Stonehenge: DNA reveals origin of builders

[Zorro]

The ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge travelled west across the Mediterranean before reaching Britain, a study has shown.

Researchers compared DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains found across Britain with that of people alive at the same time in Europe.

The Neolithic inhabitants appear to have travelled from Anatolia (modern Turkey) to Iberia before winding their way north.

They reached Britain in about 4,000BC.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47938188

[Talitha]

1. Thanks for the link!

[lindysalsagal]

2. In those days, they were called Moores, I think?

Correct me if I'm wrong. Good at math, science, architecture, design, art, languages...

[Hekate]

3. Not 6,000 years ago. I wondered about Egyptian training though. nt

[Silver Gaia]

6. That's an interesting thought.

Hmmmm...

[Amishman]

12. Anatolia region of Turkey is home to the oldest Neolithic structures in the world

No need for an Egyptian connection to explain anything

Gobekli Tepe was already thousands of years old at this point,and features large standing stone monoliths / pillars. It makes sense that the builders of Stonehenge had a connection.

Just to give you an idea just how old Gobekli Tepe is, the oldest Egyptian pyramid (Djoser) was built in 2670 BC, 4689 years ago. Gobekli Tepe was abandoned around 8000 BC, or about 10,000 years ago. The construction oldest of the pyramids is closer to the present day than it is to the construction of Gobekli Tepe.

[Hekate]

21. Many thanks; I knew I should have gone looking for a better answer.

[SeattleVet]

4. Othello was a Moore...

From the Reduced Shakespeare Company's "Complete Shakespeare (Abridged)".

[Silver Gaia]

5. This was about 5,000 years before the Moors.

Good thought, just wrong time period. The Moors were primarily Muslims who traveled to Europe during the Middle Ages. The people being discussed here were pre-Christianity by 4,000 years, and Islam is post-Christianity.

[DFW]

9. Mary Tyler Moore is a Moore. You mean the Moors (los Moros).

The Moors were an Islamic people from North Africa who occupied much of Spain for about 7 centuries. Castilian ("Spanish" ) has several words of Arab origin for this reason, where other Romance languages do not.

The Moors definitely brought a level of sophistication to the Iberian Peninsula that was lacking at the time. If you ever get a chance to visit Grenada in southern Spain, you'll see well-preserved monuments to this legacy (Alhambra, Generalife, e.g.).

[Takket]

13. Actually it is Moops

https://m.

M

[malaise]

14. LOL

;chuckle:

[Tanuki]

17. I am currently reading an excellent book on the subject and recommend it highly:

https://www.amazon.com/Moorish-Spain-Richard-Fletcher/dp/0520248406

"Beginning in the year 711 and continuing for nearly a thousand years, the Islamic presence survived in Spain, at times flourishing, and at other times dwindling into warring fiefdoms. But the culture and science thereby brought to Spain, including long-buried knowledge from Greece, largely forgotten during Europe’s Dark Ages, was to have an enduring impact on the country as it emerged into the modern era. In this gracefully written history, Richard Fletcher reveals the Moorish culture in all its fascinating disparity and gives us history at its best: here is vivid storytelling by a renowned scholar."

[jcgoldie]

18. Holy shit!

I can't believe I never made the connection between Mary Tyler Moore and Stonehenge... she really was a trendsetter!

[HipChick]

15. Moors were black...

as were Egyptians..

[Karadeniz]

32. I do think so. In the ancient artwork, one can see nubians looking different from the

Egyptians. There was also the idea that Cleopatra was black because she was in Africa, even though it was Egypt. The problem with that was she was a descendent of Ptolemy, one of Alexander's Macedonian generals who divided up his empire after his death. In order to fit in with the Egyptian concept of royalty, the ptolemies practiced royal incest, just as the pharoahs did. So Cleopatra would've looked Greek. I think Cleopatra may have been married to her brother when she met Caesar, or they were supposed to marry.

[Crunchy Frog]

24. They weren't called anything at all in any currently existing language.

This migration predates the invention of writing, and possibly even the emergence of the Proto-Indo-European language.

The Moors were dark skinned Muslims who lived in Spain and Portugal in the Middle Ages, so no relation.

[OnDoutside]

7. That won't go down well with Brexiters !

[RandiFan1290]

8. From Anatolia (Turkey)

Where they found Göbekli Tepe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobekli_Tepe


Interesting

[DLevine]

10. Yup, first thing I thought of. nt

[DFW]

11. The mobility of peoples and their technology goes back amazingly far

Things we never thought possible really were. That a people from Anatolia could find their way to Britain, and have the sophistication to build such a site--apparently with knowledge brought with them and passed down for generations--challenges the imagination.

[MineralMan]

16. It is amazing, isn't it.

When it comes to the history of humans, we are very short-sighted. We see only as far back as we have written evidence, really, or major construction projects.

It is very difficult for us to imagine life as it was 6000 years ago. We really know next to nothing about how people lived and thought that long ago. We have very scant evidence from that period and no contemporaneous accounts that old.

And yet, Stonehenge was constructed, as were many other monuments to something from that time. We can imagine life as it was then, but only dimly. We know something of how Stonehenge was built, from on-site evidence. We know where the stones were quarried, and something about that quarry location.

