I'm putting together a G25 Proto-Indo-European master sheet that I'll be using in a future blog post about the Indo-European, or, if you wish, Indo-Anatolian homeland.
An early version of the master sheet is available
HERE. Please note, the first pop label is my own while the second one is from the v66.2M.AADR dataset.
I'm aiming to expand it significantly and update it regularly. Below is a
Vahaduo G25 West Eurasia PCA with all the samples. What am I missing? Feel free to let me know in the comments.
Spoiler alert! Here are a few of the revelations that you can expect in the aforementioned blog post about the Indo-European homeland:
- Yamnaya is almost certainly derived from Serednii Stih (aka Sredny Stog). I've been talking about this for years and you can probably pick it up without too much trouble in the PCA above. Finally, even Iosif Lazaridis, David Reich, Nick Patterson and friends are now on board with this idea as per their latest paper on the topic (see Lazaridis et al. 2025).
- However, I'm not convinced by the Lazaridis et al. hypothesis that the Caucasus–lower Volga (CLV) cline is intimately linked to the Indo-Anatolian and proto-Anatolian expansions. That's because the CLV cline is an artifact of isolation-by-distance working for thousands of years across a vast and highly diverse landscape, and it includes a wide range of populations that usually have nothing to do with each other.
- The question of who actually spoke Indo-Anatolian first will, in all likelihood, never be solved to everyone's satisfaction. But the number of true candidate groups is actually quite small, and I reckon they're almost certainly all highlighted in my PCA above. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
See also...
The Caucasus is a semipermeable barrier to gene flow
607 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 401 – 600 of 607 Newer› Newest»@ Ethan
Rob-''"There's no simple scenario or singular homeland for I2a groups"
Ethan-That's the obvious takeaway. These lineages come from various hunter gatherer groups throughout Europe. ''
My comment to Gio which you quoted about the Y-hg I2 meta-clade as a whole during and just after the 'Ice Age'. But for some reason you have mis-represented or misunderstood that sentence onto the specific case of I2a-M223-L703. It is interily reasanoable to ascribe a more specific haplo-history for L703, and that is in fact the case.
'' It is your special pleading that demands some sort of origin in Ukraine for the clades in question.'
LOL special pleading would be to claim P78 is from the Iron Gates, despite its absence from hundreds of samples there, vs its relative frequency & early presence east of the Carpathians, just where its closley related cousin is also found.
Also, your G25 models, qpAdm and G25 both demonstrate a very sound fitting of Dnieper-N for Chalcolithic- BA samples with P78.
''I'm going to ignore the deflections''
On the contrary, you should carefully digest the counter-examples I described because they outline the commonly made errors by haplo-enthusiasts perching themselves on the proverbial TMRCA high-horse . Its up there with 'genes dont speak languages' and 'pots arent people'.
''I-P78 very well could be related to the Indo-European migrations into Anatolia, although I'm not sure it took the same route(s) I-S1219''
Maybe they didn;t hold hands, but the fact remains that P78 and L699 are closely related lineages which both ended up in Anatolia and parts of Greece at pretty much the same time. Your contrary viewpoints are just .. special pleading .
I don't think I-P78 is necessarily from iron gates, only that it could be or from other HG groups. I also wouldn't discount it being from the Steppe, but there's simply zero evidence for that.
I don't find the fact that they all ended up either in thrace, Anatolia or Greece very convincing of anything. For instance, the Theopetra sample appears to be a Yamnaya-related sample that mixed with Cernavoda-related groups before arriving in Greece (see IBD results for that sample).
I also am not sure they all moved at the same time, I think the phylogeny of I-S12195 (diversification of different branches ~4000bc, with different branches all still showing connections to Anatolia) and the Barcin_C->Kulluoba connections seem to suggest an entry prior to Cernavoda III or Ezero. Not the most definitive evidence but it stands out.
I'd also be curious about I-P78 entering via bidirectional geneflow between Troy and Ezero (Kanlıgeçit seems to be an example of the reverse, Troy influencing Thrace). That would neatly explain things, although if I-P78 ever shows up in central Anatolia as opposed to west Anatolia, it would probably need to be discarded.
Regarding L702 and Iron Gates, I recall Ethan noting that Pribislav had assigned L702 to LEPE18. Did that not pan out? It's not in FTDNA.
New paper maps how Steppe ancestry spread with IE languages. Greek, Armenian & Albanian are all traced to a Yamnaya-derived source — distinct from Corded Ware (Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Indo-Iranic) & Bell Beaker (Celtic, Italic) carriers. Albanian specifically enters via the same Yamnaya-derived route as Greek into the Balkans.
https://x.com/dryscoop/status/2090858843475501486?s=20
No it didn't pan out, FTDNA assigns it way upstream at I-P222. I am not sure if there are specific reads which lead Pribislav to think it could be I-L702.
A book of papers was published on PIE:
https://medialibrary.reichert-verlag.de/en/9783752003659_the_speakers_of_indo_european_and_their_world/
Unfortunately some of them seem very questionable.
The "PIE colour" paper did make it though, which features the following conclusion:
https://i.gyazo.com/b8946f5906472dc42982d0fc5723988d.png
Interesting news about Phrygian-period tumulus burials in Türkiye. The Phrygians were Anatolian linguistically, weren’t they?
A 2,800-year-old Phrygian tumulus is being excavated for the first time in Ankara
Scientific excavations have begun at the BT10 Tumulus, located in the Western Necropolis of the Phrygian period in the Bahçelievler–Emek district of modern Ankara, Türkiye.
The tumulus is dated to approximately 800–550 BC and is one of around 20 known tumuli in the Western Necropolis. Remarkably, BT10 had never previously been subjected to archaeological excavation.
Researchers expect the excavations to provide new evidence about Phrygian burial customs, everyday life, and the ancient history of Ankara.
The project is being conducted by a multidisciplinary research team led by Prof. Dr. Atakan Akçay. Following the excavations, the area is planned to become an archaeological park.
The discovery is particularly interesting because the site lies within the modern capital of Türkiye, revealing that significant remains of Iron Age Phrygian Ankara are still preserved beneath the modern city.
Source: Anadolu Agency, 21 August 2026.
https://www.aa.com.tr/tr/kultur/frig-donemi-bati-nekropolunde-yer-alan-bt10-tumulusunde-bilimsel-kazilara-baslandi/4033499?utm_source=chatgpt.com
@ Ethan
“I don't think I-P78 is necessarily from iron gates, only that it could be or from other HG groups. I also wouldn't discount it being from the Steppe, but there's simply zero evidence for that.”
A lot of philosophical arm-waving there, princess.
“That would neatly explain things, although if I-P78 ever shows up in central Anatolia as opposed to west Anatolia, it would probably need to be discarded.”
Haha You now want to exclude samples that don’t fit your preconceived visions. Didn’t Laz. already try that, low-level grifting doesn’t convince Elites
@ Shomu
“New paper maps how Steppe ancestry spread with IE languages. Greek, Armenian & Albanian are all traced to a Yamnaya-derived source — distinct from Corded Ware (Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Indo-Iranic) & Bell Beaker (Celtic, Italic) carriers. Albanian specifically enters via the same Yamnaya-derived route as Greek into the Balkans.
https://x.com/dryscoop/status/2090858843475501486?s=20”
Meh. Why is Gretzinger still stuck on the simpleton “Yamnaya-languages”, “CW - languages” schema from 2015?
And I understand that these chuds on X have invested their savings on their little Yamnaya hats, but Albanian emerges during the early Byzantine era from a mixed Balkan provincial population. It’s no more “Yamnaya -derived” than English, French or Croatian.
Like, it doesn;t even matter what soil ecology P78 was first found in. This is getting ridiculous. M269 is probably from the forest-steppe. It's silly that people have been brainwashed into thinking that so-called 'Steppe_Eneolithic'' = steppe people
@Rob
"Haha You now want to exclude samples that don’t fit your preconceived visions"
Nope, I'm making the exact opposite claim. A European clade that shows up in both West and Central Anatolia is likely IE-related.
Anyway here's how they compare in terms of big picture phylogeny (using for each a clade containing an antiquity Anatolian sample as an endpoint). The "immediate descendants" column is just the number of new subclades at each time estimate:
https://i.gyazo.com/105f0c60c516fbe6131b6c77e135e1b4.png
https://i.gyazo.com/3490f894b19ecc74f97195eb9550dbca.png
@ Ethan
Oh you mean the commonly held Troy -> Ezero view ? Ozdogan has already cast doubt on that position. Against expectations, none of the Ezero, Yamnaya & other Bulgarian BA samples hold excess neo-Anatolian/ CHG-infused ancestry
Anyhow, although almost everybody else is still waffling on about CLV, the real question is how did numerically small group of IEs (of European origin) manage to politically & linguistically impose themselves in Anatolia
@ Shomu
Phrygian is not part of 'Anatolian-IE' but 'Balkan IE,' related to Greek & Paeonian. Later wave after 1200 BC, LBA collapse, etc
I wonder how P78 got into steppe Sarmatians as far as Kazakhstan.
@Rob
My understanding is that some level of contact between Troy and Ezero is agreed upon but a causal sequence in either direction is not supported.
However, the somewhat younger Kanlıgeçit basically looks like a Trojan colony, so contacts between Troy and Thrace probably also involved the movement of people in at least one direction (but I don't think we should be surprised if the reverse were the case sometimes, too).
I just don't know much about the history of the Anatolian languages, all I know is that at one time half of Anatolia belonged to Greece, the other part to Armenia.
@ Rob "the real question is how did numerically small group of IEs (of European origin) manage to politically & linguistically impose themselves in Anatolia"
Yes. How exactly did that happen?
@ Rozbojnik
In brief, there seems to be an fairly palpable Ezero-era impact across NW Anatolia (as already clear from the Y-haplo tracer dyes). Add the 4.2 kiloyear perturbations (destruction horizons and cnflict throughout the region) and we can imagine how some IEs already in Anatolia managed to extend themselves into central Anatolia & carve up power. Subsequently based on some form of city-state power projection, ruling over a mostly non-IE population stratum. Maybe quasi-Normam model, but of course vague analogies never do justice.
I11828 Krivyansky/Lower Don seems to have a decent chunk DVM-like ancestry alongside steppe and Ukraine_N.
Do Yamnaya/Afanasievo show any special relation to I11828?
@Davidski do you have any explanation as to how Lazaridis and co was able to make Yamnaya ~ 20-25% Aknashen?
@ Rob I wonder what advantages (technological, cultural) they had over the locals. Because its hard to blame it on just luck. Or maybe it was.
@Igor
Davidski do you have any explanation as to how Lazaridis and co was able to make Yamnaya ~ 20-25% Aknashen?
By using a poor set of outgroups with some low-quality samples, including Aknashen.
It's possible to make a lot of crap models work in qpAdm that way.
But when some guy at Harvard does it, and he pushes it through peer review at Nature, then most people think it's fine.
@ rozbojnik
'"I wonder what advantages (technological, cultural) they had over the locals. Because its hard to blame it on just luck. Or maybe it was.''
When looking at near-equal socieites of the Bronze Age, it might have more to do with temporary relative advantages, grit & determination, Leader's charisma & solid succession system, etc
but also keep in mind that Anatolia was virtually empty just before 4000 BC (apart from far southeast Turkey). People could move freely into it.
@Igor
Aknashen-like population entered the later Early Bronze Age groups by 2 main routes.
The first route is connected with Nalchik Eneolithic → Steppe Eneolithic (Berezhnovka, Vonyuchka, Progress), because Steppe Eneolithic already has this small South Caucasian influence.
The second route is also connected with Nalchik Eneolithic but through early Maykop → Chernavoda/Usatovo.
All the remaining EEF in Steppe EBA comes from the Neolithic farmers of Ukraine.
@Igor
Because that's around how much South Caucasian ancestry Yamnaya has.
The stranger thing is how they seem to think Yamnaya has significantly more than Sredni Stog. I don't think that is the case.
@EthanR
Three-way G25 models with high quality samples utilising BP, Ukraine_N and South Caucasian sources lands you ~ 7-10% SCF.
If you crank it up to 4x cycles then Yamnaya prefers Chalcolithic Balkan farmers.
@Davidski
They also utilised one GK sample as their HG source. I think that helped boost the levels of Aknashen further.
Will you write a critique on their qpAdm modelling?
@Shomu
If there's South Caucasian admixture in Yamnaya it can only be mediated indirectly via Sredny Stog from Meshoko/Zamok-Svobodnoe. Maykop is too late and thus after the core Yamnaya genome-wide founder effect.
When you discount Nalchik (which is arguable to count as DVM), the earliest dates range from 4700-4400 BCE.
The samples from Unakozovskaya that we have are too CHG-rich, Nalchik is more proximate so there was substructure within DVM in terms of CHG and Cayonu-PPN ancestries.
You have to ask yourself whether we are dealing with sporadic admixture between individuals and communities in the North Caucasus or actual movements of people.
The Yamnaya genotype formed somewhere between 4500-4000 BCE and that's simply too early for South Caucasian ancestry to make any impact on Yamnaya when groups like Progress & Vonyuchka only have around ~ 10% SCF ancestry in the North Caucasus steppe around 4400-4200 BCE.
Remontnoye is too late and has Siberian admixture to be relevant for Yamnaya.
Cernavoda and Usatove formed later than the Yamnaya genotype and their very different genotype to Yamnaya suggests they formed somewhere else within the SS network.
