4 ms·

Stone Age hunter-gatherers lived beside farmers, didn't interbreed

37 points by rfugger 13y ago

ealloc 13y ago
This result is right in line with the observations of people studying the evolution of lactose tolerance [1]. Lactose-tolerant middle-easterners (who had long been eating lactose-free fermented milk, until they developed lactose tolerance) moved in to Europe and took over, and rarely mixed with the native hunter gatherers. Instead, they simply outcompeted them and largely wiped them out. It is estimated that lactose tolerance gave them "up to 19% more fertile offspring" than the indigenous hunter-gatherers. That makes me muse: Maybe the two groups didn't mix because the hunter-gatherers couldn't survive on the high-milk (and high starch?) diet of the agricultural people. Lactose intolerance can be quite violent! [1] http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471 http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1...
tjaerv 13y ago
Obligatory link to Jared Diamond's classic essay "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race": http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html
armenarmen 13y ago
I wonder it comparing the bones side by side can give us any insights into the legitimacy of the claims that the paleo diet crew likes to make?
- VLM 13y ago
  Its kinda the other way around, where extensive research led to certain conclusions... As a field this is old stuff. One of the profs in the article, Richards, is an expert in isotopic analysis and has sixty something published papers on the topic, more or less on the topic of bone analysis at various digs implying various things about diet. He shows up in the CJ Hunt movie 'perfect human diet' or whatever its called.
- Sharlin 13y ago
  The diet of a hunter-gatherer is certainly almost always healthier than that of a subsistence farmer, but people in modern industrialized societies are hardly subsistence farmers.
crazygringo 13y ago
If it's anything like Africa has been over the past 100 years, agricultural tribes and hunter-gatherer tribes simply don't mix. Agricultural tribes find the hunter-gatherer tribes to be dirty, lazy, uncivilized -- not a lot of sexual attraction going on. And the hunter-gatherer tribes think the agricultural people work way too hard for nothing, with their priorities all wrong, and don't want anything to do with the lifestyle. At least that's how it was all explained to me during time I spent in Kenya and Tanzania, where I spent a couple weeks with a hunter-gatherer tribe.
- bsullivan01 13y ago
  If it's anything like Africa has been over the past 100 years, agricultural tribes and hunter-gatherer tribes simply don't mix. You are missing the point IMO. Back then, it wasn't like today, where you check their LinkedIn profile, FB pictures, date them a few dozen times and then decide. Food, shelter and protection were even more important than now. And 2000 years is a long time not to mix, imagine what the world goes through in 2 millennia.
- rubymtnman 13y ago
  This makes a lot of sense. None of us can comprehend radically different lifestyles. Regardless of race, a very different lifestyle is almost like a different culture.
  - ExpiredLink 13y ago
    Nowadays Muslims and Christians don't 'interbreed' - and they have much more in common than stone age hunters and farmers.
    - throwaway1977 13y ago
      My Catholic wife and I are planning on being a counterexample to that argument :)
    - Mikeb85 13y ago
      Nonsense. My wife and I are an example...
rhizome 13y ago
There's a reality TV series here somewhere.
qwerta 13y ago
There are several holes in this article. >The tribe in Central Europe ate almost exclusively freshwater fish until around 3000 B.C 3000 BC was still stone (copper) age in Central Europe. Agriculture is very hard with stone tools. Also climate could be much cooler for long period. At that time I would choose fish anytime. > Typically, he said, the arrival of farming led to widespread deforestation and the disappearance of wildlife Several places in Central Europe were deforested as late as 12th century. Early European agriculture relied on burning part of forest, using it until ground was fertile and than moving to other place. Intensive agriculture (which leads to widespread deforestation) was not used until middle-ages. > Despite the fact that they were neighbours, there was little, if any, interbreeding between the two cultural groups, according to the results of a DNA analysis > Nehlich acknowledged that lack of interbreeding may have been due to cultural reasons, but said that is pure speculation in the absence of evidence. They probably lived in different periods, possibly separated by hundreds of years. Culture has nothing to do with it, even neanderthals were interbreeding with early modern humans. It was common to kidnap and marry woman from different tribes.
karlkatzke 13y ago
Huh. An ancient tribe of Crossfit-ers. Who woulda thunk?

