My Mistake

 

In 2010, over 10% of all South Korean marriages had at least one immigrant partner, and the trend seemed ever upward. It wasn't. The authorities responded by making immigration a lot harder for the foreign wives of lonely South Korean men (Statistics Korea 2021, p. 1)

 

  

In 2011, Faustino John Lim (2011) wrote about the changing demographics of South Korea, particularly its rural areas, and predicted that by 2020 a third of all children in the country would be born to non-Korean mothers.

 

Currently, a third of all marriages occurring in South Korea's rural areas involve migrant wives—mostly from China and Southeast Asia—who have been matched with South Korean men. An increasing gender imbalance tilting toward males ensures this phenomenon will continue, with jarring implications for the myth of Korean ethnic homogeneity.

 

In June, the government announced that the number of children with at least one parent of non-Korean heritage reached 150,000 this year, a number that has increased fourfold over the last four years. They are expected to number over 1.6 million by 2020, with a third of all children born that year the offspring of international unions.

 

I quoted that prediction in several of my posts, including one that appeared only three years ago. How correct was that prediction? And how correct was I in accepting it?

 

In 2020, 6% of Korea's live births had at least one immigrant parent. Of those births, 67% were to a Korean father and a non-Korean mother, 13.2% to the reverse, and 19.9% to naturalized residents (Statistics Korea 2021, p. 4).

 

There's a big difference between 6% and one third. Was that forecast unrealistic in 2011? Or did something happen afterwards to throw it off? I would say the latter. Specifically, it was thrown off by three factors:

 

·         The year 2011 saw the beginning of a crackdown on visa applications for mail-order wives. "International marriages" fell from a high of 35,100 in 2010 to a low of 21,700 in 2016 (Statistics Korea 2021, p. 1). The authorities seem to have initially enforced the existing visa requirements with more rigour. Then, in 2014, the government introduced several new rules: a Korean language requirement for the foreign spouse; income and housing requirements for the Korean sponsor; a 5-year ban on Koreans sponsoring a second foreign spouse (because of divorce); and a 3-year ban on naturalized immigrants sponsoring a foreign spouse (An 2019, pp. 102-103).

 

·         The fertility of native-born Koreans has declined, but so has the fertility of immigrant mothers. There has been a decrease in total live births to immigrants since 2012, despite an increase in the total immigrant population (Statistics Korea 2021, p. 4).

 

·         The COVID-19 pandemic has depressed both immigration and fertility.  Immigrant marriages fell from 24,700 in 2019 to 16,200 in 2020. Births to immigrants fell from 17,900 in 2019 to 16,400 in 2020.

 

The first factor is called the "observer effect." You cannot make an observation without affecting the thing you observe, perhaps to the point of invalidating your observation. When, in 2011, Faustino Lim predicted that a third of all births would be born to non-Korean mothers by 2020, the authorities responded by making immigration a lot harder for foreign women.

 

The other two factors have been noted elsewhere. In the United States, fertility has fallen among immigrant groups, particularly Hispanics. We are seeing, in fact, a dramatic drop in fertility throughout the world, the notable exceptions being much of sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Muslim world. Finally, the pandemic has reduced both fertility and international migration. Things may return to normal once it ends. Or maybe not. The pandemic may be acting as an accelerant of existing social trends (Frost 2020).

 

Does this mean that South Korea has dodged the bullet of demographic replacement? It depends on what happens to fertility and immigration once the pandemic is over. In 2020, the country's fertility rate fell to 0.84 children per woman, the lowest in the world (Reuters 2021). At that level, it doesn't take much to cause rapid demographic change. Such change could happen especially fast if citizenship is given to the growing population of legal and illegal migrants:

 

The country currently allows migrants to fill labor shortages, but soon it may have to allow greater immigration to help augment its aging, shrinking population.

 

... Chung Ki-seon, a migration expert at Seoul National University, says that South Korea is taking in migrants because it needs to supplement its agriculture, fishing, construction and manufacturing workforce, and not to address a demographic imbalance.

She predicts that situation will change over the next decade, as the country reaches a turning point that will necessitate a policy shift.

 

"The approximate age of the [Korean] people working the fields right now is over 70," she says. "And once they reach 75 or older, it will be hard for them to remain in the workforce."

 

... The pandemic cut off the inflow of thousands of legally employed migrant workers from Southeast Asia and countries as far away as Pakistan and Uzbekistan. Chung says 5,000 new seasonal laborers were supposed to come into the country to work for 90 days or less last year. But none of them could enter.

