Ancient Human Genomes, Transitions, Farmers and Language at the Edge of Europe

Large longitudinal surveys of genomic diversity have uncovered two significant shifts in ancestry components in European samples. The first of these coincided with the onset of Neolithic culture and the second occurred in the third Millennium BC around the transition from the Late Neolithic to the Bronze Age. The scale of these changes imply massive population movements which may have coincided with the spread of new languages. However, whether genome change was universally associated with these cultural horizons is not yet known. This talk will present ancient genome data from southwest and eastern Europe, will contrast their patterns of longitudinal change and speculate about language origins.