This article relates to our “How much of a caveman are you?” quiz, which is currently offline

Where does the information in the quiz come from?

From this study: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature14317. It’s part of an on-going attempt to understand how prehistoric Europe was populated. To do this, geneticists start by pulling bits of DNA out of bones from archaeological sites across the continent. The sites show us how the people lived, for instance whether they were hunter-gatherers living in caves or farmers living in early Neolithic villages.

In parallel, the researchers have been sequencing DNA from volunteers living around Europe. They look at people whose families have been living in the same place for a few generations. That avoids the confusion created by more recent intermingling and migration.

When they compare these two sets of genetic data, they have found that the DNA of people with deep European roots is a mix of three ancient populations: hunter-gatherers who arrived around 45,000 years ago, Neolithic farmers who arrived 9000 years ago, and pastoralists from the Eurasian steppes who swept across Europe on horseback and in wagons some 4500 years ago.


What does this tell us?

That the DNA of people with modern European ancestry comes from these three groups, and that the mix varies with their origin. People whose families came from Italy and Spain, for instance, have very low amounts of hunter-gatherer DNA; some have none at all. Their DNA is mostly inherited from the Neolithic farmers. Other groups, like those rooted in Norway or Lithuania, get about half of their DNA from the steppe pastoralists.

Aren’t all three ancestral groups cavemen?

No. The arrival of Neolithic farmers marked the beginning of village life in Europe. So technically, only the hunter-gatherers were “cavemen”. You can read more about who the three groups were, how they lived and how they laid the foundations for Western civilisation in our feature article.

My ancestors didn’t live in Europe. Why haven’t you included them?

We’d love to have global information, but for now we’ve used the only data we have. There may be other groups working on early migration patterns in your ancestral regions – for instance, New Scientist has published many articles on the earliest North Americans.

What if my ancestry is mixed?

You can make an educated guess by looking up your mix.

For instance: my father is from the south of France and his grandfather emigrated there from northern Italy. Both groups have very little hunter-gatherer in them and a lot of farmer, so it’s a fair bet that my paternal DNA follows that pattern. My mother is Canadian from a long line of Scottish emigrants, so the DNA she gave me is probably typically Scottish: about 50 per cent Eurasian steppe pastoralist and equal portions of hunter-gatherer and farmer.

My ancestors came from a European region not on your list. Why did you miss it out?

Unfortunately, we don’t (yet) have data on other regions. But the teams who kindly gave us these numbers are constantly widening their pool, so there may be more in future. If you’re interested in this, you may want to follow the work of the people listed on this paper: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature14317

Should I pay a private service if I want to know more about my genetic ancestry?

Probably not. Before you spend your hard-earned cash, we recommend you have a look at the University College London’s page on understanding genetic ancestry testing or Sense about Science’s factsheet.