How hunters and farmers were Stone Age friends

EARLY farmers lived alongside and interbred with the more primitive huntergatherers, according to DNA evidence.

The transition to farming is a significant one in human history and as such the two groups are usually considered entirely separate peoples.

But Stone Age DNA reveals that, in what is now Romania, hunter-gatherers and farmers were living side by side and having children. Scientists recovered four human genomes ageing between 8,800 to 5,400 years old and found they had ‘significant ancestry’ from Western hunter-gatherers’.

Researcher Dr Michael Hofreiter, of Potsdam University in Germany, said: ‘Contacts went beyond the exchange of food and artefacts. They lived together, despite huge cultural differences.’

The research, published in the journal Current Biology, adds new evidence as to when the ‘Neolithic transition’ to farming actually happened.