Post by UKarchaeology on Nov 27, 2015 15:03:14 GMT
* Ancient DNA reveals how farming rapidly changed European genetic history
New evidence has shown that 8,500 years ago, Turkish populations forever changed the lives of ancient Europeans—both historically and genetically. However, scientists have been hard-pressed to study exactly what these changes were, as typically they could only extract enough DNA necessary for intensive study from modern subjects.
"It's a great mystery how present-day populations got to be the way we are today, both in terms of how our ancestors moved around and intermingled and how populations developed the adaptations that help us survive a bit better in the different environments in which we live," said co-senior author David Reich, professor of genetics at HMS, in a statement. "Now that ancient DNA is available at the genome-wide scale and in large sample sizes, we have an extraordinary new instrument for studying these questions."
Thanks to new DNA extraction and analysis techniques, researchers can now directly see how natural selection happened in ancient humans by examining their DNA—and have found support for the idea that Europe’s first farmers arrived from Turkey.
"It allows us to put a time and date on selection and to directly associate selection with specific environmental changes, in this case the development of agriculture and the expansion of the first farmers into Europe," explained Iain Mathieson, a research fellow in genetics at Harvard Medical School and first author of the study.
According to the study, which is published in Nature, the researchers studied the genes of 230 people who lived in Europe, Siberia, or Turkey between 8,500 to 3,000 years ago—allowing them to create the largest collection of genome-wide datasets from ancient human remains to date. These datasets then allowed them to identify specific genes that changed during and after Europe’s transition from hunting and gathering to farming.
Full story: www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113411010/ancient-dna-reveals-how-farming-changed-european-genetic-history-112515/