section_path: Development and diffusion/Europe/Carbon 14 evidence
section_name: Carbon 14 evidence
paragraph_text: Carbon 14 evidence
  
  The spread of the Neolithic from the Near East Neolithic to Europe was first studied quantitatively in the 1970s, when a sufficient number of Carbon 14 age determinations for early Neolithic sites had become available. In 1973, Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza discovered a linear relationship between the age of an Early Neolithic site and its distance from the conventional source in the Near East (Jericho), demonstrating that the Neolithic spread at an average speed of about 1 km/yr. More recent studies (2005) confirm these results and yield the speed of 0.6–1.3 km/yr (at 95% confidence level).