  We generated genome-wide data from 69 Europeans who lived between 8,000-3,000
years ago by enriching ancient DNA libraries for a target set of almost four
hundred thousand polymorphisms. Enrichment of these positions decreases the
sequencing required for genome-wide ancient DNA analysis by a median of around
250-fold, allowing us to study an order of magnitude more individuals than
previous studies and to obtain new insights about the past. We show that the
populations of western and far eastern Europe followed opposite trajectories
between 8,000-5,000 years ago. At the beginning of the Neolithic period in
Europe, ~8,000-7,000 years ago, closely related groups of early farmers
appeared in Germany, Hungary, and Spain, different from indigenous
hunter-gatherers, whereas Russia was inhabited by a distinctive population of
hunter-gatherers with high affinity to a ~24,000 year old Siberian6 . By
~6,000-5,000 years ago, a resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry had occurred
throughout much of Europe, but in Russia, the Yamnaya steppe herders of this
time were descended not only from the preceding eastern European
hunter-gatherers, but from a population of Near Eastern ancestry. Western and
Eastern Europe came into contact ~4,500 years ago, as the Late Neolithic Corded
Ware people from Germany traced ~3/4 of their ancestry to the Yamnaya,
documenting a massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern
periphery. This steppe ancestry persisted in all sampled central Europeans
until at least ~3,000 years ago, and is ubiquitous in present-day Europeans.
These results provide support for the theory of a steppe origin of at least
some of the Indo-European languages of Europe.
