Publication Date:
2013-10-12
Description:
Debate on the ancestry of Europeans centers on the interplay between Mesolithic foragers and Neolithic farmers. Foragers are generally believed to have disappeared shortly after the arrival of agriculture. To investigate the relation between foragers and farmers, we examined Mesolithic and Neolithic samples from the Blatterhohle site. Mesolithic mitochondrial DNA sequences were typical of European foragers, whereas the Neolithic sample included additional lineages that are associated with early farmers. However, isotope analyses separate the Neolithic sample into two groups: one with an agriculturalist diet and one with a forager and freshwater fish diet, the latter carrying mitochondrial DNA sequences typical of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. This indicates that the descendants of Mesolithic people maintained a foraging lifestyle in Central Europe for more than 2000 years after the arrival of farming societies.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Bollongino, Ruth -- Nehlich, Olaf -- Richards, Michael P -- Orschiedt, Jorg -- Thomas, Mark G -- Sell, Christian -- Fajkosova, Zuzana -- Powell, Adam -- Burger, Joachim -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2013 Oct 25;342(6157):479-81. doi: 10.1126/science.1245049. Epub 2013 Oct 10.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Palaeogenetics Group, Institute of Anthropology, Johannes Gutenberg University, 55099 Mainz, Germany.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24114781" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Agriculture/*history
;
Animal Feed/*history
;
Animals
;
Animals, Domestic
;
*Anthropology
;
Base Sequence
;
DNA, Mitochondrial/genetics/history
;
Europe
;
*Evolution, Molecular
;
History, Ancient
;
Humans
;
Molecular Sequence Data
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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