This transition has previously been presented as peaceful.

This was honestly a bit surprising. When it comes to humans, cultural transitions like this rarely seem to be very peaceful

It seems more and more like that whole first wave of early neolithic farmers were a particularly nasty lot.

I wish we still had David Graeber around. I really appreciated his insights on this kind of dynamic.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

An international research team, of which Lund University in Sweden is a member, has been able to draw new conclusions about the effects of migration on ancient populations by extracting DNA from skeletal parts and teeth of prehistoric people.

In addition to violent death, it is likely that new pathogens from livestock finished off many gatherers," says Anne Birgitte Nielsen, geology researcher and head of the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at Lund University.

A thousand years later, about 4,850 years ago, another population change took place when people with genetic roots in Yamnaya – a livestock herding people with origins in southern Russia – came to Scandinavia and wiped out the previous farmer population.

These big-boned people pursued a semi-nomadic life on the steppes, tamed animals, kept domestic cattle and moved over large areas using horses and carts.

The study also provides a deepened understanding of historical migration flows, and the interpretation of archaeological finds and changes in vegetation and land use found in palaeoecological data.

In addition to Lund University, around 40 European, American and Australian higher education institutions and organisations took part in the study.

The original article contains 453 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 59%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

Oh cool, glad to see in America we do basically the same thing to our hunter-gatherer population (Native Americans and modern era homeless). /s

Don’t worry, the work continues