What we don't know is what the people who built it, and the other projects that date that far back, thought. There is no record of their thinking or lives other than the monuments they created. We simply do not know.

Because we don't know, we don't spend a lot of time wondering. We have records of more recent things, so we focus on those, because it is easier.

Our knowledge of our species history is still very, very limited.

[FakeNoose]

19. These migrations were probably related to the Ice Ages

The "Ice Ages" were actually the ebb and flow of several large glaciers across different areas of Europe. Nomadic groups moved around according to where they could find food, shelter and warmer temperatures. They got as far west as Britain and realized there was nothing further. At least not until they could build bigger boats.

[Crunchy Frog]

25. This migration was during the Neolithic, thousands of years after the retreat of the glaciers.

These migrations involved people who mostly lived in settled agricultural societies.

Large scale human migrations have been going on forever, even into very recent historical times.

[jberryhill]

26. People don't need to move much for DNA to travel, though

DNA moving from one place to another does not necessarily mean that people made the same movement.

If I have three groups:

A-B-C

laid out geographically like that, then DNA from group A can get to group C over the course of generations without a single person from A territory moving to C territory.

People are pretty good at one thing in particular.

[Crunchy Frog]

29. When the DNA shift is sudden and massive

And accompanied by the arrival of an entire, new cultural complex, then it was likely more than a few people getting a little on the side.

[jberryhill]

30. Your honor, I have no idea how my DNA got there

[hunter]

23. It reminds me of the later Chaco Culture in America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Historical_Park

The structures are equally enigmatic.

[mainer]

20. Immigrants get it done

The locals didn't/couldn't build Stonehenge.

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. Aaarrggghh! There is nothing in the abstract of the paper about Stonehenge

It seems to be a study of the entire British population after 4000BC, not the area of Stonehenge.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0871-9

The roles of migration, admixture and acculturation in the European transition to farming have been debated for over 100?years. Genome-wide ancient DNA studies indicate predominantly Aegean ancestry for continental Neolithic farmers, but also variable admixture with local Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Neolithic cultures first appear in Britain circa 4000?BC, a millennium after they appeared in adjacent areas of continental Europe. The pattern and process of this delayed British Neolithic transition remain unclear. We assembled genome-wide data from 6 Mesolithic and 67?Neolithic individuals found in Britain, dating 8500–2500?BC. Our analyses reveal persistent genetic affinities between Mesolithic British and Western European hunter-gatherers. We find overwhelming support for agriculture being introduced to Britain by incoming continental farmers, with small, geographically structured levels of hunter-gatherer ancestry. Unlike other European Neolithic populations, we detect no resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry at any time during the Neolithic in Britain. Genetic affinities with Iberian Neolithic individuals indicate that British Neolithic people were mostly descended from Aegean farmers who followed the Mediterranean route of dispersal. We also infer considerable variation in pigmentation levels in Europe by circa 6000?BC.

I'm pissed off the BBC is making this sound as if it's tied to Stonehenge. Here's a write-up by scientists, who are talking about farming, not Stonehenge:

Natural History Museum postdoctoral researcher Dr Tom Booth says: 'We looked at the genetic ancestry of human remains from both before and after 6,000 years ago - so some dating to the Mesolithic and some to the Neolithic - to see if we can characterise any changes, as soon as these Neolithic cultures start to arrive, we see a big change in the ancestry of the British population. It looks like the development of farming and these Neolithic cultures was mainly driven by the migration of people from mainland Europe.'

From the DNA analysis the researchers were able to reveal that most of the hunter-gatherer population of Britain were replaced by those carrying ancestry originating in the Aegean, where farming cultures are thought to have spread from after beginning in the Near East.

Professor Ian Barnes, ancient DNA expert at the Natural History Museum and co-author of the study, said: ‘Because continental farmer populations had mixed to some extent with local hunter-gatherers as they expanded along both the Mediterranean and Rhine-Danube corridors, as well as later, we expected to see some mixing in Britain as well.’

Indeed it is now understood that populations of early Neolithic cultures would have travelled from the Aegean coast in Turkey bringing farming and the specific cultures that went with it, such as new funerary rites and pottery, and spread them across much of Western Europe along the two main corridors of the Mediterranean Sea and the Rhine-Danube axis of Central Europe.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/press-office/press-releases/ancient-dna-shows-migrants-introduced-farming-to-britain-from-eu.html

[jberryhill]

27. Yes it is atrocious sensationalist reporting

They make it sound like people from Anatolia wandered into Britain and built Stonehenge, when that’s not even what the study was about or concludes.

Everyone knows Stonehenge was built by space aliens.

[kwassa]

33. Stonehenge was built by Mexican immigrants.

Non-union.

[Crunchy Frog]

28. Thank you for the clarification.

So it was about the emergence of agriculture in Britain, and not about Stonehenge.

Funny the way people misinterpret things.

[Crunchy Frog]

31. If you Google "Stonehenge" right now, EVERYTHING that comes up

Is about that article.

I guess massive stone monuments are more glamorous than the shift from hunter-gathering to agriculture.