Dienekes comments on a new paper finding another strange mixture of haplotypes in Neolithic-era sample of mtDNA from central Europe ("Unexpected ancient mtDNA from Neolithic Hungary").
I don't think even a science fiction writer could have predicted the kinds of ancient DNA results we are getting from Europe. We have genetic discontinuity between Paleolithic and Neolithic, and between Neolithic and present, and, apparently, discontinuity between Neolithic cultures themselves, and wholly unexpected links to East Asia all the way to Central Europe.
The paper is by Zsuzsanna Guba and colleagues [1]. The final phrase of the abstract:
Our investigation is the first to study mutations form Neolithic of Hungary, resulting in an outcome of Far Eastern haplogroups in the Carpathian Basin. It is worth further investigation as a non-descendant theory, instead of a continuous population history, supporting genetic gaps between ancient and recent human populations.
Past populations had incredible dynamism across Eurasia. Of course, as shown later, we need not maintain that the haplogroups presently common in East Asia have necessarily been there all that long.
