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Mystery invaders conquered Europe at the end of last ice age
New Scientist ^ | February 4, 2016 | Colin Barras

Posted on 03/23/2016 6:35:44 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Europe went through a major population upheaval about 14,500 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, according to DNA from the bones of hunter-gatherers.

Ancient DNA studies published in the last five years have transformed what we know about the early peopling of Europe. The picture they paint is one in which successive waves of immigration wash over the continent, bringing in new people, new genes and new technologies.

These studies helped confirm that Europe's early hunter-gatherers - who arrived about 40,000 years ago - were largely replaced by farmers arriving from the Middle East about 8000 years ago. These farmers then saw an influx of pastoralists from the Eurasian steppe about 4500 years ago, meaning modern Europe was shaped by three major population turnover events.

Waves of immigration

The latest study suggests things were even more complicated. About 14,500 years ago, when Europe was emerging from the last ice age, the hunter-gatherers who had endured the chilly conditions were largely replaced by a different population of hunter-gatherers.

Exactly where this new population came from is still unclear, but it seems likely that they came from warmer areas further south. "The main hypothesis would be glacial refugia in south-eastern Europe," says Johannes Krause at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, who led the analysis.

As conditions improved, it was these southern hunter-gatherers who took advantage and migrated into central and northern Europe, he says - meaning there was a genetic discontinuity with the hunter-gatherer populations that had lived there earlier.

His team analysed mitochondrial DNA extracted from 55 ancient Europeans, the oldest of whom lived 35,000 years ago - during the Pleistocene - and the youngest just 7000 years ago, during the Holocene. Previous studies focused largely on the Holocene, looking at human remains from the last 10,000 years.

"This is the first glimpse at Pleistocene population dynamics in Europe," says Krause. "Little has been done on this older material, mostly due to lower abundance of material and lesser preservation due to age."

"The population turnover after 14,500 years ago was completely unexpected," says Iosif Lazaridis at the Harvard Medical School in Boston. "It seems that the hunter-gatherers of Europe braved the worst of the ice age during the last glacial maximum but were then replaced when the ice age had begun to subside."

Europe's unusual history

The picture is not yet clear, however, as the study only looked at mitochondrial DNA sequences, rather than the longer nuclear DNA of other studies. "Mitochondrial DNA tells only part of the story of a population," says Lazaridis. It is important to try to extract nuclear sequences from the Pleistocene-aged skeletons to find out more about this earlier population turnover, he says.

The work also may solve a long-standing mystery of why a certain genetic signature is missing in people of European ancestry. All people today are members of one of a relatively small number of distinct groups based on their mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down the maternal line. The distribution of people in each group gives us a sense of how humans spread across the world in prehistory.

It always seemed that Europe had a very unusual history of colonisation because one major haplogroup - the M clade - is almost entirely missing, despite being very common across Asia and even found in Native Americans. Instead, another major haplogroup - the N clade - is most common.

"Some authors had argued that the M and N haplogroups represented two different dispersal events from Africa," says Toomas Kivisild at the University of Cambridge.

But Krause and his colleagues found that the M clade might actually have been common in Europe before the population turnover 14,500 years ago: three of the 18 most ancient humans they studied belonged to the M clade.

This suggests that the initial colonisation of Europe and Asia may have involved the same ancient population - and that the M group was actually lost in Europe much later, perhaps connected in some way to the mystery upheavals 14,500 years ago.


TOPICS: History; Science
KEYWORDS: aliens; archaeology; atlantis; dna; europe; glaciation; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; history; iceage; pleistocene
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To: Notforprophet; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; decimon; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; ...
Thanks Notforprophet.

21 posted on 03/24/2016 5:49:51 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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To: disndat

Last time I checked Moslem was not a race...


22 posted on 03/24/2016 5:58:05 AM PDT by Little Ray (How did I end up in this hand basket, and why is it getting so hot?)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Since this is all based on only mito-dna, couldn’t it be that, rather than an invasion/inmigration, the pre-existing Euro-HGers went forth and collected new wimmins thus bringing in a pool of new mito-dna?


23 posted on 03/24/2016 6:00:32 AM PDT by Paine in the Neck (Socialism consumes EVERYTHING)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

There is an interesting book that I recently read about how there were very advanced civilizations in the Americas and in Turkey that survived the ice age and then spread out to re-populate the world.

