ABSTRACT
In this paper, I would like to address the notion of farmers as our ancestors: one of the less obvious, but pervading claims to national and European identity. I argue that modern perceptions of prehistoric farming communities form a key element in ethnic and national self-definition and also serve as one of the defining features of the European society. These perceptions arose from the social evolutionary notions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and resulted in the privileged treatment of the evidence for the early farming, ‘Neolithic’ societies to the detriment of the earlier hunter-gatherers. I conclude that the contribution of indigenous hunter-gatherer societies to the diversity and differentiation evident in the Neolithic has been obscured by the desire to appropriate farming as one of the constituent elements of the European identity.
