Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - Printable Version +- The GenArchivist Forum (https://genarchivist.com) +-- Forum: Anthropology (https://genarchivist.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=108) +--- Forum: Cultural Anthropology (https://genarchivist.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=113) +---- Forum: Linguistics (https://genarchivist.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=120) +---- Thread: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian (/showthread.php?tid=191) Pages:
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Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - Jaska - 10-26-2023 Here I follow the present mainstream definition: 1. Early Proto-Indo-European = Indo-Anatolian 2. Late Proto-Indo-European = Indo-European without Anatolian A new article draft from David Anthony sums up all the recent evidence, including ancient DNA: Ten Constraints that Limit the Late PIE Homeland to the Steppes https://www.academia.edu/108547976/Ten_Constraints_that_Limit_the_Late_PIE_Homeland_to_the_Steppes RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - RCO - 10-26-2023 Proto-Indo-European was strongly related to a biocultural habitat with trees and chestnuts Indo-European Hellenic kástanon chestnut Greek kástano chestnut Albanian gështenjë chestnut Balto-Slavic *késten chestnut Latvian kastanis chestnut Lithuanian kaštonas chestnut Slovak gaštan chestnut Belarusian kaštán chestnut Bulgarian késten chestnut Croatian kesten chestnut Czech kaštan chestnut Macedonian kósten chestnut Polish kasztan chestnut Russian kaštán chestnut Serbian kesten chestnut Slovenian kostanj chestnut Germanic kastan(i)e chestnut Danish kastanje chestnut Dutch kastanje chestnut Old English chesten chestnut German kastanie chestnut Norwegian kastanje chestnut Swedish kastanj chestnut Celtic castan chestnut Welsh castan chestnut Old Irish castán chestnut Breton kistin chestnut Latin castanea chestnut Italian castagna chestnut French châtaigne chestnut Spanish castaña chestnut Romanian castană chestnut Portuguese castanha chestnut Sardinian castànza chestnut Catalan castanya chestnut Galician castaña chestnut Indo-Iranian Sanskrit kashta tree Persian kastana tree ------------- Indo-European Proto-Anatolian *tṓru- wood, tree Hittite taru tree Anatolian dōru chestnut Hellenic drũs oak Greek drys oak Proto-Albanian dru wood, log Albanian drusk oak Baltic *der̃w-ā̂ resinous wood Latvian darva tar Lithuanian derva tar Slavic *dervo tree Slovak drevo tree Belarusian dzjérava tree Bulgarian dǎrvó tree Croatian dȑvo tree Czech dřevo wood Macedonian drvo tree Polish drzewo tree Russian dérevo tree Serbian dȑvo tree Slovenian drevọ̑ tree Ukrainian kdérevo tree Germanic *tri(w)u tree Danish trä tree Dutch teer tar Old English trēow tree German teer tar Norwegian tre tree Swedish träd tree Celtic *daru, *derwā oak Welsh derw-en oak Old Irish daur oak Breton dervenn oak Latin dūrus hard Italian duro hard French dur hard Spanish duro hard Romanian dur hard Portuguese duro hard Sardinian duru hard Catalan duro hard Galician duro hard Interesting how we can find similar roots for other related words in diverse Indo-European languages. In Hittite taru tree and in Portuguese we have tora, as a part of the logged tree and árvore is tree - from the Latin arbor and Hittite arra, all related and similar from the forests. In Portuguese carvalho is oak. ORIGINAL RESEARCH Biocultural diversity of common walnut (Juglans regia L.) and sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) across Eurasia Paola Pollegioni1 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.6761 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7593191/ RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - Jaska - 10-26-2023 Those words for chestnut seem to be borrowed later from language to language, because they look too similar and because there was no word for 'chestnut' in Proto-Indo-European: https://smerdaleos.