Hunter-gatherers northwestern Europe adopted farming from migrant women, study reveals
Ancient DNA has revealed that hunter-gatherers in Belgium, the Netherlands and nearby parts of Germany adapted to farming thousands of years later than elsewhere in Europe. It has also uncovered the pivotal role of women in the process
image:
Map showing dispersion of Hunter-Gatherers
view moreCredit: Bournemouth University
A new study has used ancient DNA to reveal that hunter-gatherers in Belgium, the Netherlands and nearby parts of Germany adapted to farming thousands of years later than elsewhere in Europe. It has also uncovered the pivotal role of women in the process.
The research, published in Nature, involved scientists from Bournemouth University (BU) and the University of Huddersfield and was led by David Reich at Harvard University.
Palaeoecologist Professor John Stewart at BU has been excavating caves in the region for over 20 years. He worked with archaeologists at the Université de Liège in Belgium to excavate ancient human remains from the Meuse and Lower Rhine regions of modern-day Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, between 8500 and 1700 BCE which were used in the research.
The analysis of the DNA from the human remains was carried out at the University of Huddersfield by research students under the supervision of Dr Maria Pala, Professor Martin B. Richards, and Dr Ceiridwen Edwards.
The Neolithic period was a crucial phase in European prehistory when a series of major population and cultural shifts happened that shaped the genetic composition of modern Europeans. At a time before national borders existed, people moved freely across large distances. In Europe, these movements influenced genetically distinct populations that intermixed creating new languages, cultures, and ways of life.
During this time European populations had three distinct ancestral components: a hunter-gatherer component inherited from the first modern human (Homo sapiens) inhabitants of the continent, a Neolithic component brought by the first farmers from the Near East, and a third component associated with pastoralists from south Russia.
DNA analysis from the remains of these ancient populations has helped peal back the layers of time and revealed that the arrival of farming in the Meuse and Lower Rhine regions, around ~4500 BCE did not result in anything like the major shift in genetic composition that took place across the rest of Europe. Instead, the hunter-gather practices were still being used, and the adoption of farming was slower to be introduced by up to 3,000 years.
Strikingly, the data from the study suggest that this farmer influx was mostly from women marrying into the local hunter-gatherer communities, bringing with them their know-how as well as their genes. This pattern was limited to the water-rich environments (riverine, wetlands and coastal areas) across the region. The wealth of natural resources seems to have allowed the local people to selectively embrace some aspects of farming while also preserving many hunter-gatherer practices (and genes).
The high levels of hunter-gatherer ancestry persisted until the end of the Neolithic, around 2500 BCE, when the famous “Bell Beaker” pottery first appeared. At this point, new people, with ancestry from Russia, spread across Europe. This time however, the newcomers overwhelmed the local communities, and the ancient lineages that had survived for so long dwindled.
The study also has consequences for the history of Britain. The analysis revealed that British Early Bronze Age populations after 2500 BCE traced more than 90 per cent of their ancestry to those continental Bell Beaker populations – the earlier people, who built Stonehenge, seem to have almost completely vanished.
Professor John Stewart commented: "We expected a clear change between the older hunter-gatherer populations and the newer agriculturalists but apparently in the lowlands and along the rivers of the Netherlands and Belgium the change was less immediate. It's like a Waterworld where time stood still."
Dr Maria Pala said: “This study has also brought to light the crucial role played by women in the transmission of knowledge from the incoming farming communities to the local hunter-gatherers. Thanks to ancient DNA studies we can not only uncover the past but also give voice to the invaluable but often overlooked role played by women in shaping human evolution.”
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One of the caves in Belgium where the remains of ancient settlers were excavated
Credit
Bournemouth University
Journal
Nature
Method of Research
Data/statistical analysis
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Hunter-gatherers northwestern Europe adopted farming from migrant women, study reveals
Article Publication Date
12-Feb-2026
New study maps where wheat, barley and rye grew before the first farmers found them
Using advanced machine-learning and climate models, researchers have shown that the ancestors of crops like wheat, barley, and rye probably were much less widespread in the Middle East 12,000 years ago than previously believed
image:
Dr. Amaia Arranz-Otaegui and Ali Shakaiteer sampling cereals in the Shubayqa area.
view moreCredit: Photo: Joe Roe, University of Copenhagen
In a new study in the journal Open Quaternary, researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the University of the Basque Country have reconstructed the likely ancient geographic ranges of 65 wild plant species closely associated with early farming in West Asia. These include the wild ancestors of wheat, barley, rye, lentils, and other crops that sparked the agricultural revolution more than 10,000 years ago.
“The first farming societies were established in the Middle East about 12,000 years ago. We know this from the artifacts, seeds, and animal bones that archaeologists have recovered from excavations. But we know little about the natural background vegetation in these areas, which means that we also don’t know exactly where the Neolithic peoples found the plants that they eventually domesticated,” says archaeologist and lead author Joe Roe from the University of Copenhagen. He adds:
“Based on our new data, it looks like the ancestors of some of the plants most important to modern agriculture – wheat, rye and barley, etc. – did not grow where we expected and also that they were much less widespread than we thought.”
Joe Roe and his co-author, archaeobotanist Amaia Arranz-Otaegui, were surprised to find that many early crop ancestors appear to have been concentrated in the Mediterranean coast of the Levant, suggesting this area acted as “refugium” during the rather extreme climate of the late Ice Age.
“This suggests that many wild crops were well-adapted to quite cold and dry conditions and did not necessarily expand with the arrival of the warmer and wetter climate in which the first farming communities established themselves,” says Amaia Arranz-Otaegui.
Together, these findings provide the clearest picture yet of where the world’s earliest agricultural plants once grew and the kind of landscapes ancient communities lived in when they transitioned from foraging to farming.
A methodological breakthrough
The study also marks an important step forward for how researchers model past ecosystems. By combining large, open datasets on where specific plant species grow today with advanced computer simulations of past global climate, they were able to create detailed maps showing where ancient plants were likely to have grown.
“Essentially, we used the same climate simulations that IPPC uses to predict our future climate, just turned backwards, and combined them with a machine learning model of what kinds of environment these plants are adapted to,” says Amaia Arranz-Otaegui.
According to the researchers, this modelling approach represents a new line of evidence for understanding the ecological context of early agriculture. Because it does not rely on archaeological preservation, which can be distorted by burial, human activity, and recovery biases, it offers an independent and complementary picture of ancient plant environments.
“This gives us a whole new window onto the ecological backdrop of the world’s first farmers independent,” the two authors conclude.
The article Biogeography of Crop Progenitors and Wild Plant Resources in the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene of West Asia, 14.7–8.3 ka has been published in the open access journal Open Quaternary.
The article is an outcome of the ERC funded research project PalaeOrigins - Tracing the Epipalaeolithic origins of plant management in southwest Asia conducted at the University of the Basque Country, in collaboration with researchers from University of Copenhagen.
Archaeoboanist Amaia Arranz-Otaegui, co-author of the study, samples wild plants near Ma'in in Jordan.
Credit
Photo: Joe Roe, University of Copenhagen
Photo: Joe Roe, University of Copenhagen
Hillside in Southeastern Anatolia in Turkey, where the researchers' model suggests wild chickpea originally grew.
Credit
Photo: Joe Roe, University of Copenhagen
Photo: Joe Roe, University of Copenhagen
Journal
Open Quaternary
Method of Research
Computational simulation/modeling
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Biogeography of Crop Progenitors and Wild Plant Resources in the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene of West Asia, 14.7–8.3 ka
Article Publication Date
13-Feb-2026
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