Harvard researchers traced the origins of the vast Indo-European language family to the Caucasus-Lower Volga region, identifying the ancestral population known as the Yamnaya, who appeared around 3300 BCE and spread from Hungary to western China.
Analysis of dozens of ancient genomes reveals that close encounters between Neanderthals and humans took place in a narrow time window. The high-resolution analysis also allowed the authors to track when certain Neanderthal DNA sequences appeared in the H. sapiens genome and determine whether they were retained.
