A research led by scientists from the University of Vienna and Harvard University describes the role of a previously unidentified prehistoric population in shaping the linguistic landscape that affects nearly half the world's population today.
The study focused on the analysis of 435 individuals from archaeological sites across Eurasia. The genomic data depicted a process of interaction and integration that led to new cultural practices emerging from the blending of groups, according to Nature. At the heart of this discovery was the Caucasus-Lower Volga (CLV) population, who lived between 4500 and 3500 BCE in the region between the northern Caucasus and the southern Volga River.
"This group is the best candidate found to date to explain the origin of the Indo-European language family," said Ron Pinhasi, a professor at the University of Vienna and the first author of the study. "The discovery of this missing link in Indo-European history marks a turning point in the more than 200 years of search to reconstruct the origins of the Indo-Europeans and the routes by which these peoples spread both through Europe and Asia."
The findings present a middle ground between two predominant theories about the origin of Indo-European languages. For decades, scholars debated between the Steppe Theory, which posits that the Indo-European languages originated with the Yamnaya culture in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, and the Anatolian Hypothesis, which suggests their roots lie in present-day Turkey during the Neolithic period. According to Nature, this research bridges the gap between these theories by identifying the CLV population as an ancestral group.
Approximately 5,000 years ago, the pastoralists of the Yamnaya culture from the Pontic-Caspian steppe migrated west into Europe, permanently transforming the continent's cultural and genetic landscape.
The Yamnaya people, originating around 5500 years ago in present-day Ukraine, were highly mobile herders who expanded rapidly across a vast area from Central Europe to the edges of China around 3000 BCE. Their movements and interactions with local hunter-gatherer groups resulted in genetic mixing, or admixing, which played a crucial role in the dissemination of languages and cultures. This genetic trace is found both in the Yamnaya culture and the Neolithic inhabitants of Anatolia.
"Yamnaya ancestry is like a tracer dye whose spread you can connect with Indo-European language spread," said David Reich, a population geneticist at Harvard Medical School, according to Nature. The study generated genome data from 428 ancient individuals, including hundreds of Yamnaya people, effectively doubling the number of available genomes from the Eneolithic period and quadrupling those of the Yamnaya.
"It's ambitious to say this is a final answer to a centuries-old problem. But I think we definitely gave it a good shot," stated Iosif Lazaridis, a Harvard population geneticist involved in the study, as per Nature.
The current geopolitical situation has added layers of difficulty to the research. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine impacted collaboration among scientists and the publication of results. The DNA study had to be published as two separate articles because Russian and Ukrainian researchers could not appear on the same paper, leading to one paper with Ukrainian co-authors and another with Russian researchers, as reported by Nature.
The Indo-European language family, which includes Romance languages like Spanish, English, Persian, German, Russian, and Hindi, among others, evolved into nearly 400 languages spoken by almost half of the world's population. Over time, this common ancestral language diversified into various forms, shaping the linguistic heritage of vast regions across Europe and Asia.
The identification of the CLV population offers a compelling explanation for the origins of both the Yamnaya culture and the early Anatolian languages, including Hittite, which is believed to be one of the oldest branches preserving archaic language patterns.
"Even though the social structure of a population can leave detectable traces in its genetic diversity patterns, drawing definitive conclusions about the language spoken by a group based solely on genetic data remains impossible," cautioned researchers in Nature.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.