Eurasian steppe dominated by Iranian peoples, Indo-Iranian expanded from East Yamna

The expected study of Eurasian samples is out (behind paywall): 137 ancient human genomes from across the Eurasian steppes, by de Barros Damgaard et al. Nature (2018).

Dicussion (emphasis mine):

Our findings fit well with current insights from the historical linguistics of this region (Supplementary Information section 2). The steppes were probably largely Iranian-speaking in the first and second millennia bc. This is supported by the split of the Indo-Iranian linguistic branch into Iranian and Indian³³, the distribution of the Iranian languages, and the preservation of Old Iranian loanwords in Tocharian³⁴. The wide distribution of

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North-Eastern Europe in the Stone Age – bridging the gap between the East and the West

Interesting PhD thesis The Stone Age of north-eastern Europe 5500–1800 calBC : bridging the gap between the East and the West by Kerkko Nordqvist (2018).

Some interesting excerpts:

On the Corded Ware and related cultures

The arrival of Corded Ware is without a doubt the clearest example of migration recognized in Finnish Stone Age archaeology. Its appearance has been understood to result from the movement of a new population from the southern or southeastern Baltic Sea area to the southern and western coasts of Finland (Europaeus 1922: 137; Luho 1948: 57; Edgren 1970: 62; Matiskainen 1994: 14) (Fig. 36).

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On Proto-Finnic language guesstimates, and its western homeland

Recent chapter The Indo-Europeans and the Non-Indo-Europeans in Prehistoric Northern Europe, by Petri Kallio, In: Language and Prehistory of the Indo- European Peoples: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective, Copenhagen (2017).

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine), especially when read in combination with the most recent papers on Early Indo-Iranian, Corded Ware, and Fennoscandian genomes:

Like the Indo-Europeanists, also the Uralicists suffer from their “school who wants it large and wants it early”. This time, however, the desired homeland is even larger and earlier, covering the whole northern half of Europe already at the end of the

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Corded Ware culture contacts in the Baltic Sea region linked to immigrant potters

Article behind paywall Tracing grog and pots to reveal neolithic Corded Ware Culture contacts in the Baltic Sea region (SEM-EDS, PIXE) by Larsson et al., J. Archaeol. Sci. (2018) 91:77-91.

Abstract (emphasis mine):

The Neolithic Corded Ware Culture (CWC) complex spread across the Baltic Sea region ca. 2900/2800–2300/2000 BCE. Whether this cultural adaptation was driven by migration or diffusion remains widely debated. To gather evidence for contact and movement in the CWC material culture, grog-tempered CWC pots from 24 archaeological sites in southern Baltoscandia (Estonia and the southern regions of Finland and Sweden) were sampled for geochemical and micro-structural analyses.

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