Migration and the Genetic Map of Humanity

Population geneticist Luca Cavalli-Sforza pioneered the systematic mapping of human genetic variation onto geography and history. His book The History and Geography of Human Genes (1994), written with Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza, used classical genetic markers such as blood groups and protein variants, collected from populations across the world, to construct "synthetic maps" of gene-frequency variation. Across Europe, the first and strongest such map showed a gradient running from the eastern Mediterranean toward the northwest, closely matching the presumed path by which Neolithic agriculture spread from Anatolia beginning around 7000 BCE - offering genetic support for the "demic diffusion" model, in which farming spread primarily through the movement of farming populations rather than solely through the spread of ideas and techniques among existing hunter-gatherers.