May 07, 2020

Article | The Demographic Development of the First Farmers in Anatolia

Mavi Boncuk | 

The Linear Pottery culture is a major archaeological horizon of the European Neolithic, flourishing c. 5500–4500 BC. It is abbreviated as LBK (from German: Linearbandkeramik), and is also known as the Linear Band Ware, Linear Ware, Linear Ceramics or Incised Ware culture, and falls within the Danubian I culture of V. Gordon Childe.

The densest evidence for the culture is on the middle Danube, the upper and middle Elbe, and the upper and middle Rhine. It represents a major event in the initial spread of agriculture in Europe. The pottery after which it was named consists of simple cups, bowls, vases, and jugs, without handles, but in a later phase with lugs or pierced lugs, bases, and necks




The causes, effects, and mechanisms of the transition from foraging to farming in western Eurasia are key issues in understanding the development of our species, especially in understanding the development of larger, more dense, and more socially complex populations. Over the past decade, archaeogenetic studies have largely focused on processes that drove the spread of farming practices, particularly the introduction of farming and sedentism into Europe 

However, the demographic aspects of the transformation of forager communities in Southwest Asia into communities practicing substantial-scale mixed farming and the full extent of the role of Anatolian populations in the spread of farming into Europe have remained unclear. Here, we investigate human remains excavated from two different Neolithic settlements in central Anatolia, Boncuklu and Tepecik-Çiftlik, between circa (ca.) 8300 and 5800 calibrated (cal) BC to explore the demographic processes during the earliest (Aceramic) phase of the Neolithic transition, as well as the later Pottery Neolithic period in Anatolia.


Highlights 


• Pre-pottery farmers had low genetic diversity, akin to Mesolithic hunter-gatherers 

• Genetic diversity levels are higher in the subsequent Pottery Neolithic • Central Anatolian farmers belonged to the same gene pool as early European farmers 

• Copper Age genetic affinities suggest a second wave of Anatolian gene flow

SUMMARY 


The archaeological documentation of the development of sedentary farming societies in Anatolia isnot yet mirrored by a genetic understanding of thehuman populations involved, in contrast to the spread of farming in Europe [1–3]. Sedentary farming communities emerged inparts oft the Fertile Crescent during the tenth millennium and early ninth millen-nium calibrated (cal) BC and had appeared in central Anatolia by 8300 cal BC [4]. Farming spread intowest Anatolia by the early seventh millennium calBC and quasi-synchronously into Europe, although the timing and process of this movement remain un-clear. Using genome sequence data that we gener-ated from nine central Anatolian Neolithic individuals,we studied the transition period from early Aceramic(Pre-Pottery) to the later Pottery Neolithic, whenfarming expanded west of the Fertile Crescent. Wefind that genetic diversity in the earliest farmers was conspicuously low, on a par with European foraging groups. With the advent of the Pottery Neolithic, genetic variation within societies reached levels later found in early European farmers. Our results confirm that the earliest Neolithic central Anatolians belonged to the same gene pool as the first Neolithic migrants spreading into Europe. Further,genetic affinities between later Anatolian farmers and fourth to third millennium BC Chalcolithic south Europeans suggest an additional wave of Anatolian migrants, after the initial Neolithic spread but before the Yamnaya-related migrations. We propose thatthe earliest farming societies demographically resembled foragers and that only after regional gene flow and rising heterogeneity did the farming population expansions into Europe occur.


http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.07.057


Please cite this article in press as: 


Kılınc¸ et al., The Demographic Development of the First Farmers in Anatolia, Current Biology (2016), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.07.057 


The Demographic Developmentof the First Farmers in Anatolia 


Gülsah Merve Kılınç[1], Ayça Omrak, Füsun Özer, Torsten Günther, Ali Metin Büyükkarakaya, Erhan Bıçakçı, Douglas Baird, Handan Melike Dönertas  , Ayshin Ghalichi, Reyhan Yaka, Dilek Koptekin, Sinan Can Açan, Poorya Parvizi, Maja Krzewinska, Evangelia A. Daskalaki, Eren Yüncü, Nihan Dilsad Dagtas , AndrewFairbairn, Jessica Pearson, Gökhan Mustafaoglu, Yılmaz Selim Erdal, Yasin GökhanÇakan,  Inci Togan, Mehmet Somel, JanStorå, MattiasJakobsson,and Anders Götherström.

[1] Gülşah Merve Kılınç 
Department of Biological Sciences, Middle East Technical University, 06800 Ankara, Turkey Department of Organismal Biology, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 18C, 75236, Uppsala, Sweden

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