Continuing my theme of European achievements, researchers using DNA analysis have concluded that the same people who built the bronze-age Minoan civilisation, also built Europe. DNA analysis of Minoan skeletons revealed that ancient and modern Europeans had the closest genetic relationship with the Neolithic inhabitants who reached Crete:
“A team of researchers in the United States and Greece has used mitochondrial DNA analysis of Minoan skeletal remains to determine the likely ancestors of these ancient people.
Mitochondria, the energy powerhouses of cells, contain their own DNA, or genetic code. Because mitochondrial DNA is passed down from mothers to their children via the human egg, it contains information about maternal ancestry.
One of the buildings in Knossos restored by British archeologist Sir Arthur Evans. Knossos was the major civil center of the Minoans.
Results published May 14 in Nature Communications suggest that the Minoan civilization arose from the population already living in Bronze Age Crete. The findings indicate that these people probably were descendents of the first humans to reach Crete about 9,000 years ago, and that they have the greatest genetic similarity with modern European populations. Dr. George Stamatoyannopoulos, University of Washington professor of medicine and genome sciences, is the paper’s senior author. He believes that the data highlight the importance of DNA analysis as a tool for understanding human history.
“About 9,000 years ago,” he noted, “there was an extensive migration of Neolithic humans from the regions of Anatolia that today comprise parts of Turkey and the Middle East. At the same time, the first Neolithic inhabitants reached Crete.”
“Our mitochondrial DNA analysis shows that the Minoan’s strongest genetic relationships are with these Neolithic humans, as well as with ancient and modern Europeans,” he explained.
“These results suggest the Minoan civilization arose 5,000 years ago in Crete from an ancestral Neolithic population that had arrived in the region about 4,000 years earlier,” he said. “Our data suggest that the Neolithic population that gave rise to the Minoans also migrated into Europe and gave rise to modern European peoples.”
http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/05/14/dna-analysis-unearths-origins-of-minoans-the-first-major-european-civilization/
The original scientific paper is: J. R. Hughey (et al.), “A European Population in Minoan Bronze Age Crete,” Nature Communications, 4, (2013); doi:10.1038/ncomms287.
It is sad that all of these thousands of years of achievements are being allowed to be wash away, without many soft pudgy hands being raised in defiance.