In: Biology
5. Haak et al. (2015) found by admixture analysis of ancient and modern human DNAs that a massive wave of genetic ancestry linked to the steppes of southern Russia first appeared in Europe in the late Neolithic. Moreover, this “Russian steppe” genetic component has remained significant in most European nationalities ever since. Describe more specifically what experiments they performed, how their admixture analyses were structured, and how their results were interpreted. What were the implications of these results for the spread of Indo-European languages across Europe?
Source: here --> Haak, W. et al. (2015) Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature 522, 207-211
They generated genome wide data. They collected the sample from modern European individuals and compare their DNA with the DNA of their ancestor who believed to live in the Europe in neolithic age by the help of genetic library. The study of ancient DNA focused on the genetic past to reveal the life style of the ancestor of the modern day Europeans. The study focused on how much originality remain same in the modern day European's DNA from the ancestor.
This experiment proves that there was a possibility of migration. As the cultural, environmental changes affect the DNA, mixed with DNA of one community with the different cultural community's DNA, the new DNA have the mixture characteristics. Their study shows massive migration occurred during the neolithic age from the Russian steppe.
At the beginning of neolithic age the individuals of eastern and western side of Europe showed the different lifestyle. The early farmers who were appeared in Germany, Spain different from the Hunter-gatherer population of Russian steppe. At the post neolithic age the eastern and western part of Europe mixed, the people from Germany traced ~75% of their ancestry common with the steppe which gives the concept of migration from Eastern part of Europe.
Some European languages like Germany, Italian etc and some middle east Asian language like hindi, Sanskrit, bengali, farsi etc have some common characteristics though the origin of these languages is debated. But these common features of these languages can be solved by the above theory of migration which results for the spread of Indo-European languages across Europe.