According to the newest studies in this field, Bronze Age DNA helps us understand ancestors and reveals evidence on the founders of Europe that migrated in the respective area nearly 5000 years ago, where there was a mass migration phenomenon. It appears that our European ancestors originated from Russia and Georgia and they brought many new customs to the new lands.
After humans left Africa, they split into several groups and some of them traveled up North, becoming northern Europeans. They have kept some of their physical features up to the present time. Some of them were various technologies, farming and dairy production. The migrant people were coming from the Caucasian peninsula , roughly around 3000 BC and researchers believe that they had in common a mutation that allowed them to drink cow milk. The gene was called OCA2, but it was found only on 10% of the samples taken.
There were two main groups of people, namely the Corden Ware that were farmers and became the forefathers of the ones that remained in the Northern area, and the Afanasievo population that finally reached Asia.
The Yamnaya people are believed to be the ones that carried the genes for fair hair and skin and also to have been quite advanced at the time, in comparison to other tribes. It is possible that they have also been the first city settlers.
The bones of 101 individuals have been analyzed and their DNA is proof that the Yamnaya were spreading from the Ural mountains up to Scandinavia and some of them even migrated to Asia. Just 2000 years ago they settled there and became the ancestors of today’s Eastern Asian people.
Image source: diorealskills.org
