Angela
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Reich and Lazaridis are quoted. Apparently Lazaridis will present the poster on this at ASHG.
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/ancient-farmers-archaeology-dna.html
"They were as different from one another genetically as the Europeans and Chinese. And these groups remained distinct through the agricultural revolution as they changed from hunter-gatherers to full-blown farmers. “It was quite surprising to see how different these groups were from each other,” Dr. Lazaridis said. “It was more extreme than anything you could have imagined was going on.”
Dr. Reich and others argue that the findings show that people around the fertile crescent became farmers independently. “It’s not like you had one Near Eastern population that developed farming that expands and overruns all the others,” he said.
Archaeologists have welcomed the new results from the geneticists. But for now, they are interpreting the data in different ways.Dr. Zeder said that ancient DNA supports a scenario where farmers across the Fertile Crescent independently invented agriculture, perhaps repeatedly. But Dr. Bar-Yosef says he thinks full-blown agriculture evolved only once, and then quickly spread from one group to another.
He points to the increasingly precise dating of archaeological sites in the Fertile Crescent. Instead of the southern Levant, the oldest sites with evidence of full-blown agriculture are in northern Syria and southern Turkey. That’s where Dr. Bar-Yosef thinks agriculture began. In other parts of the Fertile Crescent, he argues, people were just toying with farming. Only when they came in contact with the combination of crops and livestock, and the technology to manage them — what scientists call the Neolithic package — did they permanently adopt the practices.“You just map the dates” of the sites at which the evidence for farming is found, he said, “and you see it’s always later as you get away from the core area.” The new genetic results simply show that this farming technology spread through the Fertile Crescent, but that the populations sharing it did not interbreed."
"About 8,000 years ago, the barriers between peoples in the Fertile Crescent fell away, and genes began to flow across the entire region. The Near East became one homogeneous mix of people.Why? Dr. Reich speculated that growing populations of farmers began linking to one another via trade networks. People moved along those routes and began to intermarry and have children together. Genes did not just flow across the Fertile Crescent — they also rippled outward. The scientists have detected DNA from the first farmers in living people on three continents.“There seem to be expansions out in all directions,” Dr. Lazaridis said.
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/ancient-farmers-archaeology-dna.html
"They were as different from one another genetically as the Europeans and Chinese. And these groups remained distinct through the agricultural revolution as they changed from hunter-gatherers to full-blown farmers. “It was quite surprising to see how different these groups were from each other,” Dr. Lazaridis said. “It was more extreme than anything you could have imagined was going on.”
Dr. Reich and others argue that the findings show that people around the fertile crescent became farmers independently. “It’s not like you had one Near Eastern population that developed farming that expands and overruns all the others,” he said.
Archaeologists have welcomed the new results from the geneticists. But for now, they are interpreting the data in different ways.Dr. Zeder said that ancient DNA supports a scenario where farmers across the Fertile Crescent independently invented agriculture, perhaps repeatedly. But Dr. Bar-Yosef says he thinks full-blown agriculture evolved only once, and then quickly spread from one group to another.
He points to the increasingly precise dating of archaeological sites in the Fertile Crescent. Instead of the southern Levant, the oldest sites with evidence of full-blown agriculture are in northern Syria and southern Turkey. That’s where Dr. Bar-Yosef thinks agriculture began. In other parts of the Fertile Crescent, he argues, people were just toying with farming. Only when they came in contact with the combination of crops and livestock, and the technology to manage them — what scientists call the Neolithic package — did they permanently adopt the practices.“You just map the dates” of the sites at which the evidence for farming is found, he said, “and you see it’s always later as you get away from the core area.” The new genetic results simply show that this farming technology spread through the Fertile Crescent, but that the populations sharing it did not interbreed."
"About 8,000 years ago, the barriers between peoples in the Fertile Crescent fell away, and genes began to flow across the entire region. The Near East became one homogeneous mix of people.Why? Dr. Reich speculated that growing populations of farmers began linking to one another via trade networks. People moved along those routes and began to intermarry and have children together. Genes did not just flow across the Fertile Crescent — they also rippled outward. The scientists have detected DNA from the first farmers in living people on three continents.“There seem to be expansions out in all directions,” Dr. Lazaridis said.