Gene frequency clines in Europe: demic diffusion or natural selection?

According to the demic diffusion model of Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues, agriculture was spread through Europe by a rapid population expansion of early farmers from the Near East. These scholars use the presence of gene frequency clines paralleling this direction of spread to support their model. However, genetic clines may also be caused by natural selection.

This article shows that the archaeological and demographic evidence for demic diffusion is questionable, and proposes an alternative selective clinal model. The model posits that genetic fitnesses changed through time as functions of ...

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