The birth of modern Eurasia began 5,000 years ago
- Jun 21, 2015
- 1 min read
A Yamnaya skull from the Samara region coloured with red ochre
Haplogroup J
Distribution map of haplogroup R1b in the Old World
Kurgan
The beginning
Was it mass migration, or rather a circulation of ideas that laid the foundation for the demographic map of Europe and Central Asia that we see today? The Bronze Age (about 5,000 – 3,000 years ago) was a period with large cultural upheavals. But just how these upheavals came to be have remained a mystery.
Assistant Professor Morten Allentoft from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen is a geneticist and is first author on the paper in , expains:
“Both archaeologists and linguists have had theories about how cultures and languages have spread in our part of the world. We geneticists have now collaborated with them to publish an explanation based on a record amount of DNA-analyses of skeletons from the Bronze Age.”
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