Prompted by the ancient DNA results, several archaeologists have speculated to me that the Bell Beaker culture could be viewed as a kind of ancient religion that converted peoples of different backgrounds to a new way of viewing the world, thus serving as an ideological solvent that facilitated the integration and spread of steppe ancestry and culture into central and western Europe. At a Hungarian Bell Beaker site, we found direct evidence that this culture was open to people of diverse ancestries, with individuals buried in a Bell Beaker cultural context having the full range of steppe
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