India, Feb. 5 -- A people living on the Eurasian steppe in current-day Russia during the Eneolithic or Copper Age 6,500 years ago were the first to speak a tongue that would eventually evolve into what is today the largest living family of human languages, the Indo-European family.
These pioneers, who were spread from the steppe grasslands along the lower Volga River to the northern foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, were genetically identified to be the originators of the Indo-European family by a pair of studies published on February 5, 2025, in the journal Nature.
The ancient DNA studies were supported in part by the United States National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, according to an article by Harvard Med...