Yann Klimentidis is back blogging again with a new post about the “Genetics of hunter-gatherers and early farmers in Europe” where he talks about the paper “Genetic Discontinuity Between Local Hunter-Gatherers and Central Europe’s First Farmers“.
An interesting paper in that it suggests today’s Europeans are not (primarily) descendant from the original Europeans. (Although I think more evidence is needed before a convincing argument can be made for this.)
Yann’s comments on it are as folllows…
They examine the Fst in mtDNA sequence between hunter-gatherer samples (13,400 to 2,300 ago) in Central Europe, from more recent individuals (and modern Europeans). I guess they must use archaeological or other evidence to determine their subsistence pattern.
They get an Fst of 0.163, which is indeed remarkably high – although do we really know what to expect when comparing populations over time? To answer this, they perform some simulations, and reject the hypothesis that this Fst could have been due to a process of population continuity.
Along with their discussion of the haplotype differences betwee[n] the hunter-gatherers and farmers, this result is pretty interesting and suggests a migration of early farmers into central Europe and replacement of hunter-gatherers.
Proto-Indo-Europeans?
(Emphasis mine.)