Agricultural transition and Indo-European dispersals

Zvelebil, Marek; Zvelebil, Kamil

doi:10.1017/s0003598x00074743

Cited by 66 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Thus, the hypothesis of the migration of farmers was not accepted by some (35). Renfrew (6,36) has accepted, on the basis of theoretical considerations, our hypothesis that agriculture was spread from the Near East by people, the farmers themselves, rather than as a technology, and he used this conceptual framework to propose that Neolithic farmers spoke IE languages, which they spread to Europe.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetics and the origin of European languages.

Piazza

Rendine

Minch

et al. 1995

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetics and the origin of European languages.

Piazza

Rendine

Minch

et al. 1995

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…The results of this study are compatible both with a complete replacement of pre-existing huntergatherers by Near Eastern farmers (the OAG model), and with the more conventional view that this replacement was only partial, and that hunter-gatherers contributed to some extent to the genetic pool of Indo-European speaking populations (the OAC model). But the view whereby language replacement was largely independent of population movements (Zvelebil and Zvelebil, 1988) fails to account for the largescale clinal patterns matching the direction of the spread of agriculture observed in Europe, and therefore does not seem easy to reconcile with the available genetic evidence.…”

Section: Relation To Other Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although directed westwards, like demic diffusion, these waves were not associated with population increases comparable to those caused by the introduction of farming and animal breeding. Therefore, diffusion of Indo-European in the late Neolithic would imply that languages spread more through cultural contacts (Zvelebil and Zvelebil, 1988) than by demographic processes (see Renfrew, 1989). As a corollary to this, association between patterns of genetic and linguistic variation should be limited and occasional among contemporary Indo-European speakers.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Indo‐European origins: A computer‐simulation test of five hypotheses

Barbujani

Sokal

Oden

1995

American J Phys Anthropol

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Allele frequency distributions were generated by computer simulation of five models of microevolution in European populations. Genetic distances calculated from these distributions were compared with observed genetic distances among Indo-European speakers. The simulated models differ in complexity, but all incorporate random genetic drift and short-range gene flow (isolation by distance). The best correlations between observed and simulated data were obtained for two models where dispersal of Neolithic farmers from the Near East depends only on population growth. More complex models, where the timing of the farmers' expansion is constrained by archaeological time data, fail to account for a larger fraction of the observed genetic variation; this is also the case for a model including late Neolithic migrations from the Pontic steppes. The genetic structure of current populations speaking Indo-European languages seems therefore to largely reflect a Neolithic expansion. This is consistent with the hypothesis of a parallel spread of farming technologies and a proto-Indo-European language in the Neolithic. Allele-frequency gradients among Indo-European speakers may be due either to incomplete admixture between dispersing farmers, who presumably spoke proto-Indo-European, and pre-existing hunters and gatherers (as in the traditional demic diffusion hypothesis), or to founder effects during the farmers' dispersal. By contrast, successive migrational waves from the East, if any, do not seem to have had genetic consequences detectable by the present comparison of observed and simulated allele frequencies.

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“…The first model, demic diffusion, attributes the spread of farming to the local growth and expansion of farmers Cavalli-Sforza 1973, 1984). The second model, cultural diffusion, involves farming being passed from one local group to the next without substantial movement of farming populations (Edmonson 1961;Zvelebil and Zvelebil 1988). The genetic consequences of these two modes of diffusion are different; the demic diffusion of farmers involves the spread of the farmers' genes, whereas the cultural diffusion model is expected to leave no genetic signature from the farmers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic evidence in support of a shared Eurasian-North African dairying origin

et al. 2005

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The process by which pastoralism and agriculture spread from the Fertile Crescent over the past 10,000 years has been the subject of intense investigation by geneticists, linguists and archaeologists. However, no consensus has been reached as to whether this Neolithic transition is best characterized by a demic diffusion (with a significant genetic input from migrating farmers) or a cultural diffusion (without substantial migration of farmers). Milk consumption and thus lactose tolerance are assumed to have spread with pastoralism and we propose that by looking at the relevant mutations in and around the lactase gene in human populations, we can gain insight into the origin(s) and spread of dairying. We genotyped the putatively causal allele for lactose tolerance (-13910T) and constructed haplotypes from several polymorphisms in and around the lactase gene (LCT) in three North African Berber populations and compared our results with previously published data. We found that the frequency of the -13910T allele predicts the frequency of lactose tolerance in several Eurasian and North African Berber populations but not in most sub-Saharan African populations. Our analyses suggest that contemporary Berber populations possess the genetic signature of a past migration of pastoralists from the Middle East and that they share a dairying origin with Europeans and Asians, but not with sub-Saharan Africans.

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Agricultural transition and Indo-European dispersals

Cited by 66 publications

References 10 publications

Genetics and the origin of European languages.

Genetics and the origin of European languages.

Indo‐European origins: A computer‐simulation test of five hypotheses

Genetic evidence in support of a shared Eurasian-North African dairying origin

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