New genetic evidence provides more clues to the origins of farming in Anatolia and suggests an alternate hypothesis to a long-held theory regarding where Indo-European languages began. A trio of studies published yesterday and today (August 25 and 26) in Science suggests that farmers didn’t solely descend from hunter-gatherer ancestors from Anatolia, an area that connects West Asia with Europe and overlaps with modern-day Turkey, but that they also came from people who entered the region in two distinct migrations, reports Science. Furthermore, the studies find that Indo-European languages may have begun in the Caucasus mountains, near modern-day Armenia, rather than emerging from the steppes north of the Black Sea as previously assumed, the outlet reports.
The three studies are all coauthored by David Reich, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard. One focuses on Mesopotamia, another on Anatolia, and a third on Southern Europe and West Asia.
The combined genetic analysis ...
