Ancient DNA studies reveal that between 6500 and 4000 BCE, descendants of western Anatolian farmers mixed with local hunter-gatherers across Europe, leading to a 70–100% ancestry turnover in most regions, with a notable exception in the wetland areas of the Netherlands, Belgium, and western Germany where hunter-gatherer ancestry persisted for a longer period.
Hunter-gatherers at Poverty Point may have built its massive earthworks not under the command of chiefs, but as part of a vast, temporary gathering of egalitarian communities seeking spiritual harmony in a volatile world.
The 11,000-year-old stone circles of Göbekli Tepe in modern Turkey may have been monuments to a vanishing way of life, representing a last-ditch effort by hunter-gatherers to maintain their traditions in the face of the Neolithic Revolution.
