The Western Hunter-Gatherers, for all their sophistication and their success in occupying postglacial Europe, did not survive the Neolithic transition.

They were not simply integrated into the incoming farming population.

The ancient DNA evidence shows a sharp transition: communities that had been nearly one hundred percent WHG in their genetics become, within a few centuries of the farming migration, communities with predominant Anatolian Neolithic farmer ancestry.

The change is too rapid to be explained by gradual mixing; it implies that the incoming farmers substantially replaced the indigenous population.

The mechanisms of this replacement — whether through violence, disease, competitive exclusion for resources, differential fertility, or some combination of these factors — are debated.