a rectangular grave with human skeleton in it.

The first Europeans weren’t who you might think

Genetic tests of ancient settlers' remains show that Europe is a melting pot of bloodlines from Africa, the Middle East, and today's Russia.

Three waves of immigrants settled prehistoric Europe. The last, some 5,000 years ago, were the Yamnaya, horse-riding cattle herders from Russia who built imposing grave mounds like this one near Žabalj, Serbia.

DANUBIAN ROUTE OF YAMNAYA CULTURE PROJECT, NATIONAL SCIENCE CENTER, POLAND
This story appears in the August 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine.

Now scientists are delivering new answers to the question of who Europeans really are and where they came from. Their findings suggest that the continent has been a melting pot since the Ice Age. Europeans living today, in whatever country, are a varying mix of ancient bloodlines hailing from Africa, the Middle East, and the Russian steppe.

The evidence comes from archaeological artifacts, from the analysis of ancient teeth and bones, and from linguistics. But above all it comes from the new field of paleogenetics. During the past decade it has become possible to sequence the entire genome of humans who lived tens of millennia ago. Technical advances in just the past few years have made it cheap and efficient to

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