At www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120508094358.htm … how Europe was repopulated is a bit of DNA analysis from the University of Huddersfield archaeo-genetics department and a paper they published in the American Journal of Human Genetics – but it might be a spot controversial. The findings claim there were refuges for humans during the Late Glacial Maximum, driven south and east by the ice. One of these is well known, Iberia and SW France, and another is in the Ukraine. Now, the study of mitochondrial DNAS from Europeans show two lineages, one of which moved out of the Middle and Near East. The intriguing thing here is that it was thought these people migrated in Europe with the first farmers, at the beginning of the Neolithic. The new research seems to indicate they arrived much earlier, at the end of the Ice Age.
At www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120507154107.htm … research published in PNAS (May 7th) claims the mystery of the domestication of the horse has been solved – and it is all quite simple. The horse was first domesticated on the steppes (what is now the Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan) but has been hybridised over and over again by the introduction and mixing of wild strains of horse for long periods after the use of horses spread into Europe and Asia.