Are Europeans all Middle Easterners?

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/10/are-europeans-all-middle-easterners.html

by Steve Sailer

For quite a number of decades, it has been apparent that agriculture was 
first invented in the "Fertile Crescent" of the Middle East, then spread 
into Europe. But that raised the question of how agriculture spread: did 
Middle Easterners colonize Europe or did existing European 
hunter-gatherers pick up Middle Eastern techniques? A couple of decades or 
so ago, geneticists entered this debate. L.L. Cavalli-Sforza argued that 
most Europeans today are descended from Middle Eastern farmers. Bryan 
Sykes responded that most Europeans are descended from indigenous 
hunter-gatherers who switched to farming.

The latest view is that Cavalli-Sforza was even more right than he 
claimed. Matthias Schultz writes in Der Spiegel in "How Middle Eastern 
Milk Drinkers Conquered Europe:"

     At around 5300 BC, everyone in Central Europe was suddenly farming and 
raising livestock. The members of the Linear Pottery culture kept cows in 
wooden pens, used rubbing stones and harvested grain. Within less than 300 
years, the sedentary lifestyle had spread to the Paris basin.

     The reasons behind the rapid shift have long been a mystery. Was it an 
idea that spread through Central Europe at the time, or an entire people?

     Peaceful Cooperation or Invasion?

     Many academics felt that the latter was inconceivable. 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 Luning, 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 Luning.

     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.

     These striking insights come from biologists and chemists. In a 
barrage of articles in professional journals like Nature and BMC 
Evolutionary Biology, they have turned many of the prevailing views upside 
down over the course of the last three years.

There's a good accompanying graphical map here.

Of course, all this raises even more questions, such as in regard to the 
recently surmised Neanderthal introgression

Having seen opinion shift several times on this topic over the last decade 
and a half, I look forward to future developments.

This lactose tolerant-centric view of the pre-history of Europe may 
provide some posthumous vindication to Raymond D. Crotty, a failed Irish 
dairy farmer turned economist, who emphasized the importance of the 
mutation to facilitate dairy farming as crucial to the dense populating of 
Northern Europe.

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