A combined study of genetics and bones shows that the switch from hunting, gathering, and farming to farming about 12,000 years ago in Europe may have had negative health effects.
The assistant research professor at Penn State said that recent studies tried to quantify the contribution of DNA to height.
The heights of individuals who lived before the Neolithic, and in the Neolithic, Copper, Bronze and Iron ages were looked at. The researchers measured the long bones of the remains that were already being examined for ancient DNA testing.
The model was created using adult height, stress seen in the bones and ancient DNA. They looked at the genetics of their ancestry. The results were reported in the recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Our approach is unique in that we used height measurements and ancient DNA from the same individuals.
The switch from a hunting, gathering, and foraged lifestyle to a settled agricultural lifestyle happened in different parts of Europe at different times.
167 people lived from 38,000 to 2,400 years ago. The earliest farmers were included. They found that individuals from the Neolithic were an average of 1.5 inches shorter than previous individuals and 0.87 inches shorter than subsequent individuals. They found that the heights increased through the Copper, Bronze, and Iron.
80% of height is from genetic makeup and 20% is from the environment.
In some parts of Europe, the switch from hunting, gathering, and foraged to agriculture resulted in a height loss.
In their study, the team looked at genetic ancestry.
She said that there was movement of people from east to west.
The height decrease for the Neolithic is reduced a bit so that it is not as extreme.
This research requires more study with larger datasets. We need to do more to find out why achieved height is lower than predicted genetic height during the shift to farming.
The researchers believe that their approach can be applied in other contexts.
More information: Stephanie Marciniak et al, An integrative skeletal and paleogenomic analysis of stature variation suggests relatively reduced health for early European farmers, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2106743119 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Citation: First European farmers' heights did not meet expectations (2022, April 7) retrieved 7 April 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-04-european-farmers-heights.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
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