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/ie-mallory-adams.pdf (Mallory, J. P. & Adams, D. Q. 2006: The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World) RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - KACHRASETH - 10-28-2023 (10-26-2023, 04:55 PM)Jaska Wrote: Those words for chestnut seem to be borrowed later from language to language, because they look too similar and because there was no word for 'chestnut' in Proto-Indo-European: David Anthony is the prime forebearers of the kurgan theory , he is has been involved in all the researches going around though in this paper he seems to have not covered a large chunk of the points that uptend the steppe theory , this is very obvious since he is the one you sprouted this theory to very mainstream media RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - RCO - 10-28-2023 Two other important Proto-Indo-European roots/words: Honey + Bee Biocultural habitat of bees: Honey (English) Proto-Indo-European root/reconstruction: *mélit Anatolian: Hittite: militt/ malitt Luwian: mallit Palaic: mallitanna Proto-Albanian: *melita Armenian: Old Armenian: մեղր (mełr) Old Armenian: մեղու (mełu, “bee”) Proto-Celtic: *meli Proto-Germanic: *mili Hellenic: Ancient Greek: μέλι (méli) Proto-Italic: *meli Latin: mel Italian: miele Portuguese: mel https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/m%C3%A9lit -------------- Bee (English) Proto-Indo-European root/reconstruction: *bʰei̯/*bʰey- Anatolian Luwian: Apaša Latin: apis, Italian: ape Spanish abeja Portuguese: abelha French: abeille Proto-Iranian: *báynah (#Pashto waynə́ ‘termite’), *baynačíH (#Ossetian #Digor binʒæ ‘fly’, mudi-binʒæ ‘bee’, lit. ‘honey-fly’) Greek: μέλιττα, μέλισσα /mélitta, mélissa/ from μέλι /méli Armenian: mełu from mełr Albanian: mjalcë/bletë Proto-Germanic:*bijō, gen. *biniz (#OldEnglish bēo, #German dial. Beie, Old Norse bý, Danish bi) Lithuanian: bìtė, Church Slavonic: bĭčela, Proto-Celtic: *bikos https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/b%CA%B0ey- The excavations on the Ayasuluk hill during the 1990s illuminated the Bronze Age past of the place at least partially. The Ayasuluk hill is now widely regarded as being the site of Apaša. After Stefan Karwiese Apaša in Luwian means bee. In fact, the bee has been the symbol of Ephesus in Archaic to Roman times and appears on coins minted there. https://luwianstudies.org/site/ephesos-artemision/ RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - Psynome - 11-12-2023 It has been continuously disappointing and frustrating to see the leading ancient DNA research groups insist on placing the Indo-Anatolian homeland in West Asia. Even the new term "Indo-Anatolian" implies some unique relationship between Anatolian and the other Indo European languages. Despite the persistent attempts by leading research groups to explain the Anatolian divergence as unrelated to expansions from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, their own presented genomic evidence and that from decades of linguistic and archaeological investigation are all perfectly consistent with an Anatolian origin on the steppe. Given how entrenched this position has become in leading research groups, it may take many years before the field can steer its way out of this dead end and evaluate the available evidence in a less biased manner. An opportunity awaits the first determined researcher or group of researchers to reconstruct the most common linguistic consensus scenario of an Anatolian entrance through the Balkans using the linguistic, archaeological, and genomic evidence that is now available. RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - Isidro - 11-12-2023 (10-26-2023, 03:59 PM)RCO Wrote: Proto-Indo-European was strongly related to a biocultural habitat with trees and chestnuts Interesting word etymology and the perfect season. I keep seing this map distribution and I can not help but recognizing the same pattern as the Neolithic Cardial movements of people toward the "European Peninsula". I would even suggest that it is the movement of an Indoeuropean branch, I can see a Centum-Satem clearly divided to this day. It seems to me the Indoeuropean related to the different steppes environments is more