The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans

[CowboyHG]

The Kurgan culture was proposed by Gimbutas but D.Anthony clearly narrowed it down to Yamnaya when looking for PIE origins. I think Jim Mallory shifted together with Anthony.
And genetics same to prove Anthony right. It seems that many cultures that Gimbutas considered "kurganized" or early Kurgan were actually still fully Neolithic Farmers (e.g. Baden, GAC) - or fully Caucasians like Maykop. As qijia psoted, Kurgans were also erected elsewhere, so it is better to keep to Yamnaya than kurgans when discussing PIE origins.

Mallory and Anthony were a little off in their predictions, in that they supported Volga-Ural origins for Yamnaya (which has been disproven by aDNA) and the inflated Repin dates which are false.
The quasi-kurgan features of pre-steppe Europe just show the similar 'cultural dialectics' found across Europe c. 4500 BC, which help contextualise their rise in the steppe rather than being some alien cultural element which appeared from nowhere.
And I disagree with the view that PIE was focussed on Yamnaya & R1b-L23, it comes across as a myopic haplo-daddy scenario given the current evidence.

[alanarchae]

The Kurgan culture was proposed by Gimbutas but D.Anthony clearly narrowed it down to Yamnaya when looking for PIE origins. I think Jim Mallory shifted together with Anthony.
And genetics same to prove Anthony right. It seems that many cultures that Gimbutas considered "kurganized" or early Kurgan were actually still fully Neolithic Farmers (e.g. Baden, GAC) - or fully Caucasians like Maykop. As qijia psoted, Kurgans were also erected elsewhere, so it is better to keep to Yamnaya than kurgans when discussing PIE origins.

Mallory would always use somewhat non committal phrasing (sensible back then with less data) but he was pretty much suggesting Stedny Stog as the early archaic IEs and Yamnaya as the fully developed core IEs since the 1980s. Anthony basically took that model and tried to fill in the details.He has a more strident sure style but as you can see with ideas like Afansievo being far too early and Usatovo as pre Germanic, that style does tend to leave more egg on your face when you get it wrong than Mallory’s cautious style. He absolutely knows how much you can infer for sure and what is speculation so he never gets anything wrong. He also tends to keep a common sense test and not disappear into trendy theory. This is just what he is like in real life - quite bluff and not given to flowery taking. Just keeps it factual and  brief

[HurrianFam]

Mallory was recently on Razib Khan’s podcast to discuss the new preprint, and the episode was added to YouTube.

[alanarchae]

The Kurgan culture was proposed by Gimbutas but D.Anthony clearly narrowed it down to Yamnaya when looking for PIE origins. I think Jim Mallory shifted together with Anthony.
And genetics same to prove Anthony right. It seems that many cultures that Gimbutas considered "kurganized" or early Kurgan were actually still fully Neolithic Farmers (e.g. Baden, GAC) - or fully Caucasians like Maykop. As qijia psoted, Kurgans were also erected elsewhere, so it is better to keep to Yamnaya than kurgans when discussing PIE origins.

Mallory and Anthony were a little off in their predictions, in that they supported Volga-Ural origins for Yamnaya (which has been disproven by aDNA) and the inflated Repin dates which are false.
The quasi-kurgan features of pre-steppe Europe just show the similar 'cultural dialectics' found across Europe c. 4500 BC, which help contextualise their rise in the steppe rather than being some alien cultural element which appeared from nowhere.
And I disagree with the view that PIE was focussed on Yamnaya & R1b-L23, I think this is a rather myopic, amateur haplo-daddy scenario given the current evidence.

The latest paper does ultimately put the roots of IE on the CLV and appear to come down with the LV the ultimate root. It also suggests that the CLV groups moving into the Don-Dnieper area created SS and core proto Yamnaya. So although it’s not exactly what was predicted, I wouldn’t play down the Volga’s role. It was likely the Volga element of CLV that indo-Anatolian springs from. Anthony appears to agree with this now. You also have the earliest dates of the classic steppe burial pose seen in Samara, Khvalysk, SS, Repin and Yamnaya in the Volga region. 