I think Yamnaya is from Novodanilovka (near the sea of Azov) which would link them with the Suvorovo individuals from Moldova and Hungary and they received EEF admixture from Trypillia upstream of the Dnieper as well as it's HG ancestry.
This is the most parsiminious explanation for the formation of the Yamnaya genotype.
There is significant IBD sharing between Yamnaya/Corded Ware samples and Maikop, so I am assuming these contacts began as soon as Maikop emerged in the early to mid 4th millennium BC.
This could not have been too significant though, as Sredni Stog samples show about the the same amount of south Caucasian ancestry (presumably differing based on time and place to some extent but this is hard to establish based off the small number of samples we have now.
One interesting thing about Sredni Stog is that the amount of south Caucasian ancestry does not appear to correlate with the amount of Berezhnovka-like ancestry.
It would be helpful if we had more Trypillian samples than just Verteba Cave, but it's virtually impossible to find any IBD connections between copper age/LN EEF groups and Yamnaya/Sredni Stog (which is notable because we have a large number of Yamnaya and EEF samples).
The few IBD hits we do see are samples which seem to track Steppe groups (Berezhnovka or Piedmont samples) moving into EEF communities (i.e. late Moldovan Trypillia, Bodrogkereztur).
Also, as previously mentioned, the mtdna in Yamnaya shows the same pattern.
@Igor
I don’t know, this is the first time I’m hearing that “the Yamnaya culture genotype formed somewhere between 4500–4000 BC”.
Maybe it is so, but I thought it formed much later.
Lazaridis et al. 2025 Extended Data Fig. 2 (a); ~4000BC estimated formation date for Yamnaya:
https://i.gyazo.com/4350dfa5452d49d0937cdaaf8fa036dc.png
Also, here is cumulative IBD hits (10cm threshold) between Verteba Cave, Maikop, and every single Ukraine/Russia Yamnaya sample (excluding Usatovo and North Caucasus Yamnaya):
https://i.gyazo.com/e0f72a561d7d38836889c35b2a595d44.png
@Ethan
Maykop shares mtDNA with Yamnaya via it's Progress-related ancestry. That's pretty obvious.
The only arguable case that might be Caucasian is mtDNA R1a, but that may not be from Maykop neccesarily since it shows up earlier in Meshoko.
But even that could be from the steppe ultimately. Meshoko has some minor Progress-related ancestry.
@Shomu
These samples are dated to around 4,000 BCE. In fact, I6559 is dated to 4338-4249 calBCE and I2108 to 4340-4178 calBCE. So the Yamnaya genotype must've existed earlier than that, because there's no way that these are the first Yamnaya-like people.
Ukraine_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:Ukraine_Zaporizhia_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:I1430.AG.TW,0.124067,0.080227,0.039598,0.114343,-0.041238,0.047969,-0.00846,-0.007846,-0.050517,-0.061596,-0.005521,0.005995,-0.016055,-0.009221,0.025651,0.012861,-0.028033,-0.010008,-0.004399,0.001251,-0.001373,0.000247,-0.000493,-0.027233,-0.003832
Ukraine_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:Ukraine_DonetsBasin_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:I6559.AG.TW,0.119514,0.071087,0.045632,0.114343,-0.023697,0.047133,0.006815,0.000923,-0.040905,-0.063418,0.003085,-0.001499,0.000892,-0.009909,0.036644,0.008088,-0.014733,0.010895,-0.000754,0.01063,0.009483,0.01051,0.00419,-0.009158,-0.010298
Ukraine_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:Ukraine_DonetsBasin_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:I6559.TW,0.120652,0.06804,0.042992,0.114666,-0.025235,0.040439,0.007755,-0.000462,-0.039269,-0.062143,0.004384,-0.002248,0.000297,-0.012937,0.035559,0.012463,-0.016037,0.011402,-0.000126,0.010505,0.009358,0.008656,0.00456,-0.010845,-0.011256
Ukraine_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:Ukraine_Dnieperpetrovsk_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:I2108.AG.TW,0.114961,0.088351,0.049403,0.125971,-0.023389,0.040997,-0.00094,-0.006692,-0.036814,-0.062871,0.012017,-0.001948,0.005798,-0.02257,0.030944,0.00411,-0.005737,-0.008235,-0.000251,0.009379,0.000998,0.01051,0.008134,-0.000241,-0.00012
It's pretty simple, Sredny Stog shows a consistent amount of minor ANF-related ancestry. Yamnaya's ancestors pre-4000 BCE must've had the same basic amount as well.
Lazaridis' model of 25% Aknashen is a troll.
Target: Yamnaya_Samara
Distance: 3.3542% / 0.03354156
80.8 Steppe_N
12.6 Mariupol_N
6.6 Bulgaria_Yunatsite_Chalcolithic_GumelnitaKaranovo
0.0 Russia_Stavropol_EarlyMaykop_EBA
Target: Afanasievo
Distance: 3.5807% / 0.03580690
82.4 Steppe_N
10.8 Mariupol_N
6.8 Bulgaria_Yunatsite_Chalcolithic_GumelnitaKaranovo
0.0 Russia_Stavropol_EarlyMaykop_EBA
@Igor
Some of the Piedmont Steppe samples, including PG2001 have clear south caucasian ancestry.
But there's more than R1a which on balance look south caucasian:
https://discover.familytreedna.com/mtdna/J2a2/tree
https://discover.familytreedna.com/mtdna/I/tree
I don't know of any that are specifically Maikop, but as mentioned, Maikop is likely not the bulk of that type of ancestry in Yamnaya, as Maikop is too young.
so that’s why in my models for Yamnaya one of the sources that showed up was Ukraine_Igren'-8_N, because it’s the same as Ukraine_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih, but in Anderson’s lists it’s written differently.
Distance to: Ukraine_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:Ukraine_Dnieperpetrovsk_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:I2108.AG.TW
0.00012600 Ukraine_Igren'-8_N:I2108__BC_4282__Cov_87.12%
0.03697102 Ukraine_Igren'-8_N:I1924__BC_3878__Cov_76.42%
And the sample I1430 is recorded as Vinogradnoe, and it is practically fully steppe, but because it has low coverage for the calculator it doesn’t fit.
@EthanR
Piedmont with it's 10% Caucasian ancestry can't explain Sredny Stog or Yamnaya. There were Lower Volga groups in Sredny Stog already in the Lower Dnieper ~ 4500 BCE.
The ANF ancestry is from the Dnieper where you had massive Trypillian settlements near Kyiv.
Maybe the Lower Don avoided Trypillian admixture where you had the Krivansky elite with J2 and a quarter Meshoko-like ancestry.
If Yamnaya is from there you have to create a complex scenario where regular SS along the Dnieper has Trypillian ancestry and Yamnaya's ancestors SCF ancestry.
In G25 Yamnaya avoids Krivansky over simple BP + Ukraine_N + EEF.
Target: Yamnaya_Samara
Distance: 3.3542% / 0.03354156
80.8 Steppe_N
12.6 Mariupol_N
6.6 Bulgaria_Yunatsite_Chalcolithic_GumelnitaKaranovo
0.0 Russia_Rostov_Krivyansky-9_N
Target: Afanasievo
Distance: 3.5807% / 0.03580690
82.4 Steppe_N
10.8 Mariupol_N
6.8 Bulgaria_Yunatsite_Chalcolithic_GumelnitaKaranovo
0.0 Russia_Rostov_Krivyansky-9_N
@Igor
Yunatsite is from Thrace and has very low HG ancestry. It's almost pure ANF. There's no population like that in close proximity to the Steppe. The plausible EEF proximate sources would be Cucuteni-Trypolye variants or Bolgrad-Aldeni.
I don't think G25 is too helpful for this purpose but here is Verteba Cave vs Remontnoye and Verteba vs Aknashen in Yamnaya/SS:
https://i.gyazo.com/5c431f81b3f7330425e82b1cde898c49.png
https://i.gyazo.com/620593460f50c63402d75b7b96ee13a2.png
@Ethan
You have to crank it up to 4x cycles.
The fits improve with EEF over SCF.
The reason I use Yunasite is because late Trypillia has Dnieper-Donets ancestry.
@Igor
You took the average for Afanasievo and Yamnaya, but in your sources there is no EHG-rich population like Khvalynsk. Because of this it does not detect the Aknashen/Nalchik-rich population like Chernavoda-Usatovo.
Because of this such a G25 does not see the South Caucasus:
Target: Russia_Samara_EBA_Yamnaya
Distance: 2.7208% / 0.02720776 | R3P | PRNG: math
56.0 Russia_Volgograd_Berezhnovka_N
25.2 Ukraine_CernavodaI_Kartal_C.AG
18.8 Russia_Saratov_Khvalynsk_Eneolithic
Target: Russia_Afanasievo
Distance: 2.9439% / 0.02943864 | R3P | PRNG: math
44.6 Russia_Volgograd_Berezhnovka_N
31.4 Russia_Saratov_Khvalynsk_Eneolithic
24.0 Ukraine_CernavodaI_Kartal_C.AG
G25 is infinitely better than whatever qpAdm garbage Harvard-MIT Broad have produced for Yamnaya.
@Ethan
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2023/02/dear-david-nick-iosiflet-me-tell-you.html
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2022/09/dear-iosifyamnaya.html
I thank you and I'll study all that you sent to me. I agree with you of course, but as in the case of Paolo Prato the PCA is interesting because we two, with very different origin in these last 8000 years at least (he is hg G-L166 and I am R-L23-Z2103), match in the same point just because a people isn't the "origin" but its "formation"... and it is the sum of thousands of years of migrations. Anyway in MyTrueAncrstry you are very far from us all and nothing close to my daughter-in-law who is 100% German.
This is how algorithms work: the answer depends on the question.
I was invited to join the discussion in Academia.edu about the "southern Arc theory". I posted this so far:
FGC24408
SK2097, BY48008, BY48355, FGC24386, FGC24394, FGC24396, FGC24401, FGC24404, FGC24406, FGC24409, FGC24412, FGC24413, FGC24414, FGC24418, FGC24419, FGC24424, FGC24428, FGC24430, FGC24436, FGC24437, FGC24446, FGC24447, FGC24449, FT319314, Y211589, Y46678, Y46679, Y54863, Y56884
FGC24444
225200 Krueger Fabiano Maddamma, b. 1884 Villetta Barrea L'Aquila Italy R-FGC24444 Big Y-500
FGC24383
H1614 Gioiello Tognoni Antonio del Badia (Castelfiorentino, Florence, 1449-????) R-FGC24383
FT296919
937109 D'Ambrosio Agostino d'Ambrosio, 1757-1817 R-FT296919
FT296480
263455 ATABEY Atabag of Samtskhe Sargis II Jakeli (1306-1334) R-FT296480
To say what? If your algorithm says that Jakelis descended from the first R-L23-Z2103 migrated from Yamnaya to the Caucasus about 5000 years ago it is wrong, because the path of his haplotype passed through Italy and very likely it is "Roman". I demonstrated the same for the great part of European Jews and many others.
The same happened for each of your SNPs. You consider you 25% Italian because your grandmother came from Italy, but she was the result of all her ancestors... Perhaps the work of Lerga-Jaso 2025 resolves the question, in fact he says that Ashkenazim are 68% "Italians"...
I traced the path of my uniparental markers. I am Italian. My Y was in Yamnaya 5300 years ago, perhaps in Villabruna 14000 or more until 17000 through the link with Tagliente 2 (I-M223). I consider many like friends, and others as mortal enemies. This is my "identity".
@Shomu
You improved the fits, but Yamnaya has Dnieper-Donets/Mariupol ancestry, when you use EHG-rich Khvalynsk it has to compensate to add Cernavoda to soak up it's EEF ancestry and in turn overestimates the amount of EEF in Yamnaya.
Maykop ancestry in Cernavoda is very little overall.
@Igor
I don’t know, but it seems to me that in Yamnaya and in the Chernavoda culture there is a common source from the North Caucasus, similar to the South Caucasian Shomutepe, and from there comes this “25 percent Aknashen-like ancestry” in Lazaridis’ paper for Yamnaya.
In terms of Distal but historically sensible ancestry, a 'standard' Yamnaya group like the Samara can be modelled as a mix of CHG ~ 30% EHG- TTK cline ~ 30% , Ukr_N ~ 30% and Tripolje ~ 10%
For the 'core Majkop' group at the north Caucasian foothills, there is an interesting finding to Note. A 3 way mix of 'Caucasus_En' (Unakozovskaya/ 'Darkveti'), 'Shuvaleri-Shom N' representative (e.g. Azerbj_LN) and 'Steppe_EN" (PG2001, 2004) Fails, with a significant negative vector coeficient for an even more southern Population (e.g. Ganj-Dareh).
So Maijkop is ~ Cauc_EN 30%, Sho-Shu 48%, Ganj-Dareh 7%, Steppe_En 15%
I.e. a large migration occured just after 4000BC, drawing groups between Georgia & Mesopotamia
The arrival of a new 'southern' population after 4000bc is supported by the appearance of Y-hg G2, L2, etc, in Majkop. These lineages are not present in the currently sampled Shuvaleri-Shomu horizon (Georgia N, Arm_N, Azbj_N)
Also, using Nalchik instead of PG_2001 gives a 'bare Fail' (p~ 0.03). So Nalchik is not the most appropriate source for the modest degree of Steppe_EN/ Khvalynsk-like ancestry observed in Majkop individuals, perhaps because it was older and subsequently replaced by 'Steppe_En' types and then 'core Majkop'.