associated with the Satem spread towards Iran, India and Slavic languages, and the Centum, not necessarily a Neolithic movements per se but earlier than (Megalithic) the so called Beaker phenomena is what brought us the Centum grouping with Greek, Celtic, Latin, Germanic etc. RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - Mythbuster General - 11-12-2023 Way too many separate things correlate together so well, as eloquently presented by Anthony, for anybody still have major doubts in a Pontic-Caspian place of origin for PIE. RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - VladMC - 12-07-2023 My version of the arrival of the Hittites in Anatolia. This is approximately the second generation of Hittites in Anatolia: Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI002 Distance: 4.7131% / 0.04713110 | R5P 36.4 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya_EBA 18.6 Bulgaria_C_Gumelniţa_Yunatsite 17.2 TUR_Catalhoyuk_Meso_Ceramic 16.4 ARM_Aknashen_N 11.4 DEU_LBK_HBS Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI009 Distance: 3.4490% / 0.03448955 | R5P 38.8 AZE_Mentesh_N 21.0 TUR_Catalhoyuk_Meso_Ceramic 16.6 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya_EBA 15.2 TUR_Tell_Kurdu_N 8.4 RUS_Maykop_En Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI012 Distance: 3.6291% / 0.03629104 | R5P 33.2 TUR_Tell_Kurdu_N 21.0 TUR_Kumtepe_En 20.8 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya_EBA 20.0 TKM_Tepe_Anau_En 5.0 HUN_EBA_Baden Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI016 Distance: 2.7782% / 0.02778155 | R5P 37.6 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya_EBA 34.8 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_En 14.6 TUR_Catalhoyuk_Meso_Ceramic 6.8 IRN_Seh_Gabi_LN 6.2 BGR_Dzhulyunitsa_N Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI017 Distance: 3.2380% / 0.03237966 | R5P 33.4 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya_EBA 22.0 DEU_LBK_HBS 20.2 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_En 14.0 ARM_Aknashen_N 10.4 Denmark_EBA Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI034 Distance: 3.0738% / 0.03073776 | R5P 41.0 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA 37.4 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_En 16.2 RUS_Darkveti-Meshoko_LN 2.8 IDN_Leang_Panninge_7100BP 2.6 TUR_N Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI036 Distance: 3.2604% / 0.03260351 | R5P 46.4 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_En 22.4 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya_EBA 15.8 DEU_LBK_HBS 8.8 TKM_Parkhai_En 6.6 HUN_Starcevo_N Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI037 Distance: 4.1610% / 0.04161049 | R5P 47.6 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA 20.6 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya_EBA 17.0 TUR_Tell_Kurdu_N 9.0 TUR_Catalhoyuk_Meso_Ceramic 5.8 TUR_SE_Sirnak_En the same thing, but without samples of the Novosvobodnaya culture Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI002 Distance: 4.7861% / 0.04786055 | R5P 35.4 ARM_Aknashen_N 34.6 Bulgaria_C_Gumelniţa_Yunatsite 15.0 TUR_Catalhoyuk_Meso_Ceramic 11.6 RUS_Darkveti-Meshoko_LN 3.4 RUS_Afanasievo_EBA Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI009 Distance: 3.5047% / 0.03504654 | R5P 42.4 AZE_Mentesh_N 23.2 TUR_Catalhoyuk_Meso_Ceramic 21.2 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA 13.2 RUS_Maykop_En Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI012 Distance: 3.7029% / 0.03702897 | R5P 28.8 TUR_Kumtepe_En 27.8 TUR_Tell_Kurdu_N 17.0 RUS_Darkveti-Meshoko_LN 14.6 IRN_Seh_Gabi_En 11.8 TKM_Tepe_Anau_En Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI016 Distance: 2.8795% / 0.02879548 | R5P 50.0 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_En 27.0 RUS_Darkveti-Meshoko_LN 12.6 TUR_Catalhoyuk_Meso_Ceramic 8.2 IRN_Seh_Gabi_LN 2.2 TUR_Kumtepe_LN_low_res Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI017 Distance: 3.3005% / 0.03300549 | R5P 30.2 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_En 29.2 RUS_Darkveti-Meshoko_LN 17.2 DEU_LBK_HBS 12.0 Denmark_EBA 11.4 