2000 Years of Parallel Societies in Stone Age Central Europe

Abstract

Farming or Fishing: Evidence has been mounting that most modern European populations originated from the immigration of farmers who displaced the hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic. Bollongino et al. (p. 479 , published online 10 October) present analyses of palaeogenetic and isotopic data from Neolithic human skeletons from the Blätterhöhle burial site in Germany. The analyses identify a Neolithic freshwater fish–eating hunter-gatherer group, living contemporaneously and in close proximity to a Neolithic farming group. While there is some evidence that hunter-gatherer women may have admixed into the farming population, it appears likely that marriage or cultural boundaries between the groups persisted for over two millennia. Thus, the transition from the Mesolithic involved a more complex pattern of coexistence among humans of different genetic origins and cultures in the Neolithic, rather than a more abrupt transition.