Stone Age · c. 4500–2500 BC · Rhine-Meuse region, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany
Ancient DNA shows Low Countries hunter-gatherers persisted for 2,000 years after farming arrived
A Nature study of 112 genomes finds farmer ancestry entered Rhine-Meuse forager groups mainly through incoming women, until steppe newcomers arrived around 2500 BC.
Peer-reviewed paper
Rhine-Meuse region, Belgium and Germany Hunter-gatherer communities in what is now the Netherlands, Belgium and north-western Germany kept their genetic ancestry for around two thousand years after farming arrived. Farming reached the region around 4500 BC. The finding comes from an ancient DNA study published in Nature.
In most of Europe, large-scale population replacement followed the arrival of the first farmers. The study finds that the lowlands and river valleys of the Rhine and Meuse were different. There, farmer ancestry entered local groups slowly. It came mostly through women who married into them.
The team analysed the genomes of 112 individuals from the Rhine-Meuse region, according to a statement from Leiden University. These people lived between 8500 and 1700 BC. David Reich at Harvard University led the research. Iñigo Olalde is the first author of the paper.
Research students at the University of Huddersfield did the DNA work. Among them were Alessandro Fichera and Francesca Gandini. Maria Pala, Martin B. Richards and Ceiridwen Edwards supervised them.
Palaeoecologist John Stewart of Bournemouth University has been excavating caves in the region for more than 20 years. He worked with archaeologists from the Université de Liège to excavate human remains used in the study. The Liège team also holds the bone samples.
Farmer ancestry came in through women
European populations of this period carried three ancestral components. The first came from the hunter-gatherers who had lived on the continent since the Palaeolithic. The second arrived with the first farmers from the Near East. The third came from pastoralists of the Russian steppe.
In the Rhine-Meuse region, the genomes show high levels of hunter-gatherer ancestry persisting until around 2500 BC. That date falls at the end of the Neolithic.
Where farmer ancestry does appear, the evidence points to women. It comes from Y-chromosome markers and mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother, and the Y chromosome only from the father. Comparing the two shows whether men or women moved between groups.
Here the gene flow ran in one direction: from farming women into hunter-gatherer communities. The researchers think these women brought knowledge of crop growing and animal husbandry with them. That would explain how farming techniques spread without whole farming groups settling in the area.
The pattern was limited to water-rich environments: rivers, wetlands and coasts. The team suggests an explanation in plentiful wild food, including fish, game, fruits and seeds. In the team's view, this allowed local people to take up the parts of farming that suited them. At the same time, they kept much of their earlier way of life.
We expected a clear change between the older hunter-gatherer populations and the newer agriculturalists but apparently in the lowlands and along the rivers of the Netherlands and Belgium the change was less immediate. It’s like a Waterworld where time stood still.
John Stewart, palaeoecologist, Bournemouth University
This study has also brought to light the crucial role played by women in the transmission of knowledge from the incoming farming communities to the local hunter-gatherers.
Maria Pala, principal investigator of the Huddersfield Archaeogenetics group, University of Huddersfield
Steppe newcomers mixed in and the Bell Beaker culture began
The change came around 2500 BC, when people with ancestry from the Russian steppe moved west. Analyses at Huddersfield found that steppe ancestry entered the Lower Rhine populations at that point, and not earlier.
The first farmers had arrived some fifteen centuries before. Unlike them, these newcomers mixed fully with local communities. The old hunter-gatherer lineages dwindled. Archaeology Wiki's account describes the newcomers as overwhelming the local groups.
The researchers argue that this mixed population was the origin of the Bell Beaker culture. The culture is named after its distinctive pottery. It first appeared around 2500 BC and later spread across much of Europe. The paper's title states the finding as: lasting Lower Rhine and Meuse forager ancestry shaped the Bell Beaker expansion.
The results also bear on Britain. According to the analysis, Early Bronze Age people in Britain after 2500 BC traced more than 90 per cent of their ancestry to the continental Bell Beaker populations. The earlier inhabitants, the people who built Stonehenge, appear to have almost completely disappeared.
Sources
- The Origin of the Bell Beaker Culture That Transformed Europe Around 2500 BC Discovered (La Brújula Verde)
- Hunter-gatherers adopted farming from migrant women (Archaeology Wiki)
- DNA Study Reveals Survival and Persistence of Low Countries Hunter-Gatherers (Archaeology Magazine)
Paper: Olalde, I., Altena, E., Bourgeois, Q. et al. Lasting Lower Rhine–Meuse forager ancestry shaped Bell Beaker expansion. Nature (2026). doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10111-8
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