Amazing stuff!
"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. ...
researchers analyzed 314 ancient genomes to clarify the trajectories of steppe-related populations and the possible origins of languages such as Italic, Celtic, Greek and Armenian. ...
Ancient genomes from Spain, France, Italy, Hungary, Moldova, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon, all dated between 2,100 and 5,200 years ago, were sequenced and combined with previously published ancient genomes for a total of 2,403 samples. Steppe ancestry sources were compared using identity-by-descent admixture modeling. To assess mobility within populations, 224 individuals underwent strontium isotope analyses. ...
Steppe ancestry in Greece and Armenia was derived directly from Yamnaya populations of the Pontic steppe without significant admixture of locals. ..."
From the abstract:
"The Indo-European languages are among the most widely spoken in the world, yet their early diversification remains contentious. It is widely accepted that the spread of this language family across Europe from the 5th millennium BP correlates with the expansion and diversification of steppe-related genetic ancestry from the onset of the Bronze Age. However, multiple steppe-derived populations co-existed in Europe during this period, and it remains unclear how these populations diverged and which provided the demographic channels for the ancestral forms of the Italic, Celtic, Greek, and Armenian languages. To investigate the ancestral histories of Indo-European-speaking groups in Southern Europe, we sequenced genomes from 314 ancient individuals from the Mediterranean and surrounding regions, spanning from 5,200 BP to 2,100 BP, and co-analysed these with published genome data. We additionally conducted strontium isotope analyses on 224 of these individuals. We find a deep east-west divide of steppe ancestry in Southern Europe during the Bronze Age. Specifically, we show that the arrival of steppe ancestry in Spain, France, and Italy was mediated by Bell Beaker (BB) populations of Western Europe, likely contributing to the emergence of the Italic and Celtic languages. In contrast, Armenian and Greek populations acquired steppe ancestry directly from Yamnaya groups of Eastern Europe. These results are consistent with the linguistic Italo-Celtic and Graeco-Armenian hypotheses accounting for the origins of most Mediterranean Indo-European languages of Classical Antiquity. Our findings thus align with specific linguistic divergence models for the Indo-European language family while contradicting others. This underlines the power of ancient DNA in uncovering prehistoric diversifications of human populations and language communities."
Ancient genomics support deep divergence between Eastern and Western Mediterranean Indo-European languages (open access)
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