The most logical explanation would be that Core Yamnaya derives their minor Anatolia Neo from multiple proximate sources inherited from the diversity of Sredny Stog. So variable Nalchik-like elements in the so-called CLV / “Steppe Eneolithic” as well as EEF from populations that had long-standing relations with the Steppe network and began pushing deeper into that ecozone themselves in the 4th millennium BC. Eventually, the genetic cline between westernmost Yamnaya and Core Yamnaya forms as the culture expands towards the Carpathians and the horizon reaches its apex. This is clearly a society that was born out of centuries of interactions within the North Pontic zone, not mass migrations of foreigners.
This would align well with many IE linguists’ analysis that the bulk of loans in PIE are unlike any extant language of the Caucasus or Middle East. Most likely the result of contact with multiple now extinct Old European tongues they encountered on the western frontier of their expanding living space. Them having received their Caucasus Neo ancestry indirectly and in augmented form from hunter-herders, as opposed to farmers, strengthens this idea.
Also I think it’s important to remember that contrary to the fantasies and sensationalist headlines of establishment academics and certain online spaces: the Yamnaya were not Asiatic nomad barbarian chuds from the the east who went around genociding "weak farmer men" and graping every woman in sight. They were seasonal agro-pastoralists whose demography and communal spaces were concentrated on the very western end of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, at an intersection with comparably advanced societies in the Balkans and Central Europe. Their social institutions just happened to be stronger during the BA so they and their northern cousins won out when the system began to collapse.
I find it interesting that, using a crude G25 model of Aknashen + Berezhnovka, the amount of Steppe ancestry in Maikop doesn't seem to noticeably increase over time, despite evidence of there being some sort of mating network with Yamnaya:
https://i.gyazo.com/362899401ee9523dbe0e0b78d2673f96.png
Look at this statue—it’s so unusual, so otherworldly. It’s hard to believe that it’s around 11,000 (!) years old.
An anthropomorphic statue gazing up at the sky
https://www.anatolianarchaeology.net/11000-year-old-statue-found-at-karahantepe-shows-a-human-sitting-on-a-leopard/
@Ethan
No way in the world does the typical Yamnaya sample have ~20-25% Aknashen-related ancestry.
Any models showing this sort of input in Yamnaya are contrived in some significant way.
He literally adjusted his model and selected components in such a way that the contribution of the South Caucasian Aknashen group to the Yamnaya culture was approximately 25%.)
It's very likely that the Aknashen-related ancestry in Yamnaya is from a couple of different populations in the Caucasus and also from Cucuteni-Trypillia farmers in the forest steppe. So, basically, what Tom said.
That's why it's so difficult to model accurately and also why it's so easy to manipulate in admixture tests.
I don't know what the exact percentages are, and I'm not really concerned with that, because in the end it just represents indirect, collateral admixture and non-Indo-European influence, rather than gene flow from the Indo-European homeland.
@David
Yeah after looking again it's way too high, but there is probably a decent chunk (~10%).
For whatever reason their modeling in that paper and the southern arc one seems to result in that type of ancestry being inflated.
The CLV/ Piedmont steppe group have ~15% 'Aknashen'', or more broadly - Shuvaleri-Shomu ancestry. Yamnaya have less than 5%, but can be modelled without any. Yamnaya certainly does not have ~25% Aknashen_N ancestry, and I don't think anybody who knows what they're doing would argue otherwise.
That there's some 'Caucasian Farmer' ancestry in steppe groups is obvious given archaeology & Y-DNA (e.g. J1, J2a, J2b), but it has been over-estimated in terms of its genetic, cultural & linguistic impacts (for various reasons, ranging from methodology to philosophy).
Doug, I think that this is the way to make a genetic exam:
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/r-1b-basal-subclades/activity-feed
Gioiello Tognoni
R-PF7562 and later the subclade R-Z7563 is one of the 3 surviving subclades of R-M269, which survived a long bottleneck. The fact that the oldest survived samples are in Southern Balkans could be a proof that whereas R-L23-Z2103 was 5300 years ago in Yamnaya, these 2 clusters (R-PF7562 and R-L23-L51) were westernmost Yamnaya not far from the Balkans and central Europe. Your subclade R-Y264224 derives from R-Y168201 after a bottleneck of 700 years in the Balkans, above all, in what is the Albanian pool now. That your samples was in Iraq 700 years before 1950 AD demonstrates, I think, that the origin is in the Janissaries during the Ottoman Empire, whereas other peoples R-L23-Z2103 in Iraq/Mesopotamia arrived about 5000 years ago from Yamnaya and I think that perhaps they brought the Euphratic language. Of course this is debated...
https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/R-Y168201/tree
I had a look at some of the Cernavoda individuals from Kartal.. They are challenging to model with qpAdm due to internal heterogeneity & complex ancestries. I'm sure everybody has already done this with G25, but its good to check with other methods
However, the 'group A' high 'steppe' (eg KTL-6 and 1) can be understood as a 4-way mix:
~ 25% Balkan Farmer, ~ 25% CLV, ~ 30% Caucasus.Caucasus_En-BA, ~ 15% Dnieper_N.
The 'group B' with high EEF (eg KTL-2): ~ 60% Balkan Farmer, ~ 20% CLV, ~ 20% Caucasus.
These values aren't gospel, and exact figures are irrelevant - the pattern is.
We therefore see that Cauc_EN/ Majkop influences were directed west to Cernavoda and were accompanied by significant biological links. Core Yamnaya by contrast had few if any direct biological links with the Caucasus (with the exception of some Yamnaya-Catacomb groups from the Caucasus itself).
This is historically plausible, due to several reasons: clear technological links Cernavoda <-> Majkop; proto-Yamnaya emerged from southern forest-steppe @ Don (?), Yamnaya then aggresively pushed out Majkop from the nth Caucasus steppe, etc....
@All
Anything published by Iosif Lazaridis, David Reich and Nick Patterson about the genetic origin and makeup of Yamnaya and the location of the Indo-European homeland must be considered extremely suspect.
Their approach and conclusions are just so Meh. Even worse are their sicophants
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https://x.com/SmartScience/status/2092890384435138721?s=20
The Archaeogenetic Landscape of the Caucasus, 2000 BCE
https://x.com/kvali_app/status/2093352912181469418?s=20
“ https://x.com/kvali_app/status/2093406252852535710”
This guy, some Georgian IT nerd, doesn’t even understand Caucasian history, let alone his consistently posting misleading information about European genetics. As per most of Shomu’s links, it’s unreliable garbage from mountain cave incels . Ignore
Maykop people were so interested in establishing direct kinship links with proto-Yamnaya-CWC that, after dealing with the pesky CLV locals, they instituted a policy of importing ruffians from Kazakhstan (“Steppe Maykop”) to act as a buffer between them.
@Tom
Yes, that was a hypothesis floated here about five years ago by one of the former commentators.
I have no idea how close to the truth it is, but I haven't seen anyone come up with a better explanation for the sudden appearance of the unusual Steppe Maykop population.
Apparently, David Anthony wasn't impressed with it, but I don't know if that's true.
@ Rob
Kvali cant even write his own tweets. He lets chatgpt generate them for him. I dont see any value in his cash grab scheme and I dont think he has genuine interest in european genetics or broader west eurasian genetics that go beyond his own ethnonarcissism
The steppe Maykop are the same people of the steppe Eneolithic mixed with the Central Asian TTK/Tyumen, which means they were exactly the same cattle breeders, and just as likely their language was Proto-Indo-European, like that of the Yamnaya, but they were darker
We literally have a half-Maikop sample in Yamnaya territory, and a half-Steppe sample in Maikop, so I am not sure why people are coping about kinship networks.
Occasional bride exchange doesn't say anything about widespread Maykop ancestry in Yamnaya and Afanasievo would have to be explained as well.
Shared IBD isn't that remotely interesting without establishing whether it's shared via the steppe or Caucasian ancestry within Maykop.
The segment length and number of IBD hits between Yamnaya/Afanasievo/CW and Maikop are indicative of relatively recent and likely regular interactions between the two groups (realistically, a low-level but consistent mating network that spanned the 4th millennium BC).
A shared genetic substrate (such as Meshoko) is possible but in itself insufficient to explain the above.
The shared IBD between Yamnaya and Maykop is via Steppe Neolithic admixture and occasional direct mating involving people like the Ozera Yamnaya outlier.
Also immediately mentioning "widespread Maikop ancestry in Yamnaya" in response to being confronted with these facts, when nobody mentioned that in the first place (nor do I believe that, and I'm not even sure Lazaridis or Patterson does), is further indication that these objections are emotional reactions stemming from belief that South Caucasus groups having any sort of role threatens the indigeneity of Steppe groups (and therefore, apparently, PIE).
There are many better, fact based arguments to prove that PIE is from the PC Steppe. I'm not sure why people are still hung up on the above.
If it was primarily because of Steppe neolithic admixture in Maikop (which to be clear, there is that type of ancestry in Maikop), then you would see IBD connections between those pretty well-sampled Steppe neolithic/eneolithic groups and Maikop samples. Those connections have not yet been recorded in the samples we have.
For the Caucasian fanboys that leaves you with Meshoko-Zamok and Nalchik as the conduit for SCF farmer in Yamnaya.
And I don't see any real evidence for that in Yamnaya or Sredny Stog except one Eneolithic individual with J2a from the Lower Don/Krivansky.
If that's all there is, occasional individuals in Sredny Stog popping up with North Caucasian ancestry, then Lazaridis and his colleagues have been shamelessly manipulating the research on the genetic origins of Yamnaya and people have been falling for it.
@ rozbojnik
“Kvali cant even write his own tweets. He lets chatgpt generate them for him. I dont see any value in his cash grab scheme and I dont think he has genuine interest in european genetics or broader west eurasian genetics that go beyond his own ethnonarcissism”
Hardly surprising, given that guys like Shomu and Khvali are illiterate incels with a cultural inferiority complex
I’d extend Lazaroglu to this group
It would be Nothing more than a joke if they weren’t scamming people from their hard earned money
Yamnaya's genotype formed between 4500-4000 BCE when it's ANF-related ancestry entered.
Running IBD on Yamnaya to figure out the discreet source(s) seems pointless.
I recall Khvalynsk sharing nothing with Yamnaya. I wouldn't read too much into it but it gived the impression Yamnaya's Steppe Neolithic ancestry isn't from nearby to Khvalynsk.
I think Yamnaya and the Middle Don samples share Steppe Neolithic ancestry from the same source.
I reckon the Lower Don was packed with Steppe Neolithic ancestry.
Some of those groups interacted with North Caucasian groups during the Eneolithic. Probably where the steppe ancestry in Meshoko and Maykop is from.
@ Shomu
“ The steppe Maykop are the same people of the steppe Eneolithic mixed with the Central Asian TTK/Tyumen, which means they were exactly the same cattle breeders, and just as likely their language was Proto-Indo-European, like that of the Yamnaya, but they were darker”
Nonsensical jibberish via AI / Google translate
The problem with 'steppe Majkop' is currently inaccurate classification introduced by Wang et al, which ar rarely chose to limit the term to Siberian ancestry individuals. Instead, the term should be extended to refer to all (diverse) individuals in the lower Don to Manych steppe b/w 3900 and 31000bc , such as the early R1b_M269 and Zolotarevka
These formed a northern periphery to core Majkop. They were then removed by the expansion of core Yamnaya.
@ Ethan
what are you waffling on about now?
1. The questions of whether Maikop and Yamnaya share a mating network, and how Sredni Stog/Yamnaya received it's ANF, are distinct. I don't think Yamnaya received very much of it from Maikop, given that Sredni Stog already basically has the same amount of ANF as Yamnaya.
2. The presence of South Caucasian mtdna in Yamnaya, and the lack of any clear EEF mtdna in Yamnaya is damning (particularly given that there are hundreds of published EEF samples, and comparatively few South Caucasian/PPN north Mesopotamian related samples).
3. There are ~50% Steppe 50% Aknashen samples (Remontnoye) found on the Eneolithic Steppe, with Sredni Stog burial posture and grave inventory, and solid IBD connections with Yamnaya.
4. There are no Eneolithic EEF groups which show strong IBD connections with the Steppe (aside from in contexts reflecting Suvorovo-related intrusions, i.e. Urziceni-Vamă, Usatovo, Cernavoda).
Points #2-4 for some reason seem to be handwaved away by people in favour of navel-gazing at the qpadm outgroups which can result in Yamnaya being modelled in the way that aligns with their priors.
that should say -''which arbitralily chose to limit the term to Siberian ancestry individuals.'
in other words, steppe Majkop has been mis-defined/ cherry picked
Wait, why gibberish? I’m translating into English with a translator because I don’t know English. I understand maybe 20 or 30 percent myself, I can’t always write without a translator, especially long texts connected with some scientific data. Well, you understood what I said here, anyone could understand what I meant.
This Steppe Maykop is the result of a migration of steppe pastoralists from the Volga-Dagestan area, or I don’t know from some other territory between the Black and Caspian Seas into the eastern Caspian. Maybe they mixed with representatives of the Botai culture, because the Botai people bred their own type of Przewalski’s horses.
Then this Steppe Eneolithic mixed with a Botai-like population and moved back west.
The most probable scenario is that they spoke the language of the Steppe Eneolithic, that is they were proto-Anatolian-Indo-Europeans.
That’s what I meant.
@Rob
"we have already explained to you that Aknashen is poor-coverage"
There is now a fairly high coverage, enhanced sequence of Aknashen. It has been available for 2 years now. The Remontnoye samples are also both high coverage.
