Slavs and Balts fraternal peoples? Results of a large study – RSUTE

in the journal PLoS ONE published an article “The gene pool of the Balto-Slavic populations: the synthesis of autosomal, mitochondrial and Y-chromosome data” with the outcome of years of research of an international group of geneticists and linguists under the guidance of Doctor of Biological Sciences Oleg Balanovsky (Institute of General Genetics and Medical Genetics Research Center) and academician Richard Willems (Estonian Biocenter and the University of Tartu).

The work involved researchers from many countries, where the majority of the population is Slavic and Baltic peoples (Russia, Ukraine , Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina), as well as the UK and a consortium of scientists of international project Genographic.

By definition, the Slavs – is people who speak Slavic languages. The similarity of all Slavic languages ​​does not require proof. At the same time, for example, the South Slavs apparently not too similar to the east and west.

But what we have seen, is the fact that the Slavs in the gene pool is very large component of autochthonous pre-Slavonic population. For example, when there was a wave of colonization from Novgorod Russia on the Russian North, the settlers brought with them their language, religion, but included – assimilated – the Before Slavic population that lived in these territories. And if the population predominate, whereas the gene pool of a population formed more like Before Slavic population than on the gene pool of the Slavs came.

It is known according to archeology, Slavic languages ​​have spread very quickly and rapidly, occupying half of Europe. But the Slavs simply not enough manpower to colonize those territories. And it seems that in the gene pool of all Slavic peoples dominated by one or the other component Before Slavic. But it was different for the northern (eastern and western) and the South Slavs.

The analysis was performed on three genetic systems: this Y-chromosome is transmitted through the father, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is transmitted through the maternal line and autosomal DNA genomes comprising the same father and mother (genome-analysis).

For all three systems get a similar picture. Eastern Slavs – Russian central and southern regions, as well as Ukrainians and Belarusians – form a group of well-formed. The exception is the northern Russian, which are genetically distant from the rest of the Eastern Slavs and gravitate to the Finno-Ugric populations.

Turning to linguistics, the researchers built a reconstructed tree Balto-Slavic languages ​​and for all populations compared three options – genetics, language and geography. The highest correlation was between genetics and geographic location of populations.

Scientists believe that, spreading through Europe, the Slavs actively involved in the structure of local populations, who have lived in these territories in Before Slavic times. Slavs brought with them the language and soak up the gene pool of local populations. This profound genetic “substrate” was different for different branches of the Slavs.

The Eastern substrate took a western and eastern Slavs. Probably most of it accounted for Baltic peoples, resettlement once very widely in the East European Plain. Another southern European substrate absorbed the Southern Slavs, and it amounted Before Slavic Balkan peoples.

These processes cemented western and eastern Slavs into a single genetic commonality and Southern Slavs thus have become more similar to the non-Slavic peoples of the Balkans, than the other Slavic nations.