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Sunday, June 22, 2025

‘Proto-Yamnaya’ Eneolithic individuals from Kuban steppe c. 3700 BC ? (guest post)


This is a guest post by an anonymous contributor. I don't necessarily agree with its findings, but I think it's a good way to get the ball rolling here again. Feel free to let me know what you think. Please note, however, that any comments that show mental instability will be blocked. No more crazy talk on this blog.

In order to understand who Yamnaya people were, one must first define ‘Yamnaya’. We will adopt a strictu sensu view (e.g. Anthony, Heyd) encompassing burials dating 3200-2600 BC, with a characteristic body position, mound construction, and copper artefacts. These complexes can be linked to a core group of people whose autosomal make-up is quite homogeneous throughout their wide geographic range. Moreover, almost all males belong to Y-haplogroup R1b-M269-Z2103. In this light, ‘core Yamnaya’ does not represent a ‘proto-Indo-European’ population, as commonly proclaimed, but a group which contributed to several post-PIE population-language complexes, such as Tocharian, Armenian and some Paleo-Balkan languages. However, historical linguistics is not the focus of this post.

Archeologists had linked Yamnaya to earlier complexes such as Khvalynsk, Repin and/or Mikhalivka. Given that cultural markers such as pottery and burial customs can be borrowed and copied, ancient DNA can offer a more objective assessment of population origins. However, the cacophony of clusters, clines and other statistical constructs in publications can be confusing. A more rationalized approach is required, and one way is to co-analyse phylogenetically linked individuals across space and time. Apart from a lower-quality individual from Smyadovo (Bulgaria c. 4300 BC), the earliest attestation of R1b-M269 is in two individuals from the Kuban steppe (Stavropol region) c. 3700 BC -NV3003 and KST001 (Ghaliachi et al 2024). However, Y-hg R1b-M269 is missing in currently sampled Kuban steppe and north Caucasian males from the preceding period (5000-4000 BC). Males of the ‘Kuban steppe 4500bc’ group (Progress, Vojnucka, Sengeleevskiy, etc) are instead derived for the phylogenetically divergent Y-hg Rb-V1636. Males from the Nalchik cemetery are also derived for Y-hg R1b-V1636, or related haplotypes, although they were buried in a ‘Caucasian Farmer’ pose and heavily infused with such ancestry, but probably also had a burial mound thrown above. We do not know when the R1b-V1636 clans entered the northern Caucasus region, or from where, but they appear to have been attracted by trade with North Caucasian Famer (~Eneolithic) groups- termed as ‘Meshoko-Zamok’, ‘Chokh’, etc, in literature. Curiously the Nalchik group has minimal Central Asian (“TTK-related”) ancestry, whilst the Kuban steppe group has high levels. This suggests that TTK-related ancestry arrived after R1b-V1636 dominant EHG clans entered the North Caucasus region, but other scenarios are possible. Lastly, two ‘Meshoko culture’ males from Unakozovskaya have been assigned to Y-hg J2a-L26.

A shake-up occurred in the north Caucasus after 4000 BC. As we know, this corresponds to the emergence of the Majkop phenomenon, catalysed by renewed migrations from the south. These were not ‘Uruk migrants’ as sometimes proposed - the Uruk phenomenon occurred several hundred years later and was a south Mesopotamian phenomenon. Instead, these newcomers emerge from southern Caucasus- north Mesopotamian ‘Late Chalcolithic’ groups. They brought with them multiple West Asian lineages, such as Y-hg T, L2, J2a-, J2b, G2. Over time they mixed with preceding north Caucasian Eneolithic groups, culminating in the Novosvobodnaja phenomenon.

The emergence of Majkop as a new socio-cultural complex broke down the previous system dominated by Y-hg R1b-V1636 clans. The Majkop sphere consisted of a ‘core’ of heterarchical chiefs buried in elaborate kurgans near the Mountains, and a dynamic northern ‘frontier’ in the steppe lands (as far as the lower Don) between 4000 and 3000 BC. At least 3 ‘‘Majkop periphery’ genetic groups can be defined; in fact all these groups can be termed ‘steppe Majkop’:

1- Group with western Siberian/ north central Asian ancestry (the ‘genetic steppe Majkop’ as defined in Wang et al, 2023)
2- The South Caucasian/north Iranian ‘Zolotarevka’ group
3- The R1b-M269 duo.

Regardless of their lineages and genomic affinities, these individuals were often buried in kurgans which over time formed groups. These were not continuations of pre-4000 BC kurgans, but the communities instead made a conscious choice to build new kurgans after 4000 BC, adding to the idea of discontinuity. But once built, these kurgan clusters continued to be developed for hundreds of years, into the Yamnaya period. This does imply ethnic homogeneity or continuity, just a ‘continuity of place’. Without a direct attestation of a phylogenetic ancestor, and guestimating from their (non-identical) genomic profile, we are left to speculate that Y-hg R1b-M269 individuals moved down from somewhere in the Volga-Don interfluve. Perhaps amongst groups utilizing Repin pottery, but if so, they did not continue its use in their new contexts. By 3000 BC, the Majkop system collapsed. Yamnaya groups and their ‘Catacomb’ descendants took control of the north Caucasus region, having benefitted from years of trade/ exchange and knowledge gathering. Whether Yamnaya actually descend from individuals like KST-1 or NV3003 remains to be seen, however these are the closest leads we have. Certainly, we can model Yamnaya as deriving from KST-1 (88%) + Dnieper_N (12%), but we should be cautious when using singular individuals as ‘sources’.
See also...

The PIE homeland controversy: December 2024 open thread

213 comments:

1 – 200 of 213   Newer›   Newest»
Copper Axe said...

Great post, good to see the ball rolling again!

Finngreek said...

The post title should read "3700 BC", not "37000".

Dospaises said...

It's mostly fairly well written but much of what is said was already known. It can basically be reduced to "we still don't know a lot of details due to a paucity of samples". For instance, we already knew that NV3003 is the oldest sample with a high number of R-M269 phylogenetic equivalents but it is also late since it from about 3700 BC and is ancestral for R-L23 and for Z2103. The path for Z2013 is M269>L23>Z2103, which the author neglected to point out, and R-L23 is from about 4350 BC. So M269>L23 was in existence for about 650 years and Z2103 was in existence for about 500 years before NV3003. The coverage of KST001 is too low to determine whether it had a lot of derived M269 or if it was derived for L23 or not. There is still too much that we don't know about how L23 and Z2103 became involved because we still don't have specimens with a lot of M269 equivalents from 4500BC-4300BC and that is probably due to R-M269 having been a small population evidenced by the large number of phylogenetic equivalents. We keep hoping for a miracle that those specimens will be found. Obviously this is only one portion of the problem.

old europe said...

KST001
Golubaya_Krinitsa
Tutkaul1
Azerbaijan_Caucasus_lowlands_LN
best coefficients: 0.724 0.152 0.124
tail prob 0.2729

Here is a model for KST001. Clearly demontrates PIA came from the Don region. Golubaya_Krinitsa is a mix of ukraine mesolithic and the well known R1b Samara HG

EthanR said...

I agree that KST001(more Yamnaya-like) and NV3003 (more Piedmont-like) being R-M269 really make it look like proto-Yamnaya was somewhere marinating around the Don at this time.

The lower Don doesn't seem like a great candidate, given how much excess UKR_N those "Don Yamnaya" samples have. So I further agree it may have something to do with Repin.

old europe said...

here is a post courtesy of genrachivist
Don_EBA_Yamnaya = 97% SS_high + 3% Alkhantepe/Maikop
Rest of Yamnaya = 66-80% SS_high + 20-34% Remontnoye

So basically Don_EBA_Yamnaya is ancestral to the Rest of Yamnaya Cluster. The earliest Yamnaya profile was Don_EBA

Highest Remontnoye (34%) is in CaspianInland_EBA_Yamnaya

Rob said...

I think it’s good to get a summary of what’s known, broken down in digestible subtopics. ‘We’ might long know about these samples, but other people do not, and how they fit within the broader scheme of things even less so.

Another interesting theme that emerges here is that even after the Satanay cave - EHG sample published by Ghaliachi, all these samples with high CHG & low / absent Cauc Farmer ancestry lend support the mid-northern CHG niche theory.

EthanR said...

(Lower) Don Yamnaya has a mid 4th millennium BC formation as per DATES, suggesting it being a mixture of something more UKR_N-rich and incoming Yamnaya (which actually has an earlier formation, as per DATES). It's not directly ancestral to anything.

This is in line with the partial continuation of the Konstantinovka cultural layer on the Lower Don, as well as its Yhgs (mixed I-L704 and R-Z2103).

Copper Axe said...

For years there has been a debate whether the agriculturalist ancestry in Yamnaya was from EEFs or from Transcaucasian people (or both, as I think is the case). Now that we have a sample such as KST001 with a profile very similar to Yamnaya in an early Maykop burial circa 3700 bc, does this help us get any closer to the answer? For the EEF proponents I think they need to provide a good explanation as to how this ancestry ended up in KST001 when we see little of it Ukraine at the time.

One interesting element here is that the model of Yamnaya as UKr_N-rich Sredny Stog + Remontnoye seems a bit less probable now as you had Yamnaya-like individuals with R-M269 living contemporary to the Remontnoye individuals. It also shows that rather than smooth clines the habitation was very patchy with clans moving about.

My best guess is that the relatives of KST001 circa 3500 bc started gaining demographic surpluses due to the utilization of the wagon and the exploitation of grassfields further away from water bodies. Over time this led to the replacement of the more diverse profiles developed in the earlier phase, and explains why Corded Ware, Yamnaya and Afanasievo are quite similar when compared to Cernavoda, Usatovo, North Caucasus steppe eneolithic, Remontnoye etc. The Steppe Maykop/Kumsay populations also benefited from this "revolution", leading tontheir appearance and interaction with the Caucasian sphere.

Dospaises said...

EthanR In my opinion you are making sense

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

Wouldn't Ustyurt culture make more sense than Kelteminar since it's more proximate to the area?
https://archives.palarch.nl/index.php/jae/article/download/1495/1514

Rob said...

@ Copper Axe

“ For the EEF proponents I think they need to provide a good explanation as to how this ancestry ended up in KST001 when we see little of it Ukraine at the time”

Circa 3700 the Ukraine eneolithic samples have tons of EEF ancestry (Cernavoda, some Sredni Stog)
But specifically for Yamnaya, someone would need to look at a more proximal approach than what’s posted here (which is appropriately distal to “triangulate” possible homeland scenarios), I might give that a go in a few days

Davidski said...

There's probably both EEF and Anatolian-related Caucasus farmer ancestry in Yamnaya, but it's not much and not from one specific source that is potentially a good location for the PIE homeland.

Thus, the argument that the presence of this type of ancestry in Yamnaya puts the PIE homeland in Armenia or Iran is retarded, and that's the important point.

Tom said...

If the nucleus of the Yamnaya population lies in the Northwest Pontic steppe as archaeology and linguistics seems to suggest, then a good number of their ancestors must have been in close proximity to Trypillian and Balkan IE communities for centuries, just like they were with DDNC whom they have ancestry from. I know there’s been a concerted effort by certain academics to remove genetic/cultural ties of steppe people to the agricultural societies of “Old Europe” for ideological reasons, but the two spheres had been in contact on the north Black Sea since what, the late 5th millennium BC?

If Core Yamnaya do not require any or much surplus South Caucasus ancestry on top of what they can get from regular Steppe Eneolithic, then I don't understand why they need to be 20-25% “Aknashen” beyond persistent coping from people like Lazaridis.

@ David

What is your general idea of Yamnaya % wise?

Moustaki said...

@Davidski

I agree there's Anatolian-related Caucasus farmer ancestry in Yamnaya (through Nalchik-like admixture). What most people I guess are interested in, is whether this admixture was acquired already at the Srendy Stog stage (during core Yamnaya's formation) or after expanding throughout the PC Steppe when they hit a population boom.

Yamnaya in the North Caucasus definitely requires some Nalchik-like contribution (per G25), though many Yamnaya groups don't or trace amounts, so it seems like this admixture was unevenly spread and had a hard time leveling out because of the the higher population densities during their expansion, regardless of the higher mobility present on the steppe.


EthanR said...

The "persistent coping" is because there are multiple lines of evidence now supporting it (in particular see the archeological description of Remontnoye found in the Lazaridis paper supplement).

