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There's no such thing as a 'pure' European--or anyone else

Gibbons, Ann
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/theres-no-such-thing-pure-european-or-anyone-else

Publisher:  Science Mag
Date Written:  15/05/2017
Year Published:  2017  
Resource Type:  Article

Europeans have no unique heritage. New studies show that almost all indigenous Europeans descend from at least three major migrations in the past 15,000 years, including two from the Middle East.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

After World War II, many scholars recoiled from studying migrations, in reaction to the Nazi misuse of history and archaeology. The Nazis had invoked migrations of "foreign" groups to German territory to justify genocide. "The whole field of migration studies was ideologically tainted," says archaeologist Kristian Kristiansen of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Some researchers also resisted the idea that migration helped spread key innovations such as farming, partly because that might imply that certain groups were superior.

Nor did researchers have a reliable method to trace prehistoric migrations. "Most of the archaeological evidence for movement is based on artifacts, but artifacts can be stolen or copied, so they are not a real "good proxy for actual human movement, says archaeologist Doug Price of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who tracks ancient migration by analyzing isotopes. "When I started doing this in 1990, I thought people were very sedentary and didn't move around much."

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