Posted on 01/19/2010 3:44:16 PM PST by decimon
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The conquerors who spread their seed across Europe in ancient times were prosperous farmers who imported their skills from the Middle East, researchers reported on Tuesday.
A study of the Y chromosome -- passed down with very little change from father to son -- suggests that the men of Europe are descended from populations that moved into Europe 10,000 years ago from the "Fertile Crescent", which stretches from Egypt across the Middle East into present-day Iraq.
"Maybe, back then, it was just sexier to be a farmer," Dr. Patricia Balaresque of Britain's University of Leicester said in a statement.
The researchers studied the DNA of 2,574 men from across Europe, they report in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Biology, available at http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000285.
Because the Y chromosome changes so little from one generation to the next, changes can be registered by measuring random genetic mutations. This "molecular clock" painted a picture of genetic spread across Europe from the Middle East, where farming originated.
"We focused on the commonest Y-chromosome lineage in Europe, carried by about 110 million men," Balaresque said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Shane ping.
how come white folks (european) never know how to farm?
Who were white? The then indigenous people? The migrating newcomers? Both? Neither?
If there's an answer then I don't know what it is. In any case, we whities are from this stock.
Those Europeans they test are probably Muslims that just showed up last week! lol
I have wondered why the N1 dna tag was so rare concidering that they introduced FARMING. Maybe they got et by those that followed or et themselves.
Better to raise a boar than to hunt one.
That hunter stuff may seem romantic but it must have been a truly Hobbesian existence.
If you were a female from a tribe gnawing bones and digging roots out of the frozen ground while a neighboring tribe was relaxing and eating good, joining the visiting team would look pretty good.
The latter group would be less apt to starve over the winter. But then, the former group might be better fighters and so slaughter the latter group. Sounds a lot like...history. ;-)
Its pretty likely that the farmers were effective hunters as well.
Kind of a silly discussion. It’s perfectly obvious why farmers displace hunters.
Population densities 50 to 100 times greater will do that.
50 guys going into battle against 2500 are pretty likely to lose.
Farmers did not always have a more secure food supply. Drought, bugs, raids, etc.
Recent studies have shown that hunter-gatherers didn’t have to work as hard and probably enjoyed life more than early farmers.
But hunter-gatherers were apex predators. Like others of this group (big cats, wolves, bears, etc.) they require truly huge territories. Very thin on the ground, by definition. Except in a very few favored places like the Pacific NW.
Famers can support a whole lot more people on the same ground. Thickly settled always beats thinly settled.
Until we get into nomadic horse archer raiders from the steppes. But that’s a whole other story.
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Thanks decimon. |
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Is that a zucchini or ya just glad ya seen me?
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