Genetic Evidence for the Demic Diffusion of Agriculture to India

Abstract

The process by which agriculture diffused from the Fertile Crescent within the past 10,000 years has been widely discussed, but as yet there is no consensus: Was it mostly a demic diffusion (with massive spread of peo-ple) or rather a cultural diffusion (without substantial migration of people)? The demic diffusion model (1) predicts a substantial ge-netic input from migrating agriculturalists, whereas the cultural diffusion model (2) pre-dicts no major changes at the genetic level. Hence, a way to test these competing hypoth-eses would be to compare genetic variation in traditional agriculturalists, traditional hunter-gatherers, and recent agriculturalists (i.e.,