An article at Cosmos Magazine remarks on an interesting finding about the development of European agriculture:
Researchers led by Choongwon Jeong of the Max Planck Institute of the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, analysed eight prehistoric humans, including a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gather from whom they extracted a complete genome.
They discovered that the Neolithic farmers were direct descendants of the hunter-gathers. The finding strongly indicates that farming became commonplace because the indigenous population changed its subsistence strategy, rather than because it was overrun by incomers who brought the practice with them.
But if the Anatolian farmers did not themselves physically hail from the east, the knowledge they used certainly did.
But those “Anatolian farmers” did spread what had learned throughout Europe and that’s reflected in the fossil record as far West as the Iberian peninsula and the British Isles.
In other words both people and ideas travel.
Elsewhere in the piece: “Today, their genetic signature is the single largest component of European genomes.”
True for Europe in general, but in Northern Europe the single largest component comes from a massive migration / replacement from Steppe pastoralists about 4,500 years ago, associated with corded-ware culture and presumably Indo-European language.
And as far as anyone has been able to determine the Basques remain a vestige of Europe’s pre-agricultural population.
It’s likely I’m descended from both the “steppe pastoralists” and the “Anatolian farmers”. My mother’s Irish haplotype is the most common maternal haplotype in Norway. My paternal haplotype is a fairly rare one (which I share with Michael Reynolds). In my case it originates in Switzerland. When asked about it my usual answer is “travelling salesmen”. The village in Switzerland from which my family came is on an ancient trade route that became the longest pilgrimage in Europe, going all the way from Poland to Spain, the Way of St. James (Jakobsweg).
“Today, their genetic signature is the single largest component of European genomes.”
So white privilege goes back that far?
Sorry, couldn’t resist.