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Originally published in Science Express on 3 September 2009
Science 2 October 2009:
Vol. 326. no. 5949, pp. 137 - 140
DOI: 10.1126/science.1176869
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Reports

Genetic Discontinuity Between Local Hunter-Gatherers and Central Europe’s First Farmers

B. Bramanti,1,* M. G. Thomas,2 W. Haak,1,{dagger} M. Unterlaender,1 P. Jores,1,{ddagger} K. Tambets,3 I. Antanaitis-Jacobs,4 M. N. Haidle,5 R. Jankauskas,4 C.-J. Kind,6 F. Lueth,7 T. Terberger,8 J. Hiller,9,§ S. Matsumura,10,11,|| P. Forster,12 J. Burger1

After the domestication of animals and crops in the Near East some 11,000 years ago, farming had reached much of central Europe by 7500 years before the present. The extent to which these early European farmers were immigrants or descendants of resident hunter-gatherers who had adopted farming has been widely debated. We compared new mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from late European hunter-gatherer skeletons with those from early farmers and from modern Europeans. We find large genetic differences between all three groups that cannot be explained by population continuity alone. Most (82%) of the ancient hunter-gatherers share mtDNA types that are relatively rare in central Europeans today. Together, these analyses provide persuasive evidence that the first farmers were not the descendants of local hunter-gatherers but immigrated into central Europe at the onset of the Neolithic.

1 Institute for Anthropology, University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany.
2 Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
3 Department of Evolutionary Biology, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Tartu and Estonian Biocentre, Tartu, Estonia.
4 Department of Anatomy, Histology and Anthropology, University of Vilnius, Lithuania.
5 Research Center "The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans" of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Senckenberg Research Institute, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
6 Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Germany.
7 Römisch-Germanische Kommission (RGK), Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
8 Lehrstuhl für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, University of Greifswald, Germany.
9 Biophysics Group, Cardiff School of Optometry and Vision Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK.
10 International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria.
11 Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, Germany.
12 Cambridge Society for the Application of Research, Cambridge, UK.

{dagger} Present address: Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia.

{ddagger} Present address: Institute for Zoology, University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany.

§ Present address: Diamond Light Source, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Chilton, UK.

|| Present address: Faculty of Applied Biological Sciences, Gifu University, Gifu, Japan.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: bramanti{at}uni-mainz.de

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)