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The first European farmers go back to Anatolia, according to researchers, who used human material from the Anatolian site Kumtepe. Even though the human remains and material had got severely degraded, it gave enough DNA from the site that could assess the demography linked to the spread of farming.

The study gives insight into the evolution from a hunter-gatherer society to a farming society.

The study was led by Ayca Omrak, a doctorate student, who took up her research work at the Archaeological Research Laboratory Stockholm University.

"I have never worked with a more complicated material. But it was worth every hour in the laboratory. I could use the DNA from the Kumtepe material to trace the European farmers back to Anatolia," Omrak said in a news release. "It is also fun to have worked with this material from the site Kumtepe, as this is the precursor to Troy," according to scienceworldreport.

Jan Stora, an associate professor in osteoarchaeology and coauthor of the study confirmed Anatolia's importance to Europe's history though she said that the material from the site needed more research.

"Our results stress the importance Anatolia has had on Europe's prehistory," said Anders Gotherstorm, who is the head of the archaeogenetic research at the Archaeological Research Laboratory. "But to fully understand how the agricultural development proceeded we need to dive deeper down into material from the Levant. Jan is right about that."