Set as a personal genealogy explored through a DNA history of Europe from the Neolithic period. (The personal setting doesn't sit so well with the scientific basis, in my mind anyway. Would have been better as a straight out popular science book.)
Brings up a number of interesting points about European history and also about archaeology as a discipline.
First, DNA evidence seems to indicate that farming was carried into the whole of Europe by immigrants from modern day Syria and Turkey ie. the place where farming seems to have originated. Early farmers have radically different DNA from the local hunters and gatherers in the period where farming first moved into areas in Europe. Later, the groups seem to have mixed as the hunters moved into the farming communities.
Many people carry a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, so Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon people mated in some way. The fact that so many carry a small part of this DNA would indicate that the early mixed individuals had a better survival rate than those without the Neanderthal DNA. Perhaps some adaptation to cold climates, as the Neanderthals had been living in this kind of environment for millennia.
Every living human being's mitochondrial DNA comes from a single female way back in history! Apparently, at some point we almost died out as a species?
There were several waves of immigration into Europe from Africa, but only two waves seemed to have been able to survive in the long run, the Neanderthal and the Cro-Magnon.
Europe's population was formed by essentially three waves of immigration - two from Africa, and a last one from Central Asia during the Iron Age.
DNA analysis has upset a lot of theories about social development and migration that have been developed over the years. Many older archaeologists couldn't accept the validity of DNA-based information as it blew their pet theories and their careers out of the water. So much for disinterested science. Some also seem to have objected to the DNA-based conclusions on essentially racist grounds. (There is no such thing as 'disinterested' thinking....)
Worth reading for the nice summary of current DNA research in archaeology.
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