Replies

Up until now, many scientists believed that the concept of farming was brought to Europe merely by the transfer of ideas.

I've never heard that. Europe has seen wave after wave of peoples from the East moving in. The Lap people in Finland are basically Asians. The Turks aren't like Arabs -- they are also Asians. Huns and all the other barbarians came from Asia. Why would this be a recent (1-2000 years ago) phenomenon? Why wouldn't this have happened at the beginning of agriculture?

The notion that people in the Near East and people in Europe had enough language in common that this sort of idea could transfer seems quite spurious. It seems far more likely like people just walked on over and said "We could plant seeds here. Let's stop and stay a while."

First off, the Lapp people, or Sa'ami, are NOT ASIANS. They are, if you will, essentially the same white folk who wintered over in the last ice age in the Western European refugia.

They are more like your ancestors of 15,000 years ago than you are. Think of them as the "original white people" but more adapted to sub-arctic climates.

Second, before the Turkish invasions from about the 900s to 1300s in the Middle East, most of the people in Anatolia (today's Turkish main homeland) were of Celtic, Greek or Semitic ancestry. The Celts and Greeks "moved in" during the First Millenium BCE, and this is talking about people all the way back to 10,000 BCE, so they'd be mostly descendants of folks who survived the last ice age in the Middle Eastern refugia ~ or the predecessors to those we call Semites today.

"The Lap people in Finland are basically Asians."

The Sa'ami consider Lap or Laplander a derogatory term these days. I have some Sa'ami DNA but it doesn't bother me. I do dislike 'Redneck' somewhat though. (ahem)

Where Do The Finns Come From?

"It seems far more likely like people just walked on over and said "We could plant seeds here. Let's stop and stay a while."

Stephan Oppenheimer says in his book, The Origins Of The British, that his studies does not support a physical migration of people from the Middle East and that farming was just adopted from village to village by the people who were already at any location. In fact, he said that once a DNA haplogroup settled in an area, it was never replaced by another.

For example, the (majority) DNA of the Brits today is the same DNA that arrived there at the end of the Ice Age. It was wave after wave of essentially the same people migrating north and west out of the Iberian Ice Age refuge. Mostly halpogroups (yDNA)R1b and (mtDMA) 'H' of which are 65%+ of Western Europeans.

Renee Zellweger is Sa'ami.