Neolithic Europe: Encyclopedia II - Neolithic Europe - Origins

Neolithic Europe - Origins

Archeologists believe that food-producing societies first emerged in the Levantine region of southwest Asia in the early Holocene, and developed into a number of regionally distinctive cultures by the 8th millennium BCE. Remains of food producing societies in Greece have been carbon-dated to around 6500 BCE at Knossos, Franchthi Cave, and a number of sites in Thessaly. Neolithic groups appear soon afterwards in the Balkans and south-central Europe. The Neolithic cultures of southeastern Europe (the Balkans, Italy, and the Aegean) show some continuity with groups in southwest Asia and Anatolia (e.g., Çatalhöyük). Some archaeologists and ethnographers refer to these cultures as Old Europe, and, with the assumption that the Bronze age coincided with the immigration of Indo-European peoples, they are also called Pre-Indo-European cultures.

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza has summarized the study of prehistoric European population genetics and demographics in The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution (written with his son Francesco), and updated it in Genes, Peoples, and Languages.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Origins", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki