Tuesday, April 16, 2019

ARCHAEOLOGY: From Babel - To Stonehenge

Therefore is the name of it called Babel;...from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:9


"Researchers compared DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains found across Britain with that of people alive at the same time in Europe.
A facial reconstruction of Whitehawk Woman,
 a 5,000-year-old Neolithic woman from Sussex
The Neolithic inhabitants appear to have travelled from Anatolia (modern Turkey) to Iberia before winding their way north.
They reached Britain in about 4,000BC.
Genetic affinities with Iberian Neolithic individuals indicate that British Neolithic people were mostly descended from Aegean farmers who followed the Mediterranean route of dispersal.
We also infer considerable variation in pigmentation levels in Europe.
One group of early farmers followed the river Danube up into Central Europe, but another group travelled west across the Mediterranean.

DNA reveals that Neolithic Britons were largely descended from groups who took the Mediterranean route, either hugging the coast or hopping from island-to-island on boats.
In addition to farming, the Neolithic migrants to Britain appear to have introduced the tradition of building monuments using large stones known as megaliths. Stonehenge in Wiltshire was part of this tradition.
Towards the end of the Neolithic, in about 2,450BC, the descendents of the first farmers were themselves almost entirely replaced when a new population - called the Bell Beaker people - migrated from mainland Europe. So Britain saw two extreme genetic shifts in the space of a few thousand years.
Prof Thomas said that this later event happened after the Neolithic population had been in decline for some time, both in Britain and across Europe. He cautioned against simplistic explanations invoking conflict, and said the shifts ultimately came down to "economic" factors, about which lifestyles were best suited to exploit the landscape."
BBC