My European Family

by Karin Bojs

  In 2011, researchers also succeeded in analysing Ötzi’s Y chromosomes, enabling them to unravel his paternal lineage. This revealed that his closest relatives in Europe’s present population are to be found mainly on Corsica and Sardinia. Ötzi’s Y chromosomes belong to haplogroup G, again a typical marker for the expansion of early agriculture in Europe. To be precise, he is part of a subgroup called G2a4, which occurs in less than 1 per cent of the population of Europe as a whole. However, in southern Corsica and northern Sardinia, nearly a third of all men belong to this rare haplogroup.

  This study was followed in 2012 by a very detailed analysis of the Iceman’s nuclear DNA, which enabled the researchers to make statements about a number of his inherited traits. They could confirm that he had brown eyes and wavy brown hair. Moreover, he was genetically disposed to furred arteries, as researchers had already observed when they first examined his body, and he was unable to digest milk as an adult, since he lacked the enzyme that breaks down lactose. In other words, he was lactose intolerant.

  These analyses of Ötzi’s nuclear DNA confirmed that he was a typical representative of early Stone Age farmers, and that the people of Sardinia are those closest to him today. This can be explained by the fact the earliest farmers spread out over large areas of Europe, including the Alps and Sardinia. New waves of migration affecting most of Europe have diluted the genetic material inherited from the first farmers. However, more isolated areas on islands and in mountainous areas of southern Europe have maintained clear traces of Europe’s first farmers.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Falbygden Area

  I have taken the train between Gothenburg and Stockholm so many times before. Mostly I tend to have my nose in a book, but I always look out of the window when the train passes through the area around Falköping.

  Nowhere along the way is the rolling, light green, chequered countryside as lovely as it is here. Herds of cattle graze on the hillsides. Spinneys of hardwood deciduous trees appear sporadically among the fields. In the distance loom the flat-topped mountains typical of the region. So it was a pleasant surprise to discover that the earliest known ancestors of my paternal grandmother, Hilda, lived in the Falbygden district. That means that I, too, have some roots in this beautiful area.

  Just 10 kilometres (6¼ miles) or so from the parishes where my grandmother’s relatives lived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Swedish researchers have carried out the world’s first analyses of nuclear DNA from Stone Age farmers. The parish in question, Gökhem, lies a few kilometres west of Falköping, at the foot of Mösseberg, a plateau mountain. It is home to several of the region’s many passage graves, a specific type of megalithic structure built by Stone Age farmers during an intensive period of a few centuries between 5,500 and 5,000 years ago.

  The first skeleton in the passage grave at Frälsegården was discovered when a farmer started digging out an earth cellar. Since then, archaeologists have found the remains of nearly 80 individuals. These people appear to have been buried in a squatting position along the walls of the passage graves.

  One of them is known as ‘Gökhem 4’. Initially, the archaeologists thought the remains were female and referred to ‘the Gökhem woman’. However, subsequent DNA analyses have shown that Gökhem 4 was a man. He died aged about 20, some 5,000 years ago. His mitochondrial DNA belongs to haplogroup H, just like that of my paternal grandmother, Hilda. After Ötzi from the Alps, Gökhem 4 was the first Stone Age farmer in the whole world to have his nuclear DNA – not just his mitochondrial DNA – published. Technically speaking, nuclear DNA is far harder to analyse, but it provides far more comprehensive information.

  As I mentioned earlier, staff from Science came to Uppsala in 2012 to hold a press conference together with Uppsala University. The reason why 5,000-year-old DNA from the Falbygden area aroused so much international interest is that it has a bearing on the question archaeologists have pondered for a century: was it immigrants who spread early farming? Or was the technology itself simply adopted by local hunting populations?

  The key point is that the province of Västergötland lies at the very northernmost extreme of the region to which early farming spread. If traces of immigration from the Middle East could be demonstrated so very far north, the question would be settled once and for all. And it has been – thanks to Gökhem 4.

