The genetic landscape in the Near East had more affinity to Neolithic Europe than the present populations do. Armenians seem to share a similar affinity to those Neolithic farmers as do other genetic isolates in the Near East, such as Greek Cypriots, Mizrahi Jews, and Middle Eastern Christian communities. Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Armenian ancestry seems to originate from an ancestral population that is best represented by Neolithic Europeans. This suggests that they may derive from a people who inhabited the Near East during the Neolithic expansion of Near Eastern farmers into Europe beginning around 8,000 years ago.