The first peasants originated from the mixture of two groups of hunter-gatherers brought together in a dramatic way climate change 12,900 years ago, a study says.
Researchers have excavated a mine of new genetic information taken from the bones of previously found ancient humans.
The findings suggest that the world’s first farmers did not come from just one group Asiaas previously thought, before they spread west to Europe.
Indeed, the earliest farmers were the descendants of hunter-gatherers from both Europe and the Near East, the researchers say.
European hunter-gatherers had headed east after the last glacial maximum, a major climatic event in which temperatures plummeted.
When they reached the east, these European hunter-gatherers were then raised with the hunter-gatherers of the Near East.
Eventually, their descendants (who became the first farmers) headed west, essentially marking the spread of agriculture in Europe.
The first peasants were the descendants of hunter-gatherers from both Europe and the Near East. These hunter-gatherers from Europe headed east due to the last glacial maximum and then reproduced with Asian populations in Asia. Their descendants (the first farmers) headed west, marking the spread of agriculture in Europe
Humans have gone from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle (consisting of killing animals and searching for plants) to an agricultural lifestyle (where they planted crops and settled more in one place). Some of the earliest European farmers are depicted
“We now find that the first farmers of Anatolia and Europe emerged from a mixed population of hunter-gatherers from Europe and the Near East,” said study author Nina Marchi at the University of Bern.
It is already known that the first agriculture took place in the so-called “Fertile Crescent”, a region of the Near East about 11,000 years ago.
People began taming animals and plants in a stable place, rather than moving around happily in search of food.
Agriculture gradually spread from Asia westward through Europe, starting around 9,000 years ago in Greece.
Areas further west, such as Great Britain, were not affected for another 2,000 years and Scandinavia only later.
Genetic analyzes of prehistoric skeletons have already suggested that early European farmers descended from hunter-gatherer populations of Anatolia, the great peninsula of western Asia.
While it may very well be the case, this new study shows that Neolithic genetic origins cannot be clearly attributed to a single region.
Researcher analyzing ancient human remains for paleogenetic research at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany
The Klein7 individual from the Kleinhadersdorf site in the Weinviertel of Lower Austria, whose genome was analyzed in the paper
For their study, the researchers analyzed bone genomes, taken from skeletons of ancient peoples from a wide range of places, including Anatolia, Greece, Serbia, Austria and Germany.
The researchers used a technique called deep sequencing, in which the genome of each ancient human was sequenced multiple times.
This resulted in higher quality data and much more information than conventional analyzes based on shallower or partial sequencing.
“We get a lot more detail on the demographic history of those populations, including population divergence, expansion and the inference of mixing dates, which is really impossible to do before,” said study author Laurent Excoffier of the University of Bern, Switzerland.
The model was then refined with additional geographic, cultural, archaeological and climatic data.
The findings suggest that the early farmers represented a mix of Ice Age hunter-gatherer groups, spread from the Near East to Southeastern Europe.
Some of the earliest farmers emerged from the mixture of hunter-gatherers of a Western group and an already mixed group that lived in the east about 12,900 years ago.
These farmers who domesticated plants and animals then migrated west, eventually bringing their culture to Central Europe.
Today many people from all over Europe are descended from them.
Location of archaeological sites with newly sequenced genomes and additional genomes used for modeling
There was also evidence that western European hunter-gatherers went through a period of extremely low population during the last glacial maximum.
Descendants of European hunter-gatherers show less diversity than early farmers because their ancestors went through a very strong population bottleneck during which they lost a lot of diversity.
In the future, the team plans to further analyze ancient genomes from other geographic sites and times to understand cultures and populations that appeared during the different stages of the Stone Age and potentially the Bronze Age.
“Although our study has brought new findings to history, I think what it really shows is that it is worth investing in high-quality genomic data,” said Excoffier.
‘These ancient materials are limited and too valuable not to be optimally analyzed. We should extract as much information as possible, which will become lasting assets that could be shared. ‘
The study was published today in the journal Cell.