Populations of the
Anatolian Neolithic derived most of their ancestry from the
Anatolian hunter-gatherers (AHG), with a minor geneflow from Iranian/Caucasus and Levantine related sources, suggesting that
agriculture was adopted
in situ by these hunter-gatherers and not spread by
demic diffusion into the region. Ancestors of AHGs and EEFs are believed to have split off from
Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHGs) between 45kya to 26kya during the
Last Glacial Maximum, and to have split from
Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers (CHGs) between 25kya to 14kya. Genetic studies demonstrate that the introduction of farming to Europe in the 7th millennium BC was associated with a mass migration of people from Northwest
Anatolia to Southeast Europe, which resulted in the replacement of almost all (c. 98%) of the local Balkan hunter-gatherer gene pool with ancestry from Anatolian farmers. In the Balkans, the EEFs appear to have divided into two wings, who expanded further west into Europe along the
Danube (
Linear Pottery culture) or the western
Mediterranean (
Cardial Ware). Large parts of
Northern Europe and
Eastern Europe nevertheless remained unsettled by EEFs. During the Middle Neolithic there was a largely male-driven resurgence of WHG ancestry among many EEF-derived communities, leading to increasing frequencies of the hunter-gatherer paternal haplogroups among them. Around 7,500 years ago, EEFs originating from the Iberian Peninsula migrated into Northwest Africa, bringing farming to the region. They were a key component in the neolithization process of the Maghreb, and intermixed with the local forager communities. were descendants of Neolithic farmers who migrated to the area about 6,000 years ago The farmers of the
Neolithic British Isles had entered the region through a mass migration c. 4,000 BC. They carried about 80% EEF and 20% WHG ancestry and were found to be closely related to Neolithic peoples of Iberia, which implies that they were descended from agriculturalists who had moved westwards from the Balkans along the Mediterranean coast. The arrival of farming populations led to the almost complete replacement of the native WHGs of the British Isles, who did not experience a genetic resurgence in the succeeding centuries. More than 90% of Britain's Neolithic gene pool was replaced with the arrival of the
Bell Beaker people around 2,500 BC, who had approximately 50%
WSH ancestry. The individuals buried in
Neolithic Ireland were found to be largely of EEF ancestry (with WHG admixture), and were closely related to peoples of Neolithic Britain and Iberia. It was found that the Neolithic peoples of Ireland had almost entirely replaced the native Irish Hunter-Gatherers through a rapid maritime colonization. The people of the
Funnelbeaker culture of southern
Scandinavia were largely of EEF descent, with slight hunter-gatherer admixture, suggesting that the emergence of the Neolithic in Scandinavia was a result of human migration from the south. The Funnelbeakers were found to be genetically highly different from people of the neighboring hunter-gatherer
Pitted Ware culture; the latter carried no EEF admixture and were instead genetically similar to other European hunter-gatherers. Moreover, the most common
paternal haplogroup among EEFs was
haplogroup G2a, while haplogroups
E1b1, and
R1b have also been found. Their
maternal haplogroups consisted mainly of West Eurasian lineages including haplogroups
H2,
I, and
T2, however significant numbers of central European farmers belonged to East Asian maternal lineage
N9a, which is almost non-existent in modern Europeans, but common in
East Asia. However, the high frequency of the East Asian mitochondrial haplogroup N9a in Neolithic cultures of the Carpathian Basin was disputed by another study. During the
Chalcolithic and early
Bronze Age, the EEF-derived cultures of Europe were overwhelmed by successive migrations of
Western Steppe Herders (WSHs) from the
Pontic–Caspian steppe, who carried roughly equal amounts of
Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) and
Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) ancestries. These migrations led to EEF
paternal DNA lineages in Europe being almost entirely replaced with WSH-derived paternal DNA (mainly subclades of EHG-derived
R1b and
R1a). EEF
maternal DNA (mainly haplogroup N) was also substantially replaced, being supplanted by steppe lineages, suggesting the migrations involved both males and females from the steppe. A 2017 study found that Bronze Age European with steppe ancestry had elevated EEF ancestry on the X chromosome, suggesting a sex bias, in which Steppe ancestry was inherited by more male than female ancestors. However, this study's results
could not be replicated in a follow-up study by Iosif Lazaridis and
David Reich, suggesting that the authors had mis-measured the admixture proportions of their sample. EEF ancestry remains widespread throughout Europe, ranging from about 60% near the
Mediterranean Sea (with a peak of 65% in the island of
Sardinia) and diminishing northwards to about 10% in northern Scandinavia. According to more recent studies however, the highest EEF ancestry found in modern Europeans ranges from 67% to over 80% in modern Sardinians, Italians, and Iberians, with the lowest EEF ancestry found in modern Europeans ranging around 35-40% in modern Finns, Lithuanians and Latvians. EEF ancestry is also prominent in living Northwest Africans like
Moroccans and
Algerians. ==Physical appearance and allele frequency==