Video is Kristiansen 2018 – Genes, Isotopes and Artefacts Conference Vienna via OREA News and YouTube
The 27th March 2019 issue of New Scientist contained a startling article with the title, Story of most murderous people of all time revealed in ancient DNA. For most visitors the article will be behind a paywall. It documents a theory by Professor Kristian Kristiansen of the University of Gothenburg et al; that following a devastating plague, a male-warrior cult people known as the Yamnaya, originating in the Caucasus, north of the Black Sea; spread out across Europe and North India, beginning around 5,000 years bp to 4,000 years bp – i.e. the 3rd millennium BCE – killing nearly all the men and abducting the women – ultimately replacing the male DNA lineage of the pre-existing neolithic farmers of Europe. The farmers were the mostly-peaceful people who had built the megalith structures, including Stonehenge.
Versions of this article were published in the popular press including, The Daily Mail, and The Sun, and The Express. It is claimed that the Yamnaya are the warrior cult that ultimately brought the Indo-European languages to Europe and North India and Asia. Presumably they are also the ultimate source of the warrior-cult religions of the various Germanic tribes and the Vedic religion and the most ancient roots of the Greco-Roman religion found in Homer’s works. They originated the bronze age culture, they used wheels, carts and horses.
- A video lecture by Professor Kristiansen heads this post.
- Professor Kristiansen et al published an open access paper in Antiquity.
- Science had an article.
- Science News had an article.
You can see that I’ve titled this post as a question. It is far from settled if you ask me. But it is fascinating. It has the advantage of looking like a grand unifying theory linking language, religion, culture and genes. So I didn’t want to ignore it.
I have also included a video of David Reich’s lecture at the Harvard Museum of Natural History on the general picture we are getting from ancient DNA:
Video is Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past via Harvard Museum of Natural History and YouTube.
UPDATE:
There’s been a paper published in Science on the formation of the populations of South and Central Asia. It involves the study of DNA from 362 ancient individuals. It traces out clearly the spread of the Yamnaya source population both into Europe and into Southern and Eastern Asia. It is almost inescapable that this is the source of the Indo-European languages.
Tao Of Scientism 