Five thousand years ago in what is today southern Sweden, two cultures lived side-by-side. Farmers, known to archaeologists as the Funnel Beaker Culture (TRB), resided in settlements in the center of the country; along the shorelines were hunter-gatherer-fisher villages, known to us as the Pitted Ware Culture (PWC). Archaeologists have been debating the relationship between these two societies ever since the radiocarbon dates were known.
Ove Persson and Evy Persson at the Ajvide excavations in Gotland, Sweden. Photo taken by Göran Burenhult
The debate concerns all of Europe, but along the edges of Sweden is a microcosm of the issues involved. We've known that agriculture - including the domestication of animals and plants - was first invented about 12,000 years ago in the Near East. That lifestyle was imported into what is today Europe a few thousand years later, and it arrived in Scandinavia about 6000 years ago. Whether that change in living methods was a movement of people or adoption of ideas by local people has been a debate in archaeological circles for well over 50 years.
A new study published in Science today reports on ancient DNA extracted from human remains from cemeteries belonging to the PWC and TRB cultures in southern Sweden. What the researchers discovered was that although both sets of people were born, lived and died in southern Sweden, the farmer's genomes contained DNA similar to people living in Greece and Cyprus today. Researchers interpret this to mean that the farmers were descendents of people who emigrated from the Mediterranean, who in turn were descendents of the original farmers.
- Pitted Ware Culture, which includes discussion of the latest research
- Linearbandkeramik
- Origins of agriculture in central Europe
Skoglund P, Malmström H, Raghavan M, Storå J, Hall P, Willerslev E, Gilbert MTP, Götherström A, and Jakobsson M. 2012. Origins and genetic legacy of Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers in Europe. Science 336:466-469.
Comments
Our swedish colleagues do have some methodological issues with this study, and with the conclusions drawn by the authors. You can follow the discussion on several swedish websites, like for exemple:
http://tingotankar.blogspot.de/2012/04/genetik-och-kallkritik-respons-och.html
thanks for the link: makes me wish I read Swedish. Could you summarize their hesitations for us? I can try to translate it with Google translator, but I’m always a little leery.
Kris
I’ll try to sum up the main points in English (i’m not a native speaker, but I hope it will be comprehensible).
The discussion touches on some more general questions, like the role of science journalism, and science-vs.-humanities. The main points of the archaeological discussion are:
-The sample size is very small. There were only 4 individuals analyzed, 1 from the swedish mainland and 3 from the island of Gotland, at a distance of ca. 300 kms between both sites.
-Their attribution to 2 different groups of “agriculturalists” and “hunter-gatherers” is too simplistic, the archaeological evidence shows rather a continuous development of local/regional cultures, more or less different from each other, not a simple dichotomy.
-The only “agriculturalist” in the sample dates about 1000 years after the first introduction of agriculture to sweden, so this individuum is unlikely to represent the supposed initial immigration wave. In the same way the 3 “hunter-gatherers” do not represent “original” pre-agricultural mesolithic hunter-gatherers, but people living for about a millennium in the neighborhood of agriculturalists.
-there may be other explanations for the observed genetic data than immigration models
thanks, very much, Murmel: that helps a lot. Sample size is an ongoing issue and will always be in the aDNA studies, because the odds of survival for DNA for thousands of years are slim. I seem to recall that the scholars tried to get DNA from several other skeletons and failed.
But despite that, it’s a good thing to remember, especially us “science journalists,” that we need to make sure we keep the waffle in our reports, if you’ll pardon the vernacular.
Kris