I don’t disagree that the secondary zone of further development of IE info it’s core form took place future west though. That is what the data seems to be saying. Though until a bigger sample without obvious gaps exists I wouldn’t commit to the detail. The whole use of autosomal dna composed of varying cocktails of many components varying from site to site and over time is risky to draw final conclusions from without a really comprehensive sample.

[CowboyHG]

The Kurgan culture was proposed by Gimbutas but D.Anthony clearly narrowed it down to Yamnaya when looking for PIE origins. I think Jim Mallory shifted together with Anthony.
And genetics same to prove Anthony right. It seems that many cultures that Gimbutas considered "kurganized" or early Kurgan were actually still fully Neolithic Farmers (e.g. Baden, GAC) - or fully Caucasians like Maykop. As qijia psoted, Kurgans were also erected elsewhere, so it is better to keep to Yamnaya than kurgans when discussing PIE origins.

Mallory and Anthony were a little off in their predictions, in that they supported Volga-Ural origins for Yamnaya (which has been disproven by aDNA) and the inflated Repin dates which are false.
The quasi-kurgan features of pre-steppe Europe just show the similar 'cultural dialectics' found across Europe c. 4500 BC, which help contextualise their rise in the steppe rather than being some alien cultural element which appeared from nowhere.
And I disagree with the view that PIE was focussed on Yamnaya & R1b-L23, I think this is a rather myopic, amateur haplo-daddy scenario given the current evidence.

The latest paper does ultimately put the roots of IE on the CLV and appear to come down with the LV the ultimate root. It also suggests that the CLV groups moving into the Don-Dnieper area created SS and core proto Yamnaya. So although it’s not exactly what was predicted, I wouldn’t play down the lowea’s role. It was likely the Volga element of CLV that indo-Anatolian springs from. Anthony appears to agree with this now. You also have the earliest dates of the classic steppe burial pose seen in Samara, Khvalysk, SS, Repin and Yamnaya in the Volga region. 

I dont see the CLV folk as being the sole glue which the Harvard paper claims, because the steppe-river valley folk had already been in contact & sharing ancestry for thousands of years earlier. The CLV model is largely a product of the way the paper chose to present statistical models and obviuosly a heavily coloured co-modification of Lazaride's and Anthony's personal theories
It's pretty clear that the CLV group disappeared as a distinct cultural entity c. 4000 BC, despite making a large genome-wide contribution to later steppe groups.
If I had to guess, the Cernavoda society- derived from Dnieper and lower Don predecessors- with elaborate social structures seems a more likely contendor than some obscure L23 groups from the forest zone or the declining CLV group. But its's an open question until there is a slam-dunk evidence in Anatolia.

[alanarchae]

The Kurgan culture was proposed by Gimbutas but D.Anthony clearly narrowed it down to Yamnaya when looking for PIE origins. I think Jim Mallory shifted together with Anthony.
And genetics same to prove Anthony right. It seems that many cultures that Gimbutas considered "kurganized" or early Kurgan were actually still fully Neolithic Farmers (e.g. Baden, GAC) - or fully Caucasians like Maykop. As qijia psoted, Kurgans were also erected elsewhere, so it is better to keep to Yamnaya than kurgans when discussing PIE origins.

Mallory and Anthony were a little off in their predictions, in that they supported Volga-Ural origins for Yamnaya (which has been disproven by aDNA) and the inflated Repin dates which are false.
The quasi-kurgan features of pre-steppe Europe just show the similar 'cultural dialectics' found across Europe c. 4500 BC, which help contextualise their rise in the steppe rather than being some alien cultural element which appeared from nowhere.
And I disagree with the view that PIE was focussed on Yamnaya & R1b-L23, it comes across as a myopic haplo-daddy scenario given the current evidence.

