Ancient DNA From 700 Skeletons Just Rewrote the Origin Story of the Languages We Speak Today

One of the most fascinating aspects of humanity is the roughly 7,000 languages we’ve devised to express ourselves. And while these languages may seem pretty different—as anyone who’s crammed for a foreign language exam can attest—linguists have known for centuries that a large majority of European languages, including English—as well as many tongues outside of the continent—are derived from a single root language known as “Proto-Indo European.”By the late 1800s, linguists suspected this proto-language began with horse-herding peoples north of the Black and Caspian seas, because its vocabulary centers on pastoral life. Genetic evidence has also pinpointed the Yamnaya culture as a key influence on the language’s migration because this group moved from modern Ukraine and Russia into eastern and central Europe some 5,000 years ago. From there, however, how other languages developed, branched off, and migrated into their present day configurations remains a fascinating puzzle.But a pair of twin studies, both published in the journal Nature, attempt to track some of these language migrations. The researchers analyzed the DNA of thousands of prehistoric humans, including 700 newly sequenced individuals, in hopes of understanding how today’s language maps came to be.“Ancient DNA cannot reveal the language or languages a particular individual spoke,” three of the study’s authors wrote in an article for The Conversation. “But by comparing prehistoric population movements with archaeological and linguistic evidence, we can increasingly test competing theories about how languages spread.”The two articles use similar techniques to explore Germanic languages (such as German, English, Norwegian, Dutch, and Swedish) and the more elusive Celtic languages, whose roughly two million remaining speakers live primarily in Ireland, Wales, Brittany, and the Isle of Man. While the Germanic languages study uncovered fascinating new details about their migration, including that their ancient ancestral tongue might’ve reached Scandinavia 800 years earlier than we thought, the study focused on the Celtic languages appears to settle a longstanding debate about where they originated.There have long been two competing theories about the geographic starting point of the Celtic languages. The first holds that proto-Celtic arose along Western Europe’s Atlantic coast. The second holds that it emerged in the continent’s interior, in the east, among the Bronze age Urnfield culture, and later migrated to its modern home in the northwest. The genetic analysis revealed the answer. An ancient people genetically associated with the Urnfield culture migrated from east to west roughly 3,200 to 2,800 years ago—exactly when many believe the proto-Celtic language first formed. Although relatively few Celtic-language speakers remain today, their populations once stretched across a large swath of the continent, before rival groups pressed in from both sides and drove them out.“They had their time, but the Scandinavians start to expand to the south, and then the Romans move up and delete the Celtic languages,” University of Gothenburg archaeologist Kristian Kristiansen, a co-author of the study, told Science.However, the team cannot fully rule out the western theory. Evidence of a migration from southwestern Europe into Britain roughly 3,800 years ago suggests the language may still have originated along the Atlantic coast. An archaeogeneticist who spoke with Science also noted that the skeletal samples offer stronger evidence for the Germanic languages than for the Celtic ones, and that surveying more Celtic burial sites could help refine the data. In short, many questions remain.So when you’re puzzling over that next Duolingo practice session, keep in mind that deciphering the evolution of the language you speak is even more deviously difficult.Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.