A Yamnaya skull from the Samara region coloured with red ochre

The birth of modern Eurasia began 5,000 years ago

Haplogroup J

Distribution map of haplogroup R1b in the Old World

Haplogroup R1b

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 Nature, 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…