Middle-Eastern Farmers 'Civilised' Europe

Farmers from the Middle East literally carried civilisation with them into Europe, 10,000 years ago, according to new genetic analysis. It reveals that modern inhabitants of Paris, Athens and Berlin share, on average, 50 per cent of their genes with people from Baghdad, Tehran, Ankara and Damascus.

That means farmers must have emigrated en masse from the Middle East into Europe, mixing and mingling with the hunter-gatherers of the day. It also helps settle the long running debate of whether immigrants brought agriculture directly to Europe or if the idea simply spread west by word of mouth.

The development of agriculture is considered to be one of the most important steps leading to modern civilisation. Archaeologists have shown that agriculture moved north-west through Europe at about one kilometre per year, based on the dating of clay pots and other tools.

But how this happened has been less clear. In the 1970s, scientists first proposed that farmers must have moved west, as certain genetic traits like eye colour seem to follow the archaeological sweep across Europe. But later studies favoured the idea of a slow cultural exchange of ideas.

In the mix

In 2000, for example, a study published in Science examined 22 genetic markers on the Y chromosome of over 1000 men and concluded that less than a quarter of modern European genes come from Middle-Eastern stock. This implies very little mixing between the populations.

But now Lounès Chikhi from University College London and his colleagues say that analysis was too simplistic. Using a different statistical model to look at the same data, they found that Middle-Eastern farmers contributed at least half of the genes of modern Europeans, ranging from 85 to 100 per cent in Greece to 15 to 30 per cent in France. That indicates farmers moved en masse across Europe.

The genetic proportions estimated by Chikhi look about right, says Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, at Stanford University. Cavalli-Sforza was one of the first to propose that middle-eastern farmers moved west, but was also one of the authors of the Science paper that suggested the opposite

He says he will now take a close look at the methods used by Chikhi, but warns: "A possible source of error is generated by the difficulties of separating pre-agricultural, agricultural and post-agricultural migrations from the Middle East."

The genetic proportions estimated by Chikhi look about right, says Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, at Stanford University, who is keen to have a close look at Chikhi's methodology. Cavalli-Sforza was one of the first to propose that middle-eastern farmers moved west, but was also one of the authors of the Science paper that suggested the opposite

The Original Story from: newscientist