According to the latest research, nomads from the steppe regions of modern southern Russia played an important role in the formation of the population and languages of today's Europe.
The population of today's Central Europe comes from peoples who migrated from East to West in two large waves.
From the Middle East about 7,500 years ago and from the steppes of today's southern Russia about 4,500 years ago. This conclusion was reached by scientists from an international research group based on the results of genetic analyzes of 94 ancient Europeans who lived from 3,000 to 8,000 years ago in the territory of today's Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Spain and Russia, according to the German news agency dpa on Monday, March 2.
The results of the study could be used to establish the ancestral home of Indo-European languages, according to a report by the research team led by David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston, published in the journal Nature.
Scientists from Reich's group examined the genome of prehistoric Europeans. “We developed a new method to isolate the parts of the genome that contain the greatest amount of information about the history of mankind, and only examined these parts,” the American scientist is quoted as saying in the message of the German Max Planck Society, which took part in the project.
Scientists suggest that the first migration flow to Central and Western Europe, inhabited at that time by hunters and gatherers, came in the person of settlers from the Middle East. “Ancient farmers and pastoralists in Spain, Germany and Hungary have almost identical genetic types, which allows us to conclude about a common origin with the peoples of the Middle East,” emphasizes Wolfgang Haack from the University of Adelaide (Australia).
Contrary to popular belief, the study suggests that languages came to Central Europe not with this wave of migrants, but with the next. About 3000 years later, a second large wave of migrants came to Europe - from the steppe regions of modern southern Russia. These are representatives of the Yamnaya culture, the German news agency dpa reports.
Researchers also believe that the ancient inhabitants of today's Germany and other regions of Central and Western Europe are connected not only by genetic, but also linguistic kinship with nomads. Scientists from David Reich's group do not give an unequivocal answer, but indicate that the results of their research call into question the theory of the formation of Indo-European languages in the context of the arrival of the first farmers and pastoralists from the Middle East to Europe.
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