They never had occasion to move to the Caucasus nor did they adopt any Caucasian languages until modern times. Others, of course, actually lived around the Black Sea until they moved to the far west to conquer Ireland, but that's really, really, really late in history. We don't have to speculate on where they lived earlier ~ and that particular crowd wasn't big enough to leave behind any genetic markers either so everyone on that line is also from the Western European refugia.
As we learn more and more about less and less it's beginning to look like the original European populations simply adopted Eastern languages, and do not, themselves, have much Eastern background.
It's kind of the same situation the Aryans have. They were just simple Arabs and sheep herders tending over their seasonal wheat fields and here came some guys with bronze swords, chopped them up, enslaved them, forced their language on them and after a few generations convinced the natives that they were actually the conquerors.
The situation proves my contention that the girls will always go for the guys with the good jobs and a steady income!
muawiyah, et al, thanks for one of the most interesting posts this lurker has come across. Mu, it is fascinating to get a glimpse of what genetic mitochondrial tracking is finding and how it clashes with traditional language and military history, which are controlled by the winner!
It is my understanding that the findings of mitochondrial tracking are too explosive to be published.
My own musings are that we had many pockets of inbreeding leading to extremes of differentiation, and even failure to thrive, and many explosive expansions of gene pools on the other hand. Religion, family structure, language, political leadership and factors such as morals or lack thereof would have a bigger impact than genetics, if WWII is any indication.