Rosa Rubicondior: Refuting Creationism - Where Europeans' Ancestors Came From - Thousands of Years Before 'Creation Week'

Reconstruction of Yamnayan life in the Pontic Area, 5000 years ago.

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New research based on an analysis of the genomes of 435 individuals has revealed the rich history of the ancestors of modern Europeans, especially the mixing of multiple ethnic groups in the Pontic Area - modern Ukraine - between 8,400 and 4,000 year ago which eventually gave rise to the Yamnaya people who get their name from the Russian for 'pit burial' (Yamna in Ukrainian).

Before the Yamnaya spread into Europe, they were preceded by two earlier waves of migration: firstly, hunter-gatherers who arrived about 45,000 years ago having interbred with and replaced the Neanderthals who had lived there for the previous 250,000 years. These were followed by farmers who came from the Middle East, starting about 9,000 years ago.

The Yamnaya, having formed a stable linguistic and cultural group, and either invented or copied ox-drawn carts and skilled horsemanship, which gave them great mobility, began to expand their range, probably under population pressure beginning about 5,300 years ago and lasting for some 1,800 years, eventually reaching all parts of Western Europe including the Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles.

What information do you have on the origins of the Yamnaya people? The Yamnaya people were a Bronze Age culture that emerged on the Pontic-Caspian steppe around 3300–2600 BCE. They are widely regarded as one of the primary groups responsible for the spread of Indo-European languages, especially into Europe. Their origins are closely tied to earlier steppe cultures, genetic ancestry, and the broader context of prehistoric Eurasian migrations.

Origins and Ancestry
The Yamnaya culture developed from a fusion of earlier steppe and Caucasus-related populations:

Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers (EHG) – These were indigenous hunter-gatherer groups from Eastern Europe and Russia. They contributed a significant portion of Yamnaya ancestry, especially paternal haplogroups like R1b and R1a.
Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers (CHG) / Early Iranian Farmers – These groups from the Caucasus and western Iran mixed with the EHG populations before or during the formation of the Yamnaya culture. Their genetic input introduced some of the cultural and technological advancements seen in Yamnaya society.
This blend of EHG and CHG ancestry resulted in what is now called "Steppe ancestry," which later spread widely into Europe and South Asia.

Cultural and Technological Innovations

Pastoral Nomadism: The Yamnaya were among the first to practice extensive horse domestication, which gave them a mobility advantage over other groups.
Wheeled Transport: They used wagons and carts, helping them spread across the vast Eurasian steppe.
Kurgan Burial Practices: They buried their dead in large mound graves (kurgans), often accompanied by grave goods and animal remains.
Proto-Indo-European Language: Many scholars link the Yamnaya to the Proto-Indo-European language, which later diversified into many modern language families across Eurasia.
Expansion and Legacy The Yamnaya people migrated extensively, influencing multiple cultures:

Into Europe: They contributed heavily to the genetic makeup of the Corded Ware culture (~2900–2350 BCE), which played a key role in the Indo-Europeanization of Europe.
Into Asia: They also moved eastward, contributing to the formation of the Afanasievo culture in Central Asia, which is thought to be an early source for Tocharian languages.
Genetic Impact

Genetic studies have shown that modern Europeans, particularly in Northern and Central Europe, have a significant proportion of Yamnaya ancestry (up to 50% in some populations). The spread of Yamnaya-related genes also influenced South Asian populations, particularly in relation to the Indo-Aryan migrations.

Would you like more details on any specific aspect, such as their linguistic connections, burial customs, or genetic studies?

Since they were probably the people who brought proto-Indo-European languages to western Europe some information on linguistic connections would be useful.

