattias Jakobsson, a
senior author of the Sciencereport, also from Uppsala University.
"The farmer we analyzed was buried under such a megalith, and that's just
one difference that helps distinguish the two cultures."
Ancient hunter-gatherers
had a distinct genetic signature that was similar to that of today's northern Europeans,
while the farmer's genetic signature closely resembles that of southern
Europeans, according to the researchers. Interestingly, these ancient genomes
don't share many similarities with modern-day Swedes, despite their discovery
and excavations in Sweden.
"The fact that the
hunter-gatherers are most similar to Finns, Orcadians and other
extreme-northern populations suggests that they were indeed the last major part
of the Mesolithic meta-population that populated large parts of Europe before
the early farmers appeared," said Anders G--rstr--f Uppsala University,
who is another senior author of the Science report. "And the
fact that the farmer is most similar to southeastern Europeans makes sense too,
as that is from where the spread of agriculture north and eastward
started."
"The results suggest that
agriculture spread across Europe in concert with a migration of people,"
added Skoglund. "If farming had spread solely as a cultural process, we
would not expect to see a farmer in the north with such genetic affinity to
southern populations."
The researchers suggest that
Europe's early, intrepid farmers traveled north across the continent, settled
in the northern regions and eventually mixed with resident hunter-gatherer
populations. Consequently, the genomes of most modern Europeans were likely
shaped by this prehistoric migration that first brought farming to the
continent, they say.
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