 

As a result, Chung says, "the farms rely mostly on illegal immigrants, who fill 80% to 90% of that shortage." There are more than 392,000 undocumented workers in the country. (Kuhn 2021)

 

References

 

An, J. (2019). Marriage Migration and National Boundary-Making: A Comparative Study of Marriage Migration in South Korea and Canada. PhD dissertation, Department of Sociology, Carleton University, Ottawa

https://curve.carleton.ca/system/files/etd/ddf5cf04-0bc0-4f75-91e4-02e69fa6170d/etd_pdf/b24af8c15a8741b50dc5c0e1b3d45b2e/an-marriagemigrationandnationalboundarymaking.pdf

 

Frost, P. (2019). South Korea at the crossroads. Evo and Proud, August 20

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2019/08/south-korea-at-crossroads.html  

 

Frost, P. (2020). An Accelerant of Social Change? The Spanish Flu of 1918-19. International Political Anthropology Journal 13(2): 123-133.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4295574

 

Frost, P. (2021). Damunwha in South Korea: A case study of divergences in cognition and behavior. Advances in Anthropology 11(2): 153-162.

https://doi.org/10.4236/aa.2021.112010  

 

Kuhn, A. (2021). As Workforce Ages, South Korea Increasingly Depends on Migrant Labor. NPR

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1001194446/as-workforce-ages-south-korea-increasingly-depends-on-migrant-labor

 

Lim, T. (2011). Korea's multicultural future? The Diplomat, July 20

https://thediplomat.com/2011/07/south-koreas-multiethnic-future/   

 

Reuters (2021). South Korea's fertility rate falls to lowest in the world.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-fertility-rate-idUSKBN2AO0UH

 

Statistics Korea. (2021). Vital Statistics of Immigrants in 2020.

http://kostat.go.kr/portal/eng/pressReleases/1/index.board?bmode=read&aSeq=415168  

South Korea at the crossroads

By mid-century, immigrant workers will be almost as numerous as native-born workers (AINZ 2016)



Readers took exception to a population forecast in my last post: children of mixed parentage will make up a third of all South Korean births in 2020 (Lim 2011). Yet in 2015 they made up only 5% (Lim 2017). From 5% to one third—is that possible in only five years?

This forecast was tangential to my argument. Ultimately, the rate of population replacement is less important than the final outcome. All the same, this forecast seems to me plausible because South Korea's population is changing at an accelerating rate. There are three interacting reasons: 

Logarithmic increase

The increase in births of "multicultural children" is logarithmic, and not linear. In 2015, such children numbered 207,693 and more than half were under 6 years of age (Wiki- Multicultural Family in South Korea 2019). This factor, alone, will cause the annual number of such births to double or even triple between 2015 and 2020.

Declining fertility of native-born women

The total fertility rate declined from 1.25 births per woman in 2015 to 0.98 in 2018 (Steger 2019). The rate of decline is probably higher for native-born women. In addition, fewer of them are of childbearing age. These two factors are together driving down the total number of births. In one year alone, from 2017 to 2018, the birth rate fell by 8.6% (Steger 2019).

Shift in sources of foreign brides toward high-fertility countries

Initially, many foreign brides were ethnic Koreans from northeast China, where the total fertility rate is even lower, only 0.75 births per woman (Wang 2018). The ethnic mix is now shifting toward brides from Southeast Asia, where TFRs are three or four times higher: Philippines: 3 births per woman, Vietnam: 2 births per women, Indonesia: 2.1 births per woman, Cambodia 2.5 births per woman.



So will "multicultural children" make up 33% of all births in 2020? Forecasts can be wrong, but I don't think this one will be far off the mark. On the one hand, the annual number of such births seems to be more than doubling every five years. On the other hand, the total number of South Korean births is falling sharply. 


By the way, that forecast doesn't include labor immigration

Please note: this is not the whole story of population replacement in South Korea. There is also labor immigration, which will become more and more important demographically:

[...] The government has brought in an immigration policy that actively embraces immigrants. Last year, it formulated it in the low birth rate and aging measures and economic policy direction. It will actively accept immigration and solve various economic and social problems such as lack of population. Immigration policy will be in full swing after 2018.