  The answer to this old controversy is that agriculture was disseminated largely by immigrants. Several studies of mitochondrial DNA from Sweden and other parts of Europe had already pointed in that direction. However, the new results from Gökhem were based on nuclear DNA, and therefore constituted far more solid proof.

  The analyses showed that much of the DNA of the man from the Falbygden passage grave is typical of today’s Turkey and Middle East. He was also clearly related to Ötzi, the Alpine man whose nuclear DNA had been published just a few months previously in Science’s rival, Nature Communications. Conversely, the researchers were able to demonstrate a clear genetic difference between Gökhem 4 and a number of roughly contemporaneous hunter-gatherers from Gotland.

  These results aroused strong reactions. Many people, both in the research community and among the general public, were enthusiastic. They could see that new DNA technology had the potential to settle longstanding issues. Others, however, were all the more critical.

  Some of these critics can be dismissed as disappointed racists. They disliked the idea that immigrants from the Middle East had played a key role in the early history of the Swedish people. Opinions of this type flourished on blogs and homepages, and I myself received quite a few emails with racist content when I reported the results in Dagens Nyheter.

  Other critics may be characterised as disappointed archaeologists. Theories that hunters went over to farming independently were an integral part of their lives’ work, which now risked being shot down in flames.

  ‘I’m absolutely furious at that Skoglund man,’ said one elderly professor to me in the course of an interview.

  ‘I take a critical view of that DNA stuff,’ was the first remark addressed to me by another professor, newly retired.

  ‘DNA research has contributed nothing of any value to archaeology,’ commented a third professor emeritus.

  The arguments rained down. There was some substance and a measure of objectivity in some, less so in others. Particular targets were the young doctoral student and biologist Pontus Skoglund, cited as the first author, and Anders Götherström, who has a background in both archaeology and molecular biology.

  Despite the intensive criticism they received from other archaeologists, the researchers who took part in the Uppsala press conference won major accolades after their noted Science study. They have published a series of other articles in the world’s foremost scientific journals. Three of them – Mattias Jakobsson, Anders Götherström and Jan Storå – have been awarded exceptionally large grants by several of the organisations that finance research in Sweden. The idea is that this finance will enable them to pursue a major DNA mapping project, to produce a kind of atlas of Sweden’s first inhabitants.

  These research grants are far more generous than those normally awarded for archaeological research. I cannot help but suspect that much of the harsh criticism voiced by other archaeologists springs from envy. No doubt it also partly reflects an inability to come to terms with the new DNA technology and to break with long-established ways of thinking.

  ‘One thing’s clear – this criticism has nothing to do with advancing understanding. The motives behind it are very different ones,’ comments the German archaeologist Detlef Gronenborn when I meet him in Mainz. He has stopped working in the field of DNA-based archaeology, so tired is he of all the personal antagonism and biased attacks.

  The more reasonable criticisms were based on the fact that the research team had only analysed the DNA of one farmer. And he lived 5,000 years ago, when agriculture had already been established in Sweden for nearly 1,000 years. The lack of DNA analyses fr
om the farmers’ first few hundred years in Sweden was undoubtedly a weak point. The researchers had not succeeded in analysing the very oldest farmers from Skåne, as the skeletons were too badly decomposed. Conditions in Gökhem have been particularly favourable, partly because the Falbygden area’s calcium-rich soils have preserved the skeletons in good condition.

  What makes the result so significant nonetheless is the fact that the Gökhem man and the other individuals in the passage grave belonged to the same Funnel Beaker culture that had predominated in Sweden since agriculture first appeared there. If genetic material from the Middle East was still present among Funnel Beaker people in Västergötland 5,000 years ago, it is reasonable to believe that the proportion of such material was at least as significant 6,000 years ago.

  Two years later, in April 2014, the Swedish researchers published a new study in Science. Now they had compiled analyses of nuclear DNA from four Gökhem farmers, all of whom lived approximately 5,000 years ago. Their DNA was compared with that of seven hunters from Gotland, six of whom were contemporaneous with the farmers from Västergötland, while the seventh lived about 7,500 years ago.

