---
title: "Anatolian Neolithic farmers: who they were and how much of your DNA is theirs"
description: "The first farmers of Anatolia spread across Europe from 6500 BC and are the largest ancestry component in most southern Europeans today. Who they were, what 'Early European Farmer' means in a calculator, typical shares by region, and how to measure yours from a raw DNA file."
canonical: https://www.ancestrify.io/blog/neolithic-farmer-ancestry-explained
date: 2026-08-28
updated: 2026-10-19
author: "Ancestrify"
---

# Anatolian Neolithic farmers: who they were and how much of your DNA is theirs

Of the three ancestral components that make up most Europeans, the farmer one is usually the
largest and the least discussed. Steppe ancestry has the wagons and the Indo-European debate;
hunter-gatherers have the Ice Age. The farmers have wheat, sheep, and the largest single share of
most people's genomes south of the Alps. This guide covers who they were, how their ancestry
spread, and how to measure it.

## Who the Anatolian Neolithic farmers were

Farming began in the Fertile Crescent around 9500 BC and was established across central and western
Anatolia by about 8500 BC. The people of those early farming villages — sites such as Boncuklu,
Tepecik-Çiftlik and Barcın in Turkey — are the **Anatolian Neolithic farmers** of the reference
panels, and their source-population page is
[Anatolian Neolithic farmers, 8500–6000 BC](/ancestry/anatolian-neolithic-farmer-8500-6000-bc-1).

Two findings from the genetics are worth holding on to. First, Feldman and colleagues (2019) showed
that the central Anatolian farmers descended largely from the *local* hunter-gatherers of the
region, with a modest contribution from further east — farming was adopted in place, not carried in
by a new population. Second, Lazaridis and colleagues (2016) showed that the early farmers of
Anatolia, the Levant and Iran were genetically quite distinct from one another; the version that
reached Europe was specifically the Anatolian one.

## How farmer ancestry spread across Europe

From about 6500 BC, farming populations carrying Anatolian ancestry moved into Europe along two
routes — the Danube corridor into central Europe, and the Mediterranean coast into Italy, southern
France and Iberia — reaching Britain and Scandinavia by around 4000 BC. Their genomes show they
were overwhelmingly of Anatolian descent on arrival, with small and gradually growing shares of the
local hunter-gatherer ancestry they encountered (Lipson et al., 2017).

In the reference literature this mixed European population is called **Early European Farmer**
(EEF): Anatolian ancestry plus a minority hunter-gatherer component, the exact share depending on
region and century. "Anatolia_N" and "EEF" are therefore not the same source. One is the Anatolian
population before the migration; the other is its European descendants after two thousand years of
mixing. Which one a model uses changes what "farmer ancestry" means in the result.

Sardinia is the textbook case of persistence: modern Sardinians retain more Neolithic farmer
ancestry than any other population in Europe, because the island was largely bypassed by the steppe
migrations that reshaped the mainland after 3000 BC.

## What a farmer percentage measures

A Neolithic farmer share is the weight assigned to a farmer-related source in a specific admixture
model, and everything said of steppe and hunter-gatherer weights applies here too: the number
depends on the proxy chosen, the other sources offered, the outgroups tested against and the
coverage of the file. Two points are specific to this component:

- **The proxy choice changes the weight the most.** Model a modern Italian against Anatolia_N,
  WHG and Western Steppe Herders and the farmer weight includes the hunter-gatherer resurgence that
  EEF carried; model the same person against an EEF source and part of that share moves to the
  farmer column while WHG drops. Neither is wrong; they are different questions.
- **Southern Europe and the Near East need a later era.** In Classical Antiquity, the populations
  of the Mediterranean had already absorbed further Anatolian, Levantine and Iranian-related
  ancestry through Bronze Age and Iron Age contact. A single "Neolithic farmer" source cannot
  represent that; the later era's sources can.

As a broad picture from the published literature: farmer-related ancestry is highest in Sardinia
and the Mediterranean south, substantial across central and western Europe, and lowest in the
north-east. Those are indications, not lookups — the analysis measures your file.