[...] According to the data from the Korea Immigration Policy Institute, a steady influx of immigrants is needed to increase the potential growth rate by 1 percentage point. In 2020, there will be 4,994,000, and in 2030, 9,927,000. In 2035, 10,864,000 people will be needed, a quarter of the total working population of 41.75 million. In 2050, 16,116,000 people will be needed. In 2060, there will be 17,224,000 people—only 4 million people less than the domestic workforce (21,865,000 people). (AINZ 2016)

It’s not clear whether these immigrants and their children will be entitled to citizenship or will always be guest workers. In the end it doesn’t really matter. They will become a permanent presence in South Korea.


Can South Korea overcome its fertility crisis?

Fertility rates can rise, just as they can fall, as one commenter noted:

[...] there's no reason to think native Korean fertility is going to stay at such a low level indefinitely. Birth rates go up and down and yearly TFRs are just a snapshot. A number of European countries had fertility drop to very low levels and have seen their TFRs increase significantly, though usually not to replacement. Czech Republic, Romania, Russia and Georgia all come to mind. (Georgia's fertility is now at replacement actually, thanks to their church.) I could see South Korean fertility following that pattern.

Yes, fertility rates can rise, but vigorous action is needed to make them rise. I'm not convinced that such action will be sufficient in South Korea's case. Detailed analysis suggests that the fertility rate is so low because many young adults are trapped in "nonregular" jobs that offer little stability and no benefits, particularly maternity or parental leave. They are nonetheless expected to meet traditional preconditions for family formation:

Our analysis also indicates a very limited scope for future fertility increase in Korea, especially because larger families have almost vanished. [...] The low fertility will be sustained by irregular work contracts among younger people and a combination of unfavorable labor market conditions for women with families and the persistence of traditional gender roles and expectations regarding their family roles, household tasks, caring for dependent members, and childrearing. (Yoo and Sobotka 2018)

The example of South Korea suggests that social conservatives may be wrong in blaming the West's fertility crisis largely on the decline in traditional values and the rise of alternative sexual lifestyles (single motherhood, gay marriage, etc.). These factors are much less important in South Korea. Furthermore, an argument can be made that some traditional values are doing more harm than good in the current economic environment, both in South Korea and in the West, specifically the idea that parents shouldn't start a family until one of them has secure employment. In most cases, that precondition will never be met. 

The main problem is thus twofold: 1) young adults increasingly have precarious employment and are postponing childbearing until their situation becomes sufficiently stable; 2) the culture in general has shifted away from the family and toward employment as the ultimate meaning of life.

Young South Koreans should explore alternative means of gaining income and accept the idea that family life can be just as rewarding as work life. This will be difficult to do, however, if the South Korean government pursues its commitment to globalism. Young adults are increasingly thrown into competition with poorly paid foreign workers, either through outsourcing of employment to low-wage countries or through insourcing of low-wage workers for "3D jobs"—dirty, dangerous, and demeaning (Mundy 2013). 

Employers are in fact incentivized to bring in foreign workers. South Korea has the largest wage gap of OECD countries between local and immigrant labor, and the gap remains even when one controls for differences in work skills (Hyun-ju 2015). This use of immigrants to do "work that Koreans won't do" has the perverse effect of increasing such employment while reducing employment that can support a family. 


References

AINZ (2016). Population in 2750 South Korea, large-scale immigration government in progress. January 9
https://issuecollecter.tistory.com/178 

Hyun-ju. (2015). Korea's wage gap between local, foreign workers largest in OECD. The Korea Herald, September 9
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20150909001162 

Lim, T. (2011). Korea's multicultural future? The Diplomat, July 20
https://thediplomat.com/2011/07/south-koreas-multiethnic-future/ 

Lim, T. (2017). The road to multiculturalism in South Korea. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, October 10
https://www.georgetownjournalofinternationalaffairs.org/online-edition/2017/10/10/the-road-to-multiculturalism-in-south-korea

Mundy, S. (2013). S Korea struggles to take in foreign workers. Financial Times, September 17
https://www.ft.com/content/afcdefd4-1c1c-11e3-b678-00144feab7de 

Steger, I. (2019). South Korea's birth rate just crashed to another alarming low. Quartz Daily Briefs, February 27
https://qz.com/1556910/south-koreas-birth-rate-just-crashed-to-another-alarming-low/  

Wang, M. (2018). For Whom the Bell Tolls: A Retrospective and Predictive Study of Fertility Rates in China (November 8, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3234861

Wikipedia (2019). Multicultural Family in South Korea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural_family_in_South_Korea

Yoo, S.H. and T. Sobotka. (2018). Ultra-low fertility in South Korea: The role of the tempo effect. Demographic Research 38(22): 549-576.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/26457056.pdf?acceptTC=true&coverpage=false  

Autumn in China

Pink Autumn, by Victor Wang (2017) (Wikipedia). China’s demographic crisis is much worse than what official statistics let on.

With its population ageing as a result of longer lifespans and a dwindling number of children, the world's most populous nation decided in 2016 to allow all couples to have a second child, relaxing a tough one-child policy in place since 1978.

But birth rates plummeted for the second consecutive year last year. Policymakers now fret about the impact a long-term decline in births will have on the economy and its strained health and social services. (Stanway 2019)

The above Reuters article appeared two weeks ago. Although China lifted its one-child policy in 2016, its total fertility rate is still declining and now stands at 1.6 children per woman—well below the replacement level of 2.1 children. Delegates to China's parliament are saying that "radical steps are needed."

Are things that bad? No … they're worse. China's fertility rate is much lower than the official figure of 1.6 and probably close to what we see in Taiwan (1.1), in Singapore's Chinese community (1.1), and in Malaysia's Chinese community (1.3). Moreover, it is continuing to decline and will soon fall below the threshold of one child per woman, if it has not already done so. Finally, this very low fertility has lasted long enough to exhaust all population momentum. The population will soon begin to shrink, most likely five years earlier than the officially projected date of 2030. 

The real figures

The official figure of 1.6 children per woman is consistent with estimates by respected international bodies: 1.62 (World Bank, 2016); 1.8 (Population Reference Bureau, 2016); and 1.6 (United Nations, 2011-2015) (Wang 2018). The total fertility rate can also be estimated from data that China collects every year, i.e., the sample surveys taken by the National Bureau of Statistics. Using this source, Mengqiao Wang came up with much lower figures:

[…] far below the 2.1 replacement level, national TFR fluctuated around 1.4 since 2003, before dropping to around 1.2 since 2010 and finally reaching an astoundingly low value of 1.05 in 2015. (Wang 2018)

This pattern of very low fertility is limited to Han Chinese, particularly those in the northeastern provinces of Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Jilin. In those provinces, the total fertility rate has fallen to 0.75 children per woman, and death rates have already overtaken birth rates:

Population shrinkage was already a fact for the northeastern part of the country, and it remained a question of when but not whether that fact would spread to other areas of the nation (official estimate of population peak at 1.45 billion by 2030 but unofficial estimate of 1.41 billion as earliest as 2025. (Wang 2018)

Why are these figures so much lower than the official figures? The main reason given is that the one-child policy caused widespread underreporting of births: many Chinese were having second children but not reporting them to government statisticians for fear of being penalized. This is seen in the differences between the raw data of the sample surveys and the official estimates of the National Bureau of Statistics. 

The NBS estimates, however, seem to be based on the sample survey data … with an upward adjustment to take underreporting of births into account: "Ironically, the NBS mentioned that the annual total births announced were calculated and inferred from the same sample surveys this study analyzed" (Wang 2018). So we are trapped in a circular argument: the sample surveys must be missing many births because the NBS estimates show a higher birth rate. But the same NBS estimates have been adjusted upwards because so many births are supposedly being missed.

Moreover, if the one-child policy had caused so much underreporting of births, the number of reported births should have increased in 2016, when that policy was scrapped, and that increase should have persisted in subsequent years. That's not what happened. The number of births did rise in 2016 and then fell in 2017 and 2018. The rise was probably due to some parents deciding to have a second child because there were no longer any financial penalties. The "backlog" of potential childbearing has now been cleared, and the fertility rate has returned to its pre-2016 slump.

It should be emphasized that the decline in Chinese fertility is now being driven by the growing number of women who have no children at all. This childlessness cannot be blamed on the one-child policy, and it is questionable, in fact, whether that policy has had much impact on the fertility rate for the past two decades. Total fertility rates have declined to the same very low level among Chinese people in Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia—where there has never been a one-child policy.

How bad is it?

Pretty bad. The fertility rate dropped below the replacement level in 1992 and has been at very low levels (1.4 or lower) since 2003. There is very little population momentum left, and an absolute drop in numbers should begin in the mid-2020s. Meanwhile, the total fertility rate may decline even further. In 2018, it was 0.98 in South Korea and 0.75 in northeastern China (Kyu-min and Su-ji 2019; Wang 2018). In all of East Asia, this pattern has only one exception: North Korea, where the rate is 1.98 children per woman (Wikipedia 2019). This is what we call “a failed state.”

One can always say that China has well over a billion people and can afford to shed a few hundred million. The relevant figure, however, is not the total population but rather the number of women who can bear children. That figure is a lot smaller and will continue to shrink. Women of childbearing age are defined (generously) as being 15 to 49 years old. Their numbers peaked at 383 million in 2011 and have been falling each year by 4 to 6 million. If we look at the most fertile age group (20-29), their numbers are expected to fall from 107.7 million in 2016 to around 80 million in 2020 (Wang 2018). 

There is no real precedent for what is happening. In the Western world, the fertility rate has declined over a longer time and has reached very low levels only in some countries, notably those of southern and eastern Europe. Moreover, unlike those countries China is still creating jobs at a high rate. Who will fill those jobs?

I addressed that question in a series of posts I wrote nine years ago. The abundance of jobs and empty housing will suck in immigrants from poorer countries, initially from Southeast Asia and then increasingly from South Asia and Africa. The African influx into Asia will be the big surprise of the 21st century, being especially noticeable in Malaysia and South China.

What can be done?

The first step toward solving a problem is to recognize that it exists. Most problems go unsolved because no one takes that first step. China is starting to move in that direction, but the word "starting" should be stressed. As Wang (2018) notes, there is a recurring tendency by the Chinese bureaucracy to downplay the demographic crisis. In some cases, the relevant data are not published:

Regrettably, such data for 2016 were no longer published in the most recent 2017 yearbook as the official publication mentioned that "In comparison with China Statistical Yearbook 2016, following revisions have been made in this new version in terms of the statistical contents and in editing: Of the chapter "Population", table named Age-specific Fertility Rate of Childbearing Women by Age of Mother and Birth Order is deleted." (China Statistical Yearbook 2017). Reasons were unknown for the deletion of this table, and it was unclear if the deletion would be temporary or permanent, or whether such deletion would continue in future years beyond 2016. (Wang 2018).

With determined effort, very low fertility can be reversed. Israel has gone the farthest in this direction, having achieved replacement fertility even among secular Jews. One must provide not only financial incentives but also cultural and ideological ones. Marriage and family formation must be seen positively. In this, unfortunately, the West is not an example to follow.

Wang (2018) suggests four measures to deal with the demographic crisis:

- Make demographic data fully accessible for debate and discussion.

- Eliminate controls on couples who want to have more than two children.

- Lower the minimum age for marriage, which is currently 22 for men and 20 for women.

- Allow out-of-wedlock births.

The first three measures seem sensible, although the second one would probably have little effect. Such controls are already absent in Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. The last measure is terrible. All things being equal, a single mother will have fewer children than a married mother. Yes, a single mother can eventually marry or remarry, but such marriages tend to be less stable and thus less conducive to future childbearing, largely because the husband is less willing to support children that are not his own.

Of course, not all things are equal. Single mothers tend to be more present-oriented and, thus, more indifferent to the long-term costs of their actions, like those of having children. But what is to be gained by encouraging such people to reproduce? The experience of the West has been that single mothers, and their children, end up being a net cost to society.

In the West, the increase in single motherhood has coincided very closely with the decline in fertility, and both reflect the same underlying problem: people are less willing to commit to a long-term relationship and raise the children it produces. We increasingly live in a culture where the only valid entity is the individual. Everything else—family, community, nation—is illegitimate.

References

Frost, P. (2010a). China and interesting times ... Evo and Proud, February 25

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2010/02/china-and-interesting-times.html

Frost, P. (2010b). China and interesting times. Part II. Evo and Proud, March 4

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2010/03/china-and-interesting-times-part-ii.html 

Frost, P. (2010c). China and interesting times. Part III. Evo and Proud, March 11

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2010/03/china-and-interesting-times-part-iii.html 

Frost, P. (2010d). Has China come to the end of history? Evo and Proud, March 18

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2010/03/has-china-come-to-end-of-history.html

Kyu-min, C. and S. Su-ji. (2019). Fertility rate plummets to less than 1 child per woman. National Politics, February 28

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2019/02/28/2019022801617.html

Stanway, D. (2019). China lawmakers urge freeing up family planning as birth rates plunge. Reuters, March 12

https://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAKBN1QT0SM-OCATP

Wang, M. (2018). For Whom the Bell Tolls: A Retrospective and Predictive Study of Fertility Rates in China (November 8, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3234861

Wikipedia (2019). Demographics of North Korea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_North_Korea#Size_and_growth_rate

Not so fast

Theresa May (Wikicommons) – “Citizens of nowhere”

The overriding lesson ancient DNA teaches is that the population in any one place has changed dramatically many times since the great human post-ice age expansion, and that recognition of the essentially mongrel nature of humanity should override any notion of some mystical, longstanding connection between people and place. We are all, to use Theresa May's derisive label, "citizens of nowhere". (Forbes 2018)

It seems that some pundits are getting tingles from ancient DNA. Still, there is more to this than political spin. Greg Cochran is no fan of Theresa May, and yet he too agrees with the above narrative— as late as 10,000 years ago nobody in Europe looked like the modern Dutch (Cochran 2018). As he sees it, Europeans were transformed beyond recognition during the last ten millennia, specifically by two demographic events:

1. The native hunter-gatherers of Europe were largely replaced by farmers from Anatolia, i.e., from the Middle East.

2. There then came another wave of demographic replacement. Warriors from the Pontic steppe spread out over Europe, killing the men and taking their women.

What do I think? In my opinion, there were indeed migrations in European prehistory, and these migrations led to some populations replacing others to varying degrees. But the magnitude of replacement has been exaggerated. This is partly due to misreading of ancient DNA data and partly due to contrary data being ignored. Let me explain myself.

What did Europeans look like before farming?

First, the modern European phenotype—pale skin with various hair colors (red, blond, black) and eye colors (blue, green, brown)—was already in place 10,000 years ago, and probably several thousand years earlier.

It didn't exist throughout Europe. Western Europeans had a combination of dark skin, dark hair, and blue eyes until very late in time. This we know from DNA retrieved at hunter-gatherer sites in Western Europe: Cheddar Gorge in England (11,000 BP), Loschbour in Luxembourg (8000 BP), and La Braña in Spain (7000 BP) (Brace et al. 2018; Lazaridis et al. 2014; Olalde et al. 2014). Dark skin persisted even after hunting and gathering gave way to farming, as attested by a Neolithic individual from England, nicknamed 'Sven,' who lived 4,000 to 5,000 years ago: "Sven most likely had intermediate to dark skin pigmentation, brown eyes and black possibly dark brown hair" (Brace et al. 2018). Sven lived just before the dawn of European history, being almost a contemporary of Hammurabi.

We get a different picture, however, from the ancient DNA of hunter-gatherers in northern and eastern Europe. There, long before farming, the phenotype was already fully modern. This has been shown by ancient DNA from Scandinavian and Eastern hunter gatherers:

Norway/Sweden, 9500-6000 BP, 7 individuals: light skin, blue eyes, light brown eyes (Günther et al. 2018)

Sweden (Motala), 8000 BP, 7 individuals: light skin ("predominantly" derived alleles), red hair, blond hair, blue eyes (Anthrogenica 2015; Mathieson et al. 2015)

East Baltic, 7460-5360 BP, 12 individuals: light skin, blue eyes (Mittnik et al. 2018)

Russia (Karelia), 7500-7000 BP, 1 individual: light skin, dark hair, brown eyes (Eupedia 2015)

Russia (Samara), 7500-7000 BP, 1 individual: light skin, blond hair, blue eyes (Eupedia 2015).

The latest study from Scandinavia notes the contrast between Scandinavian hunter-gatherers (SHGs) and Western hunter-gatherers (WHGs):

The genomic data further allowed us to study the physical appearance of SHGs; for instance, they show a combination of eye color varying from blue to light brown and light skin pigmentation. This is strikingly different from the WHGs—who have been suggested to have the specific combination of blue eyes and dark skin and EHGs—who have been suggested to be brown-eyed and light-skinned. (Günther et al. 2018)

We have less data on physical appearance from earlier times. Ancient DNA from Afontova Gora has shown that people had blond hair in mid-Siberia as early as 18,000 years ago. Using inferential methods, one research team has estimated that light skin first appeared 19,000 to 11,000 years ago (Beleza et al., 2013) and another has estimated 19,200 to 7,600 years ago (Canfield et al., 2014). The modern European phenotype seems to have taken shape during the last ice age, probably 20,000 to 15,000 years ago within an area stretching from northeast Europe to mid-Siberia. This new phenotype died out in northern Asia, probably at the height of the last ice age, and became confined to northeast Europe. It later spread to the rest of the continent not long before historic times.

Did farmers replace native Europeans?

Doesn't ancient DNA show that European hunter-gatherers were largely replaced by Middle-Eastern farmers from Anatolia? That seems to be the accepted wisdom. Ancient DNA shows a lack of genetic continuity between late hunter-gatherers and early farmers in central and western Europe. Using mtDNA, Skoglund et al. (2012) estimated Anatolian admixture at 95% in Sardinians, 52% in northwest Europeans, 31-41% in Swedes, and 11% in Russians. Not surprisingly, this finding has been cited to show that Europeans are not even native to their own continent. "We're all citizens of nowhere."

More surprisingly, this finding also suggests a strange path of phenotypic evolution: northern Europeans evolved their current phenotype before the farmers came, then lost it to some extent, and then regained what they had lost in a short span of time. When Anatolian farmers moved into that region some 6,000 years ago, the resulting admixture (30 to 50%) would have greatly reduced the population frequencies of blue eyes, blond hair, and red hair in the native population. Only 3,000 years remained between that time and the earliest historical records to allow these population frequencies to bounce back to their former values. Possible? Only if you assume very strong selection for all of these traits.

Let’s take a closer look.

The case of haplogroup U

If we compare late hunter-gatherers with present-day Europeans, we see that the main change to mtDNA has been the loss of haplogroup U. Today, this haplogroup reaches high levels only among the Saami of Finland and the Mansi of northwestern Siberia, both of whom were hunter-gatherers until recently (Derbeneva et al 2002).

Most studies show a sharp break in the frequency of haplogroup U at the time boundary between late hunter-gatherers and early farmers. Yet, in a study of 92 Danish human remains from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages, Melchior et al (2010) found high levels of haplogroup U as late as the Early Iron Age—long after the advent of farming. Instead of a sharp break, there was a gradual decline. When Jones et al. (2017) examined ancient DNA from Latvia and Ukraine, they found a similar persistence of haplogroup U across the time boundary between hunting-gathering and farming.

The sharp genetic break of previous studies seems to apply only to central and western Europe, where incoming farmers advanced rapidly through territory sparsely inhabited by hunter-gatherers. This wave of advance then stalled, however, from 7500 to 6000 BP, along a line running from the Low Countries in the West to the Black Sea in the East. North of that line, hunter-gatherers were harder to displace because they had achieved high population densities through an economy based on exploitation of marine resources (Price 1991).

In that part of Europe the loss of haplogroup U is more consistent with slow genetic change through natural selection.  In short, this haplogroup had given hunter-gatherers some kind of benefit, and they lost that benefit when they became farmers. Selection then gradually removed the obsolete haplogroup from the gene pool.

What was the benefit? Different haplogroups provide different trade-offs between thermogenesis and ATP synthesis (Balloux et al. 2009). Haplogroup U is associated with reduced sperm motility, an indication of a shift in energy balance from ATP production to heat production (Montiel-Sosa et al. 2006). Being nomadic, hunter-gatherers spend more time in the cold, especially when sleeping in temporary shelters. In contrast, farmers are more sedentary, sleep in a warmer environment, and have less need to raise body temperature at the expense of ATP production.

Although the decline in haplogroup U explains most of the mtDNA gap between hunter-gatherers and farmers, the two groups still differ genetically in other ways. Are these other differences a sign of Anatolian admixture? Perhaps. Or perhaps these differences, too, are caused by adaptation to a new regime of natural selection. No one really knows, and we should not assume that natural selection cannot be a causal factor when it clearly can.

Founder effects may be another causal factor. When bands of hunter-gatherers are given the opportunity to adopt farming, most of them turn up their noses and only a few will make the change.  Because those few bands are not perfectly representative of the hunter-gatherer gene pool, and because their numbers may increase many times over (thanks to the increase in food supply) the resulting founder effects will be substantial.

For all these reasons, population replacement is inevitably overestimated if it becomes the only explanation for genetic differences in early Europe between hunter-gatherers and farmers.

Transition from hunting and gathering to farming in the East Baltic

Lazaridis et al. (2014) estimated Anatolian farmer admixture in East Baltic peoples at 30%. This is less than the figure of 52% claimed for northwest Europeans, but it is still substantial. So a measurable signal of admixture should appear when late hunter-gatherers are compared with early farmers in the East Baltic. This comparison has been done by two research teams, and both failed to find any signal of Anatolian admixture. Jones et al. (2017) noted this absence in their study of ancient DNA from Latvia:

It is striking that we did not find evidence for early European or Anatolian farmer admixture in any of our Latvian Neolithic samples [...]. This lack of admixture is also supported by the mitochondrial haplogroup of the Latvian Neolithic samples (all belong to U; Figure 1), which is prevalent in European hunter-gatherers, including our Latvian Mesolithic samples, but not in early farmers.

