Pre-HISTORY: Farming culture traveled to Europe by boat, not overland

Credit: Modified NASA map

Genetic markers in modern populations indicate the Neolithic migrants who brought farming to Europe traveled from the Levant into Anatolia and then island hopped to Greece via Crete and then to Sicily and north into Southern Europe.

Here's a story just waiting to be written, a story of many themes.  According to new genetic research, new stone age or neolithic farmers introduced agriculture into Europe by leapfrogging along the coast by boat.  This fact sets up a conflict between existing populations of old stone  age or paleolithic hunter gatherers who roam a set geography in search of food with farmers who establish villages and claim tracts of land for their work, possibly interrupting ancient hunting patterns.

Farmers living in permanent settlements have different social structures than small groups of hunter gatherers, which adds to the conflict, undoubtedly flowing from underlying resentments and jealousies.  Living in permanent settlements allows for the accumulation of wealth as hunter gatherers have to carry everything they own on their backs.

For an example from our own recent history, compare the relative wealth of the Amerinds of the Pacific Northwest who lived in permanent settlements and the Amerind cultures of the plains who moved frequently following their food sources.  

Here's the story, and best wishes on your book.  I can't wait to read it.

Seafarers brought Neolithic culture to Europe

How Neolithic peoples found their way to Europe has long been a subject of debate. 

Between 8,800 to 10,000 B.C., in the Levant, the region in the eastern Mediterranean that today encompasses Israel and the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and part of southern Turkey, people learned how to domesticate wild grains. This accomplishment eventually allowed them to abandon their lives as nomadic hunter-gathers and become farmers.

Archaeologists use this transition from hunter-gathering to farming to mark the end of the Paleolithic era, or Old Stone Age, and the beginning of the Neolithic era, or New Stone age.

Archaeological evidence indicates that by 7,000 B.C. Neolithic farmers had moved into Europe. They introduced their ideas and genes to the native Paleolithic people, who had migrated into the continent 30,000 to 40,000 years before.

The transportation methods and travel routes the Neolithic used have long been questioned. Did they travel overland, by migrating first north from the Levant into Anatolia, a region that is now central Turkey, across the Bosporus and then on through the Balkans into central Europe?

Or did they travel by sea? And if so, by what route? Did they travel directly from the coast of Levant to Crete and then across to Greece, as one theory holds? Or did they first travel north into Anatolia and then island hop from Turkey across a large group of islands, called the Dodecanese, to Crete and, from Crete, on to Greece and Europe?

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To try to find an answer to those questions, an international team of researchers led by George Stamatoyannopoulos, professor of medicine and genome sciences at the University of Washington, looked at genetic markers found in 32 modern populations from the Near East and North Africa, Anatolia, the Aegean Islands and Crete, mainland Greece, and Southern and Northern Europe.

In this study, Stamatoyannopoulos and his colleagues compared the proportion, or frequency, of certain markers, called single nucleotide polymorphisms, (SNPs) or "snips," appearing in these different populations. When a migrating people moves into an area and intermixes with the local population, they introduce their genes into the native gene pool and acquire genes from the native peoples. This introduction of genes from one population to another is called "gene flow."

As subsequent generations continue the migration and the gene exchange is repeated again and again, the frequency of SNPs in the migrating population will reflect this genetic mixing. It is detectable in the populations they left behind.

In their study, the researchers hypothesized that the Neolithic migrants to Europe had primarily traveled by sea. They tested their hypothesis by comparing the frequency of the SNPs in populations that now inhabit the Levant, Turkey, the islands of the Aegean and the Mediterranean and Europe and North Africa.

The analysis confirmed the Neolithic migrants arose from the Levant. They then appear to have migrated first to Anatolia in central Turkey, across the Dodecanese, to Crete and then to Laconia at the southeastern tip of Greece.

As the migration continued, some populations moved north into northern Greece. but the bulk of the migration continued west to Sicily and then to the Mediterranean coast of Southern Europe and into Northern Europe.

"There were multiple migrations of Neolithic people into Europe and some, no doubt, went by the land route, but the predominant route was through Anatolia and then by sea, with Crete serving as major hub," said Stamatoyannopoulos.

Although it was not the main focus of their study, the researchers also looked at the gene flow in populations in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. They found that migrations of Neolithic people originating from the Near East also moved southeast into Arabia and through what is now Egypt and across the North African coast.

There was no evidence, however, of gene flow across the Mediterranean between Africa and Europe, This observation suggests that, although the sea allowed migrants to move along the coasts, it created a formidable barrier between the two continents.

The findings also address older controversies: whether Neolithic culture spread primarily by cultural diffusion, in which ideas move from population to population through cultural contacts, or whether the ideas were are carried by migrating peoples, called demic diffusion, from the Greek demos meaning "people."

"While cultural diffusion certainly took place," Stamatoyannopoulos said, "These findings strongly bolster the demic diffusion hypothesis."

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Story Source:  Materials provided by University of Washington. P. Paschou, P. Drineas, E. Yannaki, A. Razou, K. Kanaki, F. Tsetsos, S. S. Padmanabhuni, M. Michalodimitrakis, M. C. Renda, S. Pavlovic, A. Anagnostopoulos, J. A. Stamatoyannopoulos, K. K. Kidd, G. Stamatoyannopoulos. Maritime route of colonization of Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014