Neolithic Immigration: How Middle Eastern Milk Drinkers Conquered Europe

[petronius]

...Agriculture was invented in the Middle East, but many researchers found it hard to believe that people from that part of the world would have embarked on an endless march across the Bosporus and into the north.

Jens Lüning, a German archaeologist who specializes in the prehistoric period, was influential in establishing the conventional wisdom on the developments, namely that a small group of immigrants inducted the established inhabitants of Central Europe into sowing and milking with "missionary zeal." The new knowledge was then quickly passed on to others. This process continued at a swift pace, in a spirit of "peaceful cooperation," according to Lüning.

But now doubts are being raised on that explanation. New excavations in Turkey, as well as genetic analyses of domestic animals and Stone Age skeletons, paint a completely different picture:
* At around 7000 BC, a mass migration of farmers began from the Middle East to Europe.
* These ancient farmers brought along domesticated cattle and pigs.
* There was no interbreeding between the intruders and the original population.

Mutated for Milk

The new settlers also had something of a miracle food at their disposal. They produced fresh milk, which, as a result of a genetic mutation, they were soon able to drink in large quantities. The result was that the population of farmers grew and grew.
...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,723310,00.html

A couple of weeks old, but I don't think it's been posted...

[Igel]

1. Too many unknowns.

Some of the research is interesting, though. I was taught that the mutation originated in the Middle East. Instead it appears that it originated elsewhere, possibly in Europe.

One of the problems is the areas that haven't been investigated: Sure, there were immigrants that went NW. But much of Central Asia is a bit of a mystery--it was inhabitated by nomads, but I think there's just not enough known to say that the origin of the lactose gene was definitively in Pannonia.

That said, I guess I get to re-read my Sedov and his "Slavs in Prehistory" and its nifty summary of Old European culture and what replaced it.

Might also get in touch with Ivanov (of Ivanov-Gamkrelidze fame) to see what he makes of this. The problem is that if the IE speakers had to migrate from east to west and started in W Asia (as research with horses would seem to imply) then how did such a prosperous area get so thoroughly Indo-Europeanized?

Then again, perhaps the Central European milk-drinkers early spread east, taking PIE with them. The Poles always did want everything--PIE, Common Slavic--to have originated in the Vistula basin.

Eh. PIE and PSl Urheimat issues have been a long-standing interest of mine.