Proto-Indo-European Origins | DNA

The origins of modern Europeans are shrouded in mystery and wracked by controversy. Archaeologists and linguists have long debated the origins of the Indo-European language family as well as the origins of civilization and settled life in Europe. Recent discoveries in past years suggest that the origin of European culture, as well as some central Asian cultures, is within an archaeological culture called the Yamnaya.

One major source of contention over the origins of the precursor to modern European cultures is over whether they involved the movement of actual people or merely the exchange of ideas. Before about 9,000 BP Europe was still in the Palaeolithic. It was populated largely by hunter-gatherers, living not very differently from how they had lived when they first arrived in Europe roughly 37,000 years ago.

Beginning around 9,000 BP however, agriculture and village life began to spread across Europe and by 5,000 BP the continent was mostly settled by Neolithic farmers. Around 5,000 BP or 3,000 BC a Bronze Age culture began to spread across Europe, probably from the steppes of Eurasia.

In one view, this change is related to trade networks that existed across Eurasia. People of Europe were in trade contact with the people of the Middle East and the Eurasian steppes and they adopted the technology and lifeways of more technologically advanced outsiders.

The original position of many European archaeologists, however, was that the second instance, at least, represented an invasion. In 3,000 BC, nomadic pastoralists from the steppes of Eurasia replaced and interbred with the Neolithic farmers who had settled Europe about 4,000 years earlier.

More recent views also contend that Neolithic farmers from Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) began to spread across Europe around 7,000 BC without much interbreeding with the native hunter-gatherers. This suggests that both may have been the result of actual migrations of people.

Although there are still many unanswered questions, sequencing of ancient human genomes has revealed that these culture changes in Europe were partially the result of a migration of people.
The earlier migration of farmers from Anatolia is beyond the scope of this article, but recent research suggests that the dawn of Bronze Age Europe was due to the expansion of the Yamnaya culture.

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[gregb]

This video would be more understandable if there were more maps and fewer stock photos and film clips.

[yukiomishimafan]

It’s sad to realize that so much history is lost forever

[bigdallyc]

I want to love someone as much as this guy loves saying "Yamnya".

[MarkVrem]

The practically all men thing made me think of New France in Canada where it was pretty much all men fur traders, looking for pelts to sell back home. The same would apply to Russian mostly all-male fur-traders venturing into Siberia around the same time. But yeah, also reminiscent of Vikings. Young men looking for land, due to lack of it back home beyond the oldest son to inherit. Thinking to the Yamnaya homeland being in the Steppe, fur would be very valuable. Cold winters, and even cold nights during summer. For the Yamnaya venturing into the forests of Europe to find good quality pelts might have been very lucrative even back then. Raiding any villages on the way an added plus. Setting up posts that eventually turn into cities, and having the wealth to attract local women. In that case similar to how Viking set up Dublin, Cork, etc, in Ireland. Of course once the land is also noted as farm worthy. That would be like a YAMNAYA GOLD RUSH. ALL MEN LOOKING FOR GOOD LAND!!.

[henrikrolfsen]

The Yamnaya were known for heir large herds of horses, as well as their wagons. We know the Yamnaya that migrated into Europe, covered wagons, and horse herds, (they were horse breeders). The women and children rode in the wagons, while the men, and boys rode the horses. They carried the farm hen, and plant seeds, for later cultivation. Later in European history, we witness Germanic tribes migrating the same way: Covered wagons, oxen, and horses. These migrants from Central Europe, brought with them their ox-driven heavy plow, and Three-Field-Crop-Rotation methods, (something even the Romans were ignorant of).

[walterulasinksi]

It should be noted that the horse population from the Botai group did not genetically extend into current horse populations either to the West or East. So while the domestication of horses may have been passed as knowledge, the breed did not.

[brendacooper]

Whoever the original Indo aryan folk were they spread not only into Europe but right down into India. When you dig into both the Irish and the Hindi traditions you find that the stories differ but the elements within the stories obviously came from a shared origin, sort of like a game of gossip going off in two directions, after a few thousand repetitions and interpretations you wind up with two very different tales, both cultures placed a high value on oral history and ensured that it was memorised, both cultures had a strictly defined social system, believed in reincarnation, had both a religious aristocracy and a warrior caste, each member of the society had their rights and duties, even down to what they could wear or own. The Irish Druids even had it worked out to exactly the worth of an individuals life if you either accidently or deliberately killed him. I guess we can blame the Indo Aryans for the invention of lawyers.
It would be really interesting to see a comparison of DNA from both ends of the diaspora and get an ideal of how much was physical migration and how much was cultural spread.

