BBC Focus Magazine

[Shadowwolf]

One of the most debated developments in human history is the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies. A recent issue of Science presents the genetic findings of a Swedish-Danish research team, which show that agriculture spread to Northern Europe via migration from Southern Europe.

"We have been able to show that the genetic variation of today's Europeans was strongly affected by immigrant Stone Age farmers, though a number of hunter-gatherer genes remain," says Assistant Professor Anders Götherström of the Evolutionary Biology Centre, who, along with Assistant Professor Mattias Jakobsson, co-led the study, a collaboration with Stockholm University and the University of Copenhagen.

"What is interesting and surprising is that Stone Age farmers and hunter-gatherers from the same time had entirely different genetic backgrounds and lived side by side for more than a thousand years, to finally interbreed," Mattias Jakobsson says.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120426143850.htm

[M Paul Lloyd]

And there was I thinking that hunter gatherers gave up hunting and gathering as they increased the amount of farming as a more stable alternative.

So the old tales of the Woodland Folk were perhaps not so far fetched after all?