[...] The emergence of Neolithic features in the absence of immigration by Anatolian farmers highlights the roles of horizontal cultural transmission and potentially independent innovation during the Neolithic transition. (Jones et al. 2017)

The first evidence of Anatolian admixture in the East Baltic appears much later, in the Bronze Age (Jones et al. 2017).

Mittnik et al. (2018) similarly found no evidence of such admixture during the transition to farming in the East Baltic. They ascribed the Anatolian admixture in present-day DNA to limited gene flow after the Bronze Age. They also found, however, that some of this “admixture” was already present in the earlier hunter-gatherers:

One Narva individual, Spiginas1, dated to ca. 4440-4240 calBCE, belongs to a mitochondrial haplogroup of the H branch, normally associated with the Neolithic expansion into Europe, but shows no evidence of Neolithic farmer ancestry on the nuclear level suggesting that this haplogroup might have been present already in foraging groups. (Mittnik et al. 2018)

It seems that some aspects of the Anatolian genetic profile were already shared with Scandinavian/Baltic hunter-gatherers. How did this come about? Perhaps there was trade between farmers and SHGs, including human merchandise—much like the later trade in Slavic women with the Middle East. Or perhaps the Anatolian farmers shared common ancestry with some hunter-gatherer groups (SHGs and EHGs) but not with others (WHGs). Perhaps these farmers had originated in an earlier southward expansion of the same hunter-gatherer groups toward the Black Sea and into Anatolia.

What about the Indo-European expansion?

In northern Europe, ancient DNA does show a demographic expansion by a Pontic steppe people called the Yamna culture (commonly identified with proto-Indo-Europeans). This expansion should have strongly impacted the people of Latvia and Ukraine, who indeed show signs of Yamna admixture. Even there, however, there is more continuity than rupture between hunter-gatherer and farmer samples (Jones et al. 2017).

Again, the same objection applies here as it does to Anatolian farmer admixture. Any estimate of Yamna admixture will tend to be an over-estimate because it is difficult if not impossible to exclude genetic differences due to other causes, notably adaptation to a new regime of natural selection, as well as founder effects. 

Whenever I raise this objection, the usual reply is that the length of time between late hunter-gatherers and early farmers is too short for significant change by any causal factor except admixture from an outside source. This is untrue in the case of founder effects. It is also untrue in the case of a change in natural selection, which can produce significant effects over any time interval longer than ten generations.

One might object that founder effects can be ignored because they are random, i.e., they cannot produce the sort of directional genetic change that is caused by admixture from an outside source. Unfortunately, some of this random change will point in the "right" direction and be thus misattributed to admixture. The likelihood of this error increases if one is looking for admixture from two possible sources, i.e., Anatolian farmers and Yamna pastoralists.

Conclusion

Farming began some 10,000 years ago in the Middle East and entered Europe from the southeast. As farming advanced farther and farther into Europe, the farmers at the "front" became less and less Anatolian through intermixture with native hunter-gatherers. This was especially so during the long period (7500-6000 BP) when the wave of advance stalled along a line running from the Low Countries to the Black Sea. The last push, particularly into the East Baltic and Ukraine, was much more a cultural change than a genetic one.

Indeed, estimates of Anatolian admixture seem to be inflated across all of northern Europe. It is often stated that population replacement must have happened because we see a sharp genetic break at the time boundary between late hunter-gatherers and early farmers. Yet the break seems to apply only to central and western Europe, where there was indeed a fairly rapid replacement of hunter-gatherers by incoming farmers. Ancient DNA from Denmark and the East Baltic shows no sharp break (Jones et al. 2017; Melchior et al. 2010; Mittnik et al. 2018).

Some of the confusion in this debate may arise from the assumption that "late hunter-gatherers" formed a single group in Europe. In fact, there were at least three such groups (WHGs, SHGs, EHGs), whose genetic profiles significantly differed from each other and whose fates were likewise different. WHGs were an evolutionary dead end. They were replaced. The same cannot be said for the hunter-fisher-gatherers of Scandinavia and the Baltic, who were able to achieve high population densities by exploiting marine resources (Price 1991). With them we see more genetic continuity than rupture, and it is possible that some genetic characteristics formerly ascribed solely to "Anatolian" farmers were in fact of SHG origin.

As for the Yamna expansion, it does seem to be a real genetic event, although even here we find more continuity than rupture. Again, estimates of admixture will tend to be overestimates because of concurrent genetic change due to natural selection and founder effects.

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