The neolithisation of Eurasia: archaeological, archaeogentic and biomolecular perspectives

Abstract

The Mesolithic-Neolithic transformation was far more complex and variable process than previously hypothesised. The introduction of ceramic technology and initial pottery distributions in Eurasia show a wide-spread appearance of different pottery-making techniques and ornamental principles in different cultural and chronological contexts. The pattern cannot be explained by way of a narrow and gradual southeast - north west oriented spread of both people and vessels across Europe in the context of demic diffusion migratory model. The data indicate that ceramic technology was invented and reinvented more than once in different Palaeolithic and Neolithic contexts, and that hunter-gatherer communities made ceramic vessels elsewhere in Eurasia. Archaeogenetic data suggest that the processes of peopling Europe in prehistory were far more complex and variable than was first thought. The analyses of palimpsest of Ychromosomal paternal and mitochondrial maternal lineages in modern populations and of ancient DNA and palaeodemographic reconstructions show a complex picture of varied population trajectories elsewhere in Europe. Archaeological and biochemical data suggest that dairying and fermented milk consumption in Europe in Neolithic emerged before the genetic adaptation to milk culture.