Modern genetic analysis shows that ancestors of 90% modern British people came from Eastern Europe around 4500 years ago. 

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But the story changes when the Bell Beaker culture expanded to Britain after 4,500 years ago. Then, it was brought by migrants who ... Consider the unexpected movement of people who originally lived on the steppes of Central Asia, north of the Black and Caspian seas.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180221131851.htm

 

7 hours ago, Moreno said:

Modern genetic analysis shows that ancestors of 90% modern British people came from Eastern Europe around 4500 years ago. 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180221131851.htm

 

Wow! Great article. This additional info on the aboriginal hunter/gatherers and their interaction with the influx of migrating farmers is interesting. They say it was biased towards one sex. I would assume these were patriarchal systems operating between the two groups.

New Insights from Southeastern Europe

"Reich's second new Nature paper, on the genomic history of southeastern Europe, reveals an additional migration as farming spread across Europe, based on data from 255 individuals who lived between 14,000 and 2,500 years ago. It also adds a fascinating new nugget -- the first compelling evidence that the genetic mixing of populations in Europe was biased toward one sex.

Hunter-gatherer genes remaining in northern Europeans after the influx of migrating farmers came more from males than females, Reich's team found. "Archaeological evidence shows that when farmers first spread into northern Europe, they stopped at a latitude where their crops didn't grow well," he says. "As a result, there were persistent boundaries between the farmers and the hunter-gatherers for a couple of thousand years." This gave the hunter-gatherers and farmers a long time to interact. According to Reich, one speculative scenario is that during this long, drawn-out interaction, there was a social or power dynamic in which farmer women tended to be integrated into hunter-gatherer communities.

So far that's only a guess, but the fact that ancient DNA provides clues about the different social roles and fates of men and women in ancient society "is another way, I think, that these data are so extraordinary," says Reich."

It probably isn't a casual coincidence that our cultures now trade in stories about farmer's daughters and traveling .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Edited February 28, 20187 yr by arc