Working with Luca Cavalli-Sforza on the Neolithic Transition in Europe: The Research and our Publications

In 1970, Luca Cavalli-Sforza and I began to work on the question of the Neolithic transition in Europe. We started by measuring the rate of spread of first farming over the continent as a whole and in three of its regions. In turn, we went on to put forward the wave of advance model as a new way to explain the shift from hunting and gathering in a mobile way of life to the production of food in the context of sedentism. The aim here is to review our collaboration and what we wrote on the subject over a span of 50 years. The work will be developed in six main sections: (1) the initial studies, (2) the synthesis in 1984, (3) the widening harvest, (4) the analysis of ancient DNA in the bones of first farmers, (5) the discovery of the petrous bone and (6) Discussion.