Starčevo Neolithic: Danubian Farmers

The Starčevo-related Neolithic in this dataset unfolds across river valleys and basin edges — from Alsónyék‑Bátaszék and Vörs in Hungary to Donja Strana‑Velesnica (Serbia), Gornja Vrba (Croatia), and Podgorie in Albania. Radiocarbon-calibrated horizons within the range 6223–2459 BCE record the spread of farming lifeways into the Central and Southeastern European landscapes.

Archaeological data indicate these communities adopted domesticated cereals, pulses and caprines, introduced new ceramic vocabularies and created pit‑based household features and small, often ephemeral settlements along tributaries of the Danube and in the Korça Basin. Material signatures linked to the Starčevo horizon — coarse, often impressed pottery, new ground stone toolkits and distinctive settlement traces at sites such as Alsónyék‑Bátaszék and Lánycsók — mark cultural connections that likely trace back toward Anatolian and Aegean Neolithic source populations.

Limited evidence suggests the arrival of these lifeways was episodic and regionally variable: some locations show intensive occupation and long sequences (Alsónyék), while others appear as short-term camps or small farmsteads (Cotatcu, Carcea). The archaeological picture, when combined with genetics, points to migration of agriculturists into these landscapes rather than sole local adoption of farming by foragers, but local interaction and admixture were almost certainly part of the story.

The genetic evidence from 32 Neolithic individuals associated with Starčevo‑related contexts provides a window into the demographic trajectories of early farmers in Central and Southeastern Europe. Uniparental markers recovered in this set show a predominance of Y‑chromosome haplogroup G (8 samples), smaller counts of H (3), C (2) and I (1). Maternal lineages include mtDNA haplogroups K (5), J (4), N (3), T (3) and U (3). These markers are broadly consistent with patterns observed in other Early European Farmer (EEF) assemblages: Y‑G and mtDNA K/J are frequently associated with Anatolian‑derived Neolithic migrants.

Autosomal studies of contemporaneous Neolithic populations have repeatedly documented a dominant Anatolian farmer component; the uniparental profile here aligns with that expectation. The presence of haplogroup I, and to a lesser extent H and occasional lineages like C, may reflect local hunter‑gatherer contributions, rare incoming lineages, or stochastic founder effects at the site level. Because some haplogroups in this dataset are represented by only a few samples, interpretations about sex‑biased admixture or precise geographic origins should be treated as provisional.

With 32 samples total, this dataset is moderate in size: it is sufficient to identify broad trends (Anatolian farmer ancestry and farmer‑associated uniparental lineages), but spatially and temporally finer patterns — especially per‑site dynamics — remain preliminary. Future dense sampling and genome‑wide analyses will clarify the timing and intensity of local admixture events suggested here.