The genetic history of Europe includes information around the formation, ethnogenesis, and other DNA-specific information about populationsindigenous, or living in Europe.
As a result of the population movements during the Mesolithic to Bronze Age, modern European populations are distinguished by differences in WHG, EEF and Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) ancestry.[8][9][10]
Admixture rates varied geographically; in the late Neolithic, WHG ancestry in farmers in Hungary was at around 10%, in Germany around 25% and in Iberia as high as 50%.[11] The contribution of EEF is more significant in Mediterranean Europe, and declines towards northern and northeastern Europe, where WHG ancestry is stronger; the Sardinians are considered to be the closest European group to the population of the EEF.
Research into the genetic history of Europe became possible in the second half of the 20th century, but did not yield results with high resolution before the 1990s. In the 1990s, preliminary results became possible, but they remained mostly limited to studies of mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal lineages. Autosomal DNA became more easily accessible in the 2000s, and since the mid-2010s, results of previously unattainable resolution, many of them based on full-genome analysis of ancient DNA, have been published at an accelerated pace.[12][13]
^Since Lazaridis et al. (2014), further studies have refined the picture of interbreeding between EEF and WHG.
In a 2017 analysis of 180 ancient DNA datasets of the Chalcolithic and Neolithic periods from Hungary, Germany and Spain
evidence was found of a prolonged period of EEF-WHG interbreeding. Admixture took place regionally, from local hunter-gatherer populations, so that populations from the three regions (Germany, Iberia and Hungary) were genetically distinguishable at all stages of the Neolithic period, with a gradually increasing ratio of WHG ancestry of farming populations over time. This suggests that after the initial expansion of early farmers, there were no further long-range migrations substantial enough to homogenize the farming population, and that farming and hunter-gatherer populations existed side by side for many centuries, with ongoing gradual admixture throughout the 5th to 4th millennia BCE (rather than a single admixture event on initial contact).
Lipson M, Szécsényi-Nagy A, Mallick S, Pósa A, Stégmár B, Keerl V, et al. (November 2017). "Parallel palaeogenomic transects reveal complex genetic history of early European farmers". Nature. 551 (7680): 368–372. Bibcode:2017Natur.551..368L. doi:10.1038/nature24476. PMC5973800. PMID29144465.