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Hunter-gatherers lived throughout Europe for thousands of years and were the dominant human presence in the region for most of this period. So what happened to them all?
Researchers do not yet know the exact set of circumstances that led to this accident. European hunter-gatherers Although it will disappear, its decline will mainly be due to agricultural extension regional. Neolithic farmers arrived in Europe about 8,000 years ago and eventually replaced hunter-gatherers after a period of sharing the continent.
“Farmers began to move into Europe from the Near East, bringing livestock and domesticated plants with them. From then on, farmers and hunter-gatherers coexisted until 5,000 years ago, when hunter-gatherers disappeared.” cosimo posProfessor of Archeology and Paleogenetics at Germany’s University of Tübingen told Live Science.
European hunter-gatherers were not a single entity, but a series of distinct human groups and cultures that survived by hunting animals and foraging for wild foods.
Related: When did humans start wearing clothes?
Hunter-gatherers came to Europe in waves and began to settle on the continent Approximately 45,000 years ago. Poss described this as a “dead branch” because most of this initial population has disappeared. Early human explorers who entered Europe. However, after the initial migration fails, at least some of the subsequent migrations wave of hunter gatherers flourished on the continent.
Modern Europeans owe about 10 to 15 percent of their DNA to European hunter-gatherers, Poss said, with most of it coming from the last wave of hunter-gatherers who spread from Italy about 14,000 years ago. Then he pointed out. So even though much of their lifestyle is long gone, some of their genetic heritage lives on.
Hunter-gatherers largely kept to themselves even when farmers arrived some 6,000 years later. Farmers gradually adopted genes from hunter-gatherers, but hunter-gatherers remained genetically distinct. DNA of a 7,000-year-old man Spanish hunter-gatherers He revealed that he had blue eyes and black skin. This was true for most hunter-gatherers across Europe starting 14,000 years ago, Poss said, but farmers back then had lighter skin and dark eyes.
As agriculture spread across Europe, hunter-gatherers lost their land. “The last hunter-gatherers moved to the frontiers of Europe, to areas where they didn’t directly compete with farmers,” Poss said.
There are still many unknowns about how the two groups interacted. Some hunter-gatherers ended up living in or around rural areas. For example, a burial about 5,800 years ago of a modern-day Danish hunter-gatherer known as the Dragsholmman found him buried with hunter-gatherer grave goods, but his diet was consistent with that of early Europeans. It has been shown that farmers.According to a 2024 study published in the same journal, this means he adopted the culture and diet of immigrant farmers. Nature.
2024 studies published in journals Pro Swan Discovered by a Danish rural community violently sacrificed male hunter-gatherers From Norway or Sweden about 5,200 years ago. Ritual sacrifices were not necessarily punishments for hunter-gatherers, who may have been immigrants or traders who achieved equal social status among farmers, or even prisoners of war or slaves. study authors noted.
Some hunter-gatherer communities may have experienced unnatural deaths at the hands of farmers and received new pathogens from livestock. for example, Danish hunter-gatherers quickly became extinct According to the 2024 Nature Survey, several generations after farmers arrived about 5,900 years ago.
anders fischerThe independent archaeologist and author of both studies told Live Science that farmers rapidly increased in numbers as they spread, and that their approach to hunter-gatherers may have been “warlike.” Told.
“Late hunter-gatherers didn’t decide to become farmers,” Fisher said. “Someone made the decision on their behalf and was probably erased from existence in the same process.”
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