  Moreover, the researchers were now able to make compari­sons with nuclear DNA from another dozen Stone Age individuals from Europe and Siberia – both hunters and farmers – that had been published by other researchers. Many more sets of DNA from both hunters and farmers from the Stone Age have since been analysed.

  The conclusion is plain. The DNA of the early Swedish farmers clearly shows input from the Middle East, Turkey, Sardinia and Cyprus. These farmers differ very clearly both from the earlier hunting people and from hunters living on Gotland during the same period. The widest genetic gap between two populations in today’s Europe is that between Finns and Italians. The farmers from Västergötland and the hunters living on Gotland 5,000 years ago were genetically far more different from each other than modern Finns and Italians.

  One discernable feature that emerges from DNA analysis is that hunters and farmers probably had slightly different skin colours. Some of the hunters were probably quite dark-skinned. They bore a gene variant common in Africa. The farmers, on the other hand, bore the gene variant which predominates in today’s Europe and which is linked to light skin. They also seem to have had brown eyes. It is very likely that dark hair predominated in both groups. But more hunters bore gene variants that indicate they had blue eyes.

  Doubtless the two groups also differed considerably in the leather clothing and personal adornments they wore and in the way they embellished themselves with pigments.

  Genetically speaking, the hunters from Gotland were not particularly close to the people of any country in modern Europe, nor were they like today’s Sami. However, it is clear that they are close relatives of other Stone Age hunters found in Motala, Spain, Luxembourg and Germany. There are even a good many similarities with the 20,000-year-old Mal’ta boy from Siberia.

  The hunters can definitely not be described as inbred in the way some Neanderthal people were. They took care to have children with a partner who came from sufficiently far away. Yet they nonetheless show limited genetic variation. This indicates that Europe’s original population of hunters was quite small. These people were exposed to harsh privations and to disasters with a high death toll, such as those caused by climate change and flooding.

  There was more variation in the farmers’ genetic make-up. An explanation for this is that they belonged to a far larger group of people. DNA analyses conducted by Svante Pääbo’s team indicate that hunters’ numbers multiplied between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago; that is, just when the Ice Age was coming to an end and the climate was becoming milder. But then, between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago, the number of people with the mitochondria typical of hunters declined.

  It is also possible to see how the farmers increasingly intermingled with local hunters the further north they went within Europe. Ötzi, who lived 5,300 years ago, was already a descendant of farmers who had come to Europe from the Middle East and local hunters. The proportion of DNA from local hunters was even higher in the Gökhem farmers who lived 5,000 years ago.

  Clearly, hunters sometimes moved in among the newly arrived farmers. As a result, children with genetic material from both groups were born in farming settlements.

  A pattern can be discerned, supported by Joachim Burger’s German study of mitochondrial DNA and isotopes, by Lasse Sørensen’s extensive compilation of traditional archaeological finds and radiocarbon datings, and by the DNA results from Sweden and elsewhere. For over 1,000 years, two types of society lived alongside each other, in parallel. The hunters were predominant along the coasts, while the farmers predominated inland.

  ***

  That is exactly what the ‘prehistoric village’ of Ekehagen shows, albeit on a miniature scale. The settlements are separated by a few hundred metres, rather than a few kilometres or more. Along the shoreline of a small lake stand the crescent-shaped huts of the hunters, while the Stone Age farmers’ rectangular longhouses have been built higher up.

  Ekehagen, which lies a few dozen kilometres to the south of Falköping, is an ambitious project supported by the local authorities. Buildings from different eras have been constructed on the basis of the best archaeological expertise available. Animals, plants, boats and gear show what life was like in prehistoric times. If you really want to soak up the atmosphere, you can spend the night in one of the houses.

