At https://phys.org/news/2024-12-ancient-genomes-word-indo-european.html … a team of 91 researchers, mainly from the University of Copenhagen, has discovered an Indo European convergence between the eastern and the western Mediterranean regions. This seems to be of some significance. The assumption made at the beginning is that the Yamnaya culture north of the Caucasus and Black Sea was the origin of the Indo European speakers. Hence, the thrust of the article at https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.12.02.626332 … They are saying that Spanish, French and Italian populations received steppe ancestry from Bell Beaker migrations whilst Greece, the Balkans. and Armenia aquired ancestry directly from the Yamnaya people migrating through the Caucasus. They used strontium isotope analysis to reach their conclusions. Bell Beaker people seem to have originated from steppe pastoralists who mixed with European farmers in central and eastern Europe, after the 3200BC event [the Piorra Oscillation]. The Bell Beaker movements into western Europe occurred mid 3rd millennium BC, between 2500 – 2200BC. They were a hybrid population. In contrast, steppe ancestry in the Balkans and Greece, as well as Armenia and NE Anatolia, was due to a direct movement of people down through the Caucasus. It should be noted at this point that there was a multitude of migrations through the Caucasus, even as early as 3000BC. In the Iron Age we have the well documented movements of the Cimmerians, and somewhat later, the Scythians. In the MB period the arrival of the Mitanni Indo European speaking migrations into northern Mesopotamia, and Iran, and that of the Kassites, seems to be the target of the researchers. Or an earlier movement at the beginning of the MB period. This is probably why the researchers concentrate on a quite small period of time. They are associating this with a decline of the Kura-Arexes culture and the emergence of the Trialeti culture in the MB period. We should also note these findings do not necessarily merge with archaeological data or chronology and should be regarded as a provisional assessment. It does graphically show up as a distinct divergence between the two regions and can be considered as a base for looking at influxes of people during the Bronze ages, early to late.
At https://phys.org/news/2024-12-ancient-dna-migrations-millennium-ad.html … in this post on DNA research we have light cast on migrations during the first millennium AD, 3 thousand years or so after the post above. Germanic expansion, or upheavals, ending with the Viking raids. As the final stages of the western Roman empire involved successive waves of migration we may note it did not just involve the period, 5th to 6th centuries AD. Germanic expansion was endemic across northern Europe and Scandinavia and this movement is dated between AD1 and AD500. Mainly a south to north migration. It put pressure on existing populations in NW Europe. They added fresh genes to the populations of Germany, Poland, and southern Britain – especially during the 2nd to 4th centuries AD. This was prior to the Anglo Saxon movements, we may note. Between AD300 and 800 there was a wave of migration into Scandinavia – long before the Vikings. This means that any Viking era DNA in southern Scandinavia, Denmark and southern Sweden, carried ancestry from central Europe. There is archaeological evidence of repeated unrest in Scandinavia at this time.
The Viking era itself, 800 to 1050AD, is associated with widespread raiding all around the coasts of western Europe, north to south. Vikings also migrated into eastern Europe and Russia. It’s main export to the Islamic world were slaves – from all parts of Europe but mostly from Russia and the Slavic tribes [hence the name that was given them]. Or rather, the word slave is derived from Slavics.