Blanket bogs formed on sites where Neolithic farmers cleared trees for farming.
The Neolithic farmers grew crops, kept animals, made pottery and were highly skilled at making stone implements.
Neolithic farmers settled in the area approximately 5000 - 3500 BC, establishing continuous human settlement which lasts until present time.
'You couldn't take a Neolithic farmer and turn him into a planetary engineer,' she protested.
By around 4000 BC the hunter bands had become merged with incoming Neolithic farmers.
Thus, modern Europeans are primarily descended from these Neolithic farmers.
Around 4,500 years ago Neolithic farmers used the caves as tombs.
Technologically they had already descended to the level of Neolithic farmers, and the young were broken by toil even as they learned.
Less than 20% are descended in the female line from Neolithic farmers from the Middle East.
The hypothesis holds the linguistic and cultural influence of the Neolithic farmers far greater than the persistence of their foreign gene pool.