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posted by Fnord666 on Friday February 23 2018, @11:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the neolithic-brexit dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The ancient population of Britain was almost completely replaced by newcomers about 4,500 years ago, a study shows.

The findings mean modern Britons trace just a small fraction of their ancestry to the people who built Stonehenge.

The astonishing result comes from analysis of DNA extracted from 400 ancient remains across Europe.

The mammoth study, published in Nature, suggests the newcomers, known as Beaker people, replaced 90% of the British gene pool in a few hundred years.

Lead author Prof David Reich, from Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, US, said: "The magnitude and suddenness of the population replacement is highly unexpected."

The reasons remain unclear, but climate change, disease and ecological disaster could all have played a role.

People in Britain lived by hunting and gathering until agriculture was introduced from continental Europe about 6,000 years ago. These Neolithic farmers, who traced their origins to Anatolia (modern Turkey) built giant stone (or "megalithic") structures such as Stonehenge in Wiltshire, huge Earth mounds and sophisticated settlements such as Skara Brae in the Orkneys.

But towards the end of the Neolithic, about 4,450 years ago, a new way of life spread to Britain from Europe. People began burying their dead with stylised bell-shaped pots, copper daggers, arrowheads, stone wrist guards and distinctive perforated buttons.

Co-author Dr Carles Lalueza-Fox, from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE) in Barcelona, Spain, said the Beaker traditions probably started "as a kind of fashion" in Iberia after 5,000 years ago.

From here, the culture spread very fast by word of mouth to Central Europe. After it was adopted by people in Central Europe, it exploded in every direction - but through the movement of people.

Prof Reich told BBC News: "Archaeologists ever since the Second World War have been very sceptical about proposals of large-scale movements of people in prehistory. But what the genetics are showing - with the clearest example now in Britain at Beaker times - is that these large-scale migrations occurred, even after the spread of agriculture."

[...] The Nature study examines the Beaker phenomenon across Europe using DNA from hundreds more samples, including remains from Holland, Spain, the Czech Republic, Italy and France.

Another intriguing possibility links the Beaker people with the spread of Celtic languages. Although many linguistics experts believe Celtic spread thousands of years later, Dr Lalueza-Fox said: "In my view, the massive population turnover must be accompanied by a language replacement."


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday February 24 2018, @03:36AM

    by Arik (4543) on Saturday February 24 2018, @03:36AM (#642864) Journal
    Hi anon,

    "It is not the case that I will not challenge Zionist arguments or that you didn't understand where the Neanderthal extinction point was heading."

    Shut it down, the goyim know? My sides, anon, my sides.

    No, I swear, I did not understand where that was heading. You could say I caught the faint gestank of it but I did not properly believe it until I opened this post.

    "You knew (or should have known) but argued against 'evidence' you yourself presented and I just blew it all to pieces in context of the larger picture."

    Did I? That sounds really abominable. But I truly haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. Try to be more specific?

    "For the record, I think the Balfour declaration was a mistake but support Israel's right to exist all the same."

    Alright anon. I guess you wanted a response? I'm not at all sure it was a good idea but it's not far enough in the past that I can easily examine it in a non-biased way and yet it is not recent enough that I can feel outrage over it. It was done by a generation before my birth, who knows exactly what they thought would result? I do not.

    I could easily write essays of excessive length arguing both sides of that. Let's spare the board that alphabetorium, it would serve no purpose, any reader will either not be prepared to understand, or could write the section without our help.

    Quite frankly I'm skeptical of the notion that any state has a 'right to exist.' People have a right to exist. Jewish people certainly have a right to exist in Judea. Crypto-jews certainly have a right to exist in Judea as well. Doesn't bother me a bit if they talk about Jesus or Mohammed or Siddha G'tauma when they clearly mean Joshua.

    Can we not occasionally make a small joke without violence in response?

    The original Temple at Jerusalem was the Temple of the Stranger, of the Traveller. This is reflected very strikingly in some stories in the Torah. This was a cult of good-will, a cult of kindness to strangers, of provision to travellers. This is the tradition that I would like to see carried forward in Jerusalem.

    What I want or would like to see is, unfortunately, not worth much more than a can of beans in terms of what happens to the people trying to live a life in Jerusalem in 2018.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
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