THE IDEA THAT THERE WERE ONCE “pure”

populations of ancestral Europeans, there

since the days of woolly mammoths, has
inspired ideologues since well before the

Nazis. It has long nourished white racism,

and in recent years it has stoked fears about
the impact of immigrants: fears that have

threatened to rip apart the European Union

and roiled politics in the United States.

¶ 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 melt-

ing 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 arti-

facts, 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 possi-

ble 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 do so; a

well-preserved bit of skeleton can

now be sequenced for around $500.

The result has been an explo-

sion of new information that is

transforming archaeology. In 2018

alone, the genomes of more than a

thousand prehistoric humans were

determined, mostly from bones

dug up years ago and preserved in

museums and archaeological labs.

In the process any notion of Euro-

pean genetic purity has been swept

away on a tide of powdered bone.

Analysis of ancient genomes

provides the equivalent of the per-

sonal DNA testing kits available

today, but for people who died long

before humans invented writing,

the wheel, or pottery. The genetic

information is startlingly complete:

Everything from hair and eye color

to the inability to digest milk can

be determined from a thousandth

of an ounce of bone or tooth. And

like personal DNA tests, the results

reveal clues to the identities and ori-

gins of ancient humans’ ancestors—

and thus to ancient migrations.

Three major movements of peo-

ple, it now seems clear, shaped

the course of European prehis-

tory. Immigrants brought art and

music, farming and cities, domes-

ticated horses and the wheel. They

introduced the Indo-European

languages spoken across much of

the continent today. They may have

even brought the plague. The last

major contributors to western and

central Europe’s genetic makeup—

the last of the first Europeans, so to

speak—arrived from the Russian

steppe as Stonehenge was being

built, nearly 5,000 years ago. They

finished the job.

In an era of debate over migra-

tion and borders, the science shows

that Europe is a continent of immi-

grants and always has been. “The

people who live in a place today are

not the descendants of people who

lived there long ago,” says Harvard

T

A

World

on

The

Move

100 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC