Genetic Study Reveals Massacre Of Europe’s Original Hunter-Gatherers By Early Settlers

Before the advent of the modern world, as we know it today, the earth was a grand stage where the drama of human ambition, conflict, and annihilation played out in its most primal form.

The quest to understand the Earth is an ever-evolving journey, where scientists attempt to peel back layers of time to find out more about our history. The process involves constant discovery and, sometimes, reevaluation.

A new study is pushing scientists to reevaluate their understanding of Scandinavia and the events that took place 5,900 years ago. Earlier, it was believed that the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to farming was a “peaceful” transition. However, the study offers evidence to show that hunter-gatherers were wiped out by farmer-settlers in what is now Denmark.

The study, conducted by an international research team that includes Lund University in Sweden, has found that the first farmers in Scandinavia arrived and conducted a bloody takeover of the land within a few generations.

The researchers believe the incoming farmer-settler groups did not arrive with olive branches of peace but with swords of conquest. In addition to this, diseases from animals may have contributed to the gradual wipe-out of the hunter-gatherers as well, according to Anne Birgitte Nielsen, geology researcher and head of the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at Lund University.

“This transition has previously been presented as peaceful. However, our study indicates the opposite. In addition to violent death, it is likely that new pathogens from livestock finished off many gatherers,” Nielsen said.

Researchers examined DNA from skeletal parts and teeth of prehistoric people to come to the conclusion about the effects of migration on ancient populations. The conclusion revealed that the whole population of Denmark was entirely replaced twice within a span of just a thousand years.

The first population change took place about 5,900 years ago, at a time when gatherers, hunters, and fishers were inhabiting Scandinavia. They were wiped out within a few generations after a farmer population arrived and began driving them out.

Another population change took place about a thousand years later, some 4,850 years ago. This time, people with genetic roots in Yamnaya – described as people who herd livestock with origins in southern Russia – came to Scandinavia and wiped out the previous population of farmers living in the region.

Researchers noted that the second wipe-out could have also involved both violence and new diseases.

The newcomers quickly replaced the first farmers to settle in Denmark and gave rise to a new cultural group.

While the DNA profile of the first farmer population has been essentially erased, the genetic profile that is dominant in today’s Denmark is a mix between Yamnaya and Eastern European Neolithic people.

“This time, there was also a rapid population turnover, with virtually no descendants from the predecessors. We don’t have as much DNA material from Sweden, but what there is points to a similar course of events. In other words, many Swedes are, to a great extent, also descendants of these semi-nomads,” said Nielsen.

Research from the past has suggested that the first wave of farmers that came to Scandinavia had inherited about 30 percent of their genomes from hunter-gatherers. This pointed towards the possibility of the populations having mixed with each other and not towards farmers wiping out the hunter-gatherers, according to ScienceAlert.

The findings of the new study not only challenge the previously held beliefs about harmonious and peaceful exchanges between different groups but also improve the understanding of historical migration patterns.

“Our results help to enhance our knowledge of our heredity and our understanding of the development of certain diseases. Something that, in the long term, could be beneficial, for example in medical research,” Nielsen added.

Previous research from Mainz University, UCL, and Cambridge University also analyzed DNA from hunter-gatherer and early farmer burials and compared it to the DNA of modern Europeans. The researchers concluded that there was little evidence of a direct genetic link between the hunter-gatherers and the early farmers. Hence, the first farmers in central and northern Europe could not have been the descendants of the hunter-gatherers who lived on the same land before them.

"This is really odd," Professor Mark Thomas, from the UCL Genetics, Evolution, and Environment division and co-author of the study, said in 2009. "For more than a century, the debate has centered around how much we are the descendants of European hunter-gatherers and how much we are the descendants of Europe's early farmers. For the first time, we are now able to directly compare the genes of these Stone Age Europeans, and what we find is that some DNA types just aren't there -- despite being common in Europeans today."

When the study was published in 2009, one main question was addressed: was the gradual replacement of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to farming brought to Europe by new people, or did the idea and adoption of farming spread across the population? The findings suggested that the farmers immigrated to the area.

"Our analysis shows that there is no direct continuity between hunter-gatherers and farmers in Central Europe," Professor Joachim Burger said at the time. "As the hunter-gatherers were there first, the farmers must have immigrated into the area."

The new study, conducted by Lund University in Sweden and others, now says that the farmers did not immigrate to the area peacefully but had “slaughtered” the hunter-gatherer population, according to the news release by Lund University.