Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

by Jonathan Kennedy

The influx of the Steppe Herders in the third millennium BCE was the last great migration movement in Europe. Although various groups of immigrants have continued to enrich the gene pool in the intervening years, with the Steppe Herders’ arrival all the components of the modern European genome were present. People of European ancestry are a mixture of three genetically distinct population groups (plus, in some cases, trace amounts of other DNA).[79] First, Western Hunter-gatherers, such as Cheddar Man, who had dark skin and hair and light eyes.[80] Second, olive-skinned, dark-haired Neolithic European Farmers like Ötzi the Ice Man who migrated into Europe from Anatolia approximately 9,000 years ago, bringing farming with them, and arriving in Britain three millennia later. And third, the Steppe Herders: tall, fair-haired, light-skinned shepherds who migrated westward from the Eurasian Steppe about 5,000 years ago and adopted farming when they settled in Europe. The implications of this are momentous: contemporary Europeans are neither genetically “pure” nor are they the region’s indigenous people. Even white Europeans are mongrel immigrants.[81]