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Nature
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Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe

Naturevolume 522, pages207–211 (2015)Cite this article

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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 400,000 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 studies1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 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, farmers throughout much of Europe had more hunter-gatherer ancestry than their predecessors, but in Russia, the Yamnaya steppe herders of this time were descended not only from the preceding eastern European hunter-gatherers, but also 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∼75% 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 a steppe origin9 of at least some of the Indo-European languages of Europe.

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Figure 1: Location and SNP coverage of samples included in this study.
Figure 2: Population transformations in Europe.
Figure 3: Admixture proportions.

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Primary accessions

European Nucleotide Archive

Data deposits

The aligned sequences are available through the European Nucleotide Archive under accession numberPRJEB8448. The Human Origins genotype dataset including ancient individuals can be found at (http://genetics.med.harvard.edu/reichlab/Reich_Lab/Datasets.html).

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Bellwood, J. Burger, P. Heggarty, M. Lipson, C. Renfrew, J. Diamond, S.Pääbo, R. Pinhasi and P. Skoglund for critical comments, and the Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard for organizing a workshop around the issues touched on by this paper. We thank S. Pääbo for support for establishing the ancient DNA facilities in Boston, and P. Skoglund for detecting the presence of two related individuals in our data set. We thank L. Orlando, T. S. Korneliussen, and C. Gamba for help in obtaining data. We thank Agilent Technologies and G. Frommer for help in developing the capture reagents. We thank C. Der Sarkissian, G. Valverde, L. Papac and B. Nickel for wet laboratory support. We thank archaeologists V. Dresely, R. Ganslmeier, O. Balanvosky, J. Ignacio Royo Guillén, A. Osztás, V. Majerik, T. Paluch, K. Somogyi and V.Voicsek for sharing samples and discussion about archaeological context. This research was supported by an Australian Research Council grant to W.H. and B.L. (DP130102158), and German Research Foundation grants to K.W.A. (Al 287/7-1 and 7-3, Al 287/10-1 and Al 287/14-1) and to H.M. (Me 3245/1-1 and 1-3). D.R. was supported by US National Science Foundation HOMINID grant BCS-1032255, US National Institutes of Health grant GM100233, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Wolfgang Haak and Iosif Lazaridis: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences & Environment Institute, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, 5005, South Australia, Australia

    Wolfgang Haak, Bastien Llamas & Alan Cooper

  2. Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, USA

    Iosif Lazaridis, Nadin Rohland, Swapan Mallick, Susanne Nordenfelt, Eadaoin Harney, Kristin Stewardson, Qiaomei Fu & David Reich

  3. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, 02142, Massachusetts, USA

    Iosif Lazaridis, Nick Patterson, Nadin Rohland, Swapan Mallick, Susanne Nordenfelt, Eadaoin Harney, Kristin Stewardson, Qiaomei Fu & David Reich

  4. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, USA

    Swapan Mallick, Eadaoin Harney, Kristin Stewardson & David Reich

  5. Institute of Anthropology, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, D-55128 Mainz, Germany,

    Guido Brandt, Nicole Nicklisch, Christina Roth, Anna Szécsényi-Nagy & Kurt Werner Alt

  6. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany,

    Qiaomei Fu & Matthias Meyer

  7. Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, IVPP, CAS, Beijing 100049, China,

    Qiaomei Fu

  8. Institute for Archaeological Sciences, University of Tübingen, D-72070 Tübingen, Germany,

    Alissa Mittnik & Johannes Krause

  9. Institute of Archaeology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Science, H-1014 Budapest, Hungary,

    Eszter Bánffy & Anna Szécsényi-Nagy

  10. Römisch Germanische Kommission (RGK) Frankfurt, D-60325 Frankfurt, Germany,

    Eszter Bánffy

  11. Archaeological Research Laboratory, Stockholm University, 114 18 Stockholm, Sweden,

    Christos Economou

  12. Departments of Paleoanthropology and Archaeogenetics, Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment, University of Tübingen, D-72070 Tübingen, Germany,

    Michael Francken & Johannes Krause

  13. State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt and State Museum of Prehistory, D-06114 Halle, Germany,

    Susanne Friederich, Harald Meller, Nicole Nicklisch & Kurt Werner Alt

  14. Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueología, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, E-28049 Madrid, Spain,

    Rafael Garrido Pena

  15. The Cultural Heritage Foundation, Västerås 722 12, Sweden,

    Fredrik Hallgren

  16. Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) RAS, St Petersburg 199034, Russia,