As far as I can see online, the last attempt to date pit graves by radiocarbon was in 2013 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/...4C2D9DF322  https://www.researchgate.net/publication...esearchand specifically the Volga-Ural area and came up with Repin about 3900-3200BC and Yamnaya about 3300BC with a short overlap when Yamnaya kurgan still carried some Repin pottery. So unless this paper was wrong, it seemed to spot pit graves with Repin pottery in the 3900-3300BC era. So if Repin is just some pottery phantom then maybe the term Yamnaya needs applied fo them too. Whatever they are called they have to be DNA samples to find out exactly who they were. 
What I haven’t seen is a modern attempt to look at absolute dating of sites with Repin pottery in the often quoted origin point around the lower-mid Don. I’ve seen a map in some publication that distinguishes Yamnaya with  v late Repin pottery from pre yamnaya Repin, calling the latter ‘chalcolithic repin’. It places it in the middle Don and Donets (map doesn’t cover the Volga). I’ve also seen a map indicating late Repin as expanding then to the Dnieper and  Azov steppe. I’m presuming this is perhaps Repin pottery in early Yamnaya c. 3300-3200BC. 

Whatever Repin was, it is of interest as it ultimately by early Yamnaya was spread from the Urals to the Dnieper/Azov. Unless the 2013 datimg paper is wrong it does have a presence for quite a number of centuries before the normal c. 3300-3200BC that is put on the start of yamnaya proper. I have never seen a debunking of the 2013 hour paper. The debunking of very early Afansievo dates since Anthony wrote and the re-aligning it with the start of Yamnaya c 3300BC or so (kind of making it look like Afansievo was just early Yamnaya which often still used Repin pottery) looks correct BUT that is not the same as debunking Repin’s dates. The debunking was of Afanasievo dates, not Repin dates. 

If you know of a paper debunking the Repin dates in the 2013 paper then i’d be very interested to see it. i

[CowboyHG]

The Kurgan culture was proposed by Gimbutas but D.Anthony clearly narrowed it down to Yamnaya when looking for PIE origins. I think Jim Mallory shifted together with Anthony.
And genetics same to prove Anthony right. It seems that many cultures that Gimbutas considered "kurganized" or early Kurgan were actually still fully Neolithic Farmers (e.g. Baden, GAC) - or fully Caucasians like Maykop. As qijia psoted, Kurgans were also erected elsewhere, so it is better to keep to Yamnaya than kurgans when discussing PIE origins.

Mallory and Anthony were a little off in their predictions, in that they supported Volga-Ural origins for Yamnaya (which has been disproven by aDNA) and the inflated Repin dates which are false.
The quasi-kurgan features of pre-steppe Europe just show the similar 'cultural dialectics' found across Europe c. 4500 BC, which help contextualise their rise in the steppe rather than being some alien cultural element which appeared from nowhere.
And I disagree with the view that PIE was focussed on Yamnaya & R1b-L23, it comes across as a myopic haplo-daddy scenario given the current evidence.

As far as I can see online, the last attempt to date pit graves by radiocarbon was in 2013 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/...4C2D9DF322   https://www.researchgate.net/publication...esearchand specifically the Volga-Ural area and came up with Repin about 3900-3200BC and Yamnaya about 3300BC with a short overlap when Yamnaya kurgan still carried some Repin pottery. So unless this paper was wrong, it seemed to spot pit graves with Repin pottery in the 3900-3300BC era. So if Repin is just some pottery phantom then maybe the term Yamnaya needs applied fo them too. Whatever they are called they have to be DNA samples to find out exactly who they were. 
What I haven’t seen is a modern attempt to look at absolute dating of sites with Repin pottery in the often quoted origin point around the lower-mid Don. I’ve seen a map in some publication that distinguishes Yamnaya with  v late Repin pottery from pre yamnaya Repin, calling the latter ‘chalcolithic repin’. It places it in the middle Don and Donets (map doesn’t cover the Volga). I’ve also seen a map indicating late Repin as expanding then to the Dnieper and  Azov steppe. I’m presuming this is perhaps Repin pottery in early Yamnaya c. 3300-3200BC. 

Whatever Repin was, it is of interest as it ultimately by early Yamnaya was spread from the Urals to the Dnieper/Azov. Unless the 2013 datimg paper is wrong it does have a presence for quite a number of centuries before the normal c. 3300-3200BC that is put on the start of yamnaya proper. I have never seen a debunking of the 2013 hour paper. The debunking of very early Afansievo dates since Anthony wrote and the re-aligning it with the start of Yamnaya c 3300BC or so (kind of making it look like Afansievo was just early Yamnaya which often still used Repin pottery) looks correct BUT that is not the same as debunking Repin’s dates. The debunking was of Afanasievo dates, not Repin dates. 