"But this doesn't change the fact core Yamnaya doesnt share much if any direct social links with Majkop"
I don't think Maikop is important to the genetic formation of Yamnaya, as I've mentioned multiple times. These are different issues.
"and most importantly- Can you please share with us the mitogenomes you have analysed and the mtDNA phylogenetic trees you have constructed to back up your claims"
I've already posted those earlier in the thread.
Here is the one tree I did not directly post:
https://discover.familytreedna.com/mtdna/R1a1/tree
"despite what you claim, there are clear link between Yamnaya, late Tripolje and GAC, in one form or another, idirectly or directly. This point is not worth debating"
GAC is not relevant to the formation of Yamnaya ~4000BC.
"LOL none, apart from half the relevant steppe "
Yes, they are not relevant unless you think there was a 500km+ reflux from the Balkans back to the Dnieper or Don. Trypillia at least made its way deep into Ukraine and would be a plausible option notwithstanding the genetic issues.
"Keep in mind, you're starting from negative points"
LOL
@ Shomu
''This Steppe Maykop is the result of a migration of steppe pastoralists from the Volga-Dagestan area, or I don’t know from some other territory between the Black and Caspian Seas into the eastern Caspian. Maybe they mixed with representatives of the Botai culture, because the Botai people bred their own type of Przewalski’s horses.
Then this Steppe Eneolithic mixed with a Botai-like population and moved back west.
The most probable scenario is that they spoke the language of the Steppe Eneolithic, that is they were proto-Anatolian-Indo-Europeans.''
It's jibberish because everything your write is completely inaccurate. Niether ''steppe majkop'', nor Indo-Europeans were 'Volga-Dagestani pastoralists'.
This is just your personal fantasy that your write over & over again, it's nonsensical garbage and primitive trolling.
There was a collapse of the so-called CLV network in the North Caucasus and adjacent steppe ~ 4000 BCE, which had varying levels of Caucasus ancestry. This has been pointed out by others before.
I haven't seen a single piece of evidence that they meaningfully contributed to Sredny Stog and later Yamnaya.
Remontnoye has way too much Aknashen to be relevant on top of Sredny Stog which already had ANF.
Lazaridis is trying to pull a Trojan horse with his Armenian propaganda. His Southern Arc paper already tried to force ~ 20-25 South Caucasian ancestry in Yamnaya.
@ Ethan
“https://discover.familytreedna.com/mtdna/R1a1/tree”
Lol, you’ve copied one mtDNA Tree from ftdna tree which doesn’t support any of your claims.
And it’s clear that you can’t produce any genuine analysis other than crap you copy from GeneArchiver
Given how much of a dumbass you were wrt YDNA,, your personal claims hold no conviction or credibility.
Let’s go princess Ethan, show us the data
@ Ethan
“ Yes, they are not relevant unless you think there was a 500km+ reflux from the Balkans back to the Dnieper or Don. “”
err wut ? This another nonsensical, historically ignorant statement
Ethan, please stop drinking from the Reich - Lazarides Kool aid.
@ Ethan
“ This point is not worth debating"
GAC is not relevant to the formation of Yamnaya ~4000BC.”
There was no “Yamnaya” in 4000bc
🤦
But if there were, please demonstrate for us with some samples & data.
It's pretty clear at this point that nobody is willing to seriously try to address any of these points, let alone actually provide positive genetic evidence for EEF ancestry in Yamnaya (aside from navel-gazing at G25 and qpadm models, which clearly can be used to advance either argument).
@Igor
"Remontnoye has way too much Aknashen to be relevant on top of Sredny Stog which already had ANF."
The argument is obviously that Sredni Stog received its ANF from such a population (or similar). One of the samples from the Remontnoye site (low coverage) is completely contemporary with Sredni Stog.
"I haven't seen a single piece of evidence that they meaningfully contributed to Sredny Stog and later Yamnaya."
We have like 4 high quality Sredni Stog samples, so you aren't going to be able to demonstrate much with them in either direction, but I5894 is mtdna I4a, which is likely from the south caucasus.
Also, I will note, although I'm very skeptical of using the carbondating of the samples we have as some sort of gospel to inform chronology (note the massive FRE corrections in Berezhnovka and Khvalynsk), I find the possibility interesting that ANF ancestry may have initially been quite low in Sredni Stog around when it supposedly started (~4500BC):
https://i.gyazo.com/0787efcc4ad1e179c90a3f8e84d5ef41.png
@Ethan
I4 might as well be a steppe lineage. You're not going to convince anyone with mtDNA.
And if a population like Remontnoye existed that contributed to Sredny Stog to varying degrees, it must have existed by 4500 BCE.
Nalchik is basically 50/50 steppe & Caucasus farmer. A similar population on the steppe pre-4500 BCE seems very unlikely.
Let alone one that somehow manages to contribute to SS, whilst SS had reciprocal exchanges with Trypillia from the get go.
@ Ethan
''It's pretty clear at this point that nobody is willing to seriously try to address any of these points''
Given the fanatical / radical nature of your claims - that not a single mtDNA in Yamnaya come from EEF - the burden of proof falls upon you. But alas, you've delivered nothing because you have nothing.
Firstly, everybody here except you & Arsen knows that Yamnaya has admixture from Sredni Stog and Cernavoda, and given that much of this is female mediated (apart from the few I2a-L699 in yamnaya & catacomb), then most of the 'west shift' was female mediated and discernable in mtDNA. Secondly, my qpADM results demonstrate the presence of EEF in Yamnaya. For some reason you are deluded enough to scoff at this. But my analyses are worth infinitely more than your empty waffle, second hand data you pulled from GA & crappy calculator models, or indeed anything that those dishonest freaklets fom the Reich Lab have ever published.
Thirdly, we can outline that mtDNA while T, H5, J2b1, T2a1a, T2c1 N1, H33 found in Yamnaya are via EEF, and this mind you is limited to a brief look at the Samara set. Now with all the new data , that would grow markedly.
I also gave you the opportunity to prove yourself & impress us by creating a full mitogenomic tree, but it is clear that you're incapable of doing so and hence you fall back to your usual arm-waiving.
The fact of the matter is - EEF is found in all steppe groups relevant for IE dispersal, discussion about the Volga-fringe is irrelevant because they were not even Indo-Europeans. You're continuously presenting Idiotic claims based on your personal flashbacks of Reich Lab pseudoscience and whatever your have read on crap internet sources like Ancestral Whispers, like the conceited little cuck that you are
@Rob
"Given the fanatical / radical nature of your claims - that not a single mtDNA in Yamnaya come from EEF - the burden of proof falls upon you"
That's actually not how burdens of proof work (if anything, the scholarly consensus seems to agree with me, so if I really wanted to, it would be appropriate for me to demand the opposite) but you've tried to provide some actual positive evidence, so let's go through it:
>H33
Does not appear in Yamnaya:
https://discover.familytreedna.com/mtdna/H33/tree
>N1a1a1a
13000BC TMRCA, but at least is plausible:
https://discover.familytreedna.com/mtdna/N1a1a1a/tree
>t2c1
Looks more South Caucasian:
https://discover.familytreedna.com/mtdna/T2c1a/tree
>j2b1
Shallower TMRCA and would plausible in either direction:
https://discover.familytreedna.com/mtdna/J2b1/tree
>h5
Does not appear in Yamnaya:
https://discover.familytreedna.com/mtdna/H5/tree
So one branch that looks promising (J2b1) when compared with hundreds of published EEF samples, whereas there are several likely branches (I2, I3, I4a, J2a, R1a, J2a2) to support a South Caucasian connection (despite a very meager number of these samples), one of them notably being found in Meshoko.
@Igor
The Steppe Eneolithic is very well sampled at this point and I4a does not appear there, but it to show up upstream in what is probably a Kura-Araxes-related sample (I24108) and upstream in Maikop.
If you use my modified Vahaduo calculator, it is clearly visible that the entire South Caucasian Aknashen-like population in the Yamnaya culture comes from a Nalchik-like population. At the time when Lazaridis was writing his paper, he did not have this Nalchik sample, so he used Aknashen, which itself is a source for Nalchik. And it’s not 25 percent there, much less.
Pastoralism in the North Caucasus is not a local invention but an introduced “Neolithic package” (sheep, goats, cattle, pigs + cereals) that came from Western Asia through the South Caucasus. The reliably dated threshold is the beginning of the 5th millennium BC (approx. 5000/4900–4500 BC), mainly in the north-western and central parts of the region (Kuban basin, Kabardino-Balkaria foothills, Stavropol Ciscaucasia). In the east (mountainous Dagestan) there are earlier but controversial data for the turn of the 7th–6th millennia BC.
What existed before
Mesolithic and Early Neolithic of the North Caucasus were based on hunting and gathering. Pottery appears around 8000–7500 cal BP, but fauna remains exclusively wild. Traces of productive economy are noted only at two sites — Chokh and Kamennomostskaya Cave.
Main threshold: 5th millennium BC
The Darkveti-Meshoko Eneolithic culture (about thirty sites) marks a demographic explosion after an almost empty region. It is dated roughly 5000/4900–3300/3200 BC (early horizon sometimes given as ~4500–4000 BC).
Key sites:
- Nalchik cemetery (Kabardino-Balkaria, ~5000/4800 cal BC) — oldest Eneolithic cemetery (121 burials); wheat, barley, pigs, cattle; hunting still important.
- Meshoko (Adygea) — main reference site; pig, cattle, sheep/goats.
- Progress-2 (Stavropol foothills, 4994–4802 cal BC) — sheep-milk proteins in dental calculus.
- Vonyuchka-1 (4337–4177 cal BC) — same.
Sheep milk is crucial: dairy farming specialised on sheep is recorded from ~4200 BC, including among people without Anatolian admixture (local hunter-gatherers also adopted it).
Herd composition by landscape
- Open foothill settlements (Meshoko etc.) — cattle and pig dominate; sedentary agro-pastoral economy.
- Mountain cave/grotto sites — sheep and goats more important, higher share of wild animals.
- Coastal sites — similar to mountain ones, sometimes with horse bones.
Pigs were surprisingly numerous in the North-Western Caucasus Eneolithic.
Controversial eastern centre: Chokh (mountainous Dagestan)
Amirkhanov claims domestication and cereal cultivation no later than the turn of the 7th–6th millennia BC. Most researchers reject this early date and place the Neolithic layer in the 6th millennium BC, viewing the cereals as fully domesticated forms brought from outside (most reliable early traces are Shulaveri-Shomu in the South Caucasus).
New material 2025: Dagoginskoe-2 (Caspian Dagestan)
Lower layer provisionally dated to the first quarter of the 5th millennium BC; dwellings, burials, clay bull figurine, imported obsidian, cattle/sheep/goat breeding and cultivation of wheat, millet etc. Radiocarbon dating still incomplete; if confirmed, this would be the first major Eneolithic settlement with productive economy in the north-eastern Caucasus.
Further development
Maykop culture (3700–2900 BC) — sedentary agro-pastoral economy dominated by cattle and sheep/goats; dairy still focused on sheep. Woolly sheep appear from the early 3rd millennium BC. Fully mobile pastoralism develops with late Steppe Maykop and Yamnaya (from ~3500–3300 BC).
Confidence
Well confirmed: arrival of the domestic package at the start of the 5th millennium BC from the south, sheep-specialised dairying from ~4200 BC, regional differences in herds. Controversial: early 7th–6th millennia date for Chokh. Preliminary: Dagoginskoe-2.
@ Ethan
''That's actually not how burdens of proof work (if anything, the scholarly consensus seems to agree with me, so if I really wanted to, it would be appropriate for me to demand the opposite''
Can you please highlight this concensus ? which journal was it published and following which symposium was a consensus established
Even the Reich Lab hasn't made any afirmations that "all Yamnaya mtDNA comes from the Volga-Caucasus''.
Your understanding of uniparentals is undeveloped and relies on you resorting to pre-established tables compiled by others. Otherwise you're like a fish out of water and miss data , such as the fact that H23 is present in Pestchanka, as but one example.
Moreover, you request us to 'exclude' the Yamnaya and other Steppe En data which does not fit your preconcieved conceptions. It's literally a case of 'show me the data, no not that data''.
That Volga-Ural Yamnaya groups & Afansievo have more Volga-Caucasus mtDNA is due to the hypergamyy of conquering wetern steppe males expanding east, as amply dscribed here. Your comments recently are just irrelevant noise
@ Richard Stevens
"Please don't sidetrack this thread with claims that R1b originated in Italy. Start a thread about that somewhere else, Gioiello."
I responded to Konieczny for some inaccuracies he wrote. I don't know if he's Silesian or someone else I haven't heard from in 13 years, ever since I was banned from DNAForums—the person who sent me the video of Tardelli's goal in the World Cup Italy won when they found Villabruna. Many years have passed, and I've continued my work, even if AI only summarizes it in terms of my theories on the origins of European Jews, but I've written endlessly more and continue to investigate and prove. I was also replying to your post because the connection between Villabruna's R1b1 and I-M223 (not to mention the other hgs I between Po-Adriatic-Balkan) is very strong. Of course, I am also a glottologist and my theory on Indo-European is also very solid. I don't need to convince anyone here, other than to rediscover old friends and also old enemies.
@Ethan
It’s absurd to think that the steppes received genetic contributions only from the EHG or the southern Caucasus. In fact, it’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve read on this blog; no one with even a modicum of intelligence could believe that there was no genetic exchange—among both men and women—between the cultures of Old Europe and Yamnaya.
