Yamnaya vs Corded Ware: A View From The Steppe
Until recently, the Yamnaya Culture (3300 – 2600 BCE) had enjoyed primacy amongst the "kurgan cultures" of the late Neolithic Eurasian Steppe in the context of the spread of Indo-European languages across Europe and Asia during the early Bronze Age. This hyperfocus on Yamnaya even permeated the mass media. See:
Study of the most murderous people of all time revealed in ancient DNA: New Scientist (2019)
Yamnaya was proposed as the source of "Indo-European DNA" (known academically as Western Steppe Herder [WSH]) in both Europe and Asia, and as the vector for Indo-European languages in these regions. Notably, the Yamnaya Culture was considered to be the source of Indo-European DNA in the Bronze Age European Corded Ware Culture (3000 – 2350 BCE) and, consequently, the Bell Beakers (2800 – 2300 BCE).
However, this is problematic due to the paternal lineages in samples from these three cultures showing an absence of direct descent. Many Yamnaya samples have the paternal haplogroup R1b, as do Corded Ware and Bell Beaker males, but the subclades (R1b-Z2103 vs R1b-L151) are not descended from one another, but rather share a common ancestor. See:
Genos Historia: https://t.me/genoshistoria/106
There are other haplogroups involved too, such as R1a-M417 represented in eastern Corded Ware, also found in Indo-Aryan speakers.
Therefore, an investigation into paternal lineages suggests that the Corded Ware Culture is the source of Indo-European languages in Europe and parts of Asia, while Yamnaya is the source for Indo-European languages in Armenia and parts of the Balkans, plus the Bronze Age Afanasievo (3300 – 2500 BCE) Culture of the Altai region.
It is important to note, though, that this doesn't suggest the Corded Ware Culture as the Proto-Indo-European
urheimat; it was the vector for, not the source of Indo-European languages in the aforementioned regions.
To be continued...
