Western children take note: Turkey is to blame for vegetables.
Well, sort of.
As it turns out, the first European farmers seem to have come from Anatolia around 8,000 years ago—at least according to a new study from a team spread between Sweden, Anatolia, and Iran.
Researchers compared the DNA of two subjects from Kumtepe, an ancient town in northwestern Turkey that was the precursor to the Iliad’s Troy, to the DNA of ancient farmers across Europe, as well as to modern Europeans. The two subjects from Turkey are believed to be Neolithic farmers who were among the first to settle in Kumtepe.
After comparing the genetic material, the researchers have drawn the conclusion that the first farmers who spread into Europe indeed came from Anatolia. Getting the DNA was no easy task, though.
“I have never worked with a more complicated material. But it was worth every hour in the laboratory,” said co-author and doctorate student Ayca Omrak from the Archaeological Research Laboratory Stockholm University in a University statement.
“It is complicated to work with material from this region, it is hot and the DNA is degraded,” added Jan Storå, associate professor in osteoarchaeology at Stockholm University. “But if we want to understand how the process that led from a hunter-gatherer society proceeded to a farming society, it is this material we need to exhaust.”
Thanks to diligent work, the team was able to make a fascinating discovery, as reported in their paper in Current Biology.
DNA traces European farmers to Anatolia
“I could use the DNA from the Kumtepe material to trace the European farmers back to Anatolia,” said Omrak. Meaning: Those ancient farmers from Turkey brought forth the agricultural revolution.
Interestingly, one of the subjects from Kumtepe shows a remarkable genetic similarity to populations from Sardinia. Previous research has revealed that modern-day Sardinians are actually more closely related to the farmers who drove the agricultural revolution in Europe than modern-day Anatolians. It now appears that this is because Anatolia’s geographic location made it a sort of highway between the Near East and Europe—hence why the ancient Turkish populations who brought in farming had a lot of genetic mixing, causing modern descendants to be so genetically different.
Prior to this research, it was widely believed that farming emerged from the Levant region in what is now Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. But the new findings suggesting that Anatolia was actually the hub for this movement doesn’t negate the Levant region’s importance.
“Our results stress the importance Anatolia has had on Europe’s prehistory,” said Anders Götherstörm, who heads the archaeogenetic research at the Archaeological Research Laboratory. “But to fully understand how the agricultural development proceeded we need to dive deeper down into material from the Levant.”
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Feature Image: DNA from the Kumtepe material traced the European farmers back to Anatolia. Credit: Project Troia, thanks to Peter Jablonka
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