Do you think there was a physical border between the Balkans and Ukraine? Don’t make me laugh. It’s true that South Caucasian markers are more abundant in the Yamnaya than EEF markers, but to claim that the latter are nonexistent is utter nonsense. Check this out—what do you think?
-mtDNA-H15a1-Anatolia>Trypillia>Yamnaya culture
Ucrania, Verteba, Trypillia-VERT029 (3682 AC)
Rusia, Krivyansky, Don_EBA_Yamnaya-I24090 (2869 AC)
mtDNA-I4
Rumania, Căscioarele, BUK029 (4643 AC)
Ucrania, Alexandria, Sredni Stog-I5894 (4561 AC)
Rusia, Shatrovo-I10632 (3760 AC)
-mtDNA-J1b1a1
Moldavia, Kvityana, pos-Mariupol-I20196 (3337 AC)
Rusia, Grachevka, Samara, cultura Yamnaya-I7490 (3005 AC)
-mtDNA-T1a1-Rumania>Afanasievo
Rumania, Glăvăneşti, edad del Bronce-I11955-GLAV14 (3250 AC)
Rusia, Elo River, cultura Afanasievo-I5270 (3130 AC)
Rusia, Nizhnaya-Orlyanka, Yamnaya-I6728 (3000 AC)
+mtDNA-U4d3
Ucrania, Revova, cultura Usatovo-I7929 (3675 AC)
Moldavia, Tiraspol, cultura Yamnaya-I17747 (2721 AC)
Rusia, Chograi, Yamnaya-I32875 (2719 AC)
-mtDNA-K1a19
Bulgaria, Varna, cultura de Varna-VAR032-T1a2b-L446 (4478 AC)
Rusia, Krestovy, Rostov Oblast, Don_EBA_Yamnaya-I6882 (2900 AC)-mtDNA-K1a19a
-mtDNA-H@16311
Ucrania, cueva Verteba, Cucuteni-I2111 (3654 AC)
Moldavia, Mereni, cultura Yamnaya-I17743 (3229 AC)
Ucrania, Odesa -I11850 (2752 AC)
+mtDNA-H26
Rumania, Decea Mureșului, neolítico-ROM047 (4286 AC)
Rusia Krivyansky, Rostov, Yamnaya-I26787 (2899 AC)
Due to its geographic location, the Yamnaya culture is a genetic mix with genetic contributions from the South Caucasus, Siberia, Scandinavia, the Balkans, the Baltic region, etc. I don’t know what your intention is in denying the genetic influence of the Balkans on the steppes, but 95% of the Y-chromosome markers in Yamnaya originated in the WHGs, and anyone who denies that has less brain than a mosquito.
+SOUTHERN CAUCASUS-mtDNA-Anatolia, Georgia, Iran & Levant mtDNA markers>Yamnaya & Afanasievo
N1a1a@152, N1a1a1a, N1b1a2, R0a, 1a, W, W1c, W3a1, W6, J2a2, T2a1, T2a1b1a1, T2c1, T2c1a1, T2c1a2, T2d1a, T2e, U3a2, U3c, K1a28, H13a1a2, H13a2b, H15b
''Well confirmed: arrival of the domestic package at the start of the 5th millennium BC from the south, sheep-specialised dairying from ~4200 BC, regional differences in herds. Controversial: early 7th–6th millennia date for Chokh. Preliminary: Dagoginskoe-2.''
There's no chance that sheep dairying arrived in the Volga-Caucasus in 6000 BC when it had not even arrived in the southern Caucasus at that time.
Notwithstanding, these 'southern' people were not steppe pastoralists - they were ''southern Farmers''. They are not the progenitors of Yamnaya and other similar groups
🫵😀
"Caucasus-Volga (CLV) wasn't a real population. It's a made-up group created by Harvard in order to associate PIE with a Caucasus population. They've been trying to dishonestly push for a Caucasus origin of PIE for 10 years."
https://x.com/GenosHistoria/status/2094461714859282772?s=20
@ Rich Stevens
I thank you for all that you said. I have no reason to replicate these theories because I wrote more than 20000 letters about that. We have a place where these arguments are discussed and, even though we don't agree about everything, I have some friends who are clear in what they say like me, for instance Gaska: "Due to its geographic location, the Yamnaya culture is a genetic mix with genetic contributions from the South Caucasus, Siberia, Scandinavia, the Balkans, the Baltic region, etc. I don’t know what your intention is in denying the genetic influence of the Balkans on the steppes, but 95% of the Y-chromosome markers in Yamnaya originated in the WHGs, and anyone who denies that has less brain than a mosquito", which has Always been my position.
"If Russia and Ukraine ever stop trying to kill each other, a lot more surprises might turn up back in the old homeland." Of course, this is the real question in all discussions about population genetics, but since I'm fundamentally a historian and a historicist, all of history is involved, as well as books and people from elsewhere who have many questions about their identity and even the reality of the facts. In any case, your heir to the British Empire will soon encounter the hordes of the steppe; perhaps she already has them at home…
Maeotian aDNA from Vyazov et al. (2026).
https://x.com/guenonista/status/2094434563070083339?s=20
Sredny Stog influence across the Balkans
Left: North Macedonia: 4200-4100 BC
Right: Romania: 4300-4200 BC
https://x.com/FortressLugh/status/2094194508665610719?s=20
@Shomu
https://x.com/GenosHistoria/status/2094461714859282772?s=20
Is he wrong?
No, I just put a smiley face. 🫵😀
@ Rich Stevens
In fact I have always said that we came from the Siberian corridor, our language derived from the Siberian corridor and is linked with those languages, above all the Uralic ones, but that from 14000, but very likely from 17000 (the link with Tagliente 2: I2a-M223), we are in the WHGs. I demonstrated already 15 years ago or more, also against the same Fulvio Cruciani (letters in Worldfamilies of 2010) that R-V88 didn't come from Middle East but from Europe. Our thoughts and way of life derived from the Greek culture. Don't you like that?
Eight Infant Skeletons Found Beside Çatalhöyük’s Mysterious “House of the Dead”
https://arkeonews.net/eight-infant-skeletons-found-beside-catalhoyuks-mysterious-house-of-the-dead/
Let’s discard how the Core Yamnaya genotype formed within Sredny Stog for a moment. Did Harvard not claim in their own study that there was an admixture event between Core Yamnaya and EEF around 3350 BC? I don’t know if they realize this because it’s all about barcharts to them, but this date would predate the existence of the Yamnaya culture proper or happen just at the onset of the horizon before total expansion. Afterwards, the female exogamy between Central Europe and the Urals that they themselves constantly talk about occurred and, by extension, logically, the mediation of some Anatolia Neolithic with an origin in the EEF cultures encountered by the western Yamnaya. The mtDNA aligns with this but likely undersells the actual influence because, to my knowledge, most of the early Yamnaya samples we have are in the eastern territories and dated centuries after the formation of the culture. Such ancestry could have easily been mediated by Yamnaya women with local lineages at that point.
So you cannot talk about the Yamnaya culture without EEF. Old Europeans are a part of the story on a genetic, cultural and linguistic level.
This is of course completely reasonable to those that are not ideologically motivated to remove connections between Old Europe and the Steppe, with the aim of leaving open the idea that basal Proto-Indo-Eur… sorry, “Proto-Indo-Anatolian” (location: UKRAINE), may have originated in Armenia because they have a bone to pick with Europeans and our continent.
@Tom
Did Harvard not claim in their own study that there was an admixture event between Core Yamnaya and EEF around 3350 BC?
Where was this?
“A genomic history of the North Pontic Region from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age”
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.17.589600v1
Wave 3 migration
@ Rich Stevens
First of all to say "R-V88 crossed into central Africa during the Green Sahara period about 12 kya" is wrong. The migration to the Green Sahara happened about 7500 years ago and probably from Italy because the closest aDNA to the African line are in Italy. Look at the FTDNA tree: https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna...21027/tree. And I am waiting for some aDNA between 14000 ya and about 10000 ya to be found somewhere. The sample of Climente is dated sometimes lesser than Villabruna, anyway nothing against the Balkans or eastern Europe, we are Europe anyway and not elsewhere, what others wanted to demonstrate, but ask yourself why they permitted that Lerga-Jaso 2025 was published. It seems that the paper is linked with the Harvard Medical School...
@ Rich Stevens
Also your author says: "it is likely that this lineage rapidly expanded in the lake Chad area between 5.73 and 5.25 kya and moved backward to northeastern Africa across the Saharan region", i.e. about 5500 Years ago. I said after 7500 Years ago, thus... and we have the aDNA now which is decisive. And perhaps these are later migrations from Sardinia, because these haplotypes formed in Sardinia.
"The old idea that R-M207 is a WHG haplogroup is fallacious. It was based on the hope that Y-DNA haplogroup R was native to western Europe. It was a case of the wish being father to the thought". About R-M207 I wrote, already 20 Years ago, that the oldest subclades are found all over the world. I found one sample of R-207* also in South Africa, and that doesn't mean anything, because what does mean is the path of a descent, and about that I wrote Yesterday that I am waiting that some intermediate sample between 14000 and 10000 Years ago is found. Also about that I made my hypotheses, and also about R-V1636 I wrote that Italy owns all the 5 known haplotypes. Many think that Italy is a sink. We'll see...
“The Core Yamnaya were formed ca. 4000 BC, followed by admixture ca. 3350 BC with UNHG and European farmers in the east and west of the Dnipro-Don region” per Extended Data Fig 2 dealing with Admixture date estimates.
Their IBD analysis shows links between western Yamnaya and the rest of the horizon. It was a culture with considerable female exogamy between regional communities, as they themselves state. This would negate the theory that Yamnaya proper does not derive its Anatolia_N in part from EEF, unless people want to engage in a convoluted idea where the groups in the west categorically refused to exchange women with those around the Dnieper, who in turn refused those around the Don, etc. and the movement of women among the Yamnaya was simply an east-to-west tradition.
@ Konieczny
All of us, when investigating our origins, and in this case the path of our Y, must consider all possibilities, so I too have taken into account the possibility of having medieval origins. A friend of mine and his genetic relatives, belonging to the R-Y4364 subclade, also thought they descended from medieval migrations, but so far they haven't found anyone outside Italy who separated from them after 4,000 years ago. Even my friend Emanuele Infantino, from Sicily, whom I've been following for years and who managed to do a Dantelabs because he's Sicilian when it became impossible for us, and who belongs to my haplogroup, subclade CTS699 (the one apparently present in the Latins of 3,000 years ago), hasn't found anyone who separated from him more recently than 4,600 years ago. It is also from this, as well as from an SNP by SNP investigation, that I am convinced that my ancestors came from Yamnaya starting at least 4,200 years ago through the Balkans and the Adriatic and were then pushed towards Lazio, and the Sicels, from whom I think Infantino descended, towards Sicily. Personally, I think my parents belonged to the Sabine family of the Aureli who then emigrated to Rome. Regarding the Albanians, and no one knows where they were in antiquity, probably in the Balkans if their language is 40% Latin, 20% Greek, 10% Slavic and has no more than 10% original IE, but their widespread R-Z2110 descends from a single man (R-Z2705) who lived around 500 AD and the upstream subclades are present in Italy, having separated 3,000 years ago. By the way, this is the "Balkan cluster," which Argiedude and I discovered and theorized over 15 years ago. I think yours are the most recent subclades that migrated to Baltic Europe and then southward. To a fellow countryman of yours who asked me and thought of a medieval origin, I told him that his Y lineage could have been in Poland for 3,000 years. Unfortunately, with just one FamilyFinder, I can't say more, although I think I've figured out everything about my friend Paolo Prato, even without STRs. Just with the FamilyFinder SNP.
@Davidski
It's referring to an admixture event between Yamnaya and EEF in/or around Moldova, forming Moldovan Yamnaya.
Their admixture event between UKR_N and Yamnaya from around the same time is the formation of the lower Don Yamnaya profiles mentioned earlier. Obviously, it's more proximally an admixture event featuring some sort of late Sredni Stog community.
Yamnaya has no direct EEF admixture. EEF gives worse fits when Sredny Stog is used as source
EthanR
This sounds incorrect. Moldova Yamnaya is barely different from core Yamnaya. It doesn't have excess EEF admix to the point DATES will be used.
Don Yamnaya is much more complicated. Ukraine_N + core Yamnaya might work but not necessarily the accurate model.
@Leon
You're very confused.
Sredny Stog is not supposed to be used as a reference population to model core Yamnaya.
It should be seen as the process that eventually led to core Yamnaya in the Dnipro region of Ukraine, with only about three of the currently sampled Sredny Stog individuals being very similar to core Yamnaya.
Even Iosif Lazaridis has finally admitted that this is the case.
Read his last paper very carefully and pay attention to what the paper and its supplement say on this topic. Also look at Fig. 1C which shows the "Dnipro cline".
You have to try and understand that you're not special in any way, and that your confidence here doesn't derive from your exceptional knowledge in this area, but rather from overconfidence and sheer stupidity.
Trust me, this will do you a lot of good in life in the long run.
