Thaindian News

Washington, Jan 20 (IANS) A new study has found that most men in Europe descended from the first farmers who migrated from the Near East 10,000 years ago.
The findings, by the University of Leicester in Britain, published Tuesday in the international journal PLoS Biology, Xinhua reported.

The invention of farming is perhaps the most important cultural change in the history of modern humans. Increased food production led to the development of societies that stayed put, rather than wandering in search of food, according to the study.

The resulting population growth culminated in the seven billion people who now live on the planet. In Europe, farming spread from the “Fertile Crescent”, a region extending from the eastern Mediterranean coast to the Persian Gulf and the Tigris and Euphrates valleys.

There has been much debate about whether the westerly spread of agriculture from the Near East was driven by farmers actually migrating, or by the transfer of ideas and technologies to indigenous hunter-gatherers.

Now, researchers have studied the genetic diversity of modern populations to throw light on the processes involved in these ancient events.

The new study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, examines the diversity of the Y chromosome, which is passed from father to son.

Mark Jobling, who led the research, said: “We focused on the commonest Y-chromosome lineage in Europe, carried by about 110 million men — it follows a gradient from southeast to northwest, reaching almost 100 percent frequency in Ireland.

“We looked at how the lineage is distributed, how diverse it is in different parts of Europe, and how old it is.” The results suggested that the lineage spread together with farming from the Near East.

Patricia Balaresque, first author of the study, added: “In total, this means that more than 80 percent of European Y chromosomes descend from incoming farmers. In contrast, most maternal genetic lineages seem to descend from hunter-gatherers. To us, this suggests a reproductive advantage for farming males over indigenous hunter-gatherer males during the switch from hunting and gathering, to farming — maybe, back then, it was just sexier to be a farmer.”