## Measuring it with qpAdm

[Ancient Ancestry](/qpadm), our qpAdm analysis, models your raw file in two eras. The Hunter-Gatherer & Neolithic
Farmer era resolves the classic three-way structure — Anatolian farmers, Western Hunter-Gatherers,
Western Steppe Herders — with the weight, standard error and z-score printed for every source, the
model's p-value, the complete right set, and the model record (confidence intervals, panel labels,
sample counts) on screen in the Your model view. The Classical Antiquity era then re-models the same
genome against populations of the Iron Age and Roman world, where "farmer" ancestry has become part
of many later groups. Reading the numbers is the subject of
[How to read qpAdm results](/blog/how-to-read-qpadm-p-value-z-score-standard-error); the
overview for buyers is [What is a qpAdm ancestry test?](/qpadm).

## Measuring it with Global25

With a coordinate row, the free [admixture calculator](/lab/admixture) fits the same structure
against curated per-era source panels in your browser, and [Ancestry Map](/g25), our paid Global25
analysis, builds a calculator around your row from the curated panels and prints every population
offered, used or not. The distance lens is instructive here too: a modern Sardinian row sits close
to Neolithic farmer averages in G25 space, and a modern Estonian row sits far from them, which is
the whole history of Europe in one distance list. [qpAdm vs Global25](/blog/qpadm-vs-global25) sets
out when each method is the right instrument.

## A worked reading

Two results for the same imaginary genome, from two models in the earliest era:

```
Model A   p = 0.27   Anatolia_N 0.61 ± 0.03   WSH 0.30 ± 0.03   WHG 0.09 ± 0.02
Model B   p = 0.19   EEF        0.72 ± 0.03   WSH 0.28 ± 0.03
```

Both pass. In Model B the farmer weight is higher and the hunter-gatherer source has vanished — not
because the genome changed, but because EEF already contains the hunter-gatherer share that Model A
had to account for separately. A reader who quotes "61% farmer" from one and "72% farmer" from the
other as a contradiction has misread both; each is correct for its own sources. This is why a
report names the proxy and why a farmer figure without one is not comparable with anything.

## The individuals behind the label

Every Anatolian farmer genome in the panel is a published individual from an excavated burial,
curated in the Allen Ancient DNA Resource — see
[AADR explained](/blog/aadr-allen-ancient-dna-resource-explained). The free
[Ancient Sample Atlas](/lab/ancient-atlas) plots each of them by find-spot and date; filter to
7000–6000 BC and watch the farming villages appear across Anatolia and then the Aegean.

## What the result is not

A farmer share is not a claim that anyone buried at Barcın or Çatalhöyük was related to you. It is a
statement that your genome is compatible with drawing that share of ancestry from a population like
theirs, against specific alternatives, in one model. It carries no information about lactose
tolerance, appearance or diet — those are separate findings about the ancient individuals, not
inheritances readable from a weight.

The companion guides are [Steppe ancestry](/blog/how-to-measure-steppe-ancestry-percentage) and
[Hunter-gatherer ancestry](/blog/hunter-gatherer-ancestry-test); the terms are defined in the
[glossary](/glossary). If you have a raw file and want to know whether it can resolve the split
before you spend anything, the free [Raw DNA File Check](/lab/file-check) reports its verdict.

## References

- Lazaridis, I. et al. (2016). Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near
  East. *Nature*, 536, 419–424.
- Feldman, M. et al. (2019). Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first
  farmers of central Anatolia. *Nature Communications*, 10, 1218.
- Mathieson, I. et al. (2015). Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians.
  *Nature*, 528, 499–503.
- Lipson, M. et al. (2017). Parallel palaeogenomic transects reveal complex genetic history of
  early European farmers. *Nature*, 551, 368–372.
- Chiang, C. W. K. et al. (2018). Genomic history of the Sardinian population. *Nature Genetics*,
  50, 1426–1434.