Davidski
You're purposefully obtuse and have habit of manipulating facts to fit your agenda
Neither of Sredny Stog is "basically Core Yamnaya". Even in your crap tool the distance is significant which points to non identicalness. Neither of high sample count Yamnaya clusters have more than 70% Sredny Stog at maximum. Instead of projecting on others provocatively, look inside
Archaeologists excavating the Bronze Age archaeological site of Shahr-e Sukhteh (“Burnt City”) in southeastern Iran have uncovered a 4,600-year-old board game and a decorated bone comb. The finds provide additional evidence of the material culture, craft specialization, and recreational practices of the urban society that flourished at the site during the 3rd millennium BCE.
https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/529622/4-600-year-old-board-game-decorated-bone-comb-unearthed-at-Burnt
@ Konieczny
"The most frequent paternal lineage among the Yamnaya, R1b-Z21036,52, is represented in the ancient Balkans by daughter haplogroup R1b-CTS7556, which was first found in a Maros cultural context in Serbia (Figs. 9-10, S14)94. In turn, the primary descendant clade of R1b-CTS7556 is R1b-CTS1450, whose various daughter lineages appear in Bronze and Iron Age populations of northeastern Albania (Çinamak) and North Macedonia (Figs. 9-10, S14). Importantly, R1b-CTS1450, an ancestral subclade to R1b-BY611>Z2705, was found in BA-IA Çinamak (Fig. S14C). Out of all palaeo-Balkan haplogroups, R1b-BY611>Z2705 is the one with the most uniform distribution across all areas where Albanian has been spoken historically73, and it was also found in the Albania_Bardhoc Post_Medieval sample with the most IBD-matches with our present-day Albanian dataset (Table S10)). Based on the above, R1b-BY611>Z2705 likely played a crucial role in the Albanian ethnogenesis. The presence of R1b-CTS1450 in Çinamak and in North Macedonia suggests that the R1b-BY611>Z2705 lineage was located in this region or nearby during BA/IA. Present-day R1b-Z2705 aligns with this distribution, with the oldest branches being found in Albania, Kosovo, and southern Serbia64,73".
I didn't want to reply to this thread after what Rich Stevens and this ArmandoR1b, whom I don't know who is, wrote. After all, I wrote the first letter precisely to respond to you. I'll leave aside Rich, who now seems pathetic and defeated, but you've done a thorough investigation that deserves a response. I must tell you honestly that I took a look at the specimens added by Akbar to this topic and their autosomal recesses (https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/R-Z2705/tree I40319, I39569, I46264, I41663, I43465) and honestly got the impression that the R-Z2705 subclade in the Balkans is due to the Slavic invasion and not to an ancient presence there. But, as always, I'll do my own in-depth analysis of what you propose and give you a more definitive answer.
@Davidski
Looking Fig. B their PCA, does it strike you obvious that Core Yamnaya looks it's tilted from the Dnipro cline towards EEF?
And obviously, we know Berezhnovka-related and Ukraine_N populations formed a cline within Sredny Stog.....
Another thing: their models for Berezhnovka-Progress are bull.
Per their PCA, Berezhnovka looks to have an EHG ancestry richer in ANE than sampled EHG. Probably from the Lower Volga. They don't look titled towards Central Asia.
@Konieczny
"One important correction first: the surname is generally Vizachero (one “z” after the Vi), although there are related Vizzaccaro/Vizachero surname variants".
I exchanged hundreds, but perhaps thousands, of letters with Vincent Vizachero, but mostly against. Of course the surname is Italian and is Vizzacchero or Vizzaccaro. I wrote a lot about its etymology too. The question is that there are two Vizzaccaro, but one is an R-M73 and the other (ours) I1. Something happened meanwhile. I wrote that he had come back upon the trees, because he lived with plants. After many years he has come back to the Italy FTDNA Project. But to reproach him for that is wrong. I broke in pieces all the papers of Underhill, of Zalloua and infinite others. I wrote above that also about R-V88 I broke in pieces the papers of Fulvio Cruciani, the discoverer just of the V SNPs. The question is wider, and I don't speak about that here. If I found what you wrote above not correct, I wouldn't criticize you, but the authors of that paper...
GPT-6 Astra has set a new ECI record, with a score of 169
https://x.com/EpochAIResearch/status/2095602754282783108?s=20
Does anyone really think that the graph will truly stop growing, hit some invisible ceiling, and create an inexplicable physical limitation on the AI's intelligence? Anyone who understands algebra, higher mathematics, and physics will have no doubt that the graph will continue to rise.
@ Davidski
''with only about three of the currently sampled Sredny Stog individuals being very similar to core Yamnaya.''
Which 3 individuals do you refer to ?
@MrShomuTepinski
Even with growing ECI, I don't see how the usecases of AI are going to change by that alone. It's probably going to only make it faster and more power efficient on the same tasks older versions could do.
@Rob
Ukraine_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:Ukraine_Zaporizhia_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:I1430.AG.TW,0.124067,0.080227,0.039598,0.114343,-0.041238,0.047969,-0.00846,-0.007846,-0.050517,-0.061596,-0.005521,0.005995,-0.016055,-0.009221,0.025651,0.012861,-0.028033,-0.010008,-0.004399,0.001251,-0.001373,0.000247,-0.000493,-0.027233,-0.003832
Ukraine_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:Ukraine_DonetsBasin_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:I6559.AG.TW,0.119514,0.071087,0.045632,0.114343,-0.023697,0.047133,0.006815,0.000923,-0.040905,-0.063418,0.003085,-0.001499,0.000892,-0.009909,0.036644,0.008088,-0.014733,0.010895,-0.000754,0.01063,0.009483,0.01051,0.00419,-0.009158,-0.010298
Ukraine_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:Ukraine_Dnieperpetrovsk_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:I2108.AG.TW,0.114961,0.088351,0.049403,0.125971,-0.023389,0.040997,-0.00094,-0.006692,-0.036814,-0.062871,0.012017,-0.001948,0.005798,-0.02257,0.030944,0.00411,-0.005737,-0.008235,-0.000251,0.009379,0.000998,0.01051,0.008134,-0.000241,-0.00012
“ Davidski
https://x.com/GenosHistoria/status/2094461714859282772?s=2
Is he wrong?
August 31, 2026 at 11:03 PM
MrShomuTepinski
No, I just put a smiley face””
Yes Saar no Saar, Mr beautiful Davidski saar; Poland is #1 but IE comes from dagestani pastoralists ! 👆
One day Super AI will make me sexy girlfriend
@Rob
No, one day Super AI will expose all your fakes,
and in general, it would be very useful in genetics, archaeology, and in the linguistic reconstruction of languages, because we won’t be throwing around a thousand variants of the origin of an ancient sample and guessing which one is the most plausible — instead Super AI will do that, and along the way determine when populations mixed and split, what they looked like, and so on.
@Davidski
The recent France LUP (PRJEB97418) have read lenght problems and some are contaminated, so I cleaned them, could you produce G25 for them? https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kYqIF3YNmbZIC832NdKWnF7m5j1bQp5x/view
Thanks!
That's what I mean, Rob. Some guy created a website where you can enter G25 coordinates (I can swear by anything that this site was made with the help of a neural network), and it shows a heatmap. And just a year ago pfizher, or whatever his name was, was charging money for similar maps.
https://genemaps.net/
Shomu
“ No, one day Super AI will expose all your fakes”
Rofl. No. And I will point out that you just said that you agree with Genos Historia & Davidski, who are stating the theory I created a decade ago. So at least get your Lies straight.
“ Some guy created a website where you can enter G25 coordinates (I can swear by anything that this site was made with the help of a neural network), and it shows a heatmap. And just a year ago pfizher, or whatever his name was, was charging money for similar maps.
https://genemaps.net/”
Pfizer the vaccine company or ph@rtass from GeneArchiver ?
Every random is cashing in on Davidski’s G25. People are free to pay for and use, but it’s not going to upturn Reality
@crashdoc
I've sent them through to Teemu.
@crashdoc
what did you use to clean them up?
@ Davidski: RE ''Sredni Stog I1430; I6559, I2108''
Thanks. These are 1 male and two females (mtDNA U2e1, U4b- both 'classic EHG' lineages; and H13)
Sites; Vynogradne, Igren, Oleksandria.
All C14 dated to ~ 4200 BC.
The male is I2a-L703 (discussed extensively).
His mtDNA lineage is even more interestnig - H13a, links to Berezhnovka and a few later Yamnaya individuals, as well as Ilipinar_Ch. in northwest Turkey. Deeply, H13a links to Iron Gates_HG rather than the Caucasus-related H13c (found in 2x Kotias). But autosomally, he looks even more 'eastern' than later core Yamnaya.
The similarity in PCA might be coincidental due to similar mix of EHG, CHG, Ukr., etc. However its pretty clear that nascent proto-Yamnaya were part of this broader community, probably upstream in the Donetz-Don region, close to the Oleksandria (Kharkiv) female and the published Golubaya Krinitsa group.
So is Yamnaya genetic profile a bottlenecking/founder effect borne out of a more incoherent variation space?
@Davidski
ok thanks!
@Norfern
I visualize damage and library type using DamageProfiler, read lenght with samtools stats and contamination "manually" on mtdna. For read lenght I use a cut-off of 30 using:
samtools view -h FILE.bam | awk 'length($10) > 30 || $1 ~ /^@/' | samtools view -bS - > RESULT.bam
for contamination I use pmdtools with either --customterminus 0,1,-1,-2 OR --threshold 5 (with --ss if SS library) but parameters can vary depending on coverage and amount of contamination.
Yes Saar no Saar, Mr beautiful Davidski saar;Every random person is making money off Davidski’s G25, Saar, everyone wants to use Davidski, they’re cashing in on his invention
The homeland of PIE is from the Balkans, Macedonia, Saar👆
Many will have been surprised by many of my statements, such as that I believe my branch, R-L23-Z2110, came from Yamnaya through the Balkans and the Adriatic, bringing the ancestor of Latin and Sicel (see Emanuele Infantino of Palazzo Adriano, Sicily: R-Z2110-CTS699), or when, after having said and written it countless times, I reiterated that the dominant haplotype in Albania and the Balkans actually descends from an individual from 1500 years ago and, responding to my friend Konieczny, I wrote that it is probably due to Slavic migration, also confirmed by ancient DNA. But the other migrations must also be seen as a complex phenomenon, and it was not rash to say that the upstream R-Z2705 subclade was oldest in Italy (R-BY611) and then in Iberia (I39569 and I40319). Therefore, rather than a migration of the downstream R-Z2110 subclades toward the Baltic and then a descent southward, it may have been part of the migration of R-Z2110 toward Italy, with branches that soon went north (see R-FT378878 and R-FGC24408 with the oldest extant specimen in Norway), other subclades (R-Y5592) toward the British Isles with the bulk of R-L21 from the continent, which also arrived in several batches. R-Y5587 also has its oldest branch in Italy, and I46264 also seems oriented toward Italy. Other subclades with ancient presence in the Balkans and the Eastern Alps: R-CTS7556, presence in the Balkans (Mokrin). R-FT31210 toward the Alpine zone: see I46311.
Therefore, the history of migrations had various phases that should not be difficult to reconstruct point by point.
@Norfern-Ostrobothnian
Yamnaya is a founder effect and expansion from within the genetically heterogenous Sredny Stog culture.
I think it might even be a classic case of the periphery taking over and erasing the core, with foreign (non-Indo-European) influence from Maykop.
Indo-Anatolian is from early Sredny Stog, while Indo-European is the periphery taking over the core and moving beyond via Afanasievo, Corded Ware and Yamnaya.
I don't think Yamnaya is peripherial.
It's probably from Novodanilovka which was an elite Skelya/Sredny Stog group.
Vynoradhe (I-L699) is a Novodanilovka chief and basically Yamnaya genetically.
And Novodanilovka would link them with the Suvorovo guys from Moldova and Hungary with a Steppe Eneolithic profile.
Novodanilovka was probably the most Berezhnovka-like group within the genetically varied Sredny Stog.
Anyone noticed that the TMRCA's for R-Z2103 lines up with the Core Yamnaya founder effect? Seems like they go hand in hand.
@Igor
Vynoradhe (I-L699) is a Novodanilovka chief and basically Yamnaya genetically.
Yamnaya-like genetically, but not actually Yamnaya and without R-Z2103.
Yamnaya came later, well after the Suvorovo/Skelya expansions.
Aren't there Yamnaya with I-L699 from Kalymkia and Bulgaria and later Catacomb? Don Yamnaya aside..
R-Z2103 should have got going around 3700 BCE based on branching and the two Yamnaya-like individuals from the dry steppe. I33307 and potentially KST001. Early Repin/pre-Yamnaya.
Obviously, doesn't preclude the main Yamnaya expansion launching from the Dnieper.
"I think it might even be a classic case of the periphery taking over and erasing the core, with foreign (non-Indo-European) influence from Maykop."
Might have started around ~ 3500 BCE with the introduction of the wheel? Whilst Maykop influence was sweeping over the North Pontic and into Moldova?
Yes, it's important to understand that Maykop did have a profound impact on the steppe and on the development of Yamnaya, but it was not an Indo-Anatolian speaking culture. It represents the foreign influence that led to nuclear Proto-Indo-European.
I don't know if it's Suvorovo or Novodanilovka that gave rise to Proto-Anatolian, but, unlike Maykop, these groups were definitely Indo-Anatolian.
@Davidski
Do you think there's any Maykop admixture in Yamnaya besides the Yamnaya outlier from Ukraine?
I'm not convinced, but that admixture did make an impact in Moldova during the late Eneolithic, and it might be linked with J-L283's appearance a few hundred years later without discernable Maykop input.
There is probably some low-level Maykop-related admixture in Yamnaya.
Yamnaya is likely to have all of the different ancestry streams that show up earlier in Cernavoda and Usatove, but they're mostly blended together and difficult to discern.
