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Originally posted by Jomid59
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But the categories do make some sense based on ancient DNA results and what's known about whether the population in the categories were hunter-gatherers, farmers or herders/pastoralists at the time they lived. Based on archaeology and anthropology, we do know how humans in different societies in the past lived at various times. It's not just a guess. And population geneticists can tell us what their DNA profile was and match that with DNA found in modern humans.
"Replaced" doesn't mean totally replaced, just that the newcomers became the dominant part of the population. That's what happens when people migrate. Think of Europeans "replacing" the Native American population of the Americas after 1492. It doesn't mean that there aren't any people in the Americas left with Native American ancestry, just that it's no longer the dominant ancestry of people who live there. Similarly, what the admixture calculator being discussed in this thread is telling us is that northern Europeans still harbor a good amount of DNA from ancient European hunter-gatherers, much more so than southern Europeans, but also that all Europeans have a large amount of DNA that is similar to ancient DNA found among Mediterranean farmers.
These are not unproven scientific concepts. Studies over the last few years comparing ancient DNA to modern humans are telling us this. But then that's science and this is the Recreation Room, where I guess scientific concepts don't count for much - to some.
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