Harvard traces roots of Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages

DNA evidence places them in current-day Russia during the Eneolithic period about 6,500 years ago, landmark studies have found.

Co-authors David Anthony, Pavel Kuznetsov, and Oleg Mochalov on a treeless steppe in the Samara River valley in 1995. / David Anthony, Pavel Kuznetsov, and Oleg Mochalov

The origins of Sanskrit, one of India's oldest and most revered languages, and 400+ other Indo-European languages have been linked to an ancient population from present-day Russia, according to two groundbreaking studies published in the journal ‘Nature’ on Feb.5.

The research identifies the Caucasus Lower Volga people as the probable speakers of the ancestral Indo-European languages. The studies shed new light on the spread of these languages, spoken today by more than 40 percent of the world’s population.

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