DNA cannot tell you what language someone spoke. So two new studies in Nature, from Leiden University and the University of Copenhagen, combined ancient DNA from 712 people and more than 4,000 published genomes with archaeology and linguistics. Scientias.nl explains the results in Dutch. Germanic may have reached Scandinavia with a second wave of migrants, probably from the Baltic, about 800 years after the steppe migrations of around 3000 BCE. Much later, around 1,500 years ago, speakers from northern Germany largely replaced the population of Denmark and southern Sweden.

For Celtic, the genetic evidence points to Central Europe, perhaps today's Czechia, rather than an Atlantic sea route. It is a good reminder that national origin myths rarely survive contact with the data.

Source: Kirsten Terwisscha van Scheltinga, Scientias.nl (Dutch) (2026-11-11)
https://scientias.nl/verborgen-geschiedenis-van-europese-talen-onthuld/

Summarised by the FTI newsdesk.