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Genes and the Intimacy of Place
The pictures above were made by scientists who study genes. They tell a story. Two completely different kinds of information are combined to tell it: a map of Europe from our physical world and overlaid on it, the genetic relationship of 1378 people from Europe, shown in two dimensions. The scientific paper from which the diagram comes actually looks at these patterns around the world, and similar patterns are found worldwide to a greater or lesser degree. They were not the first to notice such patterns, but they took their study worldwide. They observe: “geography plays a strong role in giving rise to human population structure“. By “structure” they mean clustering…
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Ancient Italy: The Arrival of Agriculture and the People from the Sea: 6000BC
In ancient times the mountainous spurs of the Apennines ran down Italy’s spine and the Alps were piled at its northern end much as today. But if we had been present in the ancient neolithic we would have seen an Italy which was unlike anything we know today. The coastline would have been somewhat different, although that would not have been the most dramatic difference. Italy was blanketed with forests and this part of the world was wetter than it is today. It is 6000 BC; an era in which people from the sea arrived and brought with them agriculture. Millennia later Vesuvius would erupt. But the arrival of agriculture…