@Copper Axe
I think KST001 is probably a recent migrant, whose profile did not form in the Kuban Steppe. It's just an exercise in making sense of regional substructures within the Sredni Stog sphere from here out. Unfortunately I'm not sure if we are going to get any terribly relevant samples, beyond the Vavilov paper, because of the conflict.

@Davidski
We fortunately don't hear too much about that anymore. We should be getting a lot of new Anatolian samples very soon, including quite a number of MBA Kultepe (Kanesh) samples.

I will be taking a close look at the language used in this thesis once it is accessible, because the thesis supervisor was one of the researchers working with those same Kultepe samples:
https://open.metu.edu.tr/handle/11511/113454

Davidski said...

@Tom

What is your general idea of Yamnaya % wise?

I'm not 100% sure yet. Trying to work that out.

Davidski said...

@EthanR

Do you think that Remontnoye was ancestral to Yamnaya in a significant way?

Or is it just the result of a related but largely parallel genetic and cultural development that is more Caucasus-shifted than the Sredny Stog ancestors of Yamnaya because it's located closer to the Caucasus?

EthanR said...

@Davidski

I don't know. I lean against the south Caucasian ancestry in Sredni Stog/Yamnaya being the result of a sudden, singular pulse as opposed to something that happened over a longer time horizon due to exogemy etc.
This would be in line with the rough observation I made in an earlier thread that in Sredni Stog, South Caucasian ancestry seems to peak in the younger samples, regardless of other components.

Seems like, archeologically, the best link would be Svbodnoe or Remontnoye to facilitate this. The archeological description of Remontnoye provided by Anthony in the supplement notes a material culture with links to Sredni Stog, and a suggestion that they were seasonally migrating between the lower Don and the Manych Depression. Sounds like an ideal candidate, if accurate.

EthanR said...

If something like that were the case, then Yamnaya would naturally be slightly more South Caucasian-rich than Sredni Stog due to being (a) slightly younger, and (b) originating from somewhere relatively east in the Sredni Stog cultural sphere, still in sufficient proximity to those marriage networks (such as Repin).

Rob said...

The Supplemental note for Remontnoye seems speculative. For ex: ''These mounds, usually solitary, were the earliest burials in the steppes north of the North Caucasus, and were distributed from the lower Kuban to the Caspian Depression. ', there is no comparative dating to support this statement.
Also the reference to migratory routes seem speculative, even if they had strontium data, i dont think it's very reliable

Not saying it is 'not correct', but it's not exactly proven

Rob said...

@ Rob
''Circa 3700 the Ukraine eneolithic samples have tons of EEF ancestry (Cernavoda, some Sredni Stog)'

Obviously Cernavoda are in western Ukraine. I suspect analysing all the Sredni Stog would be a major undertaking & challenging, we'd actually have to check if S/S have EEF.

Rob said...

This post says ''We do not know when the R1b-V1636 clans entered the northern Caucasus region, or from where''

But could R1b-V1636 be 'local' to the north Caucasus? Satanay was R1a-something, but that's just one sample.
I get the feeling that V1636 is somewhere half up the Volga

Davidski said...

Aren't there Eneolithic EHG-like samples from north of the Caspian with R1b-V1636?

EthanR said...

I think they generally all have 10-15% CHG. They are at Ekaterinovskiy and S'yezzheye.

Moustaki said...

They obviously have Berezhnovka-like ancestry and the clue is R-V1636.

All of these EHG groups in the forest steppe and even Karelia have a Berezhnovka-like signal to varying degrees. R-V1636 and J1 as well as the West Asian-related mtDNA clades attest to it.

Hunter-gatherers had low population densities. Contacts with hunter-gatherers from the steppe would cause geneflow that would be otherwise hard to dilute.

Doesn't mean that R-V1636 is local to the North Caucasus per se, but it's been there for quite a while at least.

@Davidski

Those EHG-like samples with R-V1636 date to the Neolithic.

They received their steppe ancestry well before ~ 6000 BCE.

Moustaki said...

It's the same basic admixture event as Khvalynsk, but where EHG ancestry wasn't as heavily diluted.

A mixture of a steppe population rich in CHG-related ancestry and a local forest steppe population poor in that ancestry.


Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

Could you do these samples?
https://www.mediafire.com/file/gclchgzrglzm45e/Gyuris_2025.zip/file

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

I wonder if Steppe Maykop left a mark on the surrounding linguistic communities like NW Caucasian and PIE?

Rob said...

“ The "persistent coping" is because there are multiple lines of evidence now supporting it (in particular see the archeological”

The ~6% Aknashen ancestry possibly in Yamnaya is a far cry from the made-up Coping they came up with 🤣

Rob said...

Which R1b-V1636 individuals date to 6000 BC ?

Ekaterinovka Mis are c. 4500 BC (according to animal bones).
The Samara_HG is by contrast R1b-P297 ~ M73 (~ 5500 BC), with no CHG but a little bit of TTK.
This suggests that there was a migration from somewhere in the Caucasus-lower Volga-Caspian region toward the middle VOlga


Rob said...

This individual is interesting - Russia_Samara_Chekalino-4_N:I6303 BC_3578
Basically 100% EHG

As if Comb-Pick/ Lyalovo people replaced the 'cosmopolitan' Khvalysnk people before themselves being replaced by Yamnaya

Moustaki said...

@Rob

The earliest samples date to ~ 5500 BCE.


Rob said...

@ Moustaki

''The earliest samples date to ~ 5500 BCE.''

As per above, the corrosponding animal bones from the same burials only date c 4700 BC. Meaning 5500 is due to a several hundred year reservoir effect., suported by the isotopic dietary data.
Therefore we do not know where R1b-V1636 was c. 5500 bc

Rob said...

All I see is some non-carbon dated with a broad estimated range of 5500 - 4700 BC. You can tell the non dated samples, because they lack something like ''5925±25 BP, PSUAMS-8842'' after it

Tom said...

If Yamnaya emerged from the Lower Mikhaylovka (whose territory appears to be where most later Yamnaya kurgans, flat graves and signs of human activity also happen to be found), then archaeology suggests the “proto-Yamnaya” were originally a more sedentary, agro-pastoralist group wedged between and presumably in contact with Tripolye, EEF-rich Usatove, DDNC-rich cultures of the upper Dnieper, and Repin people. They wouldn’t have become nomadic pastoralists until after migrating to the Volga, Caspian, Kuban etc. from this comparatively western, “Old Europe” influenced homeland. I do not understand how this geography and time cannot adequately explain much of the Anatolia_N in Yamnaya.

Lazaridis claimed basal PIE was derived from a 50% Iran_Chl migrant wave that invaded EHG territory. That idea was then scrapped and we found out that the language was from CHG. Now the Yamnaya are 20-25% Aknashen_N. This is why I claim the man is “persistently coping”, because for years he’s been pushing this Ex Oriente Lux angle whilst regularly going on rants against Northern/Eastern Europe with the likes of Taleb on Twatter.

So do forgive me for being sceptical about his intentions and conclusions LOL.

Davidski said...

@Norfern

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Lqpw5QyoHzUYjJZ7Ws86-sVu7VplzsVQ/view?usp=sharing

EthanR said...

Yamnaya potentially being from Mikhailovka I is not a problem, because Sredni Stog probably formed, and at the very least received ancestry from, further east.

But in any event, Yamnaya is probably from Repin.

EthanR said...

Anyway, HF found the page for the Kultepe study:
https://search.trdizin.gov.tr/tr/yayin/detay/1259979/kultepe-kanis-toplulugunun-biyolojik-ve-sosyal-yapisinin-multidisipliner-bir-yaklasimla-analizi

"This project applies multidisciplinary bioarchaeological research, aiming to understand the complex and multilayered structures and dynamics of the Kültepe-Kanesh Bronze Age human population. Ancient DNA, biological distance, osteological, and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses were applied to human skeletons from the Early and Middle Bronze Age. A total of 57 individuals were sampled for ancient DNA, and viable results were obtained from 29 samples. Population genetics analyses were carried out on 27 of these samples and kinship analyses on 13 samples. These results established that the sampled individuals from Karum Ib-Ia (1835-1685 BCE) and Early Bronze Age III levels are generally closer to Anatolian Bronze Age populations than to Mesopotamian and Syrian populations. Within the sampled individuals it was not possible to distinguish individuals genetically distinct from the others and possibly of Mesopotamian or Syrian origin. Kinship analyses have revealed that relationships are common, especially among individuals buried in the same grave type. For biological distance analysis, 102 non-metric dental characteristics were recorded from 44 individuals, and results compared with published data. These results demonstrated that the population is similar to populations of West Asia and North Africa, and closest to populations from Topaklı (Nevşehir) and Klazomenai (İzmir) in Anatolia.."

Shrikant said...

Repin ain't the origin, David Anthony rectified that theory last year or so. The thing with Repin is it clashes with Mikhailovka and is probably complementary with it as part of Post Sredny cultural complex. I don't remember precisely, but NV3003 sure isn't Yamnaya profile in autosomes, it's rather Sredny without Dnieper_N, i.e. an Eastern Sredny Don variant. KST001 is almost Yamnaya, albeit Maikop admixed given it's location lies in Vonyuchka. It seems some Remontnoye herders escaped to Sredny due to possible further intrusion of Maikop x Steppe Maikop westwards beyond Manych and into Ukraine proper.

Tom said...

Target: Ukraine_Mykhailivka_EBA
Distance: 5.4218% / 0.05421775
82.2 Russia_Steppe_Eneolithic
6.8 Ukraine_N
6.0 Ukraine_Eneolithic_Trypillia
5.0 Ukraine_Deriivka_N
0.0 Azerbaijan_Caucasus_lowlands_LN
0.0 Georgia_Kotias
0.0 Georgia_N
0.0 Romania_IronGates_Mesolithic
0.0 Russia_Caucasus_Maikop_Novosvobodnaya
0.0 Russia_Don_N
0.0 Russia_EHG
0.0 Russia_Nalchik_E
0.0 Russia_Remontnoye_Eneolithic
0.0 Turkey_Barcin_LN

Rob said...

Not sure what DA clarified, but this is what he wrote - ''From this sequence it seems that Repin ceramics appeared in Eneolithic, pre-Yamnaya settlements on the Volga and middle Don, that were contemporary with Sredni-Stog-like
ceramics on the lower Don; then the Repin style spread southward and westward in the early Yamnaya period, replacing Sredni-Stog-like components at sites in the lower Don and Dnieper steppes.'

But the Repin-like pottery in west Yamnaya is cord-impressed (? like Derivka), whilst further east it is combed or more simply decorated.

Rob said...

@ Ethan- trying to convince them to analyse CA-EBA Demircihoyk. That might be more interesting

EthanR said...

@Rob
I did quite a while ago send an email to Yediay asking about Cernavoda/Usatovo/Stog being somehow included in their analysis of Kulluoba etc (Kulluoba and Demircihoyuk may as well be sibling sites). Hopefully something like that makes the published version.

I do think Kultepe will be insightful though - while there is some trace Hattic, Hurrian, Luwian etc in the material, overall the analysis of the Karum period records suggest a very predominantly Hittite speaking population at Kultepe. So I suspect we will see some I-L701 and Steppe ancestry.

Rob said...

Looking further- some of samples labelled 'Sredni Stog' are not - e.g. Vasilyevski Kordon, some of the Dereivka samples, etc.

Rob said...

@ Ethan & /or all
Which of the subsets of Don Yamnaya which have higher sredni stog & I2a, and which other the more classic ones?

EthanR said...

I don't have time to add all the YHgs to the sample names, but when I reviewed before I didn't notice any obvious correlation between autosomal profile and I-L699 vs R-M269, although I notice that the R-M269 tend to be somewhat younger.

https://pastebin.com/HNNTX6JL

Rob said...

I had a look at Yamnaya models with a distal qpAdm set-up.
Seems like they don't require any south Caucasian Farmer, only EEF
The winning model was, something like
EHG 8%, TTK 25% CHG 30% Dnieper_HG 26% Starcevo 10% (easy pass)
https://justpaste.it/ijem5

Not sure about this, seems that TTK 'eats' up EHG ancestry to a degree.
Proximally, Yamnaya can be modelled as ~ 90% Mikhailovka + 10% Dneper HG, or 90% kst-1 + 10% Ukr

Only some post-4000bc individuals require extra SCF (Yamnaya_Ozera_o, some north Caucasian Yamna, some Cernavoda-Usatavo). This suggests that Majkop groups largely avoided Yamnaya, and instead went directly west to mix with Cernavoda chiefs.





