Recent breakthroughs in human paleogenomics are reshaping understanding of European population movements, with new preprints from leading geneticists challenging long-held theories about the origins of Finnic and proto-Germanic peoples. Notably, a forthcoming 2025 preprint from Eske Willerslev The field of human paleogenomics has been consistently delivering "grand revelations about our species’ origins and evolution," as stated by Razib Khan. This includes discoveries like the widespread Neanderthal ancestry in modern humans and the identification of new human species such as the Denisovans. Geneticists are now focusing on more recent historical periods, leveraging an accumulating "vast volume of ancient human DNA samples" to trace genetic changes across tens of thousands of years in Eurasia.
One key area of recent focus is the origin of Finnic peoples. A 2023 preprint from David Reich However, the most unexpected revelation pertains to proto-Germanic tribes. While the Finnic tribes' journey concluded in the Eastern Baltic, Willerslev's 2025 preprint proposes that "that same zone now appears to have been the proto-Germanics’ and their ancestors’ long mysterious origination point." This suggestion, that what became Finland and Estonia were simultaneously the homeland of the earliest proto-Germanic-speaking people, comes "straight out of left field," as highlighted by Khan.
The implications of these findings are profound, forcing scholars to "reshuffle known archaeological results and theories into new configurations." Paleogenomics, with its ability to uncover "demographic turnover here, or the migration of an unknown people there," continues to provide surprising phenomena that were previously "indiscernible or even wholly unimagined," fundamentally altering our understanding of human history and migration patterns.