The Yamnaya people are widely believed to be the main vector for the spread of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) languages into Western Europe, largely through their cultural and genetic influence on later European populations. Here’s an overview of the linguistic connections:

The Steppe Hypothesis and Proto-Indo-European Origins

The dominant linguistic theory, known as the Steppe Hypothesis (or Kurgan Hypothesis), proposes that the Proto-Indo-European language originated among the Yamnaya people or their immediate ancestors on the Pontic-Caspian steppe around 4500–3000 BCE. This theory is supported by:

Linguistic Reconstruction: PIE appears to contain words related to steppe pastoralism, wheeled vehicles, and horses (e.g., ekwos for "horse"), all of which match Yamnaya culture.
Archaeological Evidence: The Yamnaya were highly mobile, with wheeled transport and horseback riding, facilitating language spread.
Genetic Data: The expansion of Yamnaya ancestry correlates with Indo-European language dispersal in Europe and parts of Asia.

The Yamnaya Influence on Europe

The Yamnaya did not directly introduce PIE to Western Europe but influenced later cultures that carried it forward. The two main routes of Indo-European language dispersal are:

The Corded Ware Culture (c. 2900–2350 BCE)

The Corded Ware culture emerged from Yamnaya migration and admixture with Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers in Central and Northern Europe.
Linguistically, it is often linked to the Western Indo-European branches, especially Italic, Celtic, and Germanic.
The Yamnaya-related ancestry in Corded Ware individuals suggests a strong demographic shift in Europe, replacing much of the earlier Neolithic populations.

The Bell Beaker Culture (c. 2800–1800 BCE)

Initially a distinct culture, the Bell Beaker people later mixed with Corded Ware-derived populations in Western Europe.
The Bell Beaker expansion spread Indo-European languages to the British Isles, Iberia, and France.
This migration is associated with the rise of early Celtic languages, particularly through later Hallstatt and La Tène cultures.

Indo-European Language Branches and Yamnaya Connections

While the exact timeline of PIE diversification is debated, the Yamnaya-related migrations are linked to the formation of major language groups:

Indo-European Branch
Likely Yamnaya Connection

Anatolian (e.g., Hittite)
May have split before the Yamnaya expansion.

Tocharian (Central Asia)
Linked to the Afanasievo culture (Yamnaya offshoot).

Balto-Slavic
May have stemmed from later Corded Ware cultures in Eastern Europe.

Italic (e.g., Latin)
Possibly linked to Bell Beaker migrations into Italy.

Celtic (e.g., Gaelic, Welsh)
Spread through Bell Beaker and later Bronze Age cultures.

Germanic (e.g., English, German)
Likely developed from Corded Ware cultures in Scandinavia.

Indo-Iranian (e.g., Sanskrit, Persian)
Spread eastward through the Andronovo and Sintashta cultures.

Was Yamnaya Speech Proto-Indo-European?

While the Yamnaya are the best candidate for the original PIE speakers, some scholars argue that the actual Proto-Indo-European language was spoken slightly earlier, among pre-Yamnaya steppe groups. The Yamnaya may have spoken a late form of PIE or an early Indo-European dialect that later diversified into different branches.

Conclusion

The Yamnaya were instrumental in spreading Indo-European languages to Western Europe, mainly through the Corded Ware and Bell Beaker cultures. Their influence laid the foundation for Italic, Celtic, and Germanic languages, which developed over the following millennia. Linguistic, genetic, and archaeological data all support their role in the Indo-European expansion.

The jury is still out on the question of the nature of their occupation - some schools of thought believe it was violent, since the local population declined sharply at that time; others think it was more peaceful, and that the indigenous population was already low and declining prior to their arrival. Whatever the nature of their expansion, they soon came to dominate the local culture and invigorated the Indo-European languages that were spoken there.

