Indo-Europeans: mass migration from the steppes into Europe after 3000 BC (new study)

Abstract:

We generated genome-wide data from 69 Europeans who lived between 8,000-3,000 years ago by enriching ancient DNA libraries for a target set of almost four hundred thousand polymorphisms. Enrichment of these positions decreases the sequencing required for genome-wide ancient DNA analysis by a median of around 250-fold, allowing us to study an order of magnitude more individuals than previous studies and to obtain new insights about the past. We show that the populations of western and far eastern Europe followed opposite trajectories between 8,000-5,000 years ago. At the beginning of the Neolithic period in Europe, ~8,000-7,000 years ago, closely related groups of early farmers appeared in Germany, Hungary, and Spain, different from indigenous hunter-gatherers, whereas Russia was inhabited by a distinctive population of hunter-gatherers with high affinity to a ~24,000 year old Siberian6. By ~6,000-5,000 years ago, a resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry had occurred throughout much of Europe, but in Russia, the Yamnaya steppe herders of this time were descended not only from the preceding eastern European hunter-gatherers, but from a population of Near Eastern ancestry. Western and Eastern Europe came into contact ~4,500 years ago, as the Late Neolithic Corded Ware people from Germany traced ~3/4 of their ancestry to the Yamnaya, documenting a massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery. This steppe ancestry persisted in all sampled central Europeans until at least ~3,000 years ago, and is ubiquitous in present-day Europeans. These results provide support for the theory of a steppe origin of at least some of the Indo-European languages of Europe.

(...)

Hypotheses of Indo-European origins in light of the new genetic data presented in this paper:

Genetic data is a valuable source of information that is useful for evaluating competing hypotheses of Indo-European language dispersals, to the extent that theories of such dispersals invoke migratory movements to explain their extensive distribution. Such hypotheses can be tested both with archaeology (which tests for the spread of material culture, which can spread not only by migration but also through trade or an exchange of ideas), and with genetics (which can test directly whether the movement of people accompanied perceived changes in the material record). Past genetic data from ancient DNA has confirmed one of the major predictions of the Anatolian hypothesis – the migration of early farmers from the Near East (inclusive of Anatolia) to Europe – using both mitochondrial DNA22-24 and whole genome analysis25,26. The results of our study are consistent with these findings, and also extend them by showing that not only the early farmers of central Europe (Germany and Hungary) and Scandinavia, but also of Iberia were descended from a common stock. In this sense, ancient DNA is consistent with migrations following the predictions of the Anatolian hypothesis, and indeed our ancient DNA results match the scenario outlined by Bellwood for the initial dispersal of farming into Europe remarkably well27. This is also true for the Balkan hypothesis, as geographically, southeastern Europe is a plausible place where early farmers could have diverged into an inland Danubian route toward central Europe, and a Mediterranean route toward Iberia. The evidence of a relatively homogeneous population of early European farmers with substantial Near Eastern ancestry25 is indeed a reasonable candidate for the spread of a single language family across Europe.

Our new genetic data are important in showing that a second major migration from the steppe into Europe occurred at the end of the Neolithic period (between 5000-4500 years ago). Moreover, we have demonstrated that these migrants accounted for at least ~3/4 of the ancestry of the Corded Ware people of Germany, and much of the ancestry of other Late Neolithic / Bronze Age populations of Germany and present-day northern Europeans (Fig. 3, SI9, SI10). Thus, the main argument in favor of the Anatolian hypothesis (that major language change requires major migration) can now also be applied to the Steppe hypothesis. While we cannot go back in time to learn what languages the migrants spoke, it seems more likely than not that the Corded Ware people we sampled spoke the languages of the people who contributed the great majority of their ancestry (Yamnaya), rather than the local languages of the people who preceded them. Thus, our results increase the plausibility that the Corded Ware people and those genetically similar groups who followed them in central Europe spoke a steppe-derived Indo-European language. More generally, our results level the playing field between the two leading hypotheses of Indo-European origins, as we now know that both the Early Neolithic and the Late Neolithic were associated with major migrations.

While our results do not settle the debate about the location of the proto-Indo European homeland, they increase the plausibility of some hypotheses and decrease the plausibility of others as follows:

1. The Steppe hypothesis gains in plausibility by our discovery of a migration during the Late Neolithic from the steppe into central Europe. This migration was predicted by some proponents of the Steppe hypothesis and we have now shown (definitively) that it occurred. We also note that our results help to differentiate between variants of the steppe hypothesis: we do not find evidence of an influence of steppe migrants earlier than the Corded Ware, although we cannot rule out the possibility that such evidence might be found with larger sample sizes and more sampling locations in central Europe. However, we can definitely reject that the breakup of Indo-European occurred as late as 4000 years ago28, as by ~4500 years ago the migration into Europe had already taken place. Moreover, this migration clearly resulted in a large population turnover, meaning that the Steppe hypothesis does not require elite dominance9 to have transmitted Indo-European languages into Europe. Instead, our results show that the languages could have been introduced simply by strength of numbers: via major migration in which both sexes participated (SI2, SI4)

2. The Anatolian hypothesis becomes less plausible as an explanation for the origin of all Indo-European languages in Europe, as it can no longer claim to correspond to the only major population transformation in European prehistory, and it must also account for the language of the steppe migrants. However, the Anatolian hypothesis cannot be ruled out entirely by our data, as it is possible that it still accounts for some of the major branches of the Indo-European language family in Europe, especially the branches of the south where the proportion of steppe ancestry today is smaller than in central and northern Europe (Figure 3).

3. The Balkan hypothesis faces similar difficulties as the Anatolian. If the early farmers of southeastern Europe were genetically similar to their descendants in central and western Europe, a spread of Indo-European speaking migrants from the Balkans to the rest of Europe would simply introduce another layer of “Early Neolithic” genes similar to those present elsewhere in Europe, but would not account for the migration from the steppe and its associated language. Furthermore if the steppe immigrants spoke Indo European languages, these languages are unlikely to have been acquired by migration from Europe, as our Yamnaya samples show no sign of a major component of ancestry derived from European Early or Middle Neolithic farmers (Fig. 2).

4. The Armenian plateau hypothesis gains in plausibility by the fact that we have discovered evidence of admixture in the ancestry of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists, including gene flow from a population of Near Eastern ancestry for which Armenians today appear to be a reasonable surrogate (SI4, SI7, SI9). However, the question of what languages were spoken by the “Eastern European hunter-gatherers” and the southern, Armenian-like, ancestral population remains open. Examining ancient DNA from the Caucasus and Near East may be able to provide further insight about the dynamics of the interaction between these regions and the steppe. Our results show that southern populations diluted the ancestry of populations from the steppe, but also that ancestry related to Ancient North Eurasians forms a major ancestral component of the populations of the present-day Caucasus25. Thus, both south-north and north-south genetic influence across the Caucasus is plausible.

Pitfalls in using genetic data to make inferences about language spread:

The study of Indo-European origins and language dispersals has been controversial, in part because of the history of misuse of the concept of the Proto-Indo-European homeland for ideological reasons29. In the early 20th century, Gustav Kossinna proposed the idea of ‘settlement archaeology’: that a material culture identified by archaeology, specifically the Corded Ware, might correspond to a genetically well-defined people and homogeneous language group, specifically the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Our data directly contradict Kossinna’s theories in showing that the Corded Ware are not a locally derived central European population but instead are to a significant degree descended from eastern migrants. V. Gordon Childe12, following linguistic arguments by Otto Schrader14, proposed a migration from the steppe into Europe, which seems, in view of the results of our study, to have been closer to the mark. However, following the Second World War, and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, archaeologists responded to the history of misuse of archaeology by rejecting sweeping migrations and the settlement archaeology framework altogether30, and suggesting that in practice, it would not ever be possible to show that archaeological, linguistic, and genetic groupings overlap31,32. This climate in the archaeological community has made it challenging to propose migration as an explanation for similarities or differences in material culture across time and space. Although migration is today accepted more widely by archaeologists33 than it was 30 years ago11, it is usually discussed in connection with demographic-growth models linked to the expansion of agriculture27, while migrations linked to the evolution of new socio political structures among long-established food-producing populations are less understood, less recognizable and often viewed with skepticism.

Genetic data is important to this debate as it changes the equation, bringing to bear a new type of data that can directly speak to whether or not migration occurred. This type of fact could never be clearly established before the advent of ancient DNA, except by use of stable isotope analysis which only works to detect migration if the studied samples are from the first generation of migrants. (...)

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(...) Corded Ware people from Germany traced ~3/4 of their ancestry to the Yamnaya, documenting a massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery. (...)

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A homeland for PIE in the Eurasian steppes of what is today southern Russia and Ukraine has a long history of support (Schrader 1890; Gimbutas 1970, 1977; Mallory 1989; Kortlandt 1990; Anthony 2007), initially because the reconstructed PIE vocabulary seemed to be a vocabulary of pastoralists (wool, horses, livestock, dairy foods) rather than farmers; and later because horses, domesticated in the steppes before 3500 bce (Outram et al. 2009, Anthony & Brown 2011), played a prominent role in IE ritual practices in almost every IE branch, and horses are native to and were frequently exploited by people in the Eurasian steppes. The steppe theory of PIE origins is consistent with a date for post-Anatolian PIE after 4000–3500 bce because the adoption of wheeled vehicles transformed steppe economies after this date, encouraging the rise and spread of a new form of highly mobile pastoralism that is thought to be associated with the spread of the IE languages.

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In contrast, the Pontic-Caspian homeland can be accommodated to the known relationships between the IE daughter branches because migrations are archaeologically documented to have occurred out of the Pontic-Caspian steppes into neighboring regions in the sequence and direction (Figure 2) that are demanded by the oldest three branchings of the IE tree (Ringe et al. 2002, p. 90). Pre-Anatolian separated to the west, into southeastern Europe, about 4200–4000 bce with the Suvorovo migration, the first archaeologically visible migration out of the steppes (Bicbaev 2010). Then Pre-Tocharian separated to the east, with the Afanasievo migration into the western Altai Mountains beginning about 3300 bce, the second archaeologically visible migration out of the Pontic-Caspian steppes, matching Ringe et al.’s and Winter’s (1998) expectation that Tocharian was the second branch to separate. After that, a cluster of western European branches separated to the west, into the Danube valley on the south side of the Carpathians with the Yamnaya migration up the Danube about 3100–2800 bce, and into southern Poland on the northern side of the Carpathians with the expansions of the Usatovo and the Tripolye C2 cultures about 3300–3000 bce (Ecsedy 1994, Mallory 1998,Klochko & Kośko 2009, Heyd 2011, Anthony 2013). These last separations match the proposal that the ancestors of Italic and Celtic (and perhaps pre-Germanic) could have separated in a rather complex phase of migrations and language spreads. The later spread of Indo-Iranian languages into Central Asia, Iran, and South Asia from the steppes after 2000 bce is the same in our hypothesis and in Plan B by Renfrew (1987, pp. 197–205), which he prefers (Renfrew 2002b, p. 6). A steppe homeland satisfies the archaeology-and-language relationship test by exhibiting archaeological evidence for migrations in the direction and sequence suggested by linguistic evidence.

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R1b is nowadays the most common Y-DNA haplogroup in Western Europe, but it is almost absent from ancient DNA samples older than 3000 BCE ("almost", because only one older human skeleton with R1b, if I recall correctly, has been found so far - in Spain - perhaps belonging to ancestors of the Basques).

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I0124 (Samara_HG)
The hunter-gatherer from Samara belonged to haplogroup R1b1 (L278:18914441C→T), with
upstream haplogroup R1b (M343:2887824C→A) also supported. However, he was ancestral for both
the downstream haplogroup R1b1a1 (M478:23444054T→C) and R1b1a2 (M269:22739367T→C) and
could be designated as R1b1*(xR1b1a1, R1b1a2). Thus, this individual was basal to most west
Eurasian R1b individuals which belong to the R-M269 lineage as well as to the related R-M73/M478
lineage that has a predominantly non-European distribution17. The occurrence of chromosomes basal
to the most prevalent lineages within haplogroups R1a and R1b in eastern European hunter-gatherers,
together with the finding of basal haplogroup R* in the ~24,000-year old Mal’ta (MA1) boy18
suggests the possibility that some of the differentiation of lineages within haplogroup R occurred in
north Eurasia, although we note that we do not have ancient DNA data from more southern regions of
Eurasia. Irrespective of the more ancient origins of this group of lineages, the occurrence of basal
forms of R1a and R1b in eastern European hunter-gatherers provide a geographically plausible source
for these lineages in later Europeans where both lineages are prevalent4,17,19.

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I0410 (Spain_EN)
We determined that this individual belonged to haplogroup R1b1 (M415:9170545C→A), with
upstream haplogroup R1b (M343:2887824C→A) also supported. However, the individual was
ancestral for R1b1a1 (M478:23444054T→C), R1b1a2 (PF6399:2668456C→T, L265:8149348A→G,
L150.1:10008791C→T and M269:22739367T→C), R1b1c2 (V35:6812012T→A), and R1b1c3
(V69:18099054C→T), and could thus be designated R1b1*(xR1b1a1, R1b1a2, R1b1c2, R1b1c3).
The occurrence of a basal form of haplogroup R1b1 in both western Europe and R1b1a in eastern
Europe (I0124 hunter-gatherer from Samara) complicates the interpretation of the origin of this
lineage. We are not aware of any other western European R1b lineages reported in the literature
before the Bell Beaker period (ref. 2 and this study). It is possible that either (i) the Early Neolithic
Spanish individual was a descendant of a Neolithic migrant from the Near East that introduced this
lineage to western Europe, or (ii) there was a very sparse distribution of haplogroup R1b in European
hunter-gatherers and early farmers, so the lack of its detection in the published literature may reflect
its occurrence at very low frequency.
The occurrence of a basal form of R1b1 in western Europe logically raises the possibility that presentday
western Europeans (who belong predominantly to haplogroup R1b1a2-M269) may trace their
origin to early Neolithic farmers of western Europe. However, we think this is not likely given the
existence of R1b1a2-M269 not only in western Europe but also in the Near East; such a distribution
implies migrations of M269 males from western Europe to the Near East which do not seem
archaeologically plausible. We prefer the explanation that R-M269 originated in the eastern end of its
distribution, given its first appearance in the Yamnaya males (below) and in the Near East17.

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Discussion

In Table S4.3 we summarize results from previously studied samples of 61 ancient European and 25 ancient
Siberian/Central Asian Y-chromosomes >1,000BCE. In combination with our own results (Table
S4.2), this summary makes it clear that only a single R1b Y-chromosome has been found in 70
ancient Europeans outside Russia (1.4%) before the Late Neolithic period. In contrast, all 9 ancient
individuals (100%) from Russia belonged to haplogroups R1a and R1b, and 18/23 (78%) Bronze Age
individuals from Central Asia/Siberia belonged to haplogroup R1a. In Europe except Russia, both R1a
and R1b have been found in the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age periods for a combined frequency of
6/10 (60%). Present-day Europeans have high frequencies4,17 of haplogroups R1a and R1b.
Thus, it appears that before ~4,500 years ago, the frequency of R1a and R1b in Europe outside Russia
was very low, and it rose in the Late Neolithic/Bronze Age period. The young, star-like phylogenies
of these two haplogroups24 also suggest relatively recent expansions. The ubiquity of these
haplogroups in Russia, Siberia, and Central Asia suggest that their rise in Europe was likely to have
been due to a migration from the east, although more work is needed to trace these migrations and
also to correlate them with regions of the world that have not yet been studied with ancient DNA
(such as southern Europe, the Caucasus, the Near East, Iran, and Central and South Asia).
Nonetheless, the Y-chromosome results suggest the same east-to-west migration as our analysis of
autosomal DNA.

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gyozelemlg said:

So I wonder if R1a is really a genetic footprint of Hunnic-Turkic-Magyar and perhaps Mongol tribes marrying Indo-European women?

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If I recall correctly, the highest frequency of R1a today is found in an area of Central Asia where currently people of Turkic ancestry live.

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Scandinavian team looking for Indo-Europeans in Kazakhstan

A Scandinavian team has come to Kazakhstan in search of the common homeland of all Indo-European peoples, collecting bone fragments for analysis in the Centre for Geogenetics at the University of Copenhagen.

The researchers are looking for a genetic connection to match the linguistic connections that have already been drawn, Norwegian historian Sturla Ellingvag of the Explico Historical Research Foundation told The Astana Times on Feb. 20. “We’re trying to find a connection in science, in our DNA, to prove that there is indeed a connection, between, for example, Norwegians and the people in Kazakhstan. And also we are looking for a homeland, which is somewhere on the Caspian steppe, or in Russia, or some say it’s in Armenia or Ukraine. There are many different theories.”

The researchers collected about 120 Bronze and early Iron Age bone samples in total from Pavlodar, Kostanai and Karaganda during their week-long trip to Kazakhstan, from Feb. 14 – 21. Kazakhstan is fascinating, the researcher says, because it contains human remains that are “so far back on the DNA map.”

The 4,000 year old samples they’ve found have been very well preserved, Ellingvag said. “I can only speak from meeting archaeologists in Astana and here in Karaganda, but I’m very much impressed by the professionalism and also by the exhibitions they have,” he said.

The project to search for the ancestral homeland of the Indo-European peoples falls under the umbrella of a large grant from the Danish government and is being supported by the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Gotenburg University in Sweden and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, which has one of the best historical DNA analysis labs in the world and which is where the analysis on the Kazakh remains will actually be done. Universities in Karaganda, Pavlodar and Kostanai are also involved.

The Kurgan hypothesis posits that the speakers of proto-Indo-European, the hypothesized common ancestor of the massive Indo-European language group, originally lived on the Pontiac-Caspian steppe, an area of land stretching from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea and including parts of Russia, Ukraine and northwest Kazakhstan, beginning around the fifth millenium B.C. The hypothesis describes the spread of the language family from the steppe in every direction. “Kurgan” is a term for a type of burial mound common in the Caucasus, across Kazakhstan and beyond.

“Two thousand years ago, we started having Kurgan graves in Scandinavia,” said Ellingvag. The commonalities between burial mounds in Norway and Scythian/Saka mounds in Kazakhstan are striking, he said. “[The Scythian people] had these ornaments, these animal ornaments, which are very, very important in Scandinavian art … and the ornaments are actually quite similar, which is striking, it’s very special.”

The Kurgan hypothesis has been somewhat substantiated by genetic evidence so far, according to a press release by the Kon-Tiki Museum on the project, and advances in the technology for doing historical DNA research over the past few years means it is now possible to get closer to finding this genetic and linguistic starting point for most of the peoples of Europe.

“During the past 15 years, the Y-DNA R1a haplogroup has been characterised as a genetic signal of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The theory now looks more plausible than ever, thanks to recent discoveries about its structure and phylogeography. Moreover, the Y-DNA R1a haplogroup has been found in numerous ancient remains supposedly belonging to early Indo-Europeans,” the press release explains.

A separate but related project is looking into the DNA of ancient horses. The Kurgan culture is credited with being the first to domesticate the horse.

The research team includes Ellingvag, Danish DNA-scientist Peter Damgaard and Bettina Heyerdahl, daughter of Norwegian archaeologist and explorer Thor Heyerdahl. They are also working with Kazakh researcher Emma Usmanova.

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"R1a1-M17 (М417 не тестировалась, но весьма вероятн&#1072 найдена у охотника-собирателя в верховьях Западной Двины возрастом 6000 - 5000 лет назад. Сведения об этом факте опубликованы (точнее сказать -похоронен&#1099 в региональном археологическом сборнике, который ни поп-, ни прочие генетики без специальной наводки в жизни искать не станут: Археология озерных поселений IV—II тыс. до н. э.: хронология культур и природно- климатические ритмы. — СПб.: ООО «Периферия», 2014. Статья: Чекунова Е.М., Ярцева Н.В., Чекунов М.К., Мазуркевич А.Н. Первые результаты генотипирования коренных жителей и человеческих костных останков из археологических памятников Верхнего Подвинья. С. 287-294. Таблица на с. 294."

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Knight-Dragon said:

Fr BBC today...

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31695214

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• raising stock like horses requires male strength and favors entrepreneurship and property rights, compared with female-intensive farm labor with its more egalitarian social structure.
• the mobility of the steppe people made them an important conduit for connecting the ore deposits of central Eurasia with the metal-workers near the Black Sea.
• horse-training may be difficult to learn, giving the horse-breeding culture a long-term advantage
• mutation for lactose tolerance. This mutation had a huge natural selection advantage; in cultures which adopted cow's-milk-drinking, children lacking the mutation wouldn't thrive. However, I don't think it is known with certainty where this mutation originated. (The word "lactose" doesn't appear in the large genetic pdf cited up-thread.)

Domen said:

Here is the list of these locations of graves in which ancient individuals with R1a haplogroup were found (chronological order):

In Europe:

Mesolithic hunters (5500 BCE), Yuzhnyy Oleni Ostrov island, Lake Onega (Karelia)

(...)

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The strongest geographic indicator of the location where PIE was spoken is the fact that PIE and Proto-Uralic (PU) appear to have been geographic neighbors. They had core vocabulary items that look suspiciously similar ('name', 'water') and similar-looking pronouns (Ringe 1997; Janhunen 2000, 2001; Koivulehto 2001; Kallio 2001; Salminen 2001; Witzel 2003; Parpola 2012). One kind of relationship between PIE and PU that would account for the apparently shared pronouns, noun endings, and basic vocabulary would be ancestral: The two protolanguages could have shared a very ancient common ancestor, perhaps a broadly related set of intergrading dialects spoken by hunters at the end of the Pleistocene.

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"During the past 15 years, the Y-DNA R1a haplogroup has been characterised as a genetic signal of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The theory now looks more plausible than ever, thanks to recent discoveries about its structure and phylogeography. Moreover, the Y-DNA R1a haplogroup has been found in numerous ancient remains supposedly belonging to early Indo-Europeans," the press release explains.

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One kind of relationship between PIE and PU that would account for the apparently shared pronouns, noun endings, and basic vocabulary would be ancestral: The two protolanguages could have shared a very ancient common ancestor, perhaps a broadly related set of intergrading dialects spoken by hunters at the end of the Pleistocene.

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(...) Nostratic is a macrofamily, or hypothetical large-scale language family, that includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, although its exact composition and structure vary among proponents. In its more restricted, current form, it includes the Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic and Kartvelian languages. (...)

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The Greek branch

Little is known about the arrival of Proto-Greek speakers from the steppes. The Mycenaean culture commenced circa 1650 BCE and is clearly an imported steppe culture. The close relationship between Mycenaean and Proto-Indo-Iranian languages suggest that they split fairly late, some time between 2500 and 2000 BCE. Archeologically, Mycenaean chariots, spearheads, daggers and other bronze objects show striking similarities with the Seima-Turbino culture (c. 1900-1600 BCE) of the northern Russian forest-steppes, known for the great mobility of its nomadic warriors (Seima-Turbino sites were found as far away as Mongolia). It is therefore likely that the Mycenaean descended from Russia to Greece between 1900 and 1650 BCE, where they intermingled with the locals to create a new unique Greek culture.

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Seima-Turbino phenomenon refers to a pattern of burial sites dating around 1500 BC found across northern Eurasia, from Finland to Mongolia, which has suggested a common point of cultural origin, advanced metal working technology, and unexplained rapid migration. The buried were nomadic warriors and metal-workers, travelling on horseback or two-wheeled chariots. The name derives from the Seima (Sejma) cemetery at the confluence of the Oka River and Volga River. These cultures are noted for being nomadic forest and steppe societies with metal working, sometimes without having first developed agricultural methods.[2] The development of this metalworking ability appears to have taken place quite quickly.[3] (...) It is conjectured that changes in climate in this region around 2000 BC and the ensuing ecological, economic and political changes triggered a rapid and massive migration westward into northeast Europe, eastward into China and southward into Vietnam and Thailand across a frontier of some 4,000 miles.[4] This migration took place in just five to six generations and led to peoples from Finland in the west to Thailand in the east employing the same metal working technology and, in some areas, horse breeding and riding.[4] However, further excavations and research in Ban Chiang and Ban Non Wat, Thailand argue the idea that Seima-Turbino brought metal workings into southeast Asia is based on inaccurate and unreliable radiocarbon dating, and remains a hotly debated theory among archaeologists.[6]

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It is further conjectured that the same migrations spread the Uralic group of languages across Europe and Asia: some 39 languages of this group are still extant, including Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian and Lappish.[4] However, recent genetic testings of sites in south Siberia and Kazakhstan (Andronovo horizon) would rather support a spreading of the bronze technology via Indo-European migrations eastwards, as this technology was well known for quite a while in western regions.[7][8]

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Felice Vinci is a nuclear engineer, amateur historian and author of The Baltic Origins of Homer's Epic Tales, The Illiad, The Odyssey and The Migration of Myth. William Mullen received his BA in Classics from Harvard College and his PhD from the University of Texas. He was a Professor or post-doctoral Fellow at Berkeley, Princeton, Boston University, and Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies and St. John's College. Dr. Mullen settled in the Classics Department at Bard College in 1985. Felice shares compelling evidence that the events of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey took place in the Baltic and not the Mediterranean. For years scholars have debated the incongruities in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, given that his descriptions are at odds with the geography of the areas he purportedly describes. Felice and Bill discuss how a climate change forced the migration of a people and their myth to ancient Greece. Felice identifies the true geographic sites of Troy and Ithaca in the Baltic Sea and Calypso's Isle in the North Atlantic Ocean. We'll hear where the story suggests that the events took place in the Baltic, such as Ulysses' journey along what sounds like the coasts of Norway. Also, we talk about why some tribes in Northern Europe might have stayed during the climate change. Later, we compare Homeric poems with Viking mythology to find similarities and compare Greco-Roman Gods and Goddesses to Norse Gods and Goddesses. Felice Vinci offers a key to open many doors that allow us to consider the age-old question of the Indo-European diaspora and the origin of the Greek civilization from a new perspective.

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Agent327 said:

A lot of data has been mentioned, but no indication linking this to Indo-European mass migration from the steppes into Europe, as the title promised. Still waiting on that, actually.

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