Who are the Europeans?

A Piazza
1993 Science  
In order to understand better the formation and the structure of modern European paternal and maternal genetic landscape we discuss the ancestral hunter-gatherers' and farmer's populational dynamics in late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Particular attention is paid to the origins and diffusions of 'Palaeolithic' and 'Neolithic' Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups in relation to 'demic diffusion' and to process of transition to farming in Eurasia. Our basic interpretative premises
more » ... e: -That the genesis of European neolithic civilisation was not linked to 'demic diffusion' of Levantine and Anatolian farmers; -That the phylogeography of Y chromosome haplogroups I1b*, J and E do not support the model of neolithic colonisation and replacement of indigenous populations in Europe; -That the southeast European populational trajectories and the rewriting of genetic palimpsest were set by networks of social relationships and associated small-scale mobility and local and/or regional migration; -That people, through contact provided the agency of transmission of information and incorporation of innovations such as cultigens, domesticates and ceramic technology. And these have lead to structural changes of the pre-existing social, economic and cultural phenomena with rather insignificant gene flow.
doi:10.1126/science.8511584 pmid:8511584 fatcat:bvcmipmttfepxatwwbdhuywzf4