The Cavalli-Sforza and Sykes teams squared off fiercely in the pages of the American Journal of Human Genetics in 1997, but since then their positions have steadily converged. Cavalli-Sforza now calculates that immigrant farmers from western Asia account for 26–28 percent of European DNA; Sykes puts the figure nearer 20 percent. To say that one of Europe’s first farmers descended from southwest Asian immigrants for every three or four who descended from natives is oversimplifying, but is not far wrong.
