Where does the Indo-European language family originate? Researchers have added a significant insight into this question. They examined ancient DNA from 435 individuals at archaeological sites throughout Eurasia, dating from 6400 to 2000 BCE. Their findings reveal a newly identified population from the Caucasus-Lower Volga region that links to all groups speaking Indo-European languages.
Where does the Indo-European language family originate? Ron Pinhasi and his team from the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna have made a notable contribution to this inquiry, in partnership with David Reich’s ancient DNA lab at Harvard University. They studied ancient DNA from 435 individuals found in archaeological sites across Eurasia from 6400 to 2000 BCE. Their research indicates that a newly identified population from the Caucasus-Lower Volga can be associated with all Indo-European-speaking groups. This important study is published in Nature.
Indo-European languages (IE) consist of over 400 variations, including significant groups like Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Indo-Iranian, and Celtic, and are spoken by almost half of the world’s population today. These languages evolved from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), and historians and linguists have been exploring their origins and expansion since the 19th century, facing ongoing gaps in knowledge.
The recent study in Nature, which also involved Tom Higham and Olivia Cheronet from the University of Vienna, investigates ancient DNA from 435 individuals from archaeological sites throughout Eurasia dated between 6400 and 2000 BCE. Previous genetic research had identified that the Yamnaya culture (3300-2600 BCE) from the Pontic-Caspian steppes, located north of the Black and Caspian Seas, began to expand into Europe and Central Asia around 3100 BCE, leading to a distinct “steppe ancestry” in human populations across Eurasia from 3100 to 1500 BCE. These migrations from the steppes had the most significant impact on European genomes in the past 5,000 years, believed to be a major factor in the spread of Indo-European languages.
Notably, the Anatolian branch of Indo-European languages, including Hittite—the likely oldest branch to separate—was the only one previously shown to lack steppe ancestry. Earlier studies did not find steppe ancestry among the Hittites because, according to the new findings, the Anatolian languages are derived from a group that had not been properly identified until now: an Eneolithic population dating from 4500 to 3500 BCE residing in the steppes between the North Caucasus and the lower Volga. By examining the genetics of this newly acknowledged Caucasus-Lower Volga (CLV) population, at least five individuals in Anatolia from the Hittite era show ancestry connected to the CLV population.
A Newly Identified Population with Extensive Influence
The study reveals that approximately 80% of the Yamnaya population’s ancestry comes from the CLV group, which also contributed at least 10% of the ancestry of Bronze Age central Anatolian groups, including Hittite speakers. “The CLV group can therefore be linked to all IE-speaking populations and is the strongest candidate for the population that spoke Indo-Anatolian, the root of both Hittite and subsequent IE languages,” explains Ron Pinhasi. The findings further imply that the proto-Indo-Anatolian language, shared by both Anatolian and Indo-European peoples, reached its peak in the CLV communities between 4400 BC and 4000 BC.
“Identifying the CLV population as the crucial link in the Indo-European narrative marks a significant milestone in the two-century-long effort to decode the origins of the Indo-Europeans and the pathways through which these peoples migrated into Europe and parts of Asia,” concludes Ron Pinhasi.