If you know of a paper debunking the Repin dates in the 2013 paper then i’d be very interested to see it. i

There is an issue with the data on Table 1. It does not lay out what samples & burials are associated with what ceramics, unlike the more detailed table 2 (for Yamnaya period) which has a precise description of burial inventory.
And it doesnt quantify the reservoir effect by comparative radiometric data. If you look at the dating from the humans under the Repin kurgans at Lopatino, the dates are  3300–3100 cal BCE, while that from Orlovka is 37-3400 calBCE, mode 3600. All the older dates come from pottery crust which was shell tempered, and thus has RE. So I’d think Repin dates 36-3300 bc, with a tighter pre-Yamnaya phase. Otherwise I have no issue with it being the precursor for Yamnaya, probably from middle Don.

[alanarchae]

Mallory and Anthony were a little off in their predictions, in that they supported Volga-Ural origins for Yamnaya (which has been disproven by aDNA) and the inflated Repin dates which are false.
The quasi-kurgan features of pre-steppe Europe just show the similar 'cultural dialectics' found across Europe c. 4500 BC, which help contextualise their rise in the steppe rather than being some alien cultural element which appeared from nowhere.
And I disagree with the view that PIE was focussed on Yamnaya & R1b-L23, I think this is a rather myopic, amateur haplo-daddy scenario given the current evidence.

The latest paper does ultimately put the roots of IE on the CLV and appear to come down with the LV the ultimate root. It also suggests that the CLV groups moving into the Don-Dnieper area created SS and core proto Yamnaya. So although it’s not exactly what was predicted, I wouldn’t play down the lowea’s role. It was likely the Volga element of CLV that indo-Anatolian springs from. Anthony appears to agree with this now. You also have the earliest dates of the classic steppe burial pose seen in Samara, Khvalysk, SS, Repin and Yamnaya in the Volga region. 

I dont see the CLV folk as being the sole glue which the Harvard paper claims, because the steppe-river valley folk had already been in contact & sharing ancestry for thousands of years earlier. The CLV model is largely a product of the way the paper chose to present statistical models and obviuosly a heavily coloured co-modification of Lazaride's and Anthony's personal theories
It's pretty clear that the CLV group disappeared as a distinct cultural entity c. 4000 BC, despite making a large genome-wide contribution to later steppe groups.
If I had to guess, the Cernavoda society- derived from Dnieper and lower Don predecessors- with elaborate social structures seems a more likely contendor than some obscure L23 groups from the forest zone or the declining CLV group. But its's an open question until there is a slam-dunk evidence in Anatolia.

I wouldn’t conclude L23 or its late M269 ancestor was not about in the same kind of area. There are some horrible geographical gaps in the sample. The most obvious being thatg was tested between the extreme lowest end of the Don and well up the middle Volga. And that’s exactly where I think L23 was in the period c.4500-maybe the mid 3000s.

One of the the L23 offshoots is L151 CW c. 2900BC and on this video and elsewhere they are clear that CW comes directly from core Yamnaya that later admixed with GAC (extremely likely soon after reaching the interface zone of Yamnaya and GAC. The L51 wave of Yamnaya included P310 (tmrca 3350BC) which had spread into the Balkans and which is also found in Afanasievo. It all pretty well points to P310 in Yamnaya from the start and emerging from some autosonally ‘core Yamnaya’ group prior to that. A location just upstream on the Don from the the I2 group (unsampled) makes most sense. It’s particularly bad that it isn’t sampled as when I looked closely a maps for plausible routes and crossings (some attested historically) across the Don and Volga, this is pretty much where they would have been. They might have missed an important stepping stone tribe in that area on the Balkans-Volga copper route. Though I have to say, not only is this area not sampled for ancient DNA but it is also in an area that seems poorly researched by archaeologists compared to the Volga-Samsra area and some other areas. It may be unsampled simply because even archaeologists haven’t much excavated it. No excavations =no samples.

[alanarchae]

Mallory and Anthony were a little off in their predictions, in that they supported Volga-Ural origins for Yamnaya (which has been disproven by aDNA) and the inflated Repin dates which are false.
The quasi-kurgan features of pre-steppe Europe just show the similar 'cultural dialectics' found across Europe c. 4500 BC, which help contextualise their rise in the steppe rather than being some alien cultural element which appeared from nowhere.
And I disagree with the view that PIE was focussed on Yamnaya & R1b-L23, it comes across as a myopic haplo-daddy scenario given the current evidence.

As far as I can see online, the last attempt to date pit graves by radiocarbon was in 2013 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/...4C2D9DF322   https://www.researchgate.net/publication...esearchand specifically the Volga-Ural area and came up with Repin about 3900-3200BC and Yamnaya about 3300BC with a short overlap when Yamnaya kurgan still carried some Repin pottery. So unless this paper was wrong, it seemed to spot pit graves with Repin pottery in the 3900-3300BC era. So if Repin is just some pottery phantom then maybe the term Yamnaya needs applied fo them too. Whatever they are called they have to be DNA samples to find out exactly who they were. 
What I haven’t seen is a modern attempt to look at absolute dating of sites with Repin pottery in the often quoted origin point around the lower-mid Don. I’ve seen a map in some publication that distinguishes Yamnaya with  v late Repin pottery from pre yamnaya Repin, calling the latter ‘chalcolithic repin’. It places it in the middle Don and Donets (map doesn’t cover the Volga). I’ve also seen a map indicating late Repin as expanding then to the Dnieper and  Azov steppe. I’m presuming this is perhaps Repin pottery in early Yamnaya c. 3300-3200BC. 

Whatever Repin was, it is of interest as it ultimately by early Yamnaya was spread from the Urals to the Dnieper/Azov. Unless the 2013 datimg paper is wrong it does have a presence for quite a number of centuries before the normal c. 3300-3200BC that is put on the start of yamnaya proper. I have never seen a debunking of the 2013 hour paper. The debunking of very early Afansievo dates since Anthony wrote and the re-aligning it with the start of Yamnaya c 3300BC or so (kind of making it look like Afansievo was just early Yamnaya which often still used Repin pottery) looks correct BUT that is not the same as debunking Repin’s dates. The debunking was of Afanasievo dates, not Repin dates. 

If you know of a paper debunking the Repin dates in the 2013 paper then i’d be very interested to see it. i

There is an issue with the data on Table 1. It does not lay out what samples & burials are associated with what ceramics, unlike the more detailed table 2 (for Yamnaya period) which has a precise description of burial inventory.
And it doesnt quantify the reservoir effect by comparative radiometric data. If you look at the dating from the humans under the Repin kurgans at Lopatino, the dates are  3300–3100 cal BCE. All the older dates come from pottery crust which was shell tempered, and thus has RE. It can be as high as 1,000 years.

Stratigraphically it always appears below Yamnaya in two phase sites. I’m totally open to that fact it’s dating is uncertain. It could be that it is younger though it looks to me even looked at in the round that it likely existed at least by or shortly before the very start of Yamnaya. Repin pottery traits exist within Afanasievo (which nevertheless looks basically like early Yamnaya). 

Whatever Repin pottery is it’s of interest and it’s got an interesting distribution from Volga-Urals to the Lower and middle Don, Donets and allegedly later up to the Dnieper and Azov. Whatever its fate and point of origin it is providing a tracker of something. Even if it turned out to be something not very mind blowing like a migration or trade/marriage network route used by a particular early Yamnaya subgroup. It does look at the very least it was a feature of the early 3300-3000BC phase of Yamnaya and Afanasievo. It then ceased to exist and likely wasn’t carried by Yamnaya groups after 3000BC. That might also explain why it isn’t known in Yamnaya west of the Dnieper. 

One interesting possibility to me is that - if you believe Yamnaya actually spread to the Volga from maybe the lower Don c. 3300BC - that its spread might track a Don to Volga movement. After all, someone had to move c. 3350-3200BC or you can’t explain P310 being in both Yamnaya from the Volga do the Balkans soon after 3000BC and in Afanasievo c. 3200BC. It’s TMRCA is only 3350BC so it had to have moved from somewhere. My guess is a location around the Don with Repin pottery representing a migration from there to the Volga in the 3300 era with others staying put on the Don then moving west with Yamnayaas far as the Dnieper then crossing the rest of Ukraine rapidly along 3000BC.

