Christy DeSmith at The Harvard Gazette:
A pair of landmark studies, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, has finally identified the originators of the Indo-European family of 400-plus languages, spoken today by more than 40 percent of the world’s population.
DNA evidence places them in current-day Russia during the Eneolithic period about 6,500 years ago. These linguistic pioneers were spread from the steppe grasslands along the lower Volga River to the northern foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, with researchers dubbing them the Caucasus Lower Volga people. Genetic results show they mixed with other groups in the region.
“It’s a very early manifestation of some of the cultural traditions that later spread across the steppe,” said senior author David Reich, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and human evolutionary biology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
The research provides the missing piece of a longstanding linguistic puzzle.
More here.
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