Some years ago (around 2019) I did a few posts about the emerging evidence of DNA affinities across western Europe, partly based on this article by Brace et al:
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-neolithic-revolution-came-from-east.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-yamnaya-peace-loving-travellers.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/09/brexit-and-cockeyed-science-pitts.html
For some reason it has popped up again on the BBC website. Here is the abstract of the article:
AbstractThe 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.
Partly the discussion is framed in terms of hunter-gatherers descended from Mesolithic populations across the northern and western parts of the British Isles, and the Neolithic farmers or agriculturalists coming from the near continent. These brought with them a megalithic or stone using culture which was more complex and advanced than that of the older British tribes.
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-hunt-for-proto-stonehenge-and.html
With regard to the complex myth developed by MPP and his colleagues, regarding stone selection and quarrying, the use of megaliths in at least one "lost giant circle" in the midst of a ceremonial complex, and then the export of 80 bluestones to Stonehenge, they completely ignore the fact that all this would have required a highly sophisticated Neolithic culture in West Wales and a less sophisticated one on Salisbury Plain. There is no evidence that such a state of affairs ever existed, and indeed the research by Brace et al suggests that the stone-using skills came with the Neolithic tribes moving in from the near continent -- from the east towards the west.
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-hunt-for-proto-stonehenge-and.html
With regard to the complex myth developed by MPP and his colleagues, regarding stone selection and quarrying, the use of megaliths in at least one "lost giant circle" in the midst of a ceremonial complex, and then the export of 80 bluestones to Stonehenge, they completely ignore the fact that all this would have required a highly sophisticated Neolithic culture in West Wales and a less sophisticated one on Salisbury Plain. There is no evidence that such a state of affairs ever existed, and indeed the research by Brace et al suggests that the stone-using skills came with the Neolithic tribes moving in from the near continent -- from the east towards the west.
As we have said many times before, as the myth has become more and more complex, the lack of hard evidence in support of it becomes more and more of an embarrassment for the research team that has pushed it so enthusiastically. The DNA evidence from 2019 is just another nail in the coffin, and it's no bad thing to remind ourselves of it every now and then.
Reconstructed facial characteristics of one of the "immigrant" women who came with the waves of Neolithic settlers arriving from the near continent. They were agriculturalists and stone users......
Parker Pearson relies upon tenuous pottery evidence that there may have been in - comers arriving in Neolithic times by sea to e.g the Trefin area from the WEST. This was written up in MPP'S 2012 Stonehenge book and he cites pottery evidence made by Alison Chamberlain. On such tenuous claims are entire hypotheses sometimes built..... [ the Carreg Samson cromlech].
ReplyDeleteThere does seem to be evidence of some immigration by sea along the western seaboard in the Neolithic -- the question is "what was the scale of this influx of settlers, and what influence did they have on cultural matters, eg the use of megaliths in building?" My impression from reading the literature is that the early movement in from the sea was not on a very large scale, and that the later movement -- from the east, across land -- was very much more dramatic and influential.
ReplyDeleteHave just come across this Guardian 2021 article which I believe was on the back of that awful " documentary" on Waun Maun where a wet wet wet Alice Roberts is lured to meet a damp MPP up there in Preseli.
ReplyDeleteIt seems here that 1950s archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes was, way back then, speculating about bluestones being brought as trophy stones to Salsbury Plain. Subsequently this type of speculative musing by " intellectuals " ends up with this nonsense being ' written on stone' as it were by blind disciples such as Susan Greaney and the southern Julian Richards [ as distinct from the more northerly, prosaic Julian Richards].