ARM_Aknashen_N Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI034 Distance: 3.0738% / 0.03073776 | R5P 41.0 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA 37.4 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_En 16.2 RUS_Darkveti-Meshoko_LN 2.8 IDN_Leang_Panninge_7100BP 2.6 TUR_N Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI036 Distance: 3.2792% / 0.03279194 | R5P 41.0 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_En 18.8 RUS_Darkveti-Meshoko_LN 17.6 DEU_LBK_HBS 12.0 TUR_Tepecik_Ciftlik_N 10.6 TKM_Parkhai_En Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI037 Distance: 4.2599% / 0.04259925 | R5P 44.4 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA 33.2 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_En 10.2 TUR_Catalhoyuk_Meso_Ceramic 7.2 IRN_Tepe_Hissar_C 5.0 RUS_Darkveti-Meshoko_LN I especially pay attention to sample IKI002, because it will continue to play a key role Target: TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI002 Distance: 4.7131% / 0.04713110 | R5P 36.4 RUS_Maykop_Novosvobodnaya_EBA 18.6 Bulgaria_C_Gumelniţa_Yunatsite 17.2 TUR_Catalhoyuk_Meso_Ceramic 16.4 ARM_Aknashen_N 11.4 DEU_LBK_HBS And this is after several generations of life in Anatolia: Target: TUR_Med_Isparta_EMBA:I2495 Distance: 1.1595% / 0.01159544 | R5P 29.2 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA 26.6 ROU_Salcuta_N 25.8 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_En 14.4 TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA 4.0 RUS_Afanasievo_EBA Target: TUR_Med_Isparta_EMBA:I2499 Distance: 1.3487% / 0.01348732 | R5P 36.4 Romania_LN_Gumelniţa_Pietrele 27.6 ARM_Aknashen_N 16.0 ARM_Masis_Blur_N 11.4 TUR_Tell_Kurdu_N 8.6 TKM_Tepe_Anau_En Target: TUR_Med_Isparta_EMBA:I2683 Distance: 1.0059% / 0.01005898 | R5P 58.4 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA 22.2 TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA 9.4 Switzerland_EBA 5.6 TUR_Tell_Kurdu_N 4.4 Ukraine_Eneolithic_CernavodăI_KartalB And this is already the generation in the era of which the Hittite writing system existed Target: TUR_Kaman-Kalehoyuk_MLBA:MA2208 Distance: 3.2474% / 0.03247416 | R5P 37.8 TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA 25.2 AUT_LBK_N 14.6 Levant_ISR_C 12.0 Yamnaya_SRB_EBA 10.4 IRN_Ganj_Dareh_Meso Target: TUR_Kaman-Kalehoyuk_MLBA:MA2200 Distance: 0.8113% / 0.00811333 | R5P 54.6 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_En 22.0 Serbia_Meso_Vlasac 11.4 RUS_Darkveti-Meshoko_LN 8.8 TJK_Sarazm_En 3.2 MAR_LN Target: TUR_Kaman-Kalehoyuk_MLBA:MA2203 Distance: 1.2587% / 0.01258658 | R5P 25.4 TUR_Ulucak_En 22.6 TUR_SE_Sirnak_En 22.4 TUR_Catalhoyuk_Meso_Ceramic 22.2 Romania_LN_Gumelniţa_Pietrele 7.4 RUS_Afanasievo_EBA Target: TUR_Kaman-Kalehoyuk_MLBA:MA2205 Distance: 1.4006% / 0.01400587 | R5P 37.2 TUR_Camlibel_Tarlasi_En 29.4 TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA 24.6 ARM_Masis_Blur_N 4.8 DEU_LBK_HBS 4.0 TUR_Kumtepe_LN_low_res Target: TUR_Kaman-Kalehoyuk_MLBA:MA2206 Distance: 1.5966% / 0.01596620 | R5P 36.0 TUR_Arslantepe_EBA 30.8 TUR_Catalhoyuk_Meso_Ceramic 18.4 ARM_Aknashen_N 9.6 Romania_LN_Gumelniţa_Pietrele 5.2 IRN_Seh_Gabi_LN TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA this is TUR_Ikiztepe_EBA:IKI002. It turns out that the tribes of the Novosvobodnaya culture walked along the Black Sea coast from the Kuban to the mouth of the Danube practically without mixing with the steppe tribes, then mixed with the tribes of the Gumelnitsky culture and, already mixed, went to Anatolia. Therefore, they cannot be identified in any way in Anatolia. Their mixture of Novosvobodnenskaya + Gumelnitskaya is almost the same as if the Neolithic of Iran mixed with the Neolithic of Anatolia. These two mixtures are almost impossible to distinguish RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - epoch - 02-18-2024 (11-12-2023, 03:43 PM)Psynome Wrote: It has been continuously disappointing and frustrating to see the leading ancient DNA research groups insist on placing the Indo-Anatolian homeland in West Asia. There is a recent summary of the latest knowledge of the