Early farmers from across Europe descended directly from Neolithic Aegeans

Farming and sedentism first appear in southwest Asia during the early Holocene and later spread to neighbouring regions, including Europe, along multiple dispersal routes. Conspicuous uncertainties remain about the relative roles of migration, cultural diffusion and admixture with local foragers in the early Neolithisation of Europe. Here we present palaeogenomic data for five Neolithic individuals from northwestern Turkey and northern Greece – spanning the time and region of the earliest spread of farming into Europe. Our study demonstrates a direct genetic link between both Mediterranean and Central European early farmers and those of Greece and Anatolia, extending the European Neolithic migratory chain all the way back to southwestern Asia.