Fertile Crescent farmers took DNA to Germany
Rebecca Jenkins, ABC Science, 10/11/2010
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DNA evidence suggests that immigrants from the Ancient Near East brought farming to Europe, and spread the practice to the region’s hunter-gatherer communities, according to Australian-led research. A genetic study of ancient DNA, published in PLoS Biology today, adds crucial information to the long-running debate about how farming was introduced to Europe’s nomadic hunter-gatherer societies almost 8000 years ago. An international research team, led by University of Adelaide experts, compared ancient DNA from the remains of Early Neolithic farmers at a burial site in central Germany with a large genetic database of European and Eurasian populations. They found that these early farmers had a unique and characteristic genetic signature, suggesting “significant demographic input from the Near East during the onset of farming”.