Archaeologica.org

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 172344.htm

ScienceDaily (Nov. 9, 2010) — A team of international researchers led by ancient DNA experts from the University of Adelaide has resolved the longstanding issue of the origins of the people who introduced farming to Europe some 8000 years ago.

A detailed genetic study of one of the first farming communities in Europe, from central Germany, reveals marked similarities with populations living in the Ancient Near East (modern-day Turkey, Iraq and other countries) rather than those from Europe.

Indicates quite a distant migration. I suppose they could have sailed up the Danube.

Doesn’t modern day Germany have big problems with Turkish immigrants?

Maybe the cultures have separated over the years?

Minimalist wrote:I suppose they could have sailed up the Danube.

With the Danube's strong current, and generally flaky, weak winds, directionally challenged by scores of mountain ridges, and obstructed by dozens of rapids systems that would be quite a feat. Walking was simpler.

So apparently there was some migration prior to 8,000 BC. But I would expect to find much more migratory pressure into the European heartland directly following the 5,600 BC breaching of the Bosporus/Dardanelles and consequent flooding of the Black Sea. Which apparently pushed the peoples that lived in the fertile plains around Euxine Lake mostly westward, i.e. up the Danube (probably walking, with their oxen or oxcarts, if they had those). Bringing their cultures and (agricultural) technologies with them of course.

The interesting question to me is what hapened to them?

The early farmers were very different from modern europeans.

Walking was simpler.

Walking is never simpler.

First off, they had to get across the Dardanelles.

Minimalist wrote:

Walking was simpler.

Walking is never simpler.

First off, they had to get across the Dardanelles.

Prior to 5,600 BC there were no Dardanelles to get across... so they walked!

Actually, recent scholarship has pushed that date back.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 101207.htm

ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2009) — Did a catastrophic flood of biblical proportions drown the shores of the Black Sea 9,500 years ago, wiping out early Neolithic settlements around its perimeter? A geologist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and two Romanian colleagues report in the January issue of Quaternary Science Reviews that, if the flood occurred at all, it was much smaller than previously proposed by other researchers.

The BBC has a nice picture of that migrant from the Middle East. Herding cattle. In central Germany? Covered from head to toe with red ochre and kohl, and without the fur loin cloths some would have us believe the Neandertal, 30,000 years earlier, wore.