Genomic studies on ancient humans have revealed that the process that shaped the population structure of Europe cannot be understood from the analysis of present-day populations only. The Neolithisation process, by which a population of hunter-gatherers shifted to pastoralism and farming, was mainly the result of migrations from Anatolia, starting some ~9,000 years ago, and expanding through both a Danubian and a Mediterranean route. Due to its geographic location, France was also on the way of both routes underlying Neolithic expansions, therefore, French archaeological remains provide a unique opportunity to study both expansion processes within a single country.
By the second half of the Vth millennium BC in western Europe, as Neolithisation has completed and social stratification is emerging, Neolithic individuals started to bury their deceased in collective burials, which can host the remains of dozen if not hundreds, of individuals. On present-day France, more than 3,000 of these collective burials have been excavated, each of them potentially representing one community. In the NEO project, ancient DNA extracted from bones and teeth of Neolithic individuals interred in some of these collective burials were investigated to assess their genetic ancestry as well as the diet, health, mobility patterns, residential and funerary rules characterising western European Neolithic societies. Within NEO, a multi-disciplinary approach combining archaeology, physical anthropology and molecular analyses was applied to a rich collection of remains from the late Neolithic, excavated both in northern and southern parts of France, potentially representing the ending points of the Danubian and Mediterranean neolithisation routes, respectively. The general objective of the NEO project was to observe how almost contemporary Neolithic societies developed, with regards to possible regional specificities, in order to advance our knowledge on the building of European populations in prehistory.