[halk]

This is missing a big part of the picture, which is the Bell Beaker culture, which was contemporaneous with the Corded Ware and occupied Western Europe around modern-day Belgium, the Netherlands, and the British Isles. Most of the present-day inhabitants of that region are descended from the Bell Beaker people, not the Corded Ware people. The Bell Beaker people are thought to have also been Indo-Europeans.

[Turkish_Model__]

Except for one glaring issue

Every single word associated with agriculture in Europe is of Indo-European origin. There are also many maritime words as well such as "sail". Suggesting the Indo-Europeans were seafarers..

"Scythe"
"Plough"
"Wheat"
"Bread"
"Milk"
"Cattle"
"Goat"
"Sheep"
"Swine"
"Wine"
"Beer"
"Mead"
"Wool"
"Hull"
"Paddle"
"Sail"
"Axe"

Every one of these words came from and with the Indo-Europeans....Suggesting the Indo-Europeans wrere synonymous with the advent of agriculture in the fertile crescent...

[fretnesbutke]

Where we all came from can be investigated by the study of archaeology, linguistics, folklore, etc., but the massive advancement of genetics has given us a Golden Age of anthropology. When it comes to insights into who we are, it's an amazing time to be alive.

[human]

The collision of these two populations was not a friendly one, not an equal one, but one where the males from outside were displacing local males and did so almost completely, ” Reich told New Scientist Live in September. This supports Kristiansen’s view of the Yamnaya and their descendants as an almost unimaginably violent people. Indeed, he is about to publish a paper in which he argues that they were responsible for the genocide of Neolithic Europe’s men. “It’s the only way to explain that no male Neolithic lines survived

[Nativgod]

I have heard somewhere that Corded Ware Came from Kurgan around same time as Yamnaya, which led to bell beaker, etc in Europe.

[angela]

The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture (Romanian: Cultura Cucuteni and Ukrainian: Трипільська культура), a Neolithic–Eneolithic archaeological culture (c. 5500 to 2750 BCE) of Eastern Europe was the first victim of Yamnaya expansion. Archaeological records of the Trypillia culture that was an agricultural and sedentary culture of Anatolian farmers, disappeared at the same time as Yamnaya people moved west.

[petermsiegel]

To demonstrate the PIE speakers were farmers, and not just herders, he says PIE had a native word for wheat. Hmmm... What would that be? It's not *ĝr̥H₂-no-, "grain" (too broad). It's not *pewh₂- "mow, harvest", possibly borrowed from Semitic "wheat". *h2ed- came to mean too many things to be pinned down, though in some languages it's "emmer wheat". Hittite šeppit is borrowed for sure.
In other words, the data seem to show the opposite of his conclusion on farming: they knew (and perhaps harvested) barley, but their farming words were unstable, unlike their herding terminology. Some of these farming words were borrowed (with the novel practice), but in any case they often referred to different crops in the daughter languages. So perhaps, as others posit, they were herders only, albeit gathering and occasionally tilling specific crops (like barley, but likely NOT wheat).

[Alejojojo]

I think as well that considering the Yamnaya as a male population is too much of a bold assumption. I think what dna tells us is that the Yamnaya male pass on more their genes. This can mean that either the conquered males were wiped out, enslaved (thus having little to non descendants) or/and that Yamnaya male took many captive wifes. Female dna of the Yamnaya has also been found. We have to bear that in mind too.

[loulagregg]

So nice to receive this information and to hear a great effort on your part to speak the ancient words correctly. Well balanced presentation. Thank you!

[proto-indo-europeanisanato]

If the Yamnaya destroyed the Anatolian Farmers then their DNA would not be present in today's Nordic people, plus the Aegean Farmers had totally enslaved and bred with the Western Hunter Gatherers they found on Gaul, Germany, Scandinavia and Britain, so the people the Yamnaya encountered were not at all just Anatolian aka Neolithic Farmers. These Nordicist accounts really Crack me up, and their obscurantism fear of Debate is equally laughable!

[nogins]

Here.
Let me expose to you who the real Indo-Europeans were. As in ..the people who ACTUALLY spread the Indo-European languages in the past.


First, i want to point out that "Ancient DNA " is nothing but a computer modeled "reconstruction" . So there is no proof in any of it.


Anyhow. So you have two primary waves of people carrying innovation from the Near East .

Haplogroup i
[Neolithic Indo-Europeans]
[Agriculture. Megaliths. Pottery "cultures".]

Then

Haplogroup J2
[Bronze Age Indo-Europeans]
[Greco-Roman Civilization] [Writing and Metallurgy] [Latin derived languages Romance and Celtic] [Greek derived languages Baltic and Slavic]

[MushroomsMythologyandMedicine]

I remember studying languages that porto Indo-European languages were similar to Sanskrit and Lithuanian. Linguists were able to speak Sanskrit to some villagers in Lithuania.