@ Norfern & Dave
it depends what one defines as 'periphery'. To me, the trumped up 'north Caucasus piedmont' is a periphery.
And the expansion of Yamnaya was different over the different segments of the preceding 'Sredni Stog' diversity, i.e.
- integration & mixture with pre-Yamnaya groups in Moldova, Balkans,
- displacement, or movement into empty lands in the Volga-Ural region (former ''Khvalynsk'' zone)
- expansion & conquest into the Majkop realm, which had previously marginalised the ''CLV/ north Caucasus stepe' group
The presence of Q-FT380500 among the Yamnaya/Afanasievo/CWC may represent a minor westward pulse by the Steppe Maykop into early core Yamnaya which was insignificant genetically but which facilitated Maykop influences and, by doing so, had a great impact in other ways. Q-FT380500 shows up across Eurasia among the Yamnaya/Afanasievo/CWC. That cannot be said about many other Y-DNA lineages. Q-FT380500 may have played an important role at this early stage. The status of Q-FT380500 around 2800-2700 BCE when it shows up in the archaeogenetic record does not necessarily reflect its status five hundred years prior. I'm not saying they were the leading clan since it likely represents outside influence. However, it is plausible that they were an important clan whose cultural ways had an impact on the development of the early core Yamnaya. It is likewise possible that the presence of Q-FT377000 among the Okunev culture was mediated by the Afanasievo, but that it ultimately derives from the same Steppe Maykop pulse into early core Yamnaya as Q-FT380500. However, that is less certain since there are several plausible scenarios of how a Q-F1161-derived subclade like Q-FT377000 would be present in southern Siberia around that time. After all, it was their ancestral homeland. By the way, I'm quite confident that the Yamnaya and related groups on a regular basis were forced to address the Steppe Maykop and Kumsay as Yes Saar, no Saar.
Well, I think the proto-Indo-European post-Sredny Stog ancestors of Yamnaya, Afanasievo and Corded Ware were certainly the periphery compared to Maykop.
But in human history the periphery does often expand over the core after learning from it.
That's probably why Maykop and its language were erased from the steppe.
Saar Pie is from the Balkans 👆
I bet linguists and general historians will keep harping on about how Majkop spoke “NW Caucasian”, although it’s looking like a later introduction by different ethno-cultural entity
@Karl what is the implication, steppe maykop and kumsay seemed to have been annihilated.
There were certainly Y-hg Q rich groups in the Kazakh steppe which played prominent roles in steppe dynamics. W.r.t Maykop influences, these Q lineages Karl mentioned and J2b2 come to mind, but interactions would have been more complex than Y-haplogroups.
If I'm reading ftDNA correct, Okunevo seems to hold diverse sublineages rather than a single Q-haplo-founder. Whatver the case, they seem to have taken over Afanseivo society and displaced the R1b-Z2013 clans.
And no particularly kind fate for the Q clans if i remember correctly.
Most likely, only the people of the Dolmen culture spoke a Northwest Caucasian language. I’m not sure about the Maykop culture.
@ Shomu- possibly . I think “Dolmen” even showed Srubnaja admixture.
@Davidski I agree with you about the periphery often overtaking the center. When it comes to the presence of Q-FT380500 among the Yamnaya/Afanasievo/CWC, there are several possible scenarios how that could have happened. Q1b2 was present among hunter-gatherers (UKR108, UKR162) in Ukraine. We also have an early westward migration by the Khvalynsk-like individual I5124 with Q-Y49391. With that said, I think the detectable Maykop influences in Yamnaya may have been mediated by a minor male-mediated Steppe Maykop pulse, and Q-FT380500 is the likely candidate. Q1b2a was likely present among the Steppe Maykop, but they seem to have been of lower rank compared to Q1b2b, so the clan with Q-FT380500 may have had incentives to branch out.
@AR The Steppe Maykop and Kumsay were not wiped out. You just have to take a look at Q-F1161 to see that. The much later Lola culture in the North Caucasus is either a continuation of remaining Steppe Maykop elements, or they derive from a new Kumsay-derived pulse into the North Caucasus. Just like the Steppe Maykop and the Kumsay were not wiped out, neither was the Lola culture who was one of the main contributors to the pre-Scythian gene pool (Dzhaubermezov et al. 2026). It should be noted that the Georgian King carries Q-FT284461 which is downstream of Q-L936. Q-L936 has been detected both in the Steppe Maykop (KUG003) and in the Kumsay (I26231). It is quite likely that the Q-L936-derived branch which becomes Q-FT284461 had been present in the Caucasus at least since the Lola culture, so they were not wiped out.
@Karl
The people of the Lola culture are clear migrants from the east; possibly their genetic profile formed even somewhere east of Kazakhstan, where people of the Afanasievo culture mixed with local peoples and returned west.
Well, these are just my guesses.
https://i.ibb.co/RT6Nz9jT/1788771038951.jpg
👆
@ Norfern, CrashDoc
Is there anything interesting in these French_LUP ?
@Rob
The Badegoulian has ANE
The Q1b in CWC/Afanasievo is extremely distant from the Q1b in Steppe Maikop, and almost as distant from the Q1b in Volosovo or found at Csongrad.
It has no evident proximate source.
I agree with Davidski’s idea about the periphery taking over as the origin of Yamnaya. We shouldn't take the "Yamnaya from Sredny Stog" theory in absurd, literary way, as if classical Dnieper Sredny Stog somehow magically transformed into Yamnaya while swapping their Y-DNA from I-L699 to R1b-M269. Instead, we have to look at Sredny Stog for what it actually was: a massive admixture zone between eastern Pontic-Caspian steppe (CLV) and western steppe (Dnieper-Don) groups, where the eastern steppe clearly dominated culturally—and probably linguistically.
Sredny Stog was essentially a massive mating network of neighboring communities trading brides. Imagine time around 4000 BCE: a girl from the Lower Don (modern-day Rostov-on-Don) marries a guy from a nomadic community that mostly camps around West Manych. She carries a lot of "Ukrainian" (Dnieper-Don) genes, while he is pure CLV (Caucasus-Lower-Volga) with heavy Caucasus Neolithic admixture. They have a daughter, who later goes to an inter-clan gathering and marries a guy whose family is from a neighboring river system—say, the Kuban, Kuma, or Terek.
Moving from one valley to another one was easy; during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, the Caucasus Piedmont looked like an uninterrupted network of lush green valleys, meadows, and gallery forests. Through countless marriages just like this one, "Ukrainian" autosomal ancestry eventually reached the Caspian and the Lower Volga.
On the other side of this network, in the Dnieper basin, the exact same thing was happening in reverse. Local clans kept their Dnieper-Don patrilineal Y-DNA (I-L699), but their autosomal DNA absorbed a ton of eastern steppe genes—up to 70% CLV in "high Sredny Stog" groups.
So, where does Yamnaya fit into this network? Clearly on the far eastern end, in the East Manych and Kuma basins. That’s exactly where we find the earliest Yamnaya autosomal DNA. Take these two samples, for instance:
The first is KST001, which has already been mentioned here. Dated to around 3841 BCE from the Stavropol region (Pyatigorsk in the Kuma basin), he represents the earliest known example of Yamnaya autosomal ancestry (91% Yamnaya on G25) and the earliest example of R1b-M269 ever.
The second is I33307 from Yashkul (Kalmykia, East Manych basin). Dated to around 3627 BCE, he is basically indistinguishable from classical Yamnaya (97% Yamnaya on G25) and carries the earliest sample typical Yamnaya Y-DNA R1b-Z2103.
These samples are as clear as it gets. They show exactly where the periphery of the Sredny Stog mating network crystallized into the actual ethnic group we know as the Yamnaya.
@ Norfern
''The Badegoulian has ANE''
A shift from Solutrean to Badegoulian was expected (complete 'technological turnover'), so id have expected eastern admixture, and id been waffling on abut early ANE in Europe for yonks, but still surprising to see ANE in SW France that early. Ill have to check it out
Dear Rob, as you are so eager to share you knowledge and instruct and enlighten the ignorant, could you find a spare minute to list me the most grave errors in this YT summary: The First Indo-Europeans: The Dnieper Culture, Sredny Stog & the Anatolian Branch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjZeqvSuz9Y&t=5s? I admit my mind is quite taken with the easiness of the explanation which it proposes. ;-)
I wouldn't discount the idea that Yamnaya formed near the Moldovan forest steppe.
We know Berezhnovka-like people were there pre-4000 BCE.
They moved out whilst becoming peripherial and replacing the core a few hundred years later.
qpAdm model for the Hittites, the first known people to write down an Indo-European language.
I should mention that Remontnoye_Eneolithic group has some caucasus admixture, but they still have very significant amount of ancestry from the steppe.
https://x.com/cicikus275/status/2097385715055091997?s=20
@Igor
Berezhnovka (or close to them) people were indeed present in Moldavia since at least 4600 BCE. They created the steppe-like chalcolithic cultures there: Suvorovo, Chernavoda, Usatove. But perhaps it is more related to proto-Anatolian origins.
As a place of Yamnaya formation Moldavia is extremely unlikely. It is not just that Moldavian Eneolithic lacks Yamnaya Y-Dna (R1b-M269 etc). On autosomal level, Yamnaya formula is Berezhnovka+ Caucasian farmers + Ukrainian Neolithic. In Moldavia, we could expect something like Berezhnovka + European farmers + (maybe) Ukrainian neolithic. Caucasus Piedmont, Eastern Manych Depression fit as a place of Yamnaya formation much better. They are in natural contact zone with Caucasian farmers (Darkveti). They were getting “Ukraninan” (Dnieper-Don) ancestry through female mediated marriage networks from the Don basin. Berehnovka-like groups (Progress etc.) were indigenous population there. Not even saying, that Yamnaya Y-dna (R1b-M269) were present there since at least 3900 BCE.
@ Odola
''Dear Rob, as you are so eager to share you knowledge and instruct and enlighten the ignorant, could you find a spare minute to list me the most grave errors in this YT summary: The First Indo-Europeans: The Dnieper Culture, Sredny Stog & the Anatolian Branch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjZeqvSuz9Y&t=5s? I admit my mind is quite taken with the easiness of the explanation which it proposes. ;-)''
I haven't seen the video, and I don't understand what your asking - try asking in a masculine, straightforward manner
What can you say about this, Mr. Davidski Saar?
I would add, that culturally those pre-3500 BCE samples from Kuma and Manych basins demonstrate almost complete Yamnaya package in its earliest form. Yashkul (I33307, Kalmykia, 3627 BCE) is simply characterized as an early Yamnaya, it belongs to a group of Yamnaya graves. KST001 (3841 BCE, Stavropol region, Pyatigorsk) is described by Ghalichi et al (2024) as follows: “kurgan 4, grave 17, single inhumation in north-south orientation with a wooden covering in a rectangular grave-pit. The grave was robbed and destroyed in antiquity, but a ceramic vessel was documented”. Everything is typical for Yamnaya except, perhaps, the orientation (Yamnaya graves are mostly west-east, but north-south is also possible). Rectangular grave pit (which gave the name to the whole culture, from Russian “yama”, pit), wooden covering, kurgan are typical parts of Yamnaya funerary rite.
@Gestr
Yamnaya has minimal "Caucasian farmer" ancestry. It's actually less than 10% and much less than claimed by Lazaridis, Reich etc.
Some of the Usatove samples from burials far from the Caucasus also have this type of ancestry.
So it's very difficult to pin down where Yamnaya expanded from initially because of the high mobility and complex admixture profiles of the steppe populations at this time.
The early M269 in the steppe north of the Caucasus need not mean that Yamnaya M269 lineages expanded from there. The M269 in this area might be intrusive, just like the Siberian/Central Asian admixture that suddenly appeared there during the Steppe Maykop period.
I think the fact that Yamnaya-like people already existed in Novodanilovka graves in Ukraine near the Sea of Azov points to this area as the most likely Yamnaya expansion point.
The difference between Novodanilovka and Yamnaya is more Caucasus influence in the latter, but that could've come from increased mobility on the steppe rather than Yamnaya originating in the North Caucasus.
I suspect that after the Novodanilovka chiefs left the area, possibly for the Balkans and Anatolia, the clans that gave rise to Yamnaya took their place and formed Yamnaya with additional impulses from the North Caucasus.
@Shomu
Hittites and other Anatolian speakers don't have anything directly to do with Remontnoye Eneolithic.
Anatolian languages arrived in Anatolia via the Balkans with the descendants of Sredny Stog/Suvorovo/Cernavoda peoples.
The only reason that Remontnoye Eneolithic works as an admixture source for Hittites is because it has a lot of southern Caucasus ancestry, which is obviously made up in large part from Anatolian Neolithic ancestry.
or, more simply, similar mixtures.
@Gestr
There is R-M269 in Smyadovo Bulgaria, not that it has anything to do with Yamnaya (obviously), but I don't see why Yamnaya couldn't have EEF-related admixture instead of SCF-related admixture from the western end of the steppe.
And I don't think there was enough Ukraine_N-related admixture in the Lower Don to facilitate it to the Manych depression.
SH3001 (4326-4058 calBCE) from the Manych depression is basically Steppe Eneolithic with no Ukraine_N admixture.
Yamnaya is from Sredny Stog. South Caucasian admixture on the steppe is overhyped.
