article_snippet.sent: The first farmers came to Europe 8,000 years ago and spread early agricultural practices, starting in Greece.
article_snippet.sent: But Northern Europeans during the Neolithic period, initially rejected the practice of farming, which was spreading throughout the rest of the continent, researchers claim.
article_snippet.sent: researchers findings show a bump in the road in the adoption of farming, which enabled groups of people to move away from foraging and hunting as a means for survival and sparked a ‘major economic revolution’.
article_snippet.sent: ‘This discovery goes beyond farming,’ said Solange Rigaud, the study's lead author and a researcher at the Centre for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (CIRHUS) in New York City.
article_snippet.sent: It also reveals two different cultural trajectories that took place in Europe thousands of years ago, with southern and central regions advancing in many ways and northern regions maintaining their traditions’.
article_snippet.sent: Based on discoveries of different types of Neolithic ornaments in different parts of Europe, their concluded that Northern Europeans in the Neolithic period initially rejected the practice of farming, which was otherwise spreading throughout the continent.
article_snippet.sent: Scientists recently discovered that stone-age hunter gatherers in England were trading with continental wheat farmers 8,000 years ago - long before agriculture came to Britain.
article_snippet.sent: Farming is thought to have arrived in Britain around 6,000 years ago so experts think that local hunter gatherers bought wheat by trading with European farmers from as far away as the south of France or the Balkans.
article_snippet.sent: This means that even 8,000 years ago there must have been trade routes winding their way across the continent to Britain across an ancient land bridge.
article_snippet.sent: The scientists say that the discovery shows that Britain was no-where near as isolated or insular as had been originally thought.
article_snippet.sent: The scientists say the findings may also force a complete rethink about how agriculture first arrived in Britain.
article_snippet.sent: Dr Robin Allaby, a plant geneticist at the University of Warwick who led the research, said: 'Eight thousand years ago the people of mainland Britain were leading a hunter-gatherer existence, whilst at the same time in southern Europeans farming was gradually spreading across Europe.
article_snippet.sent: the experts found that the pathways of the spread of farming over 3,000 years, are less clear than previously thought.
article_snippet.sent: We've therefore concluded that this cultural boundary reflected a block in the advancement of farming - at least during the Neolithic period.
article_snippet.sent: Their findings show a bump in the road of the adoption of farming, which enabled groups of people to move away from foraging and hunting as a means for survival and sparked a ‘major economic revolution’.
highlights_snippet.sent: Experts found farming spread more quickly in southern Europe than north .