Now an international team of researchers led by Iosif Lazaridis and his colleagues at Harvard and including scientists from the Institute of Archaeology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the Academy of Science of Moldova, the Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland and elsewhere, have shown that the Yamnaya themselves originated in the Pontic Region from the mixing of several other groups who migrated into the area from the Caucasus

Abstract
The North Pontic Region was the meeting point of the farmers of Old Europe and the foragers and pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe^1,2, and the source of migrations deep into Europe^3,4,5. Here we report genome-wide data from 81 prehistoric North Pontic individuals to understand the genetic makeup of its people. North Pontic foragers had ancestry from Balkan and Eastern hunter-gatherers6 as well as European farmers and, occasionally, Caucasus hunter-gatherers. During the Eneolithic period, a wave of migrants from the Caucasus–Lower Volga area⁷ bypassed local foragers to mix in equal parts with Trypillian farmers, forming the people of the Usatove culture around 4500 bce. A temporally overlapping wave of migrants from the Caucasus–Lower Volga blended with foragers instead of farmers to form Serednii Stih people⁷. The third wave was the Yamna—descendants of the Serednii Stih who formed by mixture around 4000 bce and expanded during the Early Bronze Age (3300 bce). The temporal gap between Serednii Stih and the Yamna is bridged by a genetically Yamna individual from Mykhailivka, Ukraine (3635–3383 bce), a site of archaeological continuity across the Eneolithic–Bronze Age transition and a likely epicentre of Yamna formation. Each of these three waves of migration propagated distinctive ancestries while also incorporating outsiders, a flexible strategy that may explain the success of the peoples of the North Pontic in spreading their genes and culture across Eurasia^3,4,5,8,9,10.

Nikitin, A.G., Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N. et al.
A genomic history of the North Pontic Region from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08372-2

© 2025 Springer nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Several members of this research team have also published a second paper in Nature based on analysis of the genomes of the same 435 people. They have concluded that the ancestors of the speakers of proto-Indo-Anatolian which is ancestral to the Anatolian and Indo-European languages occurred in the area of the Caucasus-Lower Volga. This effectively closes a gap in our knowledge of the connection between these two major language groups in western Eurasia:

Abstract
The Yamnaya archaeological complex appeared around 3300 bc across the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas, and by 3000 bc it reached its maximal extent, ranging from Hungary in the west to Kazakhstan in the east. To localize Yamnaya origins among the preceding Eneolithic people, we assembled ancient DNA from 435 individuals, demonstrating three genetic clines. A Caucasus–lower Volga (CLV) cline suffused with Caucasus hunter-gatherer^1.1 ancestry extended between a Caucasus Neolithic southern end and a northern end at Berezhnovka along the lower Volga river. Bidirectional gene flow created intermediate populations, such as the north Caucasus Maikop people, and those at Remontnoye on the steppe. The Volga cline was formed as CLV people mixed with upriver populations of Eastern hunter-gatherer^2.1 ancestry, creating hypervariable groups, including one at Khvalynsk. The Dnipro cline was formed when CLV people moved west, mixing with people with Ukraine Neolithic hunter-gatherer ancestry^3.1 along the Dnipro and Don rivers to establish Serednii Stih groups, from whom Yamnaya ancestors formed around 4000 bc and grew rapidly after 3750–3350 bc. The CLV people contributed around four-fifths of the ancestry of the Yamnaya and, entering Anatolia, probably from the east, at least one-tenth of the ancestry of Bronze Age central Anatolians, who spoke Hittite^4.1,5.1. We therefore propose that the final unity of the speakers of ‘proto-Indo-Anatolian’, the language ancestral to both Anatolian and Indo-European people, occurred in CLV people some time between 4400 bc and 4000 bc.

Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N., Anthony, D. et al.
The genetic origin of the Indo-Europeans.
Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08531-5

© 2025 Springer nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Quite clearly, when the Bronze Age Authors of Genesis were spinning their imaginative, if ill-informed, tales of human origins, they were blissfully unaware of major migrations of people and developing languages and culture not 30 days walk to the northwest. Instead, they wrote about the tales, folklore and superstitions of the people who lived within a couple of days walk of the Canaanite Hills, because they knew no better. Ironically, one of the languages that the Indo-European speakers gave rise to was Latin - the lingua franca language of Europe the Greek and Hebrew versions of the Bible were eventually translated into.

The people who helped spread that language, without which the Bible might not have been promulgated throughout Western Europe, and who were central to the origins of European cultures, rate not a single mention in what simple people believe is an accurate account of human origins.

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