Anatolian Early Bronze Age which stated the following: "Until recently, even the presence of kurgan type of burials in Anatolia was met with considerable scepticism. However, with ongoing research and particularly due to rescue excavations, the number of burials that are considered to be of the so-called kurgan type, dateable to the beginning of the Early Bronze Age, has been gradually increasing (Altunkaynak 2019; Özfırat 2014, Başgelen & Çoşar 2022). Ongoing excavations in İstanbul at Beşiktaş2 have until now exposed over 40 kurgan type burials with C14 dates revealing a narrow range of 3300–3200 bc, yielding an assemblage that directly points to the northeast Balkans. Another cemetery of the kurgan type, though with a small number of burials, has also have been excavated recently near İstanbul at Cambaztepe (Polat 2016) (Fig. 16)" https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375066361_The_Making_of_The_Early_Bronze_Age_in_Anatolia And we know since Penske et al 2023 that the northeast Balkans saw an influx of steppe related ancestry since roughly 4k-3800 years BC. In my view this case is made because even if those samples would show no steppe ancestry at all we cannot deny cultural transfer - and language is very much part of culture - from an area that clearly does show that ancestry. The dating also fits so very well. Roughly 4ky BC the split between Anatalion and LPIE in the Balkans. Roughly ~3.5ky BC the entry in Anatolia, just in time before the split between pre-proto-Hittite and the rest which is set roughly ~3ky BC. RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - billh - 02-19-2024 (10-26-2023, 04:55 PM)Jaska Wrote: Those words for chestnut seem to be borrowed later from language to language, because they look too similar and because there was no word for 'chestnut' in Proto-Indo-European: Yep, also notice that Anatolian doesn't share the word for Chestnut. They just used a word unrelated to chestnuts in other IE languages RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - parasar - 03-02-2024 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-44430-5 Inferring language dispersal patterns with velocity field estimation "Based on the estimated velocity field in geographic space, we further inferred the dispersal centre for each language case (Fig. 2b and Supplementary Fig. 6 and Supplementary Table 2; see details in Methods and Supplementary Notes section 1.3). Notably, the inferred dispersal centres of these four agricultural languages were adjacent to the known ancient agricultural or Neolithic homelands (Fig. 2b). Specifically, the inferred dispersal centre of Indo-European languages was located in the Fertile Crescent which is the earliest ancient agricultural homeland in the world (Fig. 2b)3,4. This observation favours the Anatolia origin hypothesis7 of Indo-European languages" RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - Anglesqueville - 03-02-2024 ^^ Take it from a sane mathematician, mathematics can drive fragile minds crazy. This text is a good example. RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - Jaska - 04-18-2024 Lazaridis' group has now officially rejected their earlier "Southern Arc" hypothesis for the Indo-European languages. After all, it ignored all the linguistic evidence: e.g. Indo-Iranian was proposed to have spread from Anatolia to Southern Asia without ever visiting in Europe and Sintashta, which is of course absurd. One cannot just pick a random genetic trait shared by populations in different regions and believe that he can see which language they spoke. "We thus propose the following hypothesis: that CLV cline people migrated southwards ca. 4400BCE, or about a millennium before the appearance of the Yamnaya, (admixing with different substratum populations along the way) and then westwards before finally reaching Central Anatolia. We in fact find Y-chromosome evidence that is consistent with the autosomal evidence. Sporadic instances of the steppe-associated Y-chromosome haplogroup R-V1636 in West Asia occurred at Arslantepe in Eastern Anatolia and Kalavan in Armenia in the Early Bronze