Evolution - ancient DNA yields clues to the puzzle of European origins

Archaeological evidence shows that farming was introduced into Greece and southeast Europe from the Near East more than 8000 years ago, then spread west and north to the Atlantic Ocean. But did the farmers themselves move across Europe,in a migration of people and their genes? Or was the chief movement one of culture, as Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, whose ancestors arrived on the continent as long as 40,000 years ago, adopted farming? New data clashes with some earlier studies, including Y chromosome analyses of living Europeans, which suggest that early farmers with roots in the Near East made a deep imprint on the European genome. Because the Y chromosome is inherited through the male line and mtDNA is passed down through women, some researchers now think that different genetic destinies of men and women could reconcile the data and perhaps even the European origins debate.