The Center for the Human Past starts a seminar series, "Talks of the Past", in September 2024. The seminars (app. 45 min) will take place on the first Wednesday of each month and will be followed by a discussion and a “fika” (coffee break).

The event is open to students and academics interested in interdisciplinary research in the fields of palaeogenetics, archaeology, and linguistics.

Guus Kroonen (Leiden University, the Netherlands): New linguistic and archaeogenomic perspectives on the origin and spread of the Germanic languages

The Germanic languages, including English, German and the Nordic languages, are widely assumed to have dispersed from Southern Scandinavia after the Pre-Roman Iron Age. However, the demographic processes behind their diversification are not yet fully understood. In addition, it is currently not known when and from where the Germanic language group arrived in Scandinavia.

To understand the prehistoric and historical distributions of the Germanic languages, I contributed to a paleogenomic study analyzing 710 ancient genomes and 3,940 published genomes from western Eurasia. Results indicate a Late Neolithic cross-Baltic maritime migration and significant genetic shifts during the Migration Period, impacting populations across northern Europe.

In this talk, I will discuss the challenges of interpreting archaeogenomic evidence at clarifying language origins and dispersals.

More on the seminar series "Talks of the Past" on the Center for the Human Past's website

The Center for the Human Past is one of the Swedish Research Council's centres of excellence. The Center for the Human Past collaborates with the Centre for Studies in Indo-European Language and Culture and the LAMP project (funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond), both of which are located at the Department of Slavic and Baltic Studies, Finnish, Dutch and German.