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The archaeological documentation of the development of sedentary farming societies in Anatolia is not yet mirrored by a genetic understanding of the human populations involved, in contrast to the spread of farming in Europe ?[1–3]?. Sedentary farming communities probably emerged in parts of the Fertile Crescent during the 10th millennium and early 9th millennium cal BC and had appeared in central Anatolia by 8300 cal BC ?[4]?. Farming spread into west Anatolia by the early 7th millennium cal BC and quasi-synchronously into Europe, although the timing and process of this movement remain unclear. Using genome sequence data we generate from nine central Anatolian Neolithic individuals, here we study the transition period from early Aceramic to the later Pottery Neolithic, when farming expanded west of the Fertile Crescent. We find that genetic diversity in the Aceramic Neolithic group was conspicuously low, on a par with European foraging groups. With the advent of the Pottery Neolithic, genetic variation within societies reached levels later found in early European farmers. Our results confirm that Aceramic Neolithic central Anatolians belonged to the same gene pool as the first Neolithic migrants spreading into Europe. Further, genetic affinities between Anatolian farmers and Chalcolithic south Europeans suggest an additional wave of Anatolian migrants, after the initial Neolithic spread, but before the Yamnaya migrations. We propose that the earliest farming societies demographically resembled foragers and only after marked demographic change involving regional gene flow and rising heterogeneity, did the farming population expansions into Europe occur. |