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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2007-09 > 1188655982


From: Alan R <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Abstract: Ancient DNA as a Means to InvestigatetheEuropean Neolithic
Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2007 15:13:02 +0100 (BST)
In-Reply-To: <BAY111-DAV151662E6BCEC4A38804F60B1CF0@phx.gbl>


OK here goes...

I think we all agree that the dairy products friendly
genes eventually proliferated in places where they
were very advantageous in rainy pastoral dairy areas
of Europe. However, when and from where they appeared
is not agreed.

One thing from an archaeological point of view I will
say that it is difficult to imaginable that all those
modern Europeans carrying the relevant genes have got
them from a common ancestor as recent as the Neolithic
period. For a start, there were at least two separate
main cultural sources of Neolithic spread; the LBK and
derived cultures up the Danube then north and west
(and to a lesser extent east) and the Cardial spread
along the Mediterranean from the Adriatic to Spain so
there was no single spread that a common ancestor can
easily be envisaged arriving in.

It seems clear from the central European
(LBK)Neolithic burial evidence that the early farmers
did not possess the gene in numbers as high as the
Swedish pre-farming hunters in the Swedish study. If
it is not just down to far too small sampling, this is
pretty damning to the Neolithic lactose gene theory
given that the LBK farmers of central Europe were far
closer than the Swedes temporarily, geographically and
culturally to the original south-east European source
of the spread of farming.

It is also worth noting the Swedish farming period DNA
samples which show 50% with the gene dates are from c.
3000BC which if I remember correct is around 1000
years after farming first arrived in that area and
are, therefore, not directly comparable with the
central European LBK early Neolithic data. That
Swedish middle Neolithic population had had perhaps 40
generations to select by then so we are not seeing the
genes of the earliest farmers, we are seeing the genes
of the Swedes of whatever origin after 40 generations
of strong selection towards genes that made you
tolerant to dairy products. So, the farming
hypothesis is actually undermined by the hard
evidence.

These LBK culture peoples are the main vector of the
spread of farming into central, northern, north-west
and parts of eastern Europe. These LBK farmers and
their spin off cultures such as TRB in Scandinavia
travelled on a predominantly SE to NW/north trajectory
from Hungary up the Danube and then up the rivers of
north and north-west Europe. If this spread of farming
was the origin of the lactose genes then its pretty
odd that the distribution of the genes today is the
opposite of what would be expected. Areas like
Scandinavia and Ireland where the genes are very well
represented today are the very areas where the impact
of immigrant farmers is known to be very late and
diluted at the very end of the long Neolithic trail
leading back to the Aegean etc. BTW, for those who
are interested, I was at a conference recently where
it was shown that dairying arose first in the extreme
NW of Turkey close to Bulgaria. This information is
not likely to be in print for some time yet so you
heard it here first : 0 ) It has also been recently
established that dairying was brought along with the
first arrival of farming in northern Europe and did
not lag behind the arrival of cereal farming etc. The
old theory of pastoral farming spread brought about
1000 years later by warriors with horses from the east
arriving with corded ware culture are firmly in the
dustbin of archaeology now. Not sure how that works
in terms of lactose considerations.

IMHO, the lactose thing must surely have appeared in
an individual in much earlier, probably glacial times
and his/her descendants who carried the then-useless
gene may have been scattered all round Europe in low
(but not necessarily evenly spread) numbers long
before farming arrived. Then, when the knowledge of
dairy farming spread to these hunters (along with some
settlers), those of the hunters who had the gene were
given a huge survival advantage and their descendants
proliferated. This could have been repeated among
small separate groups hundreds or thousands of times
across Europe but was essentially a local process.

Alan


.--- Lawrence Mayka <> wrote:

> First, the author does not dispute, but rather
> cites, the now
> well-established fact that northern European lactase
> persistence is a very
> recent allele, descended from a single individual
> who lived between 5000 and
> 10,000 years ago. The author of this paper does not
> mention that
> individual's geographical location, but another
> recent paper mentioned on
> this list provides evidence of an origin in the
> Caucasus.
>
> Second, the author clearly mentions "five of the
> hunter-gatherer samples
> sharing a haplotype not found among any published
> modern populations." No
> similar extinction is reported for the farmers of
> 5000 years ago. On the
> contrary, "The farming samples did not differ from
> modern Swedes whereas the
> hunter-gatherers did." The most parsimonious
> interpretation of these facts
> is that the farmers were of a stock ("tribe")
> different from that of the
> hunter-gatherers; and that the hunter-gatherers
> underwent a depopulation
> almost amounting to extinction, whereas the farmers
> spawned the bulk of the
> modern Swedish population.
>
> Third, the fact that 50% of Swedish farmers of 5000
> years ago had the
> lactase persistence allele, even though it was not
> found in Central European
> samples only a couple thousand years older,
> illustrates its rapid sweep
> across Europe--or alternatively, its northern
> European origin, if one
> rejects the evidence of an origin in the Caucasus.
>
> > [mailto:] On
> Behalf Of Alan R
> > Very interesting. It kind of backs up my own
> feeling
> > that lactose persistence must have been widespread
> in
> > low frequencies prior to farming and that the
> arrival
> > of farming with dairying present from the
> beginning
> > (that is the latest finding) gave a major
> selective
> > advantage to those hunters-gatherers with the
> lactose
> > persistence and thus their descendants
> proliferated.
> > This would have been a localised process repeated
> in
> > every locality through Europe and beyond and does
> not
> > in itself demand any external demic input (as is
> > sometimes erroneously portrayed).
>
>
>
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