Age (~3300-2500 BCE) among individuals without detectible steppe ancestry and these could be remnants of the dilution process. This haplogroup was found in the male individual from Remontnoye, both individuals from Progress-2 and two of three males from Berezhnovka, in addition to its occurrence in eleven individuals of the Volga Cline and thus was a prominent lineage of the pre-Yamnaya steppe. Isolated instances have also been found beyond the steppe in Corded Ware individuals from Esperstedt in Germany and Gjerrild in Denmark." The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.17.589597v1 More at the end: "In fact, however, our genetic data does provide such a strong case, greatly increasing the plausibility of scenarios of an eastern entry of Proto-Anatolian speaking ancestors into Anatolia. This is because we find that Central Anatolian Early Bronze Age people who were plausibly speakers of Anatolian languages based on their archaeological contexts, were striking genetic outliers from their neighbors due to having a minority component of their ancestry from the CLV (plausibly from the people who brought the ancestral form of Anatolian languages to Anatolia), the majority of their ancestry from Mesopotamian Neolithic farmers, and little or no ancestry from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic Anatolians who were overwhelming the source populations of other Early Bronze Age Anatolians. Mesopotamian Neolithic ancestry almost certainly had an eastern geographic distribution, while the Central Anatolian Bronze Age people had no evidence of the European farmer or European hunter-gatherer ancestry that CLV have encountered if they had migrated to Anatolia from the west, so the genetic data favor an eastern route." -- As long as we have no conclusive linguistic evidence concerning the route of Anatolian languages from the steppe, this genetic evidence is a strong hint toward the Caucasus route. RE: Proto-Indo-European and Indo-Anatolian - Moeca - 04-18-2024 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.17.589600v1?ct A genomic history of the North Pontic Region from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age ...................18 April 2024 Abstract The north Black Sea (Pontic) Region was the nexus of the farmers of Old Europe and the foragers and pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe, and the source of waves of migrants that expanded deep into Europe. We report genome-wide data from 78 prehistoric North Pontic individuals to understand the genetic makeup of the people involved in these migrations and discover the reasons for their success. First, we show that native North Pontic foragers had ancestry not only from Balkan and Eastern hunter-gatherers but also from European farmers and, occasionally, Caucasus hunter-gatherers. More dramatic inflows ensued during the Eneolithic, when migrants from the Caucasus-Lower Volga area moved westward, bypassing the local foragers to mix with Trypillian farmers advancing eastward. People of the Usatove archaeological group in the Northwest Pontic were formed ca. 4500 BCE with an equal measure of ancestry from the two expanding groups. A different Caucasus-Lower Volga group, moving westward in a distinct but temporally overlapping wave, avoided the farmers altogether, and blended with the foragers instead to form the people of the Serednii Stih archaeological complex. A third wave of expansion occurred when Yamna descendants of the Serednii Stih forming ca. 4000 BCE expanded during the Early Bronze Age (3300 BCE). The temporal gap between Serednii Stih and the Yamna expansion is bridged by a genetically Yamna individual from Mykhailivka in Ukraine (3635-3383BCE), a site of uninterrupted archaeological continuity across the Eneolithic-Bronze Age transition, and the likely epicenter of Yamna formation. Each of these three waves propagated distinctive ancestries while also incorporating outsiders during its advance, a flexible strategy forged in the North Pontic region that may explain its peoples' outsized success in spreading their genes and culture across Eurasia. |