You are currently viewing the abstract.
View Full TextLog in to view the full text
AAAS login provides access to Science for AAAS members, and access to other journals in the Science family to users who have purchased individual subscriptions.
Register for free to read this article
As a service to the community, this article is available for free. Existing users log in.
More options
Download and print this article for your personal scholarly, research, and educational use.
Buy a single issue of Science for just $15 USD.
Farming or Fishing
Evidence has been mounting that most modern European populations originated from the immigration of farmers who displaced the hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic. Bollongino et al. (p. 479, published online 10 October) present analyses of palaeogenetic and isotopic data from Neolithic human skeletons from the Blätterhöhle burial site in Germany. The analyses identify a Neolithic freshwater fish–eating hunter-gatherer group, living contemporaneously and in close proximity to a Neolithic farming group. While there is some evidence that hunter-gatherer women may have admixed into the farming population, it appears likely that marriage or cultural boundaries between the groups persisted for over two millennia. Thus, the transition from the Mesolithic involved a more complex pattern of coexistence among humans of different genetic origins and cultures in the Neolithic, rather than a more abrupt transition.
Abstract
Debate on the ancestry of Europeans centers on the interplay between Mesolithic foragers and Neolithic farmers. Foragers are generally believed to have disappeared shortly after the arrival of agriculture. To investigate the relation between foragers and farmers, we examined Mesolithic and Neolithic samples from the Blätterhöhle site. Mesolithic mitochondrial DNA sequences were typical of European foragers, whereas the Neolithic sample included additional lineages that are associated with early farmers. However, isotope analyses separate the Neolithic sample into two groups: one with an agriculturalist diet and one with a forager and freshwater fish diet, the latter carrying mitochondrial DNA sequences typical of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. This indicates that the descendants of Mesolithic people maintained a foraging lifestyle in Central Europe for more than 2000 years after the arrival of farming societies.
