The first introduction of farming beyond its Mediterranean homeland took place in the interior of Southeast Europe at the turn to the sixth millennium BC. Within a few centuries, pioneer farmers spread northwards into a range of unfamiliar environments. The Balkans served as a unique „experimental field“ for the adaptation of southwest-Asian farming to higher latitudes in Europe. Over the past five years, a wide range of new bioarchaeological evidence, including stable isotope studies of plant, animal and human remains as well as organic residues in pottery vessels, has been acquired from the region to enhance our understanding of this process. Based on this new evidence, the talk examines how the earliest crops were grown, livestock was raised and the first farmers fashioned their livelihoods a range of unfamiliar and challenging environments at different latitudes in southeast Europe.