[Psynome]

Also let me list here my frustrations :-) as per Anatolians and the mutually exclusive arguments

1. P-Anatolian and PIA lacks agri vocab, so can't come from South Caucasus
2. Wagons, shepherding comes from South Caucasus to the Steppe
3. All non-Steppe R1b variants of Z2103 are practically Armenian or look like that.  Could it be that actually Anatolian-speakers adopted Armenian in the Iron Age? And later partly Greek as well?
4. Well, but the problem is that actually all Z2103 (xZ2109) is South of the Caucasus or a bit north of it. Even Z2106 (xZ2109). That means that around 3100 BCE, 11 out of 12 Z2103-Y-descendant is South of the Caucasus and only Z2109 is in Yamnaya to form Afanasievo, Vucedol and Catacomb (I wonder if we have deep SNP data on Catacomb, please post here).
5. So what is the chance of 11 per 12 son staying in the Steppe from 3100 BCE till 2500-2200 BCE and only invading Armenia then and not leaving a trace elsewhere? Same applies for PF7562 actually, where only 1 out of 3 descendant is the one leading to Proto-Greeks.
6. All uncles/cousins of R1b-M269 are in Eastern Europe for millennia (V1636, M73, V88) and also R1a-M417 & cousins. So why would M269 be in the South? And we have a sea of various South of Caucasus HGs also coming to Khvalynsk and Maykop and R1b-M269 is not among them.
7. How comes that Greek is closest to Armenian but they are separeted being Kentum vs. Satem. And how comes the late vocab exchange btween Greek and Indo-Iranian? Kentumness of Greek favours an early Yamnaya movement to the Balkans (Ezero-Yunatsite-Macedonia) as described by Anthony in his book, and PF7563 would be in line with that. But then neither the Indo-Iranian issue nor the Armenian fits. If Greek is in Catacomb with Armenians bordering Sintashta-Petrovka to receive II influence, why is Armenian not getting the same and why Greek is not satemized?
8. Genetically Armenian cannot come through the Balkans. And Greek cannot come through Anatolia from the East. So that relationship is somewhat a mess, and even Proto-Greeks are not L23 but PF7563 with assimilated J2b en route.

Point of note for #2, it is not certain that wagons and pastoralism came to the steppe from the Caucasus. In fact, there's evidence to suggest these in fact arrived from the Balkan Cucuteni-Trypillia farmers to the west, who were at the time the densest and most urbanized culture on earth. In recent years, consensus has been growing that wheeled vehicles originated here, not Mesopotamia. People are used to Mesopotamia and Egypt as the shorthand for urban development and culture in prehistory, but the Balkan farmers had their peak before either of those civilizations reached their classic forms. Ironically, it was likely the IE expansion that ended the Balkan urban world.

[ArmandoR1b]

I mapped a lot of the high quality Yamnaya samples that seem to be basal M269, L23 and L51 as per this Lazaridis paper pointed at by RR in his screenshot and determined that the specimen ids are almost for sure I8950 (M269) 482969 SNP hits , I6884 (L51) 549214 SNP hits, I10627 (L23) 692609 SNP hits and  I10628 (L23) 963040 SNP hits. The SNP hits are the SNPs that have reads out of the possible 1240k. The higher the number the higher the resolution of the DNA results and also the coverage is higher with a larger number of hits. They are all younger than 2900 BC but older than 2500 BC so we are talking about a difference of at least about 1400 years after the TMRCA of L23. So that would be an extremely long period of time.
Now here is the caveat about the reported haplogroups:

I8950 (M269) with 482969 SNP hits very possibly has no-calls for both L23 and Z2103 based on the fact that out of 20 ancient specimens I have looked at that have 500000 or more SNP hits there are 11 of them have a no-call for L23, and equivalents, even though they have downstream derived SNPs. The downstream SNPs is besides the point since I8950 probably does not have downstream derived SNPs for those that aren't no-calls. They are SHT001 (SHT001.B0101), PNL001, STD002, VLI011, Aesch25, EHU002, I5748, KOP003, GBVPK, I7278, I3875. See below for Z2103 data.

