indo-europeans

Which European language is closest in relation to Iranic language? Perhaps this can help us to find missing tribes of Sarmatians and Scythians among modern populations.

Sikora et al. published a new paper comparing the genome of two 2,500-year-old Iron Age Thracians (P192-1 and K8) with Ötzi (Chalcolithic Alps), Gök4 and ajv70 (Neolithic Sweden), brana1 (Mesolithic Spain) and Swedish hunter-gatherers. The admixture comparison is particularly interesting. The...

Thanks to this paper: http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v23/n1/full/ejhg201450a.html and nice R1a maps: Can we see Z282 as Corded Ware culture and Z93 as Indo-Iranian? It could indicate Kazakhstan as Center of Iranic tribes before expansion to the South? South to Iran, Afghanistan...

A very interesting new paper by Wilde et al. 2014 tested three genes (HERC2, SLC45A2 and TYR) associated with skin, eye and hair pigmentation in 63 ancient samples from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe (mostly modern Ukraine) dating from the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. The results are relatively...

Bell Beakers were a multicultural phenomenon & trade network, not an ethnic culture I have noticed that Jean Manco mentioned in her new book Ancestral Journeys that the Bell Beaker culture represents the arrival of R1b people into Western Europe. I have explained before why it is extremely...

The North Caucasus has a very unique genetic landscape. The mitochondrial haplogroups found there, especially in the Northwest Caucasus include a lot of rare lineages that aren't found at higher frequencies almost anywhere else. These include haplogroups H2a1, I (mostly the I1, I2 and I4a...

The history of the Indo-Europeans is relatively clear from the Maykop and Yamna periods onwards, as I have described in the R1b and R1a pages on this site. The biggest question marks in my head at the moment are: - When did the R1a and R1b lineages arrive in the Pontic Steppe and North Caucasus...

Introduction One of the hottest controversies of the last few years in European prehistory and population genetics has been the origins and dispersal of haplogroup R1b. As recently as 2008 almost everybody thought that R1b had been in Western Europe since the Palaeolithic and re-expanded from...

I have revised all the mtDNA frequencies and added 20 new populations. This now permits me to create mtDNA maps. Ideally I would need more detailed regional data for central and southern Spain, all Germany, Ukraine and European Russia (except the Caucasus, which is well covered). I have got...

I2a-Din came to the Balkans and Dinaric Alps with the Thracians, Dacians & Illyrians I have given more thought about the origin of I2a-Din (L621>L147.2) and came to the following conclusion. During the Mesolithic the I2a1 (P37.2) hunter-gatherers must have occupied a vast part of western...

Eupedia is a website about Europe and so far I have limited the distribution maps of haplogroups to Europe and its periphery. But I thought it would be interesting to see the global distribution, especially in Asia since it is linked to the propagation of Indo-European people and languages. It...

Eastern Anatolia has played a major role in the development of the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age. It is also one of the most complex region for population geneticists to disentangle due to its high level of genetic diversity. In this thread I would like to propose an answer...

After my new R1b migration map, here is an illustration of the R1a history. The pattern of migration completes that of R1b. You will find all the explanations in the R1a history section. Just one new thing. The chiefly Germanic L664 subclade is the only subclade of R1a that migrated alongside...

I made my first R1b migration map over four years ago. Little has changed since then in the way I see the history of R1b people. What changed are the names of subclades and the new branches of S116/P312, like DF19, DF27 and L238, or the recent discovery of the Indo-European Z2103 branch in the...

Dienekes mentions on his blog a recent paper by Konstantine Pitskhelauri on the settlement of the Caucasus by migrants from the Middle East during the Neolithic period. The paper brings additional evidence regarding the origins of the Early Bronze Age Maykop culture in Mesopotamia, confirming...

I have updated the R1b-S28 (U152) history, adding a section about the Villanova culture: The expansion of the Urnfield/Halstatt culture to Italy is evident in the form of the Villanovan culture (c. 1100-700 BCE), which shared striking resemblances with the Urnfield/Hallstatt sites of Bavaria...

We have discussed this topic extensively in various threads on the forum over the years, but there doesn't seem to be one thread dedicated to the subject. I will summarise my thoughts here so that I don't have to repeat myself every time. As I have explained in my R1b history, between 2500 and...

We have hypothesised in Germanic words of non-IE origin that Proto-Germanic borrowed a few common words from indigenous pre-IE Scandinavians. I believe that there may be a much bigger proportion of Latin and Greek words (including those inherited in modern Romance languages) that are not...

I originally wanted to post this in Linguistics, but I realized that this is a topic that straddles both linguistics and genetics, so I decided to post it here. The Beaker-Bell Culture is one of the most puzzling archaeological cultures, and it has been frquently discussed on the forum as s...