Shomu tepe said...

is there really that much TTK origin in PG2001?

Shomu tepe said...

Caucasian admixture is present in the Volga cline, at least since the Mesolithic (Mesolithic Labyazhi, Samara HG, samples of Yekaterinovka and Khvalynsk, older than 5100 BC). Moreover, this is the same Caucasian source as in Berezhnevka

Ash said...

Target: Russia_Potapovka_o2:I0419__BC_2050__Cov_49.86%
Distance: 1.5776% / 0.01577636
94.0 Russia_MLBA_Sintashta
6.0 Turkmenistan_Gonur_BA_1

BMAC ancestry at Potapovka? Not surprising considering there is archeological trail...

Shomu tepe said...

It is interesting that the Berezhnev with the whg haplogroup I-S12195 (Iron Gate of the Balkans) did not have the Dnieper-Donetsk admixture (Iron Gate proxy), unlike the others who were ehg men, maybe you counted incorrectly?

Tom said...

@ Rob

Does Mikhailovka itself work as Steppe Eneolithic + Dnieper + EEF mix? Or does it require something Nalchik-like?

Shomu tepe said...

burials KST001 and NV3003 in the article are indicated under the Maykop influence, and both of them have a South Caucasian Neolithic mixture.

Shomu tepe said...

in the PCA space, NV3003 is located inside the triangle - Berezhnevka, Nalchik Eneolithic NCK001 and Tyumen


Target: Russia_Stavropol_Maykop/LateSteppe_Eneolithic_EBA:NV3003__BC_3714__Cov_76.55%
Distance: 1.5648% / 0.01564800 | R3P
50.6 Russia_Volgograd_Berezhnovka_N
34.4 Russia_Kabardino-Balkaria_Nalchik_Eneolithic
15.0 Russia_Tyumen_HG.SG

Shomu tepe said...

this pit man from Mikhailovka, Ukraine, a native of the Kalmyk steppes of the Eneolithic, or a mixture of pit Samara and pit Kalmykia

Target: Ukraine_Mykhailivka_EBA_Yamnaya:I32534_enhanced.TW__BC_3509__Cov_unknown
Distance: 4.1894% / 0.04189416 | R4P
51.4 Russia_Kalmykia_EBA_Yamnaya
39.8 Russia_Kalmykia_Steppe_Eneolithic
5.2 Slovakia_LBK_Medzi_Kanálmi
3.6 China_Guangxi_Dushan_N.AG

Target: Ukraine_Mykhailivka_EBA_Yamnaya:I32534_enhanced.TW__BC_3509__Cov_unknown
Distance: 2.9390% / 0.02938980 | R4P
49.8 Russia_Kalmykia_EBA_Yamnaya
37.6 Russia_Samara_EBA_Yamnaya
7.6 Lithuania_LN.AG
5.0 China_Yunnan_Yuxi_MN

Rob said...

@ Tom

curiously, the Mikhailovka individual can be modelled as a simple, two-way mix of CHG + EHG

Mikhailovka_En
Georgia_Satsurblia.SG
Russia_Arkhangelsk_Veretye_Mesolithic.SG
best coefficients: 0.641 0.359
std. errors: 0.028 0.028
tail prob 0.411

This is the same genomic profile as the Krivjanski 4000 bc J2a male.

Now, take a look at core Yamnaya (minus the Caucasus-Yamnaya set which are admixed with 'LVC' or Majkop) with G25/PCA. They sit just 'northwest' of her. What does this mean ?


@ Arsen Tepe

Yes, even with FRE correction the Golubaya Krinitsa group date as early as 5200 BC, who have CHG.
So we have a population rich in CHG between the lower Don, middle Don & lower Volga; with variations in EHG vs CHG proportion and some differential pull toward Dnieper_HG (e.g. GK), on the one hand, and TTK/West Siberian on the other (e.g. Berezhnovka).
So the nay-sayers post Ghaliachi were wrong to doubt us :)

BTW, the Mihailovka pit man was a woman

Shomu tepe said...

@Rob
didn't check her gender

Davidski said...

If it actually turns out that Yamnaya has EEF ancestry, rather than any significant Anatolian-related input via Armenia or Iran, this will reflect very badly on Lazaridis.

He should've been much more cautions over the years in regard to this topic.

Shomu tepe said...

Target: Russia_Rostov_Krivyansky-9_N:I11828_alt__BC_4307__Cov_73.73%
Distance: 1.1940% / 0.01194004 | R5P
44.8 Russia_Volgograd_Berezhnovka_N
19.6 Russia_Nalchik_E.SG
17.4 Ukraine_Dnieper_N_Mariupol.SG
10.8 Georgia_Kotias_Mesolithic.SG
7.4 Iran_GanjDareh_N.AG

Gio said...

"strictu sensu" is a mistake, because the ablative of sensus, -us, a name of the 4th declension, is in -u, but the adjective strictus, -a, -um in the ablative both masculine and neuter is in -o, thus "stricto sensu".

Rob said...

“Western Yamnaya” definitely has EEF. The reason why it was originally proposed that it doesn’t was because of the assumptions that Yamnaya samara is the original samara. But even YamSam guys are more western than LVC, Berezhnovka, etc

To me, the actual result is less important. I just think the research needs to be conducted in an more competent and honest manner

Shomu tepe said...

Why is such close attention paid to this eef mixture in pit culture? Could this small share somehow influence the overall situation of steppe cattle breeders? Do you think that these northern Black Sea eef gave the steppe dwellers the IE language?

Davidski said...

EEF is from Europe, so if Yamnaya has EEF ancestry, rather than Armenian or Iranian ancestry, then it's much less Asian than Reich, Lazaridis and Patterson argued over the years.

This is also very bad news for anyone who still wants to argue that the PIE homeland was in the Caucasus or Iran.

No one serious sees EEF as the PIE population. That's a crackpot theory.

Shomu tepe said...

@Davidski
i think there was eef influence both through caucasian neolithic and ukrainian neolithic. at least we have typical south caucasian lineages in the steppes such as j2b-l283, j2-m319 and j2-y3020

Shomu tepe said...

She definitely has some South Caucasian ancestry
Target: Ukraine_Ozera_EBA_Yamnaya.AG:I1917.AG__BC_3005__Cov_53.59%
Distance: 1.2454% / 0.01245364 | R4P
52.2 Russia_Samara_EBA_Yamnaya
20.6 Russia_LateMaikop_1d.rel.I11132.I11133.AG
15.4 Romania_Bodrogkeresztúr_ECA
11.8 Iran_ShahTepe_BA.SG

Davidski said...

The Yamaya Ozera sample is very different from the typical Yamnaya genotype.

This individual is basically 50% Maykop, which is highly unusual.

Rob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tom said...

@ Rob

Are we working with the same sample? In G25, EBA Mikhailovka is simultaneously Steppe_Eneolithic and EEF-shifted relative to the later Yamnaya core, not Krivjansky-like. If you have earlier Mikhailovka coordinates, please upload them if you have time. If not then it’s just some variance in the methods I guess and I'll align with your analysis.

In terms of the EBA Mikhailovka in G25, this sort of structure makes sense. Archaeologists have attested to a convergence of “Repin” ceramic-using people and Tripolye groups in the Northwest Pontic region during the collapsing Sredny Stog horizon. Yamnaya could be explained as Mikhailovka + late/post Stog groups richer in Ukraine_N from the Dnieper. Female exogamy with the ancestors of Corded Ware?

Tom said...

EEF societies almost certainly impacted the development and formation of steppe culture. Starcevo-related agriculturalists migrated northwards, introducing domesticated animals and subsistence ideas to Ukrainian HG’s. These Ukrainian HG’s had close links with Don and Volga EHG’s, who could be pre-PIE (or maybe all of these steppe HG’S fell on a pre-PIE language continuum). The Balkans had really early copper metallurgy, which the steppe people as far as Volga were involved in, and this was almost certainly one of the vectors of early migrations that led to the formation of Sredny Stog and in turn, Cernavoda. Kurgans appear to be structures that emerged as a result of proto-kurgan mounds of the peoples of the Lower Volga steppe coming into contact with megalithic structures and ideas around the EEF-steppe contact zone in Moldova. Some evidence even suggests that the earliest examples of wheeled vehicles may have emerged among Old European copper minors in the Carpathians etc. etc.

Shomu tepe said...

in Remontnoe, also prefers the South Caucasus and Sekh gebi, and a bit of Starcevo
Target: Russia_Rostov_Remontnoye_EBA_Yamnaya:I28682__BC_3682__Cov_76.03%
Distance: 1.9068% / 0.01906837 | R4P
52.2 Russia_Volgograd_Berezhnovka_N
28.2 Russia_Caucasus_Eneolithic.AG
14.2 Iran_SehGabi_C
5.4 Romania_EN_Starcevo.AG

EthanR said...

IBD hits between EN Remontnoye and Yamnaya, as well as some mtdna, make me lean toward the South Caucasian connection being legitimate.

Linguistically it doesn't change the picture at all. Ironically, I think Cernavoda cluster A may have had close to zero south Caucasian ancestry, and if they were pre-proto Anatolian speakers then..

Shomu tepe said...

@EthanR
why can't I do anything with remontnoye for late pit samples ☹️ probably in qpAdm or IBD, pit = 100 percent Remontnoye, but not in G25 🤨

Shomu tepe said...

Work begins to create artificial human DNA from scratch
Synthetic Human Genome Project gets go ahead https://share.google/vZOYkOAHzWXC4bYQj

Rob said...

@ Tom
Mikhailovka I32535 ?

Target
Ukraine_Mykhailivka_EBA_Yamnaya:I32534_enhanced.TW__BC_3509
Ukraine_VertebaCave_MLTrypillia
Georgia_Kotias.SG
Russia_EHG
11.4 38.2 50.4

but with qpAdm it comes out as 2-way. G25 models might come out over-fitted, e.g Look at Arsen's posts here

Shomu tepe said...

Golubaya KRINITSA, good coverage
Target: Russia_Don_N_Mariupol.SG:NEO212.SG__BC_5597__Cov_95.00%
Distance: 1.9744% / 0.01974426 | R5P
36.8 Ukraine_Mesolithic.AG
36.4 Russia_Samara_Chekalino_Elshanka_N
19.8 Georgia_Kotias_Mesolithic.SG
3.6 Iran_GanjDareh_N
3.4 Turkey_Central_Boncuklu_PPN.WGC.SG

not pure chg but as usual chg/iran

Shomu tepe said...

berezhnevka also fits well here. It means that people with similar berezhnevka lived in the Neolithic of Kalmykia, Stavropol, etc.
Target: Russia_Don_N_Mariupol.SG:NEO212.SG__BC_5597__Cov_95.00%
Distance: 1.5490% / 0.01548972 | R4P
54.8 Russia_Volgograd_Berezhnovka_N
25.8 Russia_Minino_Mesolithic.AG
15.0 Romania_IronGates_Mesolithic.AG
4.4 Turkey_Central_Boncuklu_PPN.WGC.SG

Carlos Aramayo said...

Zeng, T.C., et al., 2025. "Ancient DNA reveals the prehistory of the Uralic and Yeniseian peoples", Nature, Advance online publication.

Published online: 02 July 2025

https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/sites/reich.hms.harvard.edu/files/inline-files/s41586-025-09189-3.pdf

"...The 16 Seima-Turbino period individuals were diverse in their ancestry, also harbouring DNA from Indo-Iranian-associated pastoralists and from a range of hunter-gatherer groups. Thus, both cultural transmission and migration were key to the Seima-Turbino phenomenon, which was involved in the initial spread of early Uralic-speaking communities..."

"...Linguists have documented hundreds of Indo-Iranian loanwords that present-day Uralic languages have inherited from the Proto-Uralic speech community or from early Uralic communities just after its breakup. The Indo-Iranian expansion has been linked to the spread of Steppe_MLBA ancestry from the Sintashta population of the Trans-Ural region into other parts of Central and West Asia (where it persisted into historically attested Iranic speakers), and further into South Asia. Our findings from Rostovka and Satyga-16, showing contact and admix-ture between a Steppe_MLBA population (which, from archaeological considerations, is plausibly that of the Abashevo culture) and Yakutia_LNBA, provides an attractive context in which this linguistic exchange could have first begun, and offers another line of evidence for Uralic-speaking groups being present at Seima-Turbino sites, in line
with prior suggestions."