37 points by rfugger 13y ago

This result is right in line with the observations of people studying the evolution of lactose tolerance [1]. Lactose-tolerant middle-easterners (who had long been eating lactose-free fermented milk, until they developed lactose tolerance) moved in to Europe and took over, and rarely mixed with the native hunter gatherers. Instead, they simply outcompeted them and largely wiped them out. It is estimated that lactose tolerance gave them "up to 19% more fertile offspring" than the indigenous hunter-gatherers. That makes me muse: Maybe the two groups didn't mix because the hunter-gatherers couldn't survive on the high-milk (and high starch?) diet of the agricultural people. Lactose intolerance can be quite violent! [1] http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471 http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1...

tjaerv 13y ago

Obligatory link to Jared Diamond's classic essay "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race": http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html

armenarmen 13y ago

I wonder it comparing the bones side by side can give us any insights into the legitimacy of the claims that the paleo diet crew likes to make?

VLM 13y ago
Its kinda the other way around, where extensive research led to certain conclusions... As a field this is old stuff. One of the profs in the article, Richards, is an expert in isotopic analysis and has sixty something published papers on the topic, more or less on the topic of bone analysis at various digs implying various things about diet. He shows up in the CJ Hunt movie 'perfect human diet' or whatever its called.
Sharlin 13y ago
The diet of a hunter-gatherer is certainly almost always healthier than that of a subsistence farmer, but people in modern industrialized societies are hardly subsistence farmers.

crazygringo 13y ago

If it's anything like Africa has been over the past 100 years, agricultural tribes and hunter-gatherer tribes simply don't mix. Agricultural tribes find the hunter-gatherer tribes to be dirty, lazy, uncivilized -- not a lot of sexual attraction going on. And the hunter-gatherer tribes think the agricultural people work way too hard for nothing, with their priorities all wrong, and don't want anything to do with the lifestyle. At least that's how it was all explained to me during time I spent in Kenya and Tanzania, where I spent a couple weeks with a hunter-gatherer tribe.

bsullivan01 13y ago
If it's anything like Africa has been over the past 100 years, agricultural tribes and hunter-gatherer tribes simply don't mix. You are missing the point IMO. Back then, it wasn't like today, where you check their LinkedIn profile, FB pictures, date them a few dozen times and then decide. Food, shelter and protection were even more important than now. And 2000 years is a long time not to mix, imagine what the world goes through in 2 millennia.
rubymtnman 13y ago
This makes a lot of sense. None of us can comprehend radically different lifestyles. Regardless of race, a very different lifestyle is almost like a different culture.
- ExpiredLink 13y ago
  Nowadays Muslims and Christians don't 'interbreed' - and they have much more in common than stone age hunters and farmers.
  - throwaway1977 13y ago
    My Catholic wife and I are planning on being a counterexample to that argument :)
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    Nonsense. My wife and I are an example...

rhizome 13y ago

There's a reality TV series here somewhere.

qwerta 13y ago

There are several holes in this article. >The tribe in Central Europe ate almost exclusively freshwater fish until around 3000 B.C 3000 BC was still stone (copper) age in Central Europe. Agriculture is very hard with stone tools. Also climate could be much cooler for long period. At that time I would choose fish anytime. > Typically, he said, the arrival of farming led to widespread deforestation and the disappearance of wildlife Several places in Central Europe were deforested as late as 12th century. Early European agriculture relied on burning part of forest, using it until ground was fertile and than moving to other place. Intensive agriculture (which leads to widespread deforestation) was not used until middle-ages. > Despite the fact that they were neighbours, there was little, if any, interbreeding between the two cultural groups, according to the results of a DNA analysis > Nehlich acknowledged that lack of interbreeding may have been due to cultural reasons, but said that is pure speculation in the absence of evidence. They probably lived in different periods, possibly separated by hundreds of years. Culture has nothing to do with it, even neanderthals were interbreeding with early modern humans. It was common to kidnap and marry woman from different tribes.

karlkatzke 13y ago

Huh. An ancient tribe of Crossfit-ers. Who woulda thunk?