Published 5 February 2024 at 15.40
Domestic. When the first farmers came to Scandinavia 5,900 years ago, the gathering and hunting population was wiped out within a couple of generations. This is shown by a new study published in Nature. The results – which run counter to prevailing opinion – are based on DNA analyzes of skeletons and teeth found in present-day Denmark.
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The international research team has by extracting DNA from skeletal parts and teeth from ancient people, were able to draw new conclusions about the effects of migration on prehistoric populations.
The study shows, among other things, that there have been two almost total population changes in Denmark during the last 7,300 years. The first population change took place 5,900 years ago when a farming population, of different origin and appearance, displaced the gatherers, hunters and fishermen who had previously populated Scandinavia.
Within the course of just a few generations, almost the entire hunter-gatherer population became extinct , according to the researchers.
– It has previously been portrayed as if this transition was peaceful, including in the television series “Historien om Danmark” and the corresponding series in Sweden. But our study suggests the opposite. In addition to untimely death, it is likely that new pathogens from livestock affected many collectors, says Anne Birgitte Nielsen, geological researcher and director of the Laboratory for 14C dating at Lund University.
A thousand years later, around 4,850 years ago, another population shift occurred when people with genetic roots in the Yamnaya—an Indo-European pastoral people with roots in southern Russia—made their way to Scandinavia and wiped out the earlier farming population. Again, according to the researchers, it could have happened both through violence and through new pathogens. The grown-up people led a semi-nomanic life on the steppes, domesticated animals, kept domestic animals and moved by horse and cart over large areas. The people who settled in our latitudes were a mixture between Yamnaya and Eastern European peasant Stone Age people – a genetic profile that is still dominant in Denmark today, while the DNA profile of the first peasant population has basically been erased.
– This too once the population change occurred rapidly, and practically without descendants from the predecessors. We do not have as much DNA material from Sweden, but what is available points to a similar sequence of events. In other words, many Swedes are also largely descended from these semi-nomads, says Anne Birgitte Nielsen in a press release.
The results not only overturn previous theories about amorous and peaceful encounters between ethnic groups. The study also provides a deeper understanding of the historical migration flows as well as important keys to how to interpret archaeological findings and changes in vegetation and land use found in paleoecological data.
– Our results contribute to a deeper knowledge of our heritage . But also understanding of the development of certain diseases. Something that in the longer term can be useful in, for example, medical research, says Anne Birgitte Nielsen.