Rob said...

The Mikhailovka female being predominantly 'lower Volga' points to female exogamy against a continuity of Azov-Dnieper I2a- lineages, which exaplins why they shifted their genomic profile, before they then moved out and Yamnaya arrived

EthanR said...

@shomu tepe
No clue

https://imgur.com/a/tyCdWvI

Rob said...

@ Ethan
“ IBD hits between EN Remontnoye and Yamnaya, as well as some mtdna, make me lean toward the South Caucasian connection being legitimate.”

No issue there I posted models when Wang et al came out, plus there’s obvious halogroup links. The issue was that EEF admixture was for some reason being denied. One reason was (amongst others), at least until the recent Cernavoda data came out, it wasn’t obvious from a uniparental perspective. I pointed out many years ago there was some EEF admixture was mediated via a kind of “Island hopping” manner by a males carrying local Huntergatherer lines. But now Cernavoda has some G2, E-M78, etc there’s no doubt there either


@ Tom
Btw some of the “late Tripolje style” is actually shell- tempered steppe pottery. The idea of farmer colonisation of the western steppe has been vindicated, albeit under the lead of steppe chiefs. I thought I saw one of the Yamnaya individuals in Niktin was even buried in a GAC-type
cairn

Shomu tepe said...

@EthanR

https://i.ibb.co/nqz7MsZW/1751531211253.jpg

Here are some of the earliest examples of steppe populations, the so-called pb and pv groups, what do you think? I think that they were the real Proto-Indo-Europeans, the very first, the most original. Some groups of them went further north, forming the Khvalynsk wedge. Some went west. Forming Golubaya Krinitsa, Sredny Stog, Chernovoda Kartal, etc. At that time, the average temperature was even higher than the real ones. And the humidity was good. The weather and climate of this region of the Volga and Don were favorable to the fact that these steppe groups of cattle breeders multiplied.

Rob said...

Here is a semi-proximal model for Volga-Caspian Yamnaya

Russia_Samara_EBA_Yamnaya
Steppe_En
Ukraine_N
Hungary_EN_Starcevo_1

best coefficients: 0.795 0.115 0.090
std. errors: 0.022 0.019 0.014
tail prob 0.361

So, even the most eastern “IE” have some western ancestry. Next, we might try some more proximal modelling using the various sub-clusters of Cernavoda, ‘Sredni Stog”, GAC, Tripolje as sources of western ancestry.

Shomu tepe said...

where is another good comment ☹️

EthanR said...

@shomu type
I think almost the entirety of the red ochre cultural complex was indo-european speaking, I am just not sure whether they are *our* archaic and late PIE speakers.

The Eneolithic Don remains under-investigated.

Tom said...

@ Rob

I can’t find anything about that in particular, but GAC burial practices seem to have influenced Yamnaya tumuli in relation to the entrances of their graves. Nikitin did find Sredny Stog people in Trypillian burials on the Dnieper. When you couple this with known material exchanges (ceramics, copper, etc.) and population movements from east into the NW Pontic and Carpathians, there were interaction zones between steppe and “Old Europe” genetics opening up from the Dnieper to the Carpathians by the late 5th / early 4th millennium BC. Later on GAC influence comes into play.

So multiple proximate streams of Anatolia_N ancestry for Yamnaya. I will be interested to see how things look.

Shomu tepe said...

@EthanR
What kind of culture is "the red ochre cultural complex", what are its approximate boundaries and dating? As far as I know, hunter-gatherers used red ochre in Africa. Including the first Neanderthals.

Rob said...

@ Ethan

“ I think almost the entirety of the red ochre cultural complex was indo-european speaking, ”

Nah This complex is so heterogeneous that there would’ve been multiple languages spoken. Even a Single site like Khvkynsk II was at least a bilingual microcosm.
Groups like Nalchik or the high-central Asian ancestry groups of the falsely-name “Eneolithic steppe” were not related to PIE, which would have been limited to the Dnieper -Don region.
Even two somewhat closely related EHG groups 200 km apart would’ve spoken very different languages, because they fragmented and drifted since the post glacial period, take a look at Americam languages which are so diverse despite being the result of a relatively singular colonisation episode not too long ago
Maybe Brezhnvka spoke a para-IE group, but that’s about it.

EthanR said...

@Rob

The Suvorovo-Novodanilovka burial tradition to me seems sufficiently homogenous and so specific that, to the extent archeology can actually provide solid evidence for linguistic unity, I'm pretty well satisfied.

- Nalchik: contains mixed burial traditions, and I believe the SuNo/ Red Ochre tradition is actually a minority, so I agree, not predominantly IE.
- Piedmont Steppe: the graves with full inventories are basically carbon copy SuNo graves, at least to the extent I've read.
- Middle Volga: Copper appearing here during the SuNo, and what appear to be clear Volga lineages showing up in Suvorovo itself, convinces me of strong connection. Khlopkov Bugor appears homogenous, while Khvalynsk's heterogeneity is compatible with the presence of non-IE groups frequenting the site.
- Berezhnova: I agree.
- Dnieper/Repin/Cernavoda: These should be IE, but I think it's complicated to figure out the full picture without more early Don samples. Knowing whether the UKR SS samples we have fall on the I-S12195 level or the I-L704 level would be helpful to know as well.
- Suvorovo/Csongrad: self-explanatory

All of these groups, with the exception of Nalchik, feature individuals with 70%+ "Berezhnovka ancestry" (for lack of a better term; I note the irony of the Berezhnovka cemetery probably being younger than a lot of these groups).

Of course, the only ones to avoid being immediate dead-ends are Eastern Sredni Stog (Repin->Yamnaya/Afanasievo/CWC) and Cernavoda I.

@Shomu tepe

https://i.gyazo.com/58a72d8baec18a0167a001797f9ae529.png

Rob said...

@ Tom


Unfortunately, there are no aDNA from Bug-Dniester, etc, they would be interesting to check for the earliest phase of EEF-steppe contacts

Here's the GAC/Yamnaya burial
I20975 - KM17P2; KM-2017 Kurgan 2, Burial 2, male,
2872-2627 calBCE (4141±21 BP, BE-8040.1.1) Kurgan 2
Burial 2 was made in a Globular Amphora-style stone sarcophagus''

Rob said...

@ Ethan R

A BPV homeland scenario has a simplistic appeal about it, due to the ubiquity of its autosomal signature, and alleged archaeological trail.

However, kurgans did not originate in the northern Caucasus (although one can read these claims everywhere on the Internet today). In fact they are clearly intrusive there, as they suddenly appear after 4500 BC, with no local antecedents or stages of evolution. The Mariupol burial in Niktin et al is very interesting, as we’ve got a 4700 BC individual buried in proto-kurgan stone barrow. In this area, We can see a we can see an evolution of complexity in burial design that is absent in areas for the east

The “Suvorovo burial pose” is an evolution of the Marriupol burial, with a body on its back with legs straight shifting to a body on its back within his legs flexed. The Hunter gatherer burial from the Volga region do not show any of these precedents, whilst the caucuses had cave burials.

Moreover, linguistically, a Volga scenario fails for the same reason as a Caucasian, East Anatolian or Iranian homeland fails. As we now can trace Hittites and Luwians to a KTL -like group, we are left with the fact that the deepest divergence within Indo-European falls between Cernavoda and the proto-CW-Yamnaya group. Such a fact is not compatible with a Volga-Caucasus Homeland. In the latter scenario, it would mean that KTL and Yamnaya are language shifters, and with this shift they’d sit on the same chronological -dialectical divergence horizon.

We are left with a scenario that the Anatolian vs -“ core’ divergence is positioned between KTL and Yamnaya/CW, emerging from a pre-existing Hunter-gather a dialect chain between the Dnieper and the Don region. I think BPV was just a dynamic area, which received a lot of central Asian ancestry, and also got stimulated by Mariupol (noting the Berezhnovka male), had a boom, then a bust


We don’t need any more resolution within I2a-L701, whatever, it is clear that at least 3 different of its haplotypes were present in the steppe, and this clade spread from the Dnieper region. We really need to do is find the progenitor of R1a -M417 and R1b-M269, which will further hedge the weight of evidence.

Rob said...

To get back to some more proximal Yamnaya models; in summary-

Russia_Samara_EBA_Yamnaya:
Steppe_En + SredniStog: 0.614 0.386 Fail (TP 0.013)
Steppe_En + SredniStog + Tripolje: 0.574 0.367 0.058 Pass (0.79)
Steppe_En + SredniStog + GAC: 0.589 0.350 0.061 Pass (0.84)
Steppe_En + Ukraine_N + Starcevo_1 0.790 0.164 0.046 Pass (0.09)

Steppe_En + KTL1 + 0.744 0.256 hard Fail (~ 0)
Steppe_En + KTL2: 0.948 0.052 hard Fail (~ 0)

So Yamnaya is more western than 'Eneolithic steppe', and even requires some EEF. But Cernavoda are a poor fit for source of EEF, because they have too much EEF (+ Ceranvoda is too far away to make sense)



Shomu tepe said...

don't call the proto-Indopean culture by this disgusting Russian word "yamnaya" when there is a beautiful laconic English equivalent "pit"

Rob said...

@ Arsen- you need to keep up, Yamnaya is not 'proto-Indo-European'. You can call it what you please.

Shomu tepe said...

@Rob

what samples did you take as SeredniiStih? there are some there that have a large percentage of steppe, similar to berezhnevka, and there are some that have nothing steppe at all.

I think the following picture is emerging. The steppe cattle breeders SeredniiStih from Ukraine partially went east, and in the area of ​​the Kalmyk steppes mixed with their steppe brothers, like Berezhnevka, and + some South Caucasian admixtures from Maikop or Ginchi, finally formed the profile of the pit culture

Cheese said...

As a layman having skimmed through this comment section and fora, I keep on reading about an assumed academic conflict, but what does this refer to? What's with Lazaridis and why people have this skepticism towards him, what and how exactly is he 'coping'?

To me it seems the Berezhnovka sample/area is the closest to 'original'/earliest PIE we can get, spreading out into different directions, is this correct?

Ash said...

What is your assessment regarding this Indo aryan guy?

Target: Uzbekistan_Bustan_BA_o2:I11520__BC_1547__Cov_66.64%
Distance: 1.8161% / 0.01816104
54.4 Iran_ShahrISokhta_BA2
30.2 Turkmenistan_Gonur_BA_1
11.0 Russia_MLBA_Sintashta
4.4 TibetanPlateau_Zongri


Do you think this 1550bce Indo aryan formed in central asia and moved later to swat or formed in swat between 2200-1600bce and later migrated to Bustan....

Also this

"Archaeological investigations at Bustan Burial Mound have revealed a complex funerary
ritual related to the usage of fire. On top of the graves there were piled rocks, showing the
influence of Steppe traditions. There were inhumation as well as cremation burials. There
was a dedicated chamber for cremation of bodies at Bustan, including multi-usage hearths
and altars. The altars were functionally classified into ones used for libations, ones used for
meals, and ones used for sacrifices. The funerary rite documented at Bustan, specifically in
relation to the role of fire, is not known at this time from any other site Iran, South Asia, or
the Central Eurasian Steppes."

Ash said...

Is this true?

David Anthony (2007)

According to Anthony in The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, Seima–Turbino smiths used lost‑wax (cire perdue) and hollow‑mold casting techniques—as seen in their distinctive socketed axe and spearheads with side hooks. Anthony suggests these methods were “probably learned from BMAC metalsmiths, the only reasonably nearby source (perhaps through a skilled captive)” .

Hollow-mold casting of weapons.

These appear alongside exotic materials like lapis lazuli (from Afghanistan) and nephrite (from near Lake Baikal), reinforcing the idea of long-distance interaction .

Davidski said...

@Cheese

Lazaridis spent over a decade arguing that there were large-scale population movements from West Asia to Eastern Europe (Yamnaya is 50% Armenian!!!), and that these migrations brought Indo-European languages to Europe. He also argued that there was not enough Eastern European steppe ancestry in ancient Anatolia to put the Indo-European homeland in Eastern Europe.