  There are traces of Stone Age hunters in the Falbygden region, but they predate the Gökhem skeletons by a long time. The very oldest finds, which come from Lake Hornborga, are about 10,000 years old. Archaeologists have found the oldest remains of dogs in Sweden, including a nearly complete skeleton that looks like a sturdier version of today’s Swedish vallhund. However, no traces of hunters’ huts have yet been found in the region.

  Instead, Ekehagen’s huts are inspired by examples from Denmark. To be precise, they are based on Ulkestrup, Zealand, where a Stone Age dwelling has been preserved exceptionally well by being buried in oxygen-free mud.

  I peer into the two reed-thatched hunters’ huts at Ekehagen. Both of them comprise an inner, oval room and a fairly large covered front yard looking out over the water. On the shore among the huts is a fireplace. There is fishing and hunting gear hanging up, including a fish trap woven from hazel switches and a fishing net made of plant fibres.

  At the water’s edge lie a few boats made of hollow tree trunks. A few tourists are paddling around in two of them. Wearing brightly coloured lifejackets, they paddle unsteadily but determinedly, splashing loudly. I imagine the hunters of the Stone Age manoeuvred their dugout boats more quietly, with better balance and greater skill.

  The summer’s day when I visit Ekehagen is unusually cool. But there is a cosy fire inside the Stone Age farmers’ longhouse. There is no chimney. Instead, the smoke finds its way along the ceiling, then out through small apertures at the top on the short sides of the house. Although these draw quite effectively, the room is nonetheless smoky. Spending a lot of time in a dwelling like this would not have been good for people’s airways. Smoke from simple fireplaces inside homes remains one of the main causes of illness and death in poor countries. There is a good deal of evidence that Stone Age farmers were adversely affected. Ötzi had traces of soot in his lungs, as did several of the individuals from the earlier Çatalhöyük site.

  But the heat from the fire is pleasant on this chilly day, and it helps to provide light in the dim room. The only other sources of light are the small holes in the roof where the smoke escapes. A few visiting children, suffering from the cold, huddle around the fire with their parents to eat their packed lunches – sandwiches, presumably.

  Cultivated grain – specifically, various kinds of wheat and barley – was also a staple in the diet of the Falbygden area’s Neolithic people. They sometimes ate pork, and occasionally there was mutton or beef. However, cows were probably kept mainly for their milk.

  It is unlikely tha
t Sweden’s first farmers habitually drank milk. A large proportion of Sweden’s modern-day population have a particular gene variant that enables us to digest milk as adults. However, this variant is unusual in most of the world. Most adult humans suffer from diarrhoea and severe stomach aches if they drink a significant amount of milk.

  Among the original hunting population of Europe, no one seems to have been genetically equipped to drink milk as an adult. Nor does the particular gene variant required appear to have occurred among the earliest population of farmers. Ötzi was unable to digest milk. The same probably applied to the Stone Age farmers from the Falbygden area whose DNA was analysed. It was not until later, at the start of the Bronze Age, that the special gene variant occurred, according to the odd pieces of evidence researchers have discovered. But even then, it does not seem to have been particularly common. It was not a generalised phenomenon until shortly before the Iron Age. Up to that point, most adults were what we today call lactose intolerant.

  Yet there is no doubt that the first Stone Age farmers in Sweden kept cattle. Apart from all the ancient bones from cows and oxen, chemical analyses of terracotta vessels have revealed traces of milk fat. The oldest in Sweden are nearly 6,000 years old and come from Fellingsbro in Västmanland. In Poland, ceramic colanders have been found that show people were producing cheese as early as 7,000 years ago.

  If I were to speculate, I would say the children living in the Stone Age villages in the Falbygden area drank fresh milk, while the adults stuck to cheese and butter, and possibly yogurt or soured milk. These foods can often be digested by people with lactose intolerance.

  The farmers’ longhouses at Ekehagen have roofs thatched with reed, just like the hunters’ huts. But the longhouses are far more solidly built. Each is supported by a row of large oak posts running down the middle. The outer walls are built of aspen wood.