Out of 5 specimens with 500000 or more hits that are L23 or are derived for an SNP downstream of Z2103 there are 2 that have a no-call for Z2103. One of those is I0443 which has 986462 SNP hits and coverage of 6.1209 so this is a very high resolution sample.  I0443 has more SNP hits and higher coverage than I8950, I6884, I10627, and I10628. Which means that I10627 (L23) 692609 SNP hits and  I10628 (L23) 963040 SNP hits could possibly have no-calls for Z2103 meaning that if that is the case they could have been derived for Z2103 if there had been reads on those specimens for Z2103. It is very rare to have a no-call for L51 with that much coverage so they are very likely ancestral for L51.

That would make I6884 (L51) as the only specimen, out of the above, that possibly could be a clue to a region that R-L23 originated in based on a cluster of L51 and Z2103 specimens in the same region without even taking into consideration their age.

I am not saying that the above is likely but it looks like a 50% chance that it is the scenario.

Once the BAMs are published then they need to be checked for the pertinent SNPs that could be no-calls just like I did for SHT001 (SHT001.B0101), PNL001, STD002, VLI011, Aesch25, EHU002, I5748, KOP003, GBVPK, I7278, I3875, I0443 and many others.

As David Anthony said in the conference, once the early Yamnaya were very mobile and once the herds grew large enough they had to expand their territory. It looks like there are still too many unknowns until more specimens are tested and they find some that are much older, by at least 500 years, and derived for Z2103 and L51 but with downstream ancestral reads with few no-calls. Or specimens with a derived read of L23 but ancestral reads for both Z2103 and L51 that are 1000 years older or P310 specimens from 3300-300 BC that aren't from Afanasievo. Of course part of the speculation was where they need to search for these types of specimens but the mobility and small initial population size of L23 and downstream clades before 3000 BC causes me to have lower expectations for even the next 5 years. My hopes will always stay high but the expectation is now lower than in the past.

I see these are mostly Lower Don-Manych river/depression confluence samples. A similar conclusion about L23* paragroups was posted by Rich Rocca above. Also it is clear from the autosomal data that Core Yamnaya (L23 and dervied) is just a bit more BP-PV like than Don Yamnaya (heavily L699 and practically Sredni Stog Hi).

The samples that I posted are the ones that RR posted. I'm not sure my point was understood. Part of my point is that they shouldn't be called L23* because we don't know that they don't have no-calls for pertinent SNPs even though they are high quality samples and I posted evidence for my point. L23 samples younger than 2900 BC that aren't Z2103 or L51 fit into one of three categories - No-call for Z2103, or dead lineage, or unknown rare lineage. They aren't really L23*. Since we don't have the BAMs we don't know which of those categories they fit into. In a fourth category would be a rare no-call for L51.

As far as those samples being a clue as to where to look for older L51 specimens the samples we posted are 1400 years removed from the R-L23 common ancestor.

The oldest L23 specimen, published or not, is I33307 (3705-3533 calBCE) R-Z2106 from EL064 (KRC_RAS_1175, Volga-Chogray-Channel-53, kurgan 6, burial 17).  I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of that result.

The oldest L51 specimen that does not have an ambiguous or controversial result and isn't low quality is SHT001 (SHT001.B0101) from Shatar Chuluu (Afanasievo) (3320-2918 calBCE) which is R-P310(xL151)

The next oldest is unpublished I12893 from Idzhil-2 Republic of Kalmykia, Oktyabrsky District, Idzhil Village (3300-2600 BCE)

The oldest specimens don't help with trying to find the region of the source of the common L23 ancestor.

Without more samples derived for L23 or subclades, that are older, which will be hard to find and will take a long time, there is still much speculation even with the autosomal data.

As stated in the Lazaridis et al. 2024 study on page 215 of the SM. " In the future it is important to study the Pontic-Caspian steppe in even finer spatio-temporal detail to identify the pre-Yamnaya population in the Eneolithic mix of Don-Volga with Serednii Stih populations out of which we think that the Yamnaya emerged. Where did the “core Yamnaya” patrilineal clan (R-Z2103/R-M12149 bearers) live and why did they become so successful? "

That can't be answered without more specimens derived for R-L23 that are older.

[CowboyHG]

While the Kurgan may not be an ethno-liguistic marker, the talk about