But the evidence for these conclusions was very weak. He basically just misinterpreted some formal statistics.

Has he apologized for any of this, or at least made it clear that some mistakes were made? Nope.

Now he's arguing that proto-Anatolians moved into Anatolia from the steppe via the Caucasus. Again, there are serious problems with this, the main one being that he hasn't seriously looked at the Balkan route, which is much more plausible overall.

Shomu tepe said...

@Rob
.."you need to keep up, Yamnaya is not 'proto-Indo-European'. You can call it what you please."

It seems that Gabru showed models where it was clearly visible that the pit culture was best suited for the early Corded Ware people, and no other steppe population was better suited for this than the pit.

EthanR said...

Well, we have Berezhnovka, Kartal, and Kaman-Kalehoyuk firmly on the the I-S12195 line. The residue of late Stog on the Lower Don appears to be I-L704, so unless that's unrepresentative of what was there earlier (as in, ~4500BC), we should expect I-S12195 to emerge either west of the Lower Don or somewhat east of it.

I we can figure out the origin of Cernavoda I, then for my money, everything else will become clear.

With respect to Mariupol burials, the ochre burials are a minority (and slightly younger), and that situation of the partially complete burial form is paralleled with the (what I believe to be) contemporaneous supine, knees raised burials at Ekaterinovka.

I don't think any of the ochre Mariupol burials are sampled, besides the contaminated one giving R-L21 reads. But if they are UKR_N-like then in either case you have to argue that one group assimilated the other.

Rob said...

@ arsen

“ It seems that Gabru showed models where it was clearly visible that the pit culture was best suited for the early Corded Ware people, and no other steppe population was better suited for this than the pit”.

The link between CW and Yamnaya was made by Haak et al in 2015. It works statistically but in reality things are more complex. In fact we can model Yamnaya originating from CW ;)

But that’s all irrelevant to what being discussed, because you’re missing the point about the phylogenic relationships amongst steppe cultures

Finngreek said...

@Rob
"In fact we can model Yamnaya originating from CW ;)"
Really? Is there a paper on that?

Rob said...

@ EthanR
I prefer to take a broader picture rather than focussing on L703,

Under I-L702, there are 3 'steppe-related' haplotypes
- I-P78 - Yassitepe, Kazanlak, Beli Breyag
- I-S22311- I-Y87044: Pietrele, Smyadovo, Theopetra, Carlomanesti
- I-S22311- L-703: main expander


''.With respect to Mariupol burials, the ochre burials are a minority (and slightly younger), and that situation of the partially complete burial form is paralleled with the (what I believe to be) contemporaneous supine, knees raised burials at Ekaterinovka.

I don't think any of the ochre Mariupol burials are sampled, besides the contaminated one giving R-L21 reads. But if they are UKR_N-like then in either case you have to argue that one group assimilated the other. But if they are UKR_N-like then in either case you have to argue that one group assimilated the other.''

Maybe you're reading too much into ochre staining. Many of the lower Dnieper cemetreries utilised clay, because that is also a red pigment which was locally available. In Iberia, they sometimes used cinebar
But that is just one component of a bigger package
One can easily make the case that the Dnieper group moving east ~ 5500/5000 BC introduced pre-PIE language as part of the Mariupol culture package. We have 'western outliers' as far as the northern Caucasus

Rob said...

@ Arsen

''what samples did you take as SeredniiStih? there are some there that have a large percentage of steppe, similar to berezhnevka, and there are some that have nothing steppe at all.''

I used actualy Sredni Stog samples, perhaps a future post might look into this.
NB - most of the samples labelled 'Sredni Stog' in publications which have no steppe ancestry aren't actually Sredni Stog period, but are Neolithic. Many are from Derivka, which are fairly irrelevant for Sredni Stog (and mostly R1b-V88); others are from the middle Don region, which are not Sredni Stog either.
Naturally, if you misclassify samples, conclusions are going to be false.

Rob said...

@ Finngreek
No not published, just saying it can

Russia_Samara_EBA_Yamnaya
Estonia_CordedWare.SG, Steppe_En, Ukraine_N
0.206 0.682 0.112
Tail prob 0.221

Rob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
EthanR said...

I'm of the view that I-L702 is an Iron Gates/Carpathian lineage, while I-L699 is the one branch that assuredly moved east.
I-L702: TMRCA of 7236 BCE.

I-P78: TMRCA of 4248 BCE, shows up first in EBA Thrace. The lack of any Steppe/Ukraine samples splitting I-P78 makes me suspect that it was a local lineage, and integrated with Cernavoda I/III groups sometime after the Tell settlements initially collapsed.

I-Y87044: TMRCA of 4275, looks comparable to I-P78 in many regards, except that we actually seem to have an originating sample from just before the Tell settlements collapsed (PIE60/61, ~4550BCE). This sample is basically 25% local forager, 75% standard Gumelnita. At some point this lineage was also absorbed by Cernavoda I/III or Yamna.

So this leaves I-L699 as the only branch unambiguously connected to the neolithic/eneolithic Steppe. It's obviously in Ukraine, and we know it got as far east as to reach the middle Don by ~5000 BCE. Whether and when it reached the Don-Volga interfluve is a different and difficult question.

EthanR said...

Here is a fun prediction for while we wait for the Anatolian samples to be released:

I-L699 will have a predominantly Hittite distribution (as in, appearing in Central Anatolia).
I-P78 will have a predominantly Luwic distribution (as in, appearing in Western, Central, and South-Eastern Anatolia).

EthanR said...

It somehow still remains under-discussed how cool this sample is:
Distance to: Serbia_Roman_elite_2.SG:R6750.SG__AD_155__Cov_65.02%(I-P78)
0.02981522 Italy_Lazio_Roman_Empire_Isola_Sacra_(Southeast_Anatolian_Profile)_(n=1)
0.03028538 Mesopotamia_IA_Neo-Assyrian-Achaemenid_Nevali_Cori_(Syrio-Mesopotamian_Profile)_(n=1)
0.03233580 Mesopotamia_Early_Medieval_Dara_(Mixed_Assyrian+Levantine_Profile)_(n=2)
0.03260095 Hatay_LBA_Alalakh_(n=6)

Cheese said...

What are the arguments on favour of Balkan to Anatolia?

And the Berezhnovka samples I referred to, what's the verdict in those, as they really some to tie the whole area together, from my superficial view.

EthanR said...

@Cheese

Berezhnovka pretty well has the autosomal profile and location we should be looking for, but coincidentally the Berezhnovka sample is probably slightly too young (after RE adjustment and considering how downstream the Yhgs are).

Shomu tepe said...

@Cheese
yes, absolutely so, progress-berezhnevka is the original, and whoever argues with this is a clinical idiot. at least, there is no farmer's admixture from either Ukraine or the South Caucasus
They were shepherds, hunters and fishermen. They took everything they could from the steppe, squeezed out all the juices, what is important, they were half from the north-eastern Caucasus. Since there is all the evidence and facts about the contacts of Seroglazovka and Trialetian.

Rob said...

I don't think that Berezhnovka is what ties PIE, its just a another statistical invention which does not reflect reality. Seems like people havent learned from the previous errors which were published by the 'experts'. Just on rinse repeat.

The answer is simple:
- proto-Anatolians are associated with I-L702. The Luwian-associated I-P78 isn't associated with Berezhnovka cluster, so that removes its centrality.
- nuclear PIE is associated with R1b-M269 and R1a-M17, also missing in the Berezhnovka cluster.

What ties these PIE ^ groups is their geographic proximity, a specific regional form of EHG, enriched with WHG-Ukr N ancestry, and their presence in the Mariupol cluster which evolved into Sreni Stog.

Over time acquired other forms of ancestry, such as CHG, TTK, both types of farmer. Formal modelling shows that the CHG-rich ancestry is from multiple sources, each acquired over 2000 years, some archaic CHG, some from Majkop, etc. And each of the CHG-rich groups were ethno-linguistically distinctive, and non-IE.

@ Ethan - your comments are confused & self-contradictory, Schilling for Harvard's charleton theories will lead to disrepute when the evidence becomes undeniable

Rob said...

The Berezhnovka theory is the same gimmick as the Progress-Piedmont theory, S Arc and any other permutation of Reich/ Patterson/Lazairides/Anthony theories.

I know some commentators have no hope of ever understanding basic facts, but its surprising to see Ethan schilling nonsense.
By his own claim I-P78 is Luwian, but this is not from Berezhnovka. In fact, none of the IE groups are.
It is quite basic
- the proto-Anatolian split is from an I-L702 group in the Dnieper
- the 'nuclear IE' assoc. with R1b-M269 and R1a-M17 are not from Berezhnovka. If they were on this cline, we shoudl see it by now. But they were probably from somewhere just north of the lower Don.

So what links PIE is a specific type of EHG found in the Dnieper Don region, with elevated Dnieper / WHG ancestry. They then acquired CHG, TTK, Majkop, Tripolje ancestry, etc , over 2000 years. There were several sources of CHG-ancestry, all were distinctive, and none of them were IE.

These comments by idiotic Lazarides fanboys are just non constructive, it goes backward and means no further insights will be provided on the blog. Arsen- please find an alternative means to deal with your inferiorty complex



Rob said...

btw Kazanlak_I19452 can be modelled as Neolithic + Yamnaya + Dnieper or Iron Gates HG
But if P78 is from the Iron Gates/ Balkans, I wonder why it took 2000 years to show up. Before 4000 bc, Danubian HG lineages were R1b-V88, C1a2, other types of I2a

EthanR said...

@Rob
I don't see any other proposal that adequately explains what happened on the eneolithic steppe, and its surroundings.

With respect to proto-Anatolian being I-L702, is this not the same thing as calling colonial Englishmen an "R-L151" people? I mean technically, R-U152, R-L21, and R-U106 is all there.. but not recognizing that happenstance misses the point.

Shomu tepe said...

@Rob again, if we say that language is transmitted through men, especially in patrilineal societies, then we should admit that the original, basal Proto-Indo-Europeans were people from Afontova Gora)

Shomu tepe said...

Nostratic Indo-European😄

Rob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Cheese said...

@Rob Which place do you give Berezhnovka in broader perspective? I don't understand why it would be a gimmick? Could Berezhnovka-like ancestry not be a proxy of this EHG you're speaking of, which than acquires Dniepr/WHG ancestry?


EthanR said...

@Rob
"So you're saying that you don't understand what we mean when we off-hand say ''proto-Anatolian I-L702''

There is a proto-Anatolian (late ChL/EBA Thrace) population featuring multiple branches of I-L702. But there is no evidence that pre-proto-Anatolian (as in, Cernavoda I) has anything more than I-L699, hence only the latter has implications for discussing the Eneolithic Steppe (contrary to the suggestion you made earlier re: downplaying the significance of I-L699 phylogeny).

Anyway, if somebody is bored and feels like actually doing Lazaridis/Nikitin/Patterson's job, they could run ancIBD with the key eneolithic Steppe samples, Csongrad, Cernavoda, Usatovo, EBA Thrace etc. That should work to figure some of this stuff out.
I unfortunately don't have the means to do so right now (I might after the new Anatolian samples come out).

Shomu tepe said...

typical russian village meets a hero from "svo" (that's what they call war, otherwise if you call war war you risk a prison term) ukraine
https://x.com/MirovichMedia/status/1941783725718556726

EthanR said...

@Rob
Anyway, if you believe Donets/Azov groups assimilated the Lower Don and Lower Volga as part of a Mariupol cultural sphere in second half of the sixth millenium BCE (similarly to Kotova), then I don't see how a homeland like Berezhnovka (~4500 BCE) is at all incongruent with whatever your model is.

Shomu tepe said...

@Rob I have already written many times why ANE including AG3 were R1

Shomu tepe said...

@Rob
Target: Bulgaria_EBA.AG:I19452.AG__BC_2500__Cov_33.48%
Distance: 0.8489% / 0.00848929 | R3P
52.2 Czechia_C_Baalberge.AG
27.0 Ukraine_CernavodaI_Kartal_C.AG
20.8 Turkey_Central_CamlibelTarlasi_Chalcolithic.AG

EthanR said...

