Ancient Europe's agricultural revolution got no love in the north. European hunter-gatherers living near the Baltic Sea clung to their traditional way of life as farming societies sprouted across Central and Southern Europe, a new study suggests. Clues to ancient Europeans' openness to or rejection of agriculture come from the beads they left behind. From roughly 11,000 to 5,000 years ago, foragers in central and southern regions increasingly adopted ornamental beads favored by incoming farmers, say archaeologist Solange Rigaud of New York University and her colleagues. A transition to these personal decorations, which presumably had social and symbolic meanings, signals broad acceptance of farmers' cultural practices by foraging groups that covered a large swath of Europe, Rigaud's group concludes April 8 in PLOS ONE.
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