Repost: Ancient DNA upends European prehistory

[Donkees]

Repost: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217693096

Genes reveal striking diversity within similar ice age cultures

1 MAR 2023 BY ANDREW CURRY



Excerpt:

New DNA evidence, published today in Nature, shows Gravettians in France and Spain were genetically distinct from groups living in what is now the Czech Republic and Italy. “What we thought was one homogenous thing in Europe 30,000 years ago is actually two distinct groups,” says Mateja Hajdinjak, a molecular biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology who was not part of the new study.

... Genetic data suggest that before the arrival of farmers in northern Europe around 6000 B.C.E., hunter-gatherers in Western Europe had dark skin and light eyes. People in Eastern Europe and Russia, meanwhile, had light skin and dark eyes. Most surprising, despite the lack of geographic barriers between modern-day Germany and Russia, the two groups spent millennia not mingling. “From 14,000 years ago to 8000 years ago, they do not mix at all,” Posth says. But he acknowledges that the team’s samples don’t cover the continent completely, and the likely contact zones—in Poland and Belarus, for example—lack samples. More genetic data from those areas might show the two populations mixing locally.

https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-dna-upends-european-prehistory

[Joinfortmill]

1. I want his hat! Lol.