Don't think this ever got posted anywhere but it offers interesting evidence for a Steppe homeland:
www.academia.edu/124328062/Shining_in_the_distance_PIE_colour_terms_revisited

Shomu tepe said...

by the way, someone read my messages here and decided to visualize them on a map, the population like Berezhnevka was given by Chokh_CHG mixed with Lebyazhinka, and the Central Caucasian ones like Nalchik later gave them a South Caucasian mix 👇
https://x.com/Sulkalmakh/status/1941846843454894288

Shomu tepe said...

What do you think, Davidski?

Rob said...

@ Ethan

'There is a proto-Anatolian (late ChL/EBA Thrace) population featuring multiple branches of I-L702. But there is no evidence that pre-proto-Anatolian (as in, Cernavoda I) has anything more than I-L699,''

I disagree, but it's getting beyond the scope of this thread, but if you want to place the PIE genesis in Berezhnovka, then you shold look to the trans-Caucasus (pseudo-Cimmerian) model offered by Harvard. Otherwise it is linguistically and phylogenetically not compatible with a 'western route', too many coincidences, mental gymnastics and irreconcilable contradictions


@ Shomu Tepe
Target: Bulgaria_EBA.AG:I19452 yes there's several ways it can be modelled. Question is - what is most historically plausible and consistent with other lines of evidence ?

Rob said...

https://x.com/Sulkalmakh/status/1941846843454894288

Illustrates how the Dnieper group feeds into the Don, which in turn mixed with Seraglozovskaya(-Berezhnovka), but still maintained distinctive social boundaries.

The 'net' autosomic shift is not a direct surrogate of cultural & linguistic effects, it is often an artefact of available genomes, methodology and unaccounted for population dynamics.

Not sure if the formative North Caucasus steppe group comes from Lower Don vs lower Volga, but minor details. There is lareg benefit from time-sliced images over one difficult to read 'site map' and one PCA on which vague and out of context conclusions are made

Rob said...

@ Arsen

“ I have already written many times why ANE including AG3 were R1”


Everybody knew this 10 years ago. And AG-3 is still a woman, with no Ydna
Given that some suggest that Yhg P*/ pre R came from Southeast Asia, maybe PIE is from Cambodia ? You should write a paper

Rob said...

^ as in the series of time-slice maps of which this example is a part

Rob said...

curiously, the male AFG-2 is Q-NGQ11 :)

Shomu tepe said...

I drew something like + - last year.

https://i.ibb.co/gDjrgPX/1734119078070.jpg

only mine is a little more precise, because he has a source from the East as West Siberian hunter-gatherers, and I have something similar to tutkaul

Shomu tepe said...

@Rob
Here's another interesting one
Target: Bulgaria_EBA.AG:I19452.AG__BC_2500__Cov_33.48%
Distance: 0.6513% / 0.00651263 | R3P
79.8 Hungary_MN_AVK.AG
15.6 Russia_Saratov_Khvalynsk_Eneolithic
4.6 Georgia_Satsurblia_LateUP.SG
😁

Rob said...

Interesting to see some ancient NW Greek samples
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.01.662689v1.supplementary-material

with continuity of proto-Greek R1b-PF7562 in one individual

Rob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Irdi said...

@Davidski, you are way too harsh on Lazaridis, a scholar whose conclusions you have been reaching yourself as of late.

It now seems rather certain, that not only do the Yamnaya peoples possess Iranian Neolithic ancestry, not only do they carry Caucasus farmer ancestry but they may in fact not be admixed with European farmers at all.
What does this indicate when we contemplate the Southern Arc theory? Why, that it has credibility indeed.

And that is without getting into the weeds of WHEN such ancestry admixed into the ancestors of the Pit Ware peoples, which could very well be POST the Progress_En formation, Remontnoye is a clue here...

It appears as if YOU need to revise your model from these past 10 years not Iosif.

Davidski said...

@Irdi

You're totally clueless. You're either on drugs or mentally retarded.

Lazaridis has been pushing for an Armenian/Iranian PIE homeland for a decade until he finally had to stop when it became obvious to him that Anatolian languages came from the steppe.

His latest paper is actually very similar to some of my blog posts from years ago in which I suggested that the origins of Yamnaya and PIE were in the steppe north of the Caucasus.

https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2020/02/ancient-dna-vs-ex-oriente-lux.html

So am I copying Lazaridis or is he copying me?

And no, Yamnaya doesn't have any Iranian ancestry. You're taking things too literally like many of the Lazaridis fan boys out there.

Shomu tepe said...

I like that Davidsky, for every controversial argument of his opponents, has some post that he wrote a long time ago, in order to share the link later

Shomu tepe said...

very interesting sample from Ulan I28683, Rostov region, late eneolithic

Rob said...

To be fair, CHG, Iran F and Caucasian Farmers have a lot of overlap. But it pays to update theories. There's no shame in saying 'in a previous paper we suggested X, but the emerging evidence currently points to Y". It's actually an alpha trait. It's also good idea to get out of one's echo chamber.

Gaska said...

Nothing new that we don't already know, except that the anonymous contributor is making the same mistake that harvardians have been making for 10 years, i.e. magnifying the role played by the descendants of M269 (actually only a part of them because L51>L151 still does not appear in the steppes) in the Yamnaya culture. For God's sake, we have 26 samples of western Yamnaya (Don river), of which 17 i.e. 65% are I2a-L699, 4 are L754, and only 5 (19.23%) are L23 or R1b-Z2103 i.e. descendants of M269. Nor should we forget other markers such as V1636 or M73, which are also not descendants of M269.

Ergo who was speaking IE or Proto IE?

Don-Yamnaya, I2a-L699?, in that case IE was a language inherited from the WHGs.

Volga-Yamnaya V1636, M73 & Z2103? in that case IE was also an inherited language of the WHGs because they all derive from Villabruna.

To speculate that M269 moved down from the Volga-Don interfluve, is just that, speculation, especially since the author of the post acknowledges the existence of M269 in the Gumelnita-Karanovo culture of Bulgaria.


Tom said...

@Davidski

Lazaridis hasn’t really accepted the Steppe hypothesis. He was a participant in the two Harvard studies, where he had the position to undermine what were perceived as undesirable viewpoints among colleagues such as EEF and Steppe populations having genetic contacts on the North Pontic, or proto-Anatolian speakers entering Asia Minor via the Balkans as supported by the archaeological record and now Y-DNA.

But he has since claimed on social media that basal PIE from Armenia or somewhere “south” is favoured, which could theoretically include anything from Eastern Anatolia to Mesopotamia and parts of Iran.

So there’s still a lot of psychological and emotional issues vis-à-vis Eastern Europe.

EthanR said...

The Eker thesis is now available: https://open.metu.edu.tr/handle/11511/113454

Judging from the PCA it looks like IA Lycia broadly resembles the IA Degirmendere samples we have, which makes sense. If that's the case, then it perhaps strengthens the idea that the Degirmendere profile was indeed representative of IA Carians (as opposed to having Greek ancestry) as based on historical grounds Lycia would have had less contact.

Unfortunately the Y-DNA probably won't be available until the paper is published.

Shomu tepe said...

@Gaska
"Volga-Yamnaya V1636, M73 & Z2103? in that case IE was also an inherited language of the WHGs because they all derive from Villabruna."
What the hell are you talking about?

CordedSlav said...

Davidski where do you think Yamnaya came from, if you disagree ?
Somenody should do one on Corded Ware origins & R1a-M17

Davidski said...

Yamnaya has nothing directly to do with Armenia or Iran.

Lazaridis, Reich and Patterson overstated Yamnaya's links to Armenia and Iran by interpreting their data and statistics too literally and superficially. As a result, they wrongly concluded that the Indo-European homeland was in Armenia or Iran.

So now we have an army of total morons online, like Irdi here, getting all worked up about Yamnaya and Indo-Europeans coming from Armenia or Iran.

Yamnaya is the result of a rapid expansion from a small population living somewhere north of the Black Sea and with genetic roots in this area since at least the Eneolithic, and not the result of any migrations from Armenia or Iran.

Anyone claiming otherwise is either a moron or a liar, or both.

CordedSlav said...

lol okay, but I wasn't referring to Harvard. What is your take about Yamnaya and Corded Ware origins in comparison to the current post ?

Davidski said...

I don't think that Yamnaya came from the Kuban steppe. It probably derives from a post-Sredny Stog group located somewhere west of the Kuban steppe.

That's also where Corded Ware came from, because both Yamnaya and Corded Ware derive from the same ancestral population.

Proto-Anatolians probably derive from a population that was located west of the Corded Ware/Yamnaya ancestral group.

Gio said...

@Gaska

Not only, but already from so long I demonstrated that I-M223 was in Italy and only in Italy from 20000 to 10000 Years ago, and at the autosome level they were the same as Villabruna of 14000 Years ago but probably from 17000 Years.

Rob said...

Well it’s not just Laz fanboys that need help. Theres a cohort of one-trick pony genealogists who are LARPIng on about Yamnaya just a bit too much. In some other, shit forum

Gaska said...

@Shomu Tepe

We have already talked many times and we are not going to keep tiring people, the only thing you have to do is to use your intelligence and find out which is the most ancient R1b and to which culture it belonged and then you will start to understand.

1-What is really important is to use common sense and think that if we accept that prehistoric societies were patriarchal, and therefore men were responsible for transmitting the language, then everyone will agree that Yamnaya and CWC spoke languages inherited from their ancestors WHGs (or if you prefer EHGs, although in reality the genetic separation between them is minimal).

2-IE has nothing to do with Caucasus, Iran, India or anything like it, the longer people take to accept this evidence the more ridiculous they will be, because the South Caucasian male genetic contribution in the steppes has been minimal since the Mesolithic.

3-Unlike many scholars who work in genetics and linguistics or amateurs participating in these forums, I have to admit that I have no idea of the language spoken by Yamnaya, but I dare to defend my idea that they spoke the language of the European hunter-gatherers.

4-And from now on a reproach that affects the most fanatic kurganists; much of the blame for all this Asian crap regarding the origin of Indo-European is yours. People have defended an origin of IE in the steppes first defending the massive migration of R1a and R1b, and when things did not look good they have ended up saying that 1, 2 or 5% of a certain autosomal component is enough to defend the origin of a language in a given region, they have simply devalued the genetic requirements to justify a language shift to the level of American junk bonds. Bullshit, only the genetic continuity of male markers and a massive migration or founder effect can cause a language change, and more in societies as culturally powerful as the first European farmers.

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

Villabruna had R1b-V88 which it got from ANE

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

Or pre-V88 rather

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

And as for the I haplogroups in Yamnaya those are far removed from WHG anyways.

Shomu tepe said...

interesting post in GA, what are they doing there with the G25 coordinates, who the hell knows, but I think Davidski knows what they are doing

https://genarchivist.net/showthread.php?tid=1448&pid=46528#pid46528

Radiosource said...

I think Yamnaya emerged not as a static population confined to a small territory, but as a mobile network of people operating on a large territory:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Indo-European_steppe_homeland_cropped.png

Being a mobile group of people from its inception faciliated its further expansionist activity.

Davidski said...

@Radiosource

You're confusing population size with geography.

Yamnaya does come from a relatively small population, rather than a large group with regional diversity, that's why it's so genetically homogenous.

But whether that small population was confined to a small area or roamed across the entire North Pontic steppe is a different issue.

Radiosource said...

On a side note, is the new autosomal test set to be ready somewhere in autumn?

Rob said...

@ Davidski
''But whether that small population was confined to a small area or roamed across the entire North Pontic steppe is a different issue.''

That's why semantics & definition is important. Yamnaya propper is indeed homogeneous, and its clan was 'rare' / not populous before ~ 3300 BC


@ Norfern
''And as for the I haplogroups in Yamnaya those are far removed from WHG anyways.''

Most I2a-L702 is pre-Yamnaya, but a few persisted in Yamnaya.
They are obviously not from ANE or even typical of the handful of I's seen in EHG or Ukraine Mesolithic. I'd say they came from somwhere near the Polish/Hungarian/ Ukrainian border.
Although WHG is a bit of a loose term, they were 'WHG'

Gaska said...

@Norfern-Ostrobothnian

Heh heh heh, you can do whatever gymnastic mental exercises you feel necessary to try to deny the obvious. Even a titty baby would be able to genetically link I2a-L699, R1b-L23, R1b-Z2103, R1b-M73 & R1b-V1636 to WHGs (including Baltic and Balkan HGs).

