A Review of “The Mighty Dead” by Adam Nicolson, Part 3 — Indo-European Population Genetics
Indo-European genetics
A major weakness of The Mighty Dead is a lack of any discussion of findings from population genetic studies. In her 2015 book Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the First Venturers to the Vikings, Jean Manco notes that while it has been widely assumed that the shift to Indo-European languages was triggered “by Indo-European speakers establishing themselves as elites among other peoples,” the genetic evidence points to them having a “much larger impact on the population.”[xi] The earliest sample found of the Y-DNA haplogroup R (the one that today dominates Europe) is from a boy who lived 24,000 years ago in Siberia. Manco notes that this boy “carried a genetic component omnipresent in Europeans today, but found only on the eastern fringes of Europe before the Late Neolithic.” This component, named Ancestral North Eurasian (ANE), was also present in a sample from a 17,000 year old male from much further West, and
most significantly, ANE is strikingly present in a group of [the Indo-European] Yamnaya people buried in the Samara region (all of whom carried variants of the R1b haplogroup). A sample of Corded Ware people in Germany has been modeled as approximately three-quarters Yamnaya, clear evidence of migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery. Bell Beaker people in Germany also carried ANE.[xii]
Another striking fact is the very strong correlation between the distribution of the Y-DNA haplotype R1 and the distribution of the Indo-European languages. Manco notes that “the dramatic genetic heritage of the Indo-Europeans was first suspected from the modern distribution of Y-DNA R1. R1a1a (M17) dominates northern India and is also found in Eastern Europe, particularly in Slavic and Baltic populations, while R1b1a2 (M269) dominates the rest of Europe.” While not the only haplogroup that spread with the Indo-Europeans, R1 is the “part of the picture that leaps to the eye.”
Another clue to the genetic impact of the Indo-Europeans pastoralists from the steppe is the fact that most European adults can drink milk as a result of a helpful genetic mutation that confers lactase persistence. Manco observes that: “It has been proposed that lactase persistence was the genetic edge that allowed the dairy pastoralists to spread.”[xiii] Evidence of the aggressive demographic expansion of the Indo-Europeans, and the consequent displacement of other ethnic groups in Europe is revealed by the fact that non-Indo-European Y-DNA haplogroups like G2a are today found almost exclusively in mountainous regions of Europe. One source makes the point that:


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