Early farmers from across Europe directly descended from Neolithic Aegeans

Bradley, Daniel; Cassidy, Lara

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1523951113

Early farmers from across Europe directly descended from Neolithic Aegeans

Files

PNAS-2016-Hofmanová-6886-91.pdf (3.34 MB)

Date

2016

Authors

Bradley, Daniel

Cassidy, Lara

Access

openAccess

Citation

Hofmanov?? Z, Kreutzer S, Hellenthal G, Sell C, Diekmann Y, D??ez-Del-Molino D, Van Dorp L, L??pez S, Kousathanas A, Link V, Kirsanow K, Cassidy L.M, Martiniano R, Strobel M, Scheu A, Kotsakis K, Halstead P, Triantaphyllou S, Kyparissi-Apostolika N, Urem-Kotsou D, Ziota C, Adaktylou F, Gopalan S, Bobo D.M, Winkelbach L, Bl??cher J, Unterl??nder M, Leuenberger C, ? ilingiro??lu C, Horejs B, Gerritsen F, Shennan S.J, Bradley D.G, Currat M, Veeramah K.R, Wegmann D, Thomas M.G, Papageorgopoulou C, Burger J, Early farmers from across Europe directly descended from Neolithic Aegeans, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113, 25, 2016, 6886 - 6891

Abstract

One of the most enduring and widely debated questions in prehistoric archaeology concerns the origins of Europe’s earliest farmers: Were they the descendants of local hunter-gatherers, or did they migrate from southwestern Asia, where farming began? We recover genome-wide DNA sequences from early farmers on both the European and Asian sides of the Aegean to reveal an unbroken chain of ancestry leading from central and southwestern Europe back to Greece and northwestern Anatolia. Our study provides the coup de grâce to the notion that farming spread into and across Europe via the dissemination of ideas but without, or with only a limited, migration of people.