Farming Reached the Mediterranean from the Near-East Much Earlier than We Thought

Description

Agriculture spread into the Mediterranean from the Near East at the end of the Late Glacial period 13,000 years ago, thousands of years earlier than we previously thought, a study has revealed. This new hypothesis indicates that farmers then colonised other parts of Europe, bringing with them their agricultural practices.

Subject

There is an acute shortage of pre-Neolithic skeletal remains from which ancient samples can be taken in Mediterranean countries. Compared to previous studies, they were able to obtain this amount of genetic material by looking at modern DNA samples.

"We haven't been able to fill the gap with ancient DNA, so we found a way to get round that by looking at modern samples. Instead of dating the lineages across Europe as a whole we have dated them firstly in the Mediterranean area and then we have looked at what happens if you assume that they have arrived in that area and then moved on," lead author Martin Richards said.