Human Genetics: Message from the Mesolithic

[Richard Rocca]

Only mtDNA was tested. It is not clear where (Italy?) the samples came from, but since they site the recent Sánchez-Quinto paper from Iberia, they are probably similar hunter-gatherer types...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982212007099

Summary:
DNA extracted from the remains of two Mesolithic individuals reveals that they had genetically little in common with modern Europeans. The ancestors of most modern Europeans thus most likely entered Europe only with the advent of farming.

[Maliclavelli]

The paper, unfortunately not for free, is written by Barbujani, a Geneticist (and Novelist) of Ferrara, one of the most strenuous follower of Luigi Luca Cavalli Sforza and of his theory of the demic diffusion from Middle East of the actual European population. It doesn’t presuppose new findings, but it is probably an exam of the paper of Federico Sánchez-Quinto et al., Genomic Affinities of Two 7,000-Year-Old Iberian Hunter-Gatherers Current Biology, Volume 22, Issue 16, 21 August 2012, Pages 1494-1499, we have discussed  a lot on the forums. The paper (also it not for free unfortunately) says in the abstract: “Furthermore, analyses of 1.34% and 0.53% of their nuclear genomes, containing about 50,000 and 20,000 ancestry informative SNPs, respectively, show that these two Mesolithic individuals are not related to current populations from either the Iberian Peninsula or Southern Europe”. The percentages of the SNPs taken in consideration are just 1,34 and 0,53%, and this may say us something about its reliability and also about the reliability of its author who said recently, after having supported for so long the origin of the Etruscans from Asia Minor/Aegean Sea, that the link between Tuscans and Anatolians is 13,000 years old. But now has been enough a paper like this to resurrect in him his ancient ideas. Anyway we should read the paper for saying something more careful.