    Valery Khartanovich & Vayacheslav Moiseyev

  17. Volga State Academy of Social Sciences and Humanities, Samara 443099, Russia,

    Aleksandr Khokhlov, Pavel Kuznetsov & Oleg Mochalov

  18. Abteilung Madrid, Deutsches Archaeologisches Institut, E-28002 Madrid, Spain,

    Michael Kunst

  19. Danube Private University, A-3500 Krems, Austria,

    Nicole Nicklisch & Kurt Werner Alt

  20. Institute for Prehistory and Archaeological Science, University of Basel, CH-4003 Basel, Switzerland,

    Sandra L. Pichler & Kurt Werner Alt

  21. Departamento de Prehistòria, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, E-08193 Barcelona, Spain,

    Roberto Risch

  22. Departamento de Prehistòria y Arqueolgia, Universidad de Valladolid, E-47002 Valladolid, Spain,

    Manuel A. Rojo Guerra

  23. State Office for Cultural Heritage Management Baden-Württemberg, Osteology, D-78467 Konstanz, Germany,

    Joachim Wahl

  24. Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, D-07745 Jena, Germany,

    Johannes Krause

  25. Anthropology Department, Hartwick College, Oneonta, 13820, New York, USA

    Dorcas Brown & David Anthony

Authors
  1. Wolfgang Haak
  2. Iosif Lazaridis
  3. Nick Patterson
  4. Nadin Rohland
  5. Swapan Mallick
  6. Bastien Llamas
  7. Guido Brandt
  8. Susanne Nordenfelt
  9. Eadaoin Harney
  10. Kristin Stewardson
  11. Qiaomei Fu
  12. Alissa Mittnik
  13. Eszter Bánffy
  14. Christos Economou
  15. Michael Francken
  16. Susanne Friederich
  17. Rafael Garrido Pena
  18. Fredrik Hallgren
  19. Valery Khartanovich
  20. Aleksandr Khokhlov
  21. Michael Kunst
  22. Pavel Kuznetsov
  23. Harald Meller
  24. Oleg Mochalov
  25. Vayacheslav Moiseyev
  26. Nicole Nicklisch
  27. Sandra L. Pichler
  28. Roberto Risch
  29. Manuel A. Rojo Guerra
  30. Christina Roth
  31. Anna Szécsényi-Nagy
  32. Joachim Wahl
  33. Matthias Meyer
  34. Johannes Krause
  35. Dorcas Brown
  36. David Anthony
  37. Alan Cooper
  38. Kurt Werner Alt
  39. David Reich

Contributions

W.H., N.P., N.R., J.K., K.W.A. and D.R. supervised the study. W.H., E.B., C.E., M.F., S.F., R.G.P., F.H., V.K., A.K., M.K., P.K., H.M., O.M., V.M., N.N., S.L.P., R.R., M.A.R.G., C.R., A.S.-N., J.W., J.K., D.B., D.A., A.C., K.W.A. and D.R. assembled archaeological material, W.H., I.L., N.P., N.R., S.M., A.M. and D.R. analysed genetic data. I.L., N.P. and D.R. developed methods usingf statistics for inferring admixture proportions. W.H., N.R., B.L., G.B., S.N., E.H., K.S. and A.M. performed wet laboratory ancient DNA work. I.L., N.R., S.M., B.L., Q.F., M.M. and D.R. developed the 390k capture reagent. W.H., I.L. and D.R. wrote the manuscript with help from all co-authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence toDavid Reich.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Figure 2 Modelling Corded Ware as a mixture ofN = 1, 2, or 3 ancestral populations.

a, The left column shows a histogram of rawf4 statistic residuals and on the rightZ-scores for the best-fitting (lowest squared 2-norm of the residuals, orresnorm) model at eachN.b, The data on the left showresnorm and on the right show the maximum |Z| score change for differentN.c,resnorm of differentN = 2 models. The set of outgroups used in this analysis in the terminology ofSupplementary Information section 9 is ‘World Foci 15 + Ancients’.

Extended Data Figure 4 Geographic distribution of archaeological cultures and graphic illustration of proposed population movements / turnovers discussed in the main text.

a, Proposed routes of migration by early farmers into Europe∼9,000−7000 years ago.b, Resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry during the Middle Neolithic 7,000−5,000 years ago.c, Arrival of steppe ancestry in central Europe during the Late Neolithic∼4,500 years ago. White arrows indicate the two possible scenarios of the arrival of Indo-European language groups. Symbols of samples are identical to those inFig. 1.

Extended Data Table 1 Number of ancient Eurasian modern human samples screened in genome-wide studies to date
Extended Data Table 2 Summary of the archaeological context for the 69 newly reported samples
Extended Data Table 3 PairwiseFST for all ancient groups with ≥ 2 individuals, present-day Europeans with ≥ 10 individuals, and selected other groups

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Information sections 1-11, see contents page for more details (PDF 31143 kb)

Supplementary Data

This file contains Supplementary Data 1. (XLSX 83 kb)

Supplementary Data

This file contains Supplementary Data 2a. (ZIP 12329 kb)

Supplementary Data

This file contains Supplementary Data 2b. (ZIP 14459 kb)

Supplementary Data

This file contains Supplementary Data 2c. (ZIP 9269 kb)

Supplementary Data

This file contains Supplementary Data 2d. (ZIP 2401 kb)

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Haak, W., Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N.et al. Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe.Nature522, 207–211 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14317

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Editorial Summary

Steppe change for European languages

David Reich and colleagues generated genome-wide data from 69 Europeans who lived between 8,000 and 3,000 years ago. Their analyses reveal that closely related groups of early farmers — different from indigenous hunter-gatherers — appeared in Germany, Hungary and Spain at around 8,000 to 7,000 years ago. At the same time Russia was inhabited by a distinctive population of hunter-gatherers with high affinity to a 24,000-year-old Siberian. By 6,000 to 5,000 years ago, a resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry had occurred throughout much of Europe, apart from in Russia. Western and Eastern Europe came into contact about 4,500 years ago, leaving traces of steppe ancestry in present-day Europeans. In addition to providing new insights into Neolithic population dynamics, these analyses lend support to the theory of a steppe origin of at least some of the Indo-European languages of Europe. The reported findings are also consistent with a study of 101 Bronze Age genomes reported onpage 167 of this issue.

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