Early farmers from across Europe directly descended from Neolithic Aegeans

Authors	HOFMANOVÁ Zuzana KREUTZER S HELLENTHAL G SELL C DIEKMANN Y DIEZ-DEL-MOLINO D VAN Dorp L LOPEZ S KOUSATHANAS A LINK V KIRSANOW K CASSIDY LM MARTINIANO R STROBEL M SCHEU A KOTSAKIS K HALSTEAD P TRIANTAPHYLLOU S KYPARISSI-APOSTOLIKA N UREM-KOTSOU D ZIOTA C ADAKTYLOU F GOPALAN S BOBO DM WINKELBACH L BLOCHER J UNTERLANDER M LEUENBERGER C CILINGIROGLU C HOREJS B GERRITSEN F SHENNAN SJ BRADLEY DG CURRAT M VEERAMAH KR WEGMANN D THOMAS MG PAPAGEORGOPOULOU C BURGER J
Year of publication	2016
Type	Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Citation
Doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1523951113
Keywords	paleogenomics; Neolithic; Mesolithic; Greece; Anatolia
Description	Farming and sedentism first appeared in southwestern Asia during the early Holocene and later spread to neighboring regions, including Europe, along multiple dispersal routes. Conspicuous uncertainties remain about the relative roles of migration, cultural diffusion, and admixture with local foragers in the early Neolithization of Europe. Here we present paleogenomic data for five Neolithic individuals from northern Greece and northwestern Turkey spanning the time and region of the earliest spread of farming into Europe. We use a novel approach to recalibrate raw reads and call genotypes from ancient DNA and observe striking genetic similarity both among Aegean early farmers and with those from across Europe. Our study demonstrates a direct genetic link between Mediterranean and Central European early farmers and those of Greece and Anatolia, extending the European Neolithic migratory chain all the way back to southwestern Asia.