Ancient genomes provide final word in Indo-European linguistic origins
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A team of 91 researchers—including famed geneticist Eske Willerslev at the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Center, University of Copenhagen—has discovered a Bronze Age genetic divergence connected to eastern and western Mediterranean Indo-European language speakers.
Findings indicate that Spanish, French and Italian populations received steppe ancestry from Bell Beaker groups, while Greek and Armenian groups acquired ancestry directly from Yamnaya populations. Their results are consistent with the Italo-Celtic and Graeco-Armenian linguistic models.
Indo-European languages cover much of Europe and western Asia and are thought to have originated mainly from migrations of Early Bronze Age people across the Pontic Steppe. The Pontic Steppe region stretches north of the Black Sea from the edge of modern-day Bulgaria across southern Ukraine to the shores of the Caspian Sea.
