Our history, our genes

Abstract

Greek mythology tells us that Crete was the cradle of Western civilization. The ancient legends relate how Zeus seduced Europa, the daughter of a Phoenician king, by turning himself into a bull and hiding in the king's herd. While gathering flowers, Europa stroked the bull and ended up on his back. Zeus went to the ocean and swam to Crete. The Greek historian Herodotus ( circa 484–425 BC) also relates the tale of Europa, but with a different twist: as an act of revenge, the Minoans, who had been living on Crete, kidnapped Europa and took her to their island. Either way, Europa ended up on Crete to become the ‘mother’ of Western civilization. > …population geneticists have used non‐recombining DNA from the Y chromosome, mitochondrial DNA and other markers to probe, refine and redefine the prehistorical and historical record of migratory patterns in human history Modern archaeologists, who have been researching the original human settlement of Crete since the latter half of the nineteenth century, offer a third, less fantastical version, which leaves no space for a mythological Europa. Finds of pottery and ancient remnants of agriculture support the theory that the island's first permanent inhabitants arrived around 7,000 BC, possibly from Anatolia. Neolithic farmers settled in the lowlands and became part of the Minoan civilization 4,000 years later. Throughout the centuries, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Turks also migrated to Crete until the island became unified with mainland Greece in the early twentieth century. Now, researchers in population, molecular and evolutionary genetics are contributing to the investigation of the origins of Crete's population. Given that the Cretans might have been the first modern humans in Europe, it is a fascinating story. “What you have [is] this empty space sitting out in the Mediterranean, and there's no pre‐existing genetic substrate there from …