Nobody denies that there is an ANE component in WHGs because everybody knows the Siberian origin of R*, but R1b is a totally different thing. So in my opinion Yamnaya spoke the language of the European HGs, whether it was an Indo-European language or not.

The South Caucasian CHG component in the steppes is overwhelmingly female mediated, either thanks to Anatolian-Iranian-Levantine markers that crossed the Caucasus with Maykop and other cultures that preceded it or to EEF markers established in the contact zones of the Old European cultures with the steppes.

I do not care about the dates that linguists assign to the common Indo-European (or PIE or Pre-Pie or whatever you want to call it) and unless someone wants to defend that the cultural superiority of Maykop caused a change of language in the steppes, the truth is that the most reasonable thing is to think of a linguistic continuity from the European Paleolithic and Mesolithic to Yamnaya.

Gio said...

@ Gaska

I even took in consideration your hypothesis that R1b of Villabruna, after having been separated from R1a and the possible ancestor "IE" Language of the Siberian corridor, they adopted the Alpine-Caucasian Language of hg I2a (whose descendants are Sardinian and Basque: look at Blasco Ferrer theory), in fact we can hypothesize that "Caucasian" Languages were linked to hgs J and I (I Always hope that hg J will be found in Western Europe before the 13000 yo Satsurblia). Etruscan and Tyrsenian languages were thought by Alfredo Trombetti intermediate between Caucasian and IE languages, and who knows how many intermediate languages went extinct in Europe. "Yamnaya" and similar derived above all from hgs I-M223 and R1b and they lived between 20000 and 10000 ya in Italy (or nearby) and were WHG. Of course to link DNA and languages needs a very deep study and I think that IE is closely linked to the Nostratic languages (above all Finno-Ugric) than Caucasian ones. Many facts happened also for the languages in 20000 and 10000 Years.

Rob said...

btw there is something weird going on with the Tripolje Verteba cave samples from Gelabert et al. Their models stated they have no local (Ukr_HG) ancestry, but got strange 3 or 4 way mixes which only passed with Baden, CHG, Yamnaya etc (and I'm not referring to the CW- or Bronze Age samples). But the Verteba cave individuals from Mathieson can be modelled simply as EEF ~ 80% + Ukr_HG ~ 20%, although lower coverage. There might be a genotype issue with Gelabert et al's data.

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

@Rob
Wouldn't it be likelier from something like a precursor population in Ukraine or a farmer population in Romania that got I2a-L701 from WHG thousands of years prior? There were no immediate WHG or predominantly WHG populations right next to Yamnaya.

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

R1b shows up in predominantly EHG populations in Eastern Europe and at most in Narva and Iron-Gates but not so much so in western WHG. So it is likelier that R1b originates from Eastern European HGs whether or not the various subclades went back and forth between Ukraine/Russia and the Baltics/Eastern Balkans from time to time.

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

Specifically R1b clades in Yamnaya

EthanR said...

Steppe I-L699 appears to derive from among the same population movements that mark the transition from the UKR mesolithic profile to the UKR Neolithic profile (in simplified terms).

There is also strong evidence for the persistence of pockets of foragers in certain parts of Europe until the bronze age. These help to explain the later assimilation of forager I1/I2 lineages.

EthanR said...

A lot of these were obviously mediated through farmer groups, but not necessarily all of them, and these assimilation events took place over a large time transect with differing dynamics depending on the region.

Shomu tepe said...

@EthanR
Well, look, in the late Neolithic in the steppe such a very powerful tribe of cattle breeders shepherds was formed in the region of the lower Volga Kalmykia Stavropol, since there was a favorable climate all the conditions this tribe multiplied very quickly, when this tribe became large, some of them went north along the Volga forming the Khvalynsk Klina some of them went to Ukraine some of them went back to the Caucasus (because they themselves were half from the Caucasus) those who were in Ukraine mixed a little with local farmers and hunter-gatherers, returned back because this steppe, shepherds have to go back and forth and then they mixed with those steppe and Neolithic cultures that continued to live in the region of Kalmykia lower Volga also from the south came additional mixtures associated with the southern Caucasus through Nalchik, Maikop, Alhantepe and so on, and thanks to all this pit was formed culture
and they had a patriarchal clan system, because of this there was constant war between the shepherds

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

Sure, although it would be rather silly to speak of WHG in Eastern Europe when discussing these hunter-gatherer groups. They'd likely be more like Ukraine Neolithic groups or perhaps some Russian CCC groups.

Gaska said...

EthanR

I2a-L699 is currently a marker born in the Ukrainian mesolithic ergo technically it is an EHG. Its path to Yamnaya is clear, it could not have suffered the cultural influence of either European or South Caucasian Neolithic cultures. this is the oldest known sample.

I1738 (5399 BCE)-Vovnigi, Ukraine-I2a-L701>L699-Mathieson, 2.018-HARVARD

BUT (and this is a story very similar to the R1b steppe markers), their closest ancestors are the Balkan, Scandinavian and Baltic HGs which as everyone knows are genetically speaking WHGs.

Marker I2a1b/1a2a-CTS616>CTS10057>L702

NEO19 (6363 BCE)-Rønsten, Kongemose_Denmark-I2a-CTS616>CTS10057-Allentoft, 2024
UZZO40 (6330 BCE)-Grotta dell Uzzo, Trapani, Mesolithic_Sicily-I2a1b1a2-CTS616>CTS10057
I5402 (6206 BCE)-Hadučka Vodenica, Iron Gates HGs, Serbia-I2a2a1b-CTS10100-CTS10057
ZVEJ4, (5721 BCE)-Zvejnieki, I4551, BHG, Latvia-I2a1b1a2-CTS10057-Mathieson, 2018-HARVARD

LEPE18 (6075 BCE)-Lepenski Vir, Iron Gates_Mesolithic Serbia-I2a2a1b1-L702 (xP78,Y5606)
I3715 (5560 BCE)-Vilnianka, Zaporizhia oblast, N_Ukraine-I2a1b1a2a1-L702-Mathieson, 2018

That is to say only 1000 years between the first CTS10057 that we know in Denmark, Serbia and the Baltic and its descendant L699. Does anyone have any doubt that despite being an EHG, the origin of L699 is in the WHGs? Why would they have changed their language in Ukraine?

Gaska said...

@Norfern-Ostrobothnian

Narva and Iron Gates are basically WHGs, and even if they were not, neither the Baltic nor the Balkans are in the steppes. Do you understand?

The origin of R1b-M73 which is a very minority marker in Yamnaya is in the Baltic and that of R1b-Z2103 is in the steppes but this does not mean that its ultimate origin is in Siberia or the Urals.

The only R1b marker that clearly looks like an EHG is R1b-V1636 and this is also a very rare marker on Yamnaya. Therefore, to say that R1b originated in the EHGs is reckless to say the least.
The male marker of EHGs is mainly R1a and is absent in Yamnaya. In addition, WHGs and EHGs share a large number of mitochondrial markers.

But forget about this discussion, do you think that Western or Eastern European hunters spoke different languages?

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

I don't think WHG nor EHG spoke a single language family and I think that Indo-European cannot be traced to a single Mesolithic language.

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

Perhaps the language that was brought to Ukraine during the Neolithic with the Iron Gates like impulse in fact prevailed, although I'd suppose it would be a local language far removed from other such languages of Mesolithic Europe. On the other hand the Ukrainian Mesolithic language could have also prevailed, and that too in fact may have come from Eastern WHG groups. But I don't think it's right to discuss a single WHG or EHG language or one encompassing both.
Target: Ukraine_N:I3715
Distance: 3.5590% / 0.03558990
76.0 Ukraine_Mesolithic
19.8 Romania_IronGates_Mesolithic
4.2 Georgia_Kotias.SG

Target: Ukraine_Mesolithic
Distance: 1.9976% / 0.01997641
49.2 Russia_Karelia_HG
46.8 Romania_IronGates_Mesolithic
4.0 Georgia_Kotias.SG

Shomu tepe said...

@Gaska
all these samples, marked new, are from Russia, and are EHG or EHG mixed with ANE and other East Siberian impurities, especially those from Siberia
https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-Y13200/

Rob said...

@ Norfern

''Wouldn't it be likelier from something like a precursor population in Ukraine or a farmer population in Romania that got I2a-L701 from WHG thousands of years prior? There were no immediate WHG or predominantly WHG populations right next to Yamnaya.''

I dont thnink anybody is saying there were ''Mesolithic WHGs'' right next to Yamnaya in 3000 BC. WHG is a bit of a misnomer, because they arent from western Europe. WHG probably formed in the Po-Adriatic - Carpatho-Dniester region. And in this zone they were in contact with ANE/ EHG from the get-go, and their autosomal profiles become comlex, e.g. Baltic HG have high levels of WHG but they feature R1b-P297, whilst Motala have high levels of EHG but are mostly I2-something

But I2a-L699 definitely moved East toward the Dnieper & Don regions, c 5500 BC, they then evolved into Sredni Stog, Cernavoda, etc and some mixed in with classic Yamnaya
Where exactly 'from the west' they were before moving toward the Dnieper is hard to say. Many people think Iron Gates, however, IG are dominated by R1b-V88, the Dudesti Farmer-HGs from East Romania also seem to be missing this specific lineage. But in smple terms, it is definitely a WHG' marker,

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

@Rob
I see

Gaska said...

@Norfern Ostrobothnian said “I don't think WHG nor EHG spoke a single language family and I think that Indo-European cannot be traced to a single Mesolithic language”

Could you explain why you think this?

In addition to I2a-L699, other EHGs male markers come from the West, for example R1b-V88 is shared by the Balkans and Ukraine, yet the former is autosomically Iron Gates HG and the latter EHGs and R1b-M73 is shared by the Baltic and Russia, yet the former is autosomically Baltic HG and the latter EHG. Why would these V88s and M73 speak different languages if, in addition, they were contemporaries.

I5235 (8.885 BCE)-Padina, IGHGs, Serbia-R1b-V88>FT370000-Y127541
VSL004 (8.421 BCE)-Vasilievka1, mesolithic, Ukraine-R1b-V88

I4630 (7.272 BCE)-Zvejnieki II, ZVEJ30, Latvia-R1b1a1a-P297>Y13200
NEO088 (6.359 BCE)-Zamostje2, Russia-R1b1a1a-M73

The border between EHGs and WHGs is in the Balkans and the Baltic and evidently this territory does not coincide with what we know today as Western and Eastern Europe. To think that everything comes from the east is as absurd as to think that everything comes from the west, the genetic exchanges between both types of European hunter gatherers were frequent for millennia, so I do not find the reason to think that they spoke different languages.

In any case, do you agree that Yamnaya spoke a language originating from the European Hgs whether they were western or eastern?

Do you think that IE originated in the steppes?

Languages do not appear suddenly by magic, everyone inherits the language of their parents, and the ancestors of the steppe men are not in the CHGs nor in the Anatolian HGs, nor in the Natufian culture, so to change this inheritance you need either a massive South-Caucasian migration (which obviously did not happen, although 50% of Yamnaya is CHg I have already said that in my opinion this is due to exogamy) or a drastic cultural change motivated by an absolute technological superiority (we can only think of Maykop).

Rob said...

I'm inclined to think that the Volga-Ural region is the 'homeland' of Y-R1, arriving there sometime during the 'Ice Age', from an ancestral R* Siberian group. An early western wave, which reached Italy and via northern Balkans developed/ differentiated into V88.
A second wave brought R1a and R1b-P297 toward Ukraine and the East Baltic. When this occurred is difficult to gauge, as there is much debate and uncertainty amongs Russian / fmr Soviet archaeologists. However, according to the solid dates we do have, it seems it was c. 11,000 BP, ie the start of the Holocene/ Mesolithic; but it could have been earlier. It is noteworthy that R1a is present in the lower Dnieper Mesolithic and Satanay cave (steppe lands); whilst Dereivka Mes. has R1b-V88, like the Iron Gates.
It's hard to know the trajectory between P297 in the Baltic & Samara, athough the latter is obviously younger than the former. Autosomes don;t help, because both are admixed, Baltic with WHG and Samara_HG with Siberian. Not sure about V1636, it might have been a lower Volga haplotype.
Another interesting fact is that R became extinct in Siberia. R1b formed and expanded from east Europe, R2 survived in 'Iranian Farmers', and R1b-Ph155 in some nook /cranny of central Asia.

