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An international research team of over 130 experts, with the participation of Hungarian specialists, has uncovered the missing link in the origins of the Indo-European language family. The results of their genetic studies were published in the journal Nature, reads the website of the HUN-REN Research Center.
The Indo-European languages, which number more than 400 and include major groups such as Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Indo-Romanic, and Celtic, are spoken by almost half of the world’s population today, in addition to the majority of the modern European population. These languages may have evolved from the Proto-Indo-European language, whose origins and spread have been studied by historians and linguists since the 19th century. However, there is still a lack of knowledge about the origins of the language family.
Previous genetic studies have already shown that communities of the so-called Yamnaya culture, once widespread in the Pontic-Caspian steppe north of the Black and Caspian Seas, migrated both westwards into Europe and eastwards into Central Asia from around 3100 BC. As a result of this expansion, characteristic burials under mounds, known as kurgans, also appeared in large numbers in the Hungarian lowlands (Alföld).
Results of the new research have identified three genetic transitions in Eastern Europe and Southwest Asia in the period 5-4 millennia BC.
The first is the Caucasus–lower Volga line, in which the genetic heritage of the Caucasian hunter-gatherer population was dominant. The second, the Volga genetic gradient, was the result of a mixture of Caucasus–lower Volga peoples and hunter-gatherer populations of Upper Volga, Eastern European origin. The third, the Dnieper gradient, was formed by the mixing of Caucasus–lower Volga peoples from the west and Neolithic hunter-gatherer communities from the northern Black Sea coast along the Dnieper River.
Genetic evidence suggests that they directly formed the core population of the later Yamnaya culture around 4000 BC, which subsequently underwent rapid population growth and then spread due to favorable climatic and environmental conditions. The emergence of the genetic stock of these ‘steppe ancestors’ can be traced across Eurasia in the period 3100-1500 BC.
Of all the demographic events of the last 5000 years, this Yamnaya outflow from the Steppe had the greatest impact on the genetic stock of European humans. It is therefore highly probable that this is a demographic phenomenon linked to the spread of Indo-European languages.
The only branch of the Indo-European languages that did not previously show a Steppean ancestry was Anatolian, including Hittite, which is probably the oldest detached branch of the language family. The recent study suggests that this community is genetically related to the newly discovered Caucasus–lower Volga gradient.
Its recognition may provide the missing link, genetically and also by extension, linguistically, between the Eneolithic communities of the steppe plain between the North Caucasus and the lower Volga and the Anatolian communities of the pre-Hittite and Hittite periods.
The same group can also be considered to be at least one-tenth of the ancestors of the Hittite-speaking communities of the Bronze Age in Central Anatolia.
All this makes the Caucasus–lower Volga group associated with all Indo-European language-speaking populations, and therefore the best candidate for the population that spoke the Proto-Indo-Anatolian language, Hittite, and the ancestor of all later Indo-European languages in the North Caucasus and lower Volga.
The genetic samples from Hungary come from the most western distribution area of the Yamnaya communities, from the burials of the mounds in Alföld excavated in the last decades. The new results also confirm the Eastern European genetic linkage of these individuals. A special burial from the Csongrád-Kettőshalom site dates from the period before that, around 4200 BC.
A man buried here is one of the earliest individuals of Steppean origin in the Carpathian Basin to be genetically confirmed, and his ancestors have been identified near the Volga River.
The research involved archaeological, physical anthropological, and archaeogenomic analysis of prehistoric communities in present-day Hungary. It was carried out by the Institute of Archaeogenomics and the Institute of Archaeology of the HUN-REN Research Center for the Humanities, the Department of Human Studies of the ELTE TTK, the University of Szeged, the Déri Museum, the Damjanich János Museum, and the Hungarian Natural History Museum.
Via hun-ren.hu, Featured image: Pexels