Researchers have now shed light on this conundrum by analyzing ancient DNA samples across the Near East. An international team, including Harvard University’s Iosif Lazaridis, Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg, Ron Pinhasi, and David Reich, published a paper in Science. It was determined that the early farmers did not come from pure local populations. Early Neolithic migrations to Anatolia occurred in several waves.

There was a distinct migration into Anatolia during the Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic periods based on ancient DNA from Mesopotamia. But there was also another migration. The evolution of humankind is complex and full of mystery. While it is claimed that around 10,000 years ago, there were no advanced civilizations on Earth, ancient sites such as those in Anatolia, like Gobekli Tepe, suggest otherwise. Gobekli Tepe is one of the oldest, most massive ancient sites discovered to date, and it changes everything we thought we knew about humankind’s history and origin. To better understand this specific period in history, we look back at certain traits like the transition from a hunter-gatherer, nomadic life to a more stationary one. In the past 10,000 years, for instance, humanity changed drastically. The primary subsistence method was agriculture and animal husbandry (with some hunting and gathering). Neolithic revolutions began at different times around the world. They never reached Australia, where farming did not begin until the 19th century. Different areas of the Holocene developed agriculture and animal husbandry independently. The region of Anatolia-Mesopotamia was the first place where agriculture and captive herbivore breeding emerged, excluding China. The Neolithic revolution changed human history, but who exactly were the Anatolian farmers in the early days? Did the locals develop a new lifestyle, or were they long-term residents? How exactly did this evolution play out?