A new study claims to have identified the first speakers of Indo-European language, which gave rise to English, Sanskrit and hundreds of others.

Ancient-DNA analyses identify a Caucasus Lower Volga people as the ancient originators of Proto-Indo-European, the precursor to the massive Indo-European language family. The population lived on the Eurasian steppe within the borders of current-day Russia during the Copper Age about 6,500 years ago, data show.

For decades, the leading theory for the ubiquity of Indo-European languages was that early farmers, living in a region known as Anatolia, which includes present-day Turkey, exported languages in the family as the agricultural revolution spread starting around 9,000 years ago.