I stumbled upon a simply incredible resource, specifically a database of ancient mtDNA maintained by Czech academics. All of the genomes have provenance files, with links to the source. Moreover, they all have dates, and locations, which is simply fantastic. I’ve been running analysis all morning, and one thing is clear: ancient Europeans are from Asia, specifically, they are related to the people of modern day Sri Lanka. You can run my genetics software on, e.g., this genome, which is from Belgium, around 33,000 BCE, and it is a 99% match to the Sri Lankans, and the Phoenicians (who are obviously related to the Sri Lankans). You find exactly this throughout history, in Germany, Austria, and Italy, suggesting that people came to Europe from Asia a very long time ago. Moreover, many Africans, specifically the Nigerians, are also closely related to the Sri Lankans, and Asians more generally. This is all consistent with a migration-back hypothesis, where humanity began in Africa, migrated to Asia, and then migrated back to both Europe and Africa.

Moreover, the second find is that the Roma people are definitely Russian, not Indian, which I already suspected based upon the fact that nearly a majority of Russians are a 99% match to the Iberian Roma. I’m not doubting that they spent a lot of time in India, and it seems reasonable that their culture developed there, however, their ultimate genetic origin is Siberia. Specifically, there’s a Siberian genome from about 45,000 BCE that is a 99.5% match to the Iberian Roma, and many modern Russians. Moreover, I’ve found no evidence of Roma people in Europe even up to the Middle Ages, except in Iron Age Finland and Ötzi the Ice Man. Both suggest that the Roma were originally Arctic people, and moreover, suggesting as a general matter, that the Roma people were fairly recent arrivals in Europe, at least in the numbers present today, which are significant (i.e., you have many people that are definitely of Roma descent that don’t declare it in genetic studies).