An international team of researchers including Professor Sorin-Cristian Ailincăi, PhD, and Associate Professor Mihai-Dan Constantinescu, PhD, from the Faculty of History at the University of Bucharest, has published a groundbreaking study in Nature journal on the origins and expansion of Indo-European populations.
Titled „The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans”, the study sheds new light on the origins of Indo-European languages by identifying genetic links between prehistoric communities from the Caucasus, the Lower Volga, and the Black Sea region.
This research is a major contribution to archaeology, genetics, and historical linguistics, especially since the origins of Indo-European languages remain a highly debated topic. It also builds on previous studies, such as „The Genetic History of the Southern Arc: A Bridge Between West Asia and Europe.”
To pinpoint the earliest stages of Indo-European history, the researchers assembled DNA from 435 individuals, found at archaeological sites across Eurasia, dating between 6400 and 2000 BC. Their findings provide crucial new details that expand on earlier research.
The study builds on genetic evidence suggesting that the Yamnaya culture (3300–2600 BC) played a key role in spreading Indo-European languages across Europe, Central and South Asia, and Siberia.
The Yamnaya people, originally from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, expanded from Hungary in the west to Kazakhstan in the east, which explains the appearance of “steppe ancestry” in Eurasian populations between 3100 and 1500 BC. These migrations had a lasting impact, shaping the genetic makeup of European populations over the past 5000 years.
The new research, however, reveals that the Yamnaya themselves descended from a distinct genetic group in the Caucasus and Lower Volga region, which contributed to the formation of Indo-European-speaking populations. The DNA analysis demonstrated three genetic clines: the Volga cline, formed by the mixing of Eastern European hunter-gatherers with populations from further up the river, the Dnipro cline, which emerged as groups from the Caucasus migrated westward to the Dnipro and Don river regions, and the Caucasus-lower Volga (CLV) cline, which is a mix of Caucasus hunter-gatherers and Pontic steppe populations.
The study also confirms a genetic connection between steppe populations and those of central Anatolia, suggesting that Anatolian languages, such as Hittite, were introduced by migrants from the northern Caucasus before the Yamnaya expansion. Based on this, the researchers propose a new perspective: the Proto-Indo-Anatolian language, the ancestor of both Anatolian and Indo-European languages, was spoken by communities in the Caucasus and Lower Volga region, likely emerging between 4400 and 4000 BC.
This discovery is key to understanding the origins of Indo-European languages and the prehistoric migrations that shaped Eurasia’s genetic diversity.
The full article can be accessed here.
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