Mavi Boncuk |
The causes, effects, and mechanisms of the transition from foraging to farming in western Eurasia are key issues in understanding the development of our species, especially in understanding the development of larger, more dense, and more socially complex populations. Over the past decade, archaeogenetic studies have largely focused on processes that drove the spread of farming practices, particularly the introduction of farming and sedentism into Europe
However, the demographic aspects of the transformation of forager communities in Southwest Asia into communities practicing substantial-scale mixed farming and the full extent of the role of Anatolian populations in the spread of farming into Europe have remained unclear. Here, we investigate human remains excavated from two different Neolithic settlements in central Anatolia, Boncuklu and Tepecik-Çiftlik, between circa (ca.) 8300 and 5800 calibrated (cal) BC to explore the demographic processes during the earliest (Aceramic) phase of the Neolithic transition, as well as the later Pottery Neolithic period in Anatolia.
Highlights
• Pre-pottery farmers had low genetic diversity, akin to Mesolithic hunter-gatherers
• Genetic diversity levels are higher in the subsequent Pottery Neolithic • Central Anatolian farmers belonged to the same gene pool as early European farmers
• Copper Age genetic affinities suggest a second wave of Anatolian gene flow
SUMMARY
The archaeological documentation of the development of sedentary farming societies in Anatolia isnot yet mirrored by a genetic understanding of thehuman populations involved, in contrast to the spread of farming in Europe [1–3]. Sedentary farming communities emerged inparts oft the Fertile Crescent during the tenth millennium and early ninth millen-nium calibrated (cal) BC and had appeared in central Anatolia by 8300 cal BC [4]. Farming spread intowest Anatolia by the early seventh millennium calBC and quasi-synchronously into Europe, although the timing and process of this movement remain un-clear. Using genome sequence data that we gener-ated from nine central Anatolian Neolithic individuals,we studied the transition period from early Aceramic(Pre-Pottery) to the later Pottery Neolithic, whenfarming expanded west of the Fertile Crescent. Wefind that genetic diversity in the earliest farmers was conspicuously low, on a par with European foraging groups. With the advent of the Pottery Neolithic, genetic variation within societies reached levels later found in early European farmers. Our results confirm that the earliest Neolithic central Anatolians belonged to the same gene pool as the first Neolithic migrants spreading into Europe. Further,genetic affinities between later Anatolian farmers and fourth to third millennium BC Chalcolithic south Europeans suggest an additional wave of Anatolian migrants, after the initial Neolithic spread but before the Yamnaya-related migrations. We propose thatthe earliest farming societies demographically resembled foragers and that only after regional gene flow and rising heterogeneity did the farming population expansions into Europe occur.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.07.057
Please cite this article in press as:
Kılınc¸ et al., The Demographic Development of the First Farmers in Anatolia, Current Biology (2016), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.07.057
The Demographic Developmentof the First Farmers in Anatolia
Gülsah Merve Kılınç[1], Ayça Omrak, Füsun Özer, Torsten Günther, Ali Metin Büyükkarakaya, Erhan Bıçakçı, Douglas Baird, Handan Melike Dönertas , Ayshin Ghalichi, Reyhan Yaka, Dilek Koptekin, Sinan Can Açan, Poorya Parvizi, Maja Krzewinska, Evangelia A. Daskalaki, Eren Yüncü, Nihan Dilsad Dagtas , AndrewFairbairn, Jessica Pearson, Gökhan Mustafaoglu, Yılmaz Selim Erdal, Yasin GökhanÇakan, Inci Togan, Mehmet Somel, JanStorå, MattiasJakobsson,and Anders Götherström.
[1] Gülşah Merve Kılınç
Department of Biological Sciences, Middle East Technical University, 06800 Ankara, Turkey Department of Organismal Biology, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 18C, 75236, Uppsala, Sweden