@Davidsky
I would agree with “a possibility” of Yamnaya being from the Azov Coast. I had that opinion myself, but that was before KST001 and especially I33307. But here is what I don’t understand. You yourself in one of the postings, several years ago, expressed the idea of Yamnaya origins at the Caucasus Piedmont. It was long before the aforementioned samples were published. So, it looks like, they prove you were right! Congratulations! So: what makes you now, with all those samples (by now we have 3 pre-3500 BCE R1b-M269s in East Manych/Kuma basin and 0 in other parts of steppe!), look for another Yamnaya homeland, and not the place we have the earliest perfect Yamnaya autosomal mix, the earliest Y-dna samples and the earliest examples of Yamnaya cultural package? What makes Azov Coast better than East Manych, at least, with current data? By the way, could you mention the sample IDs of those Novodanilovka individuals, that, in your opinion, are apparently closer to Yamnaya than KST001 or I33307?
I think it's looking increasingly likely core Yamnaya formed somewhere between the Dniester and Dnieper, and left the area before Maykop-related admixture could make an impact on it.
These people were really mobile, so they could pop up anywhere between the North Pontic and the North Caucasus steppe between 4000-3500 BCE.
That doesn't mean Maykop couldn't have had technological and cultural influences on Yamnaya.
@Gestr
I can't remember ever saying that Yamnaya came from the Caucasus Piedmont. I just used the Caucasus Piedmont Eneolithic samples to model Yamnaya ancestry, because that's all that was available for a long time.
Yamnaya is archeologically derived from Sredny Stog, rather than Maykop.
Sredny Stog is a fairly broad term, and even the Remontnoye Eneolithic samples technically belong to Sredny Stog, so this does leave some interesting possibilities. But I don't think the North Caucasus is one of them. Repin is more likely.
Anyway, these Ukrainian Sredny Stog samples are very similar to core Yamnaya, and they date to >4,000 BCE, which is much earlier than anything truly Yamnaya-like in the North Caucasus.
The point about these samples is not that they're closer to Yamnaya than KST001 and I33307, but that they might actually be ancestral to KST001 and I33307.
Ukraine_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:Ukraine_Zaporizhia_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:I1430.AG.TW,0.124067,0.080227,0.039598,0.114343,-0.041238,0.047969,-0.00846,-0.007846,-0.050517,-0.061596,-0.005521,0.005995,-0.016055,-0.009221,0.025651,0.012861,-0.028033,-0.010008,-0.004399,0.001251,-0.001373,0.000247,-0.000493,-0.027233,-0.003832
Ukraine_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:Ukraine_DonetsBasin_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:I6559.AG.TW,0.119514,0.071087,0.045632,0.114343,-0.023697,0.047133,0.006815,0.000923,-0.040905,-0.063418,0.003085,-0.001499,0.000892,-0.009909,0.036644,0.008088,-0.014733,0.010895,-0.000754,0.01063,0.009483,0.01051,0.00419,-0.009158,-0.010298
Ukraine_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:Ukraine_Dnieperpetrovsk_Eneolithic_SeredniiStih:I2108.AG.TW,0.114961,0.088351,0.049403,0.125971,-0.023389,0.040997,-0.00094,-0.006692,-0.036814,-0.062871,0.012017,-0.001948,0.005798,-0.02257,0.030944,0.00411,-0.005737,-0.008235,-0.000251,0.009379,0.000998,0.01051,0.008134,-0.000241,-0.00012
Some folks don't have basic capacity to understand pattersn acrosstime & space.
The findings of KST001 and I33307 show that R1b-M269 is not from the Caucasus, because that lineage is missing in the preceding Meshoko-Darkveti, Nalchik, ''CLV'' and core Majkop groups. Cant remember which one, but one of them even has excess Dnieper-N ancestry.
This shows that R1b-M269 moved into the Manych from elsehwere, sporadically at first, then as part of a large takeover.
@Davidski
Do you still subscribe to your 2022-2023 model for Yamnaya in response to Lazaridis' Southern Arc model for Yamnaya?
Have you ran any formal stats recently with the latest samples from the steppe?
@Igor
I do still think that Yamnaya has some EEF ancestry, but I don't see this as a key point anymore, and I'm prepared to wait for more samples or better methods to sort this out.
@Rob
Russia_Kalmykia_EBA_Yamnaya:I33307 has excess Dnieper N ancestry, which is obviously very interesting considering those older Yamnaya-like samples from near the Dnieper.
@Davidski
Those Sredny Stog samples are interestingly enough identical to Early Corded Ware. Yamnaya/Afanasievo requires excess steppe_EN.
I have a feeling Corded Ware is from near Kharkiv and M417 possibly from the Middle Don nearby.
Hacked away a qpGraph and it seems like the ANE in Badegoulian is most related to the ANE in WHG, as expected. So this means there was a wave of ANE that impacted the Epigravettians prior to the EHG wave, since I believe the latter is more related to Afontova Gora, Xiaohe and Tutkaul. Badegoulian and WHG ANE shows no preference between Mal'ta and Afontova Gora.
More advanced methods, for example such as Super AI. Mister Davidski saar.
1. Re: wool video - I make no videos ;-) 2. Re: "masculine" questions: am a woman, so that would be "appropriation" ;-) 3. RE: main question: well, that YT video I asked you about postulates a kind of "first wave proto-Proto-Indo-European migration" through the West into Anatolia - and as far I understood giving birth to late Greeks on the way: Step 1 (Lower Dnieper ~4700–4400 BC): Dnieper hunter-gatherers mix with Volga/Caucasus pastoralists, forming Sredny Stog.
Step 2 (Balkan Expansion ~4600–4400 BC): Elite pastoralists move southwest (Suvorovo culture), bringing horse-headed scepters into Romania and Bulgaria.
Step 3 (Balkan Conquest ~4000 BC): Cernavodă culture advances along the Danube, collapsing local Balkan Copper Age societies (Karanovo, Gumelnița).
Step 4 (Anatolian Gateway ~3400–3000 BC): Cernavodă forms the Ezero culture, linking Thrace directly to early Troy (I & II) in Asia Minor.
Step 5 (Central Anatolia ~1900 BC): Migrants settle in central Anatolia; autosomal steppe DNA fades through mixing, but Proto-Anatolian language survives to become Hittite.
Key Y-DNA Haplogroups
"I-L699" (Core Male Line): Dnieper hunter-gatherer origin → Sredny Stog → Cernavodă → Bulgaria → Central Anatolia (Kaman-Kalehöyük Hittite context).
"R-V1636" (Secondary Line): Volga/Caucasus origin → found alongside "I-L699" in Cernavodă and Arslantepe.
"I-Y702" (Balkan Branch): Sister line to "I-L699" ; carried into Western Anatolia (~2000 BC) by Indo-Europeanized Balkan locals.
And it has some funny AI animation about them conqeuring the Cucuceni-Tripolye on the way...
yeah the later ANE-> EHG is Afontova related, and probably mediated (at least in part) by an inflow of Y-hg Q. This fooled a lot of people into claiming R1b-P297 etc entered Europe c. 11000 BC (ie almost 15000 years later than in reality).
@ Odola
Yes ma’am thank you Ma’am.
Overall, that seems like a good summary, one can always quibble details but tbd
I think Dan Davis did a similar topic. I’ll. Check both out soon.
@Rob
To your comment about “intrusiveness” of R1b-M269. That, by the way, is an interesting issue, I was going to talk about it, and thank you for bringing it up. In fact, Yashkul sample (I33307) is literary the FIRST sample in the huge area of Kalmykia, Volgograd region south of Berezhnovka and Astrakhan region. And, remember, this is a huge area, of the size of a decent European country, with many very productive ecological niches even now (Volga-Akhtuba Delta, Volga-Don isthmus near Kalach-on-Don where Repin culture, archeological precursor of Yamnaya, formed etc.), not to say about the time of Climatic Optimum. So, for the record, Yashkul is the first ever sample in this whole area, and right away it has fully developed Yamnaya A-dna and Y-dna! Coincidence? I don’t think so.
What was there before? Nobody knows. Which makes me feel, by the way, that some groups of early Indo-Europeans had some unusual ways of dealing with the dead: water burial, cremation etc. Because I don’t know about not just DNA-samples, but about ANY human remains from that area before Yashkul. But back to the question of intrusiveness. Where exactly and from where? In Pyatigorsk - probably, it was intrusive, because we have Progress and other samples there. In Kalmykia and East Manych – we just don’t know. If it is intrusive, from where? Clearly not from the Pontic areas (“Ukraine”), where, despite of extensive sampling, we don’t have a single not to say R1b-M269, but even its precursor, R1b-P297.
@Odola
Greek is more related to Armenian and Indo-Iranian than to Anatolian. In fact, it's more closely related to every Indo-European language family than to Anatolian.
So Greek is probably derived from a Yamnaya-related population that also had close contacts with the ancestor of Corded Ware.
Anatolian represents an earlier branch of Indo-European that is probably associated with Suvororo/Sredny Stog and a migration that happened before the Yamnaya expansion.
That Youtube clip that you linked to gets this wrong, which is a rather basic thing to get wrong.
@Gestr
I'm willing to bet that M269 and Z2103 will turn up in Ukraine if we get a few more of those ~4,000 BCE Yamnaya-like people from between the Dnieper and Sea of Azov.
Currently we only have three of them and I think only one is a male.
@Davidski
Thank you very much for the samples, I will try to write about them a little bit later. Right now, to the question of intrusiveness: I wonder, what do you and other folks here think about those two samples: I20298 and I7890? The second one is from Slovakia, and has a fully developed Yamnaya a-dna profile and R1b-Z2103 (even some more advanced subclades) at 3991 BCE! Obviously, It doesn’t mean R1b-M269 is from Slovakia (as many people here, I am sure, would subsume), but, if the real date is anything close, it seems to strengthen your point about high mobility of early Yamnaya. With KST001 and Yashkul we’ll have several samples with almost identical a-dna and y-dna several thousand km. apart! The situation, by the way, is very similar to Khvalynsk-Berezhnovka-Suvorovo network several centuries earlier. The center of gravity of this hyper-mobile Yamnaya community is still unclear.
I20298 is even earlier, at 4150 BCE, from Chelyabinsk region. It doesn’t have G25 coordinates, and apparently belongs to some west Siberian/Ural forager. If it is relevant at all (there are obvious issues with this sample), what do you think about the possibility that R1b-M269 has similar origin to Steppe Maykop clans, and is a result of recent migration from Siberia/Central Asia?
@ Davidski
''Greek is more related to Armenian and Indo-Iranian than to Anatolian. In fact, it's more closely related to every Indo-European language family than to Anatolian.''
not sure we should entirely swallow this mantra. For one, 'proto-Greek' Y-DNA includes R1b-Pf7562 and I2a-P78, not exactly 'typical Yamnaya' markers, although PF7562 falls within M269 and 'Yamnaya R1b-Z2103' comes down later on.
I think the Greco-Armenian link is almost overdone. Publications make some vague remarks about R1b-M269, Catacomb, and 'after 2600bc', but these contentions aren't accurate. Indeed, compared to proto-Greeks, proto-Armenians feature R1b-Z2103 and I2c-L596. Obviously ''Y-DNA aren't Languages Trees'', and its ultimately a linguistic question, but linguists remain in debate on the exact affinities between Greek & Armenian.
The links between Phrygian and Greek are more solid. But any links between Greek & Armenian might reflect the fact that proto-Armenians set off from the Moldovan steppe.
Also, I think that proto-Greeks did absorb some pre-proto-Anatolian in the Balkans, some linguists view the -nth- & -ss-- toponyms across northern Greece and Anatolia to reflect such a layer, although others see them as pre-/non-Indo European substrata.
Overall, there is more to it than 'Yamnaya lanaguages', "CW langauges', etc. I havent been impressed by language spin-off publications post aDNA.
Indeed, rechecking, the video does explicitly bring up Greek and Phrygian alongside Balkan-to-Anatolian movements, which blurs the line between the early "1st-wave" steppe pulse and the later Yamnaya-derived Nuclear IE horizon that Greek seems to actually belong to.
I was mainly focusing on its argument for the I-lineages tracing the early Suvorovo and Cernavodă "1st-wave" movement "from the West" into Anatolia. But you are right that lumping Greek into that same early movement confuses a fast, 1st-wave, "Huns-style" elite pulse, which, as far as we know, left virtually no lasting genetic trace in the Balkans (outside of those isolated Anatolian pockets at its presumably ultimate destination), with the massive demographic reset of the "Yamnaya 2nd wave" (or whatever wave it ultimately turns out to have been).
Still, a lot of summaries still report that Greeks and Phrygians were at least partly a result of that early wave, so the video's author might not be fully up to date on the latest archaeogenetic consensus here, even if his depiction of the 1st-wave mechanics was helpful for a lurking viewer like myself. I just wanted to ask if Rob found much fault with the depiction of the "1st wave" itself, and I was relieved to find that he did not.
@Gestr
Yamnaya is archeologically closely associated with Sredny Stog and, considering those early Yamnaya-like samples from the Dnieper, its population probably derives from the Sredny Stog population.
So, for now, both archaeology and ancient DNA are in agreement that Yamnaya formed somewhere within Sredny Stog territory. Yamnaya is not an offshoot of Maykop.
And that's probably why we're seeing M269 popping up both east and west of Sredny Stog just after 4,000 BCE.
As for M269, the oldest M269 samples are currently from Europe, and Yamnaya, the most M269-rich ancient population, expanded from Europe to Asia.
So M269 is definitely from Europe.
You would need direct evidence of the presence of M269 in ~4,000 BCE Central Asia to successfully argue that M269 moved into Europe from Central Asia. I don't think such evidence will ever show up.
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