The European Family Tree Gets Weirder and Weirder

Surprising new studies of ancient DNA suggest that (1) Europe’s first farmers came from foreign shores, and (2) that we have no idea where the DNA of most modern Europeans comes from. The recovered genes of ancient neolithic farmers were found to be entirely unlike those of the native Ice Age hunter-gatherers which preceded them. When compared with Europeans alive today there was not much overlap with either group. This came as a shock to researchers who previously thought that we may all share a branch of the old family tree. Now scientists are left to explain where the genetic inheritance of modern Europeans comes from if not from either of these two cultures.

Artwork: Line Drawing of a Banyan Tree, courtesy of Pearson Scott Foresman and the Wikimedia Foundation.