New Research Links Cultural and Genetic Development of Early Europeans Over Thousands of Years
A new DNA study reveals how different populations intermingled during the European Stone Age and how isolated some populations actually were. The study, conducted by researchers at Uppsala University in collaboration with an international research team, generated new genetic data on 56 individuals from Central and Eastern Europe during the Stone Age. The findings were published in the journal Communications Biology.
‘This kind of research requires a broad interdisciplinary discussion. The discussion has been very fruitful,” says Tiina Mattila, a population geneticist at Uppsala University and lead author of the study.
Over the past 15 years, DNA research has pieced together Europe’s Stone Age history. Before the spread of agriculture in Europe, different groups of hunter-gatherers existed in different parts of Eurasia, and they interacted with each other. This study shows that the interbreeding of these hunter-gatherer genetic lineages was strongly linked to geography. Several previous DNA studies on European prehistory have also shown that the spread of agriculture was strongly related to gene flow from Anatolia. That group was genetically and culturally quite different from European hunter-gatherers. However, agriculture spread in different ways in different geographic areas, resulting in different ethnic groups mixing in different ways in different parts of Europe.
These differences in genetic lineages and cultural intermingling tell us about the power relations between different groups,” says Tiina Mattila.
Although it is often assumed that communal cemeteries are family cemeteries, our research shows that this was not always the case.” This shows that even in the Stone Age, other social factors were involved in burial practices,” says Helena Malmström, archaeogeneticist at Uppsala University.
A more comprehensive picture of the genetic history of Stone Age Europeans has emerged in recent years, and this new study adds more details to the puzzle. Some areas of Europe, such as the Dnipro River delta, have been inhabited by isolated hunter-gatherer groups for thousands of years,” said Matthias Jakobsson, professor of genetics at Uppsala University.
Source: New Research Links Cultural and Genetic Development of Early Europeans Over Thousands of Years