Ancient DNA suggests Germanic languages reached Scandinavia 800 years later
Researchers led by the University of Copenhagen and Leiden University analysed DNA from thousands of prehistoric Europeans, including more than 700 newly sequenced people. Two studies in Nature test theories on how the Germanic and Celtic languages spread.
The team found that a second group with steppe ancestry reached Eastern Scandinavia about 4,000 years ago, probably from across the Baltic Sea. They say these newcomers may have brought the precursor of Germanic, some 800 years later than traditionally assumed. The authors wrote about their own peer-reviewed work, and this link between ancestry and language is a suggestion, not proof.