I had been waiting for new results of ancient studies for months. Finally here is one : Ancient Megalithic mtDNA from France
They extracted the mtDNA of 6 individuals from a Megalithic burial chamber (dating from 4200 BCE) and managed to retrieve it for one adult and two children. They belonged to haplogroups U5b, X2 and N1a.
- U5b is completely expected. U5a and U5b are what I described as typical Paleolithic European mtDNA.
- N1a was already found in Neolithic sites in Central Europe and is though to have come from the Near East with the early farmers. Megalithic constructions are Neolithic and could not have been built without farming to support the population. So no big surprise here either.
- as for X2, it is more typical of the Caucasus and Anatolia (as well as places settled by the Indo-Europeans in Central Asia). I have longed linked X2 to Y-haplogroups G2a, and to a lower extent also R1b, which originated in the same region. X2 being also widespread in Anatolia and Greece, it probably came with Neolithic farmers along with N1a. These would probably have carried G2a male lineages with them. The interesting part here is that both haplogroups that could be from the Near East are now quite rare, suggesting that the original population of farmers that migrated to Europe didn't leave so many descendants behind them where they came from. This is just a wild extrapolation based on just a few mtDNA results, and I am awaiting more results to confirm and deny this hypothesis.
They extracted the mtDNA of 6 individuals from a Megalithic burial chamber (dating from 4200 BCE) and managed to retrieve it for one adult and two children. They belonged to haplogroups U5b, X2 and N1a.
- U5b is completely expected. U5a and U5b are what I described as typical Paleolithic European mtDNA.
- N1a was already found in Neolithic sites in Central Europe and is though to have come from the Near East with the early farmers. Megalithic constructions are Neolithic and could not have been built without farming to support the population. So no big surprise here either.
- as for X2, it is more typical of the Caucasus and Anatolia (as well as places settled by the Indo-Europeans in Central Asia). I have longed linked X2 to Y-haplogroups G2a, and to a lower extent also R1b, which originated in the same region. X2 being also widespread in Anatolia and Greece, it probably came with Neolithic farmers along with N1a. These would probably have carried G2a male lineages with them. The interesting part here is that both haplogroups that could be from the Near East are now quite rare, suggesting that the original population of farmers that migrated to Europe didn't leave so many descendants behind them where they came from. This is just a wild extrapolation based on just a few mtDNA results, and I am awaiting more results to confirm and deny this hypothesis.