The myths and legends of those areas are very similar. No, I am not talking about Aliens. But I am suggesting that the man was prevalent, and aware of what was going on much further back than most people understand.


24 posted on 03/24/2016 6:02:19 AM PDT by Vermont Lt (Ask Bernie supporters two questions: Who is rich. Who decides. In the past, that meant who died.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

It shouldn’t be a mystery were these people came from - the melting glaciers drowned 10,000,000 square miles of prime coastal and river front as well as vast inland areas. But most mainstream science types do not count this major event because it would rock too many boats and raise too many awkward questions, not to mention the loss of professional reputations.

So it will remain a mystery that Nat Geo and Disco channels can make ad revenue from while hiding the obvious in plain sight. Move along everything happens slowly, there are never any catastrophic events - except in the very distant past which we do our best to obscure.


25 posted on 03/24/2016 6:41:46 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Fascinating!

All the jokes aside, it is very interesting to me how humans went on to be established in all the diverse parts of the Earth.

I wonder if there were initially no races; all humans looked the same, yet with the characteristics of individuals and sexes, and how they went about eventually become more specialized.

For example, was black or very dark brown skin first, and lighter, less melanin infused skin come later?

Was hair originally wooly and kinky—meaning nappy, and then become straight, or vice versus? Chimp hair is black—you don’t see too many red or blond chimps—yet their hair is straight and uniform in length. How come human head hair continues to grow throughout life?

Where did blonde hair and blue eyes come from?

Flared nostril, wide noses versus large, narrow noses?

Slanted eyes versus round eyes?

And now this article... Were the original Europeans aborigine looking or pale Nordics?


26 posted on 03/24/2016 6:49:37 AM PDT by Alas Babylon!
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To: Alas Babylon!

Looks like there were several waves of “original” humans into Europe so its a difficult question to answer. They have theorized the early hunter gatherer population had dark skin and blue eyes.


27 posted on 03/24/2016 6:59:19 AM PDT by ZULU (Trump is the answer. The Establishment is the problem.)
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To: ZULU

I could see that the darkest babies in a seasonally low sunlight, cloudy latitude and climate not getting enough Vitamin D and therefore not thriving or even dying.

So lighter skin would be a life long advantage in such places. The lighter skin individuals would at least maximize their Vitamin D production over the darker skinned ones and pass their genes on by producing children—or more children over a longer life. How many generations would that take? I would think less than 100.

So there’s my take on skin color. Still, Eskimos are far darker than Laplanders. Why is that? Both are at high latitudes and similar climates. Maybe Eskimos get far more Vitamin D from fish, seals, whales and polar bears in their diet?


28 posted on 03/24/2016 7:09:01 AM PDT by Alas Babylon!
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To: Paine in the Neck
"Since this is all based on only mito-dna, couldn’t it be that, rather than an invasion/inmigration, the pre-existing Euro-HGers went forth and collected new wimmins thus bringing in a pool of new mito-dna?"

Not unheard of.

I've read that the female, mtDNA of Iceland is the same as Ireland. The male, YDNA in Iceland is from the male Vikings.

On the way to Iceland, the Vikings stopped at Ireland and collected the prettiest Irish women and took them to Iceland as wives.

Some have called the women of Iceland the prettiest in the world. The Vikings didn't take any ugly women there.

29 posted on 03/24/2016 10:12:50 AM PDT by blam (Jeff Sessions For President)
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To: SunkenCiv

The “invaders” from the refugia were probably much more numerous than the few who would have stuck out the sub-Arctic conditions up near the glaciers.


30 posted on 03/24/2016 12:12:05 PM PDT by colorado tanker
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To: blam
They drink to much, smoking hot though.
31 posted on 03/24/2016 1:21:09 PM PDT by Little Bill (o)
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To: PIF

“It shouldn’t be a mystery were these people came from - the melting glaciers drowned 10,000,000 square miles of prime coastal and river front as well as vast inland areas. But most mainstream science types do not count this major event because it would rock too many boats and raise too many awkward questions, not to mention the loss of professional reputations.”

I don’t know if it’s so much about career protectionism as it might be about what I think of as “steady state-ism”. It’s a natural proclivity to work with how the world geography is currently and forget about how it was during the event under question.

It tends to show up in such things as discussing migration paths into the “new world”. It is known that the sea levels were considerably lower at the time of the events in question, yet most of the theories and hypothesis are developed exclusively from dry dirt archeology.

Another issue is that what we, the gen pop, get told is filtered through idiot media. A media that we know full well only ever gets something correct on accident.


32 posted on 03/24/2016 1:23:34 PM PDT by Grimmy (equivocation is but the first step along the road to capitulation)
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To: Grimmy

The whole of what is euphemistically called ‘pre-history’ is in utter turmoil and chaos. We do not even have to go back as far as the Ice Age but merely to 3800 BC and the Old Egyptian Kingdom to find the inconsistencies, the wholly overlooked, the forgeries, the shoddy scholarship, and petty academic fiefdoms.

Working with “how the world geography is currently” is to completely omit, to overlook the entirety of the thesis at hand. World history for mass market propaganda and consumption ... those guys no better they are just not going to spoil their markets with the truth. None of them will mention Gobekli Tepe built in 10,000 BC by master stone masons and then deliberately buried.

Their charade is quickly coming to an abrupt halt.


33 posted on 03/24/2016 1:43:24 PM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: SunkenCiv

Maybe they were all of the people who were displaced from the continental shelf when the seas actually did rise.


34 posted on 03/24/2016 2:39:58 PM PDT by Explorer89 (And now, let the wild rumpus start!!)
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To: colorado tanker; Explorer89

[singing] Flood, here comes the flood...


35 posted on 03/24/2016 3:18:14 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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To: Alas Babylon!; ZULU; blam; 2ndDivisionVet; SunkenCiv; grey_whiskers; nickcarraway; All

There have been a number of fortuitous new genes in Europe. The Neanderthal are now suspected of being very fair and possibly blue-eyed redheads. My husband of Scots/Viking ancestry had that coloring (ginger gene) and massive, muscular physique. This enabled them to survive the poor sunlight of the north and ice ages. The “white” gene gained by Africans moving north enhanced survival. Eskimos get Vitamin D from heavy fish diet. Laplanders use land mammals more frequently so need lighter skin. The gene that enabled enzymes to digest milk in adulthood greatly enhanced surviveability in Europe and led animal rearing and increased population.

Has any work been done on the mysterious Basque population? Are they M or N? I know their language is unique and no one knows where they came from. What % of Neanderthal do they have in their genes?


36 posted on 03/24/2016 7:50:33 PM PDT by gleeaikin
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To: disndat
"Face it people. We are ALL moslems"

I think we were talking a BIT before Mohammed's time! ;)

37 posted on 03/25/2016 7:15:57 AM PDT by Da Bilge Troll (Defeatism is not a winning strategy!)
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She suggests that the Magdalenians, whose artifacts are found along western North Africa as well as the Iberian peninsula, are in fact the remnants of Plato's Atlantic kingdom.

By examining and comparing artifacts from different eras across North Africa and into Southwest Asia, Settegast is able to draw a broad but convincing outline of the movements of peoples throughout the region. Her investigations show that around 9,000 BCE... abruptly, skulls of a different shape (the Gracile Proto-Mediterranean type), which have the bottom incisors knocked out, show up in gravesites. Removal of the bottom two incisors was a ritual common to North African and Saharan peoples, and is still prevalent among Nilo-Saharan groups such as the Nuer and Dinka. Across North Africa and into Southwest Asia at this time, "tanged-point" arrowheads start to appear in great numbers. These factors coincide with a sudden prevalence of running figures with bows in the rock paintings throughout the region. A final piece of the puzzle is the presence of layers of burned material at numerous sites across North Africa and southward up the Nile. Put all this evidence together, and it seems clear that some sort of widespread conflict was going on at this time period, which could very well relate to Plato's war.
Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5,000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archeology by Mary Settegast | review by Jeffrey Joe Miller, MA | August 9, 2019

Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5,000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archeology by Mary Settegast | review by Jeffrey Joe Miller, MA | August 9, 2019

38 posted on 04/11/2020 8:34:26 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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