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Concept
Genetic history of Europe
Summary
The genetic history of Europe includes information around the formation, ethnogenesis, and other DNA-specific information about populations indigenous, or living in Europe.
The most significant recent dispersal of modern humans from Africa gave rise to an undifferentiated "non-African" lineage by some 70–50 ka (70-50,000 years ago). By about 50–40 ka a West Eurasian lineage had emerged, as had a separate East Eurasian lineage. Both East and West Eurasians acquired Neanderthal admixture in Europe and Asia.
European early modern humans (EEMH) lineages between 40 and 26 ka (Aurignacian) were still part of a large Western Eurasian "meta-population", related to Central and Western Asian populations.
Divergence into genetically distinct sub-populations within Western Eurasia is a result of increased selection pressure and founder effects during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, Gravettian).
By the end of the LGM, after 20 ka, A Western European lineage, dubbed West European Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) emerged from the Solutrean refugium during the European Mesolithic. These mesolithic hunter-gatherer cultures are subsequently replaced in the Neolithic Revolution as a result of the arrival of Early European Farmers (EEF) lineages derived from mesolithic populations of West Asia (Anatolia and the Caucasus).
In the European Bronze Age, there were again substantial population replacements in parts of Europe by the intrusion of Western Steppe Herders (WSH) lineages from the Pontic–Caspian steppes, being deeply related to Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers. These Bronze Age population replacements are associated with the Bell Beaker and Corded Ware cultures archaeologically and with the Indo-European expansion linguistically.
As a result of the population movements during the Mesolithic to Bronze Age, modern European populations are distinguished by differences in WHG, EEF and Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) ancestry.
Admixture rates varied geographically; in the late Neolithic, WHG ancestry in farmers in Hungary was at around 10%, in Germany around 25% and in Iberia as high as 50%.
Official source
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