Indo-European DNA: The Genetic Migration of Indo-Europeans…
Channel: Celtic History Decoded
Date: 04/02/2024

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Indo-European DNA: The Genetic Migration of Indo-Europeans…

Considering that nearly half the world’s population speaks a language that is part of the Indo-European language family, from Irish and Scottish Gaelic to Sanskrit in India, what do we know about the genetic legacy left by the massive waves of Indo-European migration? 

Well we can see the genetic fingerprints of the Indo-Europeans right across Eurasia, and it may explain why there are so many origin stories in the likes of Scotland and Ireland that discuss cultures from the Steppe, an area north of the Black Sea and to the east. The origins of the Indo-Europeans seems to be a mixture of both Anatolia and the Pontic-Caspian steppe, with various cultures over the centuries and millennia spreading Indo-European traits outwards. 

The presence of Steppe related ancestry in so many parts of Eurasia is quite astonishing, and is considered a strong marker of the legacy of these Indo-European migrations. 3 cultures in particular were important in this spread, and they are important to understand before documenting some of the genetic findings from recent research. 

The Yamnaya culture, also known as the Pit Grave culture, was one, which existed from around 3300 – 2600 BC in the Pontic-Caspian steppe. The rapid spread of the Yamnaya culture across Eurasia has led many to argue that may have been quite a violent event, with the Yamnaya people potentially committing genocide against the native peoples they largely went on to replace, but that is a story for another time. 

Second up is a connected culture known as the Corded Ware culture, a culture that existed from around 3000 BC – 2350 BC and occupied a massive area, from a contact zone with the Yamnaya culture to stretching right across a large part of central and western Europe and into parts of Scandinavia. Thirdly, there was the Bell Beaker culture, which existed from around c. 2800–1800 BC and occupied an area much further west, in Western Europe, Britian and Ireland. 

Sources:

Cassidy, L. M., Martiniano, R., Murphy, E., Teasdale, M. D., Mallory, J., Hartwell, B., & Bradley, D. G. (2016). Neolithic and Bronze age migration to Ireland and establishment of the insular Atlantic genome. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(2), 368-373. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1518445113 

Haak, W., Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N. et al. Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature 522, 207–211 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14317 

Olalde, I., Brace, S., Allentoft, M. et al. The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe. Nature 555, 190–196 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25738 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25738#citeas 

Vagheesh M. Narasimhan et al. - The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia.Science365,eaat7487(2019).DOI:10.1126/science.aat7487

Indo-European languages Indo-European languages - Establishment, Spread, Diversity | Britannica 

Story of most murderous people of all time revealed in ancient DNA https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132230-200-story-of-most-murderous-people-of-all-time-revealed-in-ancient-dna/ 

Haplogroup R1b https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b 

The genomic history of the Aegean palatial civilizations https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00370-6?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867421003706%3Fshowall%3Dtrue#secsectitle0015 

Ancient DNA reveals origin of first Bronze Age civilizations in Europe https://phys.org/news/2021-05-ancient-dna-reveals-bronze-age.html 
 
Creative Commons Imagery:

XVodolazx https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yamna_culture_tomb.jpg Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en 

#history #indoeuropean #ancientcivilizations 

Indo-European DNA - Ancestry - R1a - R1b