The biggest DNA study on ancient people rewrites European history. Modern Europeans were born in the Bronze Age after a large wave of immigration by a nomadic people known as Yamnaya who came from the Russian steppe. It happened in the third millennium BC.

"This is where we begin. We see that a large part of the modern European, genetically start here, "says study leader Eske Willerslev, who is a professor at the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

The find probably marks the end of more than 100 years of archaeological debate over whether the great cultural upheaval seen in the Bronze Age (2700 BC. to 500 BC.) was driven by ideas or by immigration.