The Bronze Age arrived in Europe and Asia approximately 5,000 years ago, leaving behind a vast array of metal tools, axes, and jewelry across a giant territory stretching from Siberia to Scandinavia. DNA research on remains from the Bronze and Iron Ages has established that Eurasian nomads brought their culture and possibly languages to Europe and Asia.

The Yamnaya, Corded Ware, and Afanasevo DNA analysis of 170 individuals’ remains found at archaeological digs in Europe and Asia, dating from 5,000 to 3,000 years ago, revealed that around 5,000-4,800 years ago, nomadic pastoralists, representatives of the ancient «Yamnaya» culture from the expansive historical Pontic-Caspian steppe, covering the geographic area from the Black to the Caspian Sea, made a significant incursion into Europe. This conclusion was reached by two competing comprehensive research groups, who had access to the material from which they extracted the DNA of ancient nomads. The linguistic sections of these groups concluded that these nomads brought the Proto-Indo-European language to Europe, from which all 400 modern Indo-European languages descended.

These nomadic pastoralists entered into kinship relations with the local peasants and jointly created the «Corded Ware culture» in what is now Central Europe. Their genetic trace is present throughout Central and Northern Europe. But that’s not all.

From the Pontic-Caspian steppe, there was another wave of migrations to the East, reaching as far as the Altai and Siberia, where the nomads displaced the local hunter-gatherers. They arrived on wheeled carts pulled by oxen and on war horses. It turns out that nomadic pastoralists dominated territories from Northern and Central Europe to modern Siberia and northern Mongolia. This is confirmed by Mr. Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Copenhagen, who led the DNA research — «…we now see that the Yamnaya spread not just to the north of Europe, they extended to the Urals and beyond, into Central Asia, then onto the Altai, Siberia, China, and Mongolia.»

Archaeologists have long discovered connections between the steppe cultures, including the Yamnaya, and the people of the Bronze Age living 5,500-4,500 years ago in the Altai, Southern Siberia, or Northern Mongolia. Like the steppe nomads, these Bronze Age people, including the famous «Afanasevo culture» in the Altai, buried their nobility horizontally on their backs in stone burial mounds or natural hills, where horses were also buried. They made legged mortars or were among the first to use harness transport and trained horses. All these qualities link the steppe nomads of Eurasia with the populations of Central and Northern Europe, including the Yamnaya and the Corded Ware culture, who, in turn, are considered to be carriers of the Proto-Indo-European language.

Regarding DNA analysis, Willerslev sequenced the genomes of 101 remains from archaeological digs in modern Europe, tracing the common ancestors of the Yamnaya to some time in the past, centered around the territory of the modern Samara Valley in Russia, and the Afanasevo — residents from the Altai to the Yenisei River in Siberia. This confirmed archaeologists’ assumptions that the same people migrated across a vast territory from Siberia to Europe.

One key difference has been established in the nature and consequences of the nomads’ migrations: in Europe, they intermingled with the local indigenous population, whereas in the East, they almost entirely displaced the local indigenous population, the hunter-gatherers. Eske Willerslev notes that this likely occurred because the region from the Altai to the Yenisei was sparsely populated.

The ancestors of Europeans had a «lactose intolerance» issue.

The eastern wing of the Yamnaya-Afanasevo spread to the territories of modern Central Asia, possibly Mongolia and China, and existed until they were displaced by the fierce warriors of the Sintashta culture, known in Russian archaeological science as the «Andronovo culture.» In essence, the Sintashta were kin; they came from the Ural and Caucasus regions and were genetically related to the peoples of Central Europe. The Sintashta ruled in Central Asia 2,000 years ago. This implies that the population of Central Asia during that era was more European than Asian.

2,000 years ago, the Sintashta were displaced by waves of migrants from Asia – the «Karasuk» and «Mezhovaya» cultures, as well as other Iron Age cultures, which laid the genetic foundation for the modern peoples of our region.

The genetic connection between the populations of Asia, Central Asia, and Europe during the Bronze Age holds special significance for modern Europeans – their scholars realized that in the Bronze Age, small and mobile groups of interconnected foreigners from the Eurasian steppe established their order and entered into kinship relations with the local population.

David Reich, a population geneticist from Harvard University, stated, «Now we have specific samples from places ranging from Spain and the Atlantic coast all the way to Central Siberia.» He noted that the genetics of many modern Eurasian peoples were completely unknown until a few years ago. Now, the picture of the Bronze and Neolithic Ages is almost fully drawn.

Willerslev from Copenhagen and Reich from Harvard discovered that the steppe people brought with them genes for light skin and brown eyes, though the northern European hunter-gatherers already had light skin. A paradoxical quality of all nomads of that era was that they were pastoralists, constantly living near domesticated animals, but were unable to digest raw milk in adulthood.

Modern Europeans can comfortably consume raw milk in adulthood, and Professor Willerslev from Denmark is surprised that, «…some of their Bronze Age ancestors did not exhibit ‘lactose tolerance’ in maturity…».

Linguistic Aspect

The massive waves of Eurasian steppe people during the Bronze Age may have also contributed to the spread of ancient Indo-European languages in Europe, languages that were prevalent in Central and South Asia when humanity invented written historical documentation. These languages gave birth to the Romance, Germanic, Hindi, and Tocharian language groups. In modern linguistics, the theory of «Nostratic languages,» i.e., the related languages of Eurasia, is gaining authority. Within its framework, the Indo-European languages are related to another linguistic macro-family – the Altaic languages, which includes Kazakh. If the genetic kinship between the Yamnaya and Europeans is ever reflected in groups of related languages, it would be a severe challenge to the dominant historical-linguistic hypothesis that the early Indo-European languages in modern Europe were spread by Near Eastern farmers. While the connection is clear and sensational for geneticists, the world of linguistics remains cautious, yet highly interested in the work of geneticists.

Paul Heggarty, a linguist from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, says, «Today, there is a real sense in the scientific world that after two centuries of linguistic searches for the root of Indo-European languages, ancient DNA samples have suddenly provided acceleration and momentum towards a possible solution.» However, he adds that to support the geneticists’ findings, more scientific material is desirable from countries south of the Caspian and further into Central Asia.