For those venturing down the paleo-language rabbbithole, I again bring out the case study of Amerindian languages. EHG & WHG dispersed at a similar time, and the populations subsumed within those broad categories would have differentiated into mutually unintelligible languages, esp after 12000 bp, when populations became disconnected or more tethered to their own chosed niches

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

My counter point is the Native Americans and to an extent the Papuans and Australians. Ignoring Athabaskans and Eskimo-Aleutic languages these language families and isolates formed among Native Americans themselves in a similar time depth as Epigravettians dispersed to Europe. Not to mention the mixing, you have ANE and Anatonlian ancestries both bringing potential new languages and influences to the WHG groups and some Magdalenian groups too in Iberia. Papuans and Australians showcase how much languages can diversify. If these Mesolithic groups did speak a single language then how are languages like Nuragic, Etruscan and Basque capable of deriving from EEF or WHG populations despite being from separate language families? You have Hurro-Urartian, Kartvelian, NWC and NEC among Anatolian CHG heavy populations.

As for your examples I place more importance to the autosome and cultural association than Y-DNA.

I don't think it is meaningful to discuss PIE beyond the Neolithic at most. Somewhere in broadly Eastern Europe among EHG and CHG derived groups with admixture from elsewhere too.

Rob said...

@ Norfern
You misunderstood what is written, I am saying that 'Mesolthic macrogroups' like EHG, WHG & CIHG are not likely to have spoken single language family, but potentially several, although one might have been widespread.

Not sure what you're trying to say about west Mediterranean and the Anatolian-Cauc language examples, there's plenty of geographic and genetic distinction to explain their genesis.


'''As for your examples I place more importance to the autosome and cultural association than Y-DNA.''omewhere in broadly Eastern Europe among EHG and CHG derived groups with admixture from elsewhere too.'''''

Autosomal anaylsis does not support the EHC/CHG theory. It is a manipulated and cherry picked claim. The autosomeal data in fact shows that PIE is associated with EHG, CHG, and EEF + WHG. You seem to have a poor understanding of Y-DNA and misrepresent what it implies - Y-DNA is important tracer dye, which very simply tells us that the Lazarides/Anthony Cope model, as I call it, doesn't check out. No amount of mental gymnastics will square the fact that the most basal IE language is not associated with Y-hg J1, R1b-V1636 or Central Asia Q1, but I2a-l799 with a documented 3000 year of continuity and development. Yes it is deeply WHG and from Central Europe. Apparently this fact offends some Siberian-Uraloid or Dagestani village sensitivities ? :)
This might further imply that the proto-CW-Yamnaya goup in turn switched to this language ~ 5500 Bc, or that the Sredni Stog group spoke a dialect chain which was partly erased. CHG, TTK and Sidelinko-Samara people likely have nothing to do with PIE, because they are not part of this population, they only temporarily borrowed some cultural ideas from the Mariupol-Sredni Stog IEs, and donated a large amount of autosomes, due to bride-gifting.
This is basic stuff.

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

@Rob
No that was my reply to Gaska

Shomu tepe said...

@Rob What language did people speak in the steppe eneolithic? Some kind of basal proto-NEC, to designate animals, sheep, body parts, the Caspian Sea, rivers such as the Volga, Sulak, Terek, steppes and various mountains that could be distinguished and by which one could navigate in space?🤔

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

@Rob
As for if PIE came from Iron Gates or something like that then I guess it could work with how Ukraine Mesolithic and Ukraine Neolithic look like. It's one possibility. I don't think PIE was lurking south of the Caucasus or beyond the Volga by the Neolithic anyhow.

Gio said...

We are speaking a lot in Italy about the Garlasco case, where Alberto Stasi, from an Apulian father, was judged guilty, but we are Fighting from so long against this sentence. This is his Y (17 markers), perhaps a J1-Y196305, just the sample of J1 older than Satsurblia I was searching for. The other sample in Italy could be in Benevento province.

Rob said...

@ Norfern
''As for if PIE came from Iron Gates or something like that then I guess it could work with how Ukraine Mesolithic and Ukraine Neolithic look like.''

I'm not making the claim that PIE is from the Iron Gates. As per definition- a proto-language is the (reconstructed) stage just before its branches moved out in different directions; at least that is what the 'late proto-phase' is. This stage is associated with Cernavoda, Sredni Stog and the Yamnaya-CW complex. Given what we know, these complexes emerged between the Dnieper and the Don, with an element of uncertainty enabling us to extend this further east (until we find the root of CW).

To speculate further, pre- or very early-PIA might have been introduced by 'Mariupol group'. 'Nuclear' IE have a number of grammatical differences to 'Anatolian IE", which could be substrate inheritences from the former's pre-shift (pre-Mariupol) languages. One could make the arguement that all these groups in fact inherited an archaic form of PIE from a EHG - CHG rich group in the Volda-Don region, but that once again brings us back to - why are the most 'archaic' 'Anatolian' languages linked to groups with the least amount of CHG who were relative newcomers to the region from the West ?

@ Arsen
''at language did people speak in the steppe eneolithic? Some kind of basal proto-NEC, to designate animals, sheep, body parts, the Caspian Sea, rivers such as the Volga, Sulak, Terek, steppes and various mountains that could be distinguished and by which one could navigate in space?🤔''

Which linguists have suggested that IE names for animals, basic human body parts and the Volga river were inherited from NEC ?
I dont think 'steppe Eneolithic' really led to any extant language. Modern Caucasian languages emerged later, from the LBA-Iron Age 'Koban-Colchis' mega-complex which asserted themselves after the Scythians etc were subdued. The NEC group would have deeper roots to Kura-Araxes. Curiously, the G2a-founder effect found in Kartvelians (G-Z6744) has been found in Zayukovo and Urartians. This deeply links to Neolithic Zagros haplotypes, but no intermediate samples as yet bridges the link.

Shomu tepe said...

@Rob
no, no, no, you're confusing something Kaban Colchis, this is the central western Caucasus, it has nothing to do with us, everything was different in our own way. We have no connection with the western Caucasus, with Maykop, we have more connection with Kur Araks and its local variant such as in Velikent, Dzhemikent, Manaskach culture, Ginchi, Kayakent-Kharachoev culture and so on. The Kaban culture is possibly connected with some western Caucasian languages. including Chechen and Ingush. But all those cultures that I listed are from the Bronze Age. The Dagestani languages were formed in the early Bronze Age and even earlier. And what was before that?

Shomu tepe said...

@Gio
perhaps some rare and basal J1 got to WHG together with I, which has a common root with J, I was more in percentage terms than J, but this is very unlikely, most likely. more options are that it got there with Neolithic farmers, or generally much later with all sorts of migrations from the south.

Gio said...

@Shomu Tepe
"@Gio
perhaps some rare and basal J1 got to WHG together with I, which has a common root with J, I was more in percentage terms than J, but this is very unlikely, most likely. more options are that it got there with Neolithic farmers, or generally much later with all sorts of migrations from the South".

This is what pretty much all people thought so far: that all is in Italy and Western Europe did come from elsewhere, that Ex Oriente Lux, that Phoenicians had descendants in the Mediterranean coasts, that European Jews descend from slaves at the times of the defeats of Jews by Romans, etc etc, and of course mine is only a hypothesis based only upon a few markers and I know that we need aDNA, but for I-M223 and R1b1 (Villabruna) we got that, and about much other.

Rob said...

@ Arsen
''no, no, no, you're confusing something Kaban Colchis, this is the central western Caucasus, it has nothing to do with us, everything was different in our own way. We have no connection with the western Caucasus, with Maykop, we have more connection with Kur Araks and its local variant such as in Velikent, Dzhemikent, Manaskach culture, Ginchi, Kayakent-Kharachoev culture and so on.''

I did not say that NEC come from NWC. I wrote - ''the NEC group would have deeper roots to Kura-Araxes''

The problem is - Kura Araxes was wiped aside by Catacomb-Babino groups. In the northeast Caucasus, the Manas group represents a local variant of the Catacomb complex, with classic catacomb burials, European cromlechs and even corded Ware. These have nothing to do with NEC speakers

The Kayakent-Karachoy succeded them, are probably a remnant KAx group which expanded from the Dagestani mountain zone. They share much with the Koban-Colchis culture, especially metalwork traditions, So, the entire Caucasus world had cultural contacts during the LBA-IA

''And what was before that?''

Episodic discontinuity
NEC have no direct links to Mesolithic or 'Neolithic' Chokh :)

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

How do you interpret Sredny Stog having more EHG than previous archaeological cultures of the area which had more WHG?

Norfern-Ostrobothnian said...

Or were these Lipetsk samples actually Sredny Stog?
Target: Russia_Don_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih.SG:NEO167.SG__BC_3885__Cov_46.70%
Distance: 3.6893% / 0.03689314
73.6 Russia_Karelia_HG
17.4 Serbia_IronGates_Mesolithic
9.0 Georgia_Kotias.SG

EthanR said...

That's a site on the Sredni Stog periphery with mixed (local and Stog) ceramics and without the full cultural package. It's not terribly instructive.

Gio said...

When I was been studying the few STRs! Very likely Alberto Stasi is J-M205-Y125824 separated 5000 Years ago from the other two Italian haplotytpes, thus probably in Italy at least from 5000 Years.

N50045 Aceto Guglielmo Aceto, b.c. 1050, Sicily Italy J-M205 DeepSNP-J
12 24 15 10 19-20 11 15 12 12 11 28 15 8-9 11 12 24 14 19 31 14-15-16-16 10 10 19-20 14 14 19 17 35-36 11 9 11 8 16-16 8 11 10 8 11 9 12 21-24 14 10 12 12 13 8 13 22 20 12 12 11 14 10 12 12 11 35 16 8 14 12 26 26 19 11 11 12 11 12 10 11 11 10 11 12 32 11 12 22 15 11 10 20 15 18 12 22 11 12 14 24 12 20 19 9 14 18 9 10 11

243835 Lucian Sabatino Luciani, b. abt. 1740, Moscufo, Abruzzo Italy J-Y125824 Big Y-700
12 25 15 11 15-19 11 15 13 11 11 27 17 8-8 11 11 24 14 19 29 15-15-15-15 10 10 20-20 14 14 17 17 33-33 xx 9 11 8 15-16 8 11 9 8 13 9 12 21-24 15 10 12 12 16 8 13 22 20 12 12 11 14 10 12 12 11 34 15 8 14 12 26 26 19 12 11 13 10 11 10 11 11 10 10 11 31 11 12 23 14 11 10 20 15 19 11 22 14 12 14 25 12 23 19 8 13 19 9 10 11

Alberto Stasi
12 25 15 10 18-19 xx xx 11 12 11 28 18 x-x xx xx xx 14 19 xx xx-xx-xx-xx xx 11
xx-xx 14 xx xx xx xx-xx xx 9 xx x xx-xx x xx x x xx x xx xx-xx xx xx xx xx xx x xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx x xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx 23 xx x xx xx x xx xx

GD Aceto and Luciani 58/111
GD between Luciani and Stasi 9/17
GD between Aceto and Stasi 11/17

Shomu tepe said...

Minino EHG+Khvalynsk+UKR_N
Target: Russia_Don_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih.SG:NEO167.SG__BC_3885__Cov_46.70%
Distance: 1.4817% / 0.01481653 | R3P
43.6 Russia_Minino_Mesolithic.AG
31.0 Russia_Khvalynsk_Eneolithic.AG
25.4 Ukraine_N.AG

Shomu tepe said...

Lazarides uses AI
https://x.com/iosif_lazaridis/status/1944076099446567213

Rob said...

Those Vorezhneh Don, etc, samples from Allentoft et al are not sredni stog. The excavation report makes mention of some alleged pottery decorated like SS, but the site and burial has no links. Semi- Mariupol related.
What they shed is they have western shift + CHG compared to baseline EHG

Gio said...

J-Y125824 < J-FT4244.1 < J-Y22075 < J-YP51, J-Y5055587 (H) (T) < J-YP108 < J-CTS1969 * Y501594 (H) (T) < J-PF7321 * YP33 * YP163 < J-Y3165 * YP31 * YP32 * PF7352 *YP105 * YP166 * YP12195(H) * Y12198 < J-M205*
Thus these samples could be in Italy, the Balkans, Western Europe at least from 7000 Years, and why not more?

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