Seafarers brought Neolithic culture to Europe, gene study indicates. Post-neolithic hieroglyphics may hold the key to identify the people who moved into Europe.
The 'demic difusion' hypothesis validated by the gene study points to the colonization of Europe by the maritime route from 7000 BCE. The movement of the neolithic people originating from the near East is a major area of study in archaeology. The east-to-west movement validated by the gene study points to the need to revisit the search for IE urheimat. The presence of many post-neolithic technology words related to minerals and metals in IE can be explained by the use of words from the travellers along the Tin Road from Afghanistan to Mari both along the land route and along the Persian Gulf routes.
This is an area of research which can advance starting with the indicators of Philosophy of Symbolic forms in Meluhha Cipher (S. Kalyanaraman, 2014) to explain the rebus deployment of hieroglyphs based on proto-Indian language words on over 7000 seals and tablets.
Kalyanaraman
Seafarers brought Neolithic culture to Europe, gene study indicates
June 10th, 2014
From <http://phys.org/wire-news/
The 'demic difusion' hypothesis validated by the gene study points to the colonization of Europe by the maritime route from 7000 BCE. The movement of the neolithic people originating from the near East is a major area of study in archaeology. The east-to-west movement validated by the gene study points to the need to revisit the search for IE urheimat. The presence of many post-neolithic technology words related to minerals and metals in IE can be explained by the use of words from the travellers along the Tin Road from Afghanistan to Mari both along the land route and along the Persian Gulf routes.
This is an area of research which can advance starting with the indicators of Philosophy of Symbolic forms in Meluhha Cipher (S. Kalyanaraman, 2014) to explain the rebus deployment of hieroglyphs based on proto-Indian language words on over 7000 seals and tablets.
Kalyanaraman
Seafarers brought Neolithic culture to Europe, gene study indicates
June 10th, 2014
How the Neolithic people found their way to Europe has long been a
subject of debate. A study published June 6 of genetic markers in
modern populations may offer some new clues.
Their paper, "Maritime route of colonization of Europe," appears in
the online edition of the Proceeding of the National Academy of
Sciences.
Between 8,800 to 10,000 B.C., in the Levant, the region in the eastern
Mediterranean that today encompasses Israel and the West Bank, Jordan,
Syria and part of southern Turkey, people learned how to domesticate
wild grains. This accomplishment eventually allowed them to abandon
their lives as nomadic hunter-gathers and become farmers.
Archeologists use this transition from hunter-gathering to farming to
mark the end of the Paleolithic era, or Old Stone Age, and the
beginning of the Neolithic era, or New Stone age.
Archeological evidence indicates that by 7,000 B.C. Neolithic farmers
had moved into Europe. They introduced their ideas and genes to the
native Paleolithic people, who had migrated into the continent 30,000
to 40,000 years before.
The transportation methods and travel routes the Neolithic used have
long been questioned. Did they travel overland, by migrating first
north from the Levant into Anatolia, a region that is now central
Turkey, across the Bosporus and then on through the Balkans into
central Europe?
Or did they travel by sea? And if so, by what route? Did they travel
directly from the coast of Levant to Crete and then across to Greece,
as one theory holds? Or did they first travel north into Anatolia and
then island hop from Turkey across a large group of islands, called
the Dodecanese, to Crete and, from Crete, on to Greece and Europe?
To try to find an answer to those questions, an international team of
researchers led by George Stamatoyannopoulos, professor of medicine
and genome sciences at the University of Washington, looked at genetic
markers found in 32 modern populations from the Near East and North
Africa, Anatolia, the Aegean Islands and Crete, mainland Greece, and
Southern and Northern Europe.
In this study, Stamatoyannopoulos and his colleagues compared the
proportion, or frequency, of certain markers, called single nucleotide
polymorphisms, (SNPs) or "snips," appearing in these different
populations. When a migrating people moves into an area and intermixes
with the local population, they introduce their genes into the native
gene pool and acquire genes from the native peoples. This introduction
of genes from one population to another is called "gene flow."
As subsequent generations continue the migration and the gene exchange
is repeated again and again, the frequency of SNPs in the migrating
population will reflect this genetic mixing. It is detectable in the
populations they left behind.
In their study, the researchers hypothesized that the Neolithic
migrants to Europe had primarily travelled by sea. They tested their
hypothesis by comparing the frequency of the SNPs in populations that
now inhabit the Levant, Turkey, the islands of the Aegean and the
Mediterranean and Europe and North Africa. The results of their study
are being published online today, June 9, by the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.
The analysis confirmed the Neolithic migrants arose from the Levant.
They then appear to have migrated first to Anatolia in central Turkey,
across the Dodecanese, to Crete and then to Laconia at the
southeastern tip of Greece.
As the migration continued, some populations moved north into northern
Greece. but the bulk of the migration continued west to Sicily and
then to the Mediterranean coast of Southern Europe and into Northern
Europe.
"There were multiple migrations of Neolithic people into Europe and
some, no doubt, went by the land route, but the predominant route was
through Anatolia and then by sea, with Crete serving as major hub,"
said Stamatoyannopoulos.
Although it was not the main focus of their study, the researchers
also looked at the gene flow in populations in the Arabian Peninsula
and North Africa. They found that migrations of Neolithic people
originating from the Near East also moved southeast into Arabia and
through what is now Egypt and across the North African coast.
There was no evidence, however, of gene flow across the Mediterranean
between Africa and Europe, This observation suggests that, although
the sea allowed migrants to move along the coasts, it created a
formidable barrier between the two continents.
The findings also address older controversies: whether Neolithic
culture spread primarily by cultural diffusion, in which ideas move
from population to population through cultural contacts, or whether
the ideas were are carried by migrating peoples, called demic
diffusion, from the Greek demos meaning "people."
"While cultural diffusion certainly took place," Stamatoyannopoulos
said, "These findings strongly bolster the demic diffusion
hypothesis."
From <http://phys.org/wire-news/