The "First Farmers?"

World’s first farmers have surprisingly diverse origins, a research has found.

18:45 18 July 2016

An international team of researchers has analysed ancient remains in Europe and found that the world’s first farmers have diverse origins. The findings shed light on a debate whether farming spread out from a single source in the region or whether multiple farmer groups spread their technology across Eurasia.

 

The study, which was published in the journal Science, established that farming spread via the mass migration of people and that early farmers who lived in the Zagros mountains of Iran were very different from that of the people who spread farming west from Turkey into Europe. Although both groups inhabited the Fertile Crescent, they appear to have separated genetically between 46,000 and 77,000 years ago.

 

Co-author Mark Thomas, from University College London (UCL), said: "Probably the biggest surprise news about this study is just how genetically different the eastern and western Fertile Crescent early farmers were,"

 

Another co-author Dr Garrett Hellenthal, also from UCL, commented: "It had been widely assumed that these first farmers were from a single, genetically homogeneous population. However, we've found that there were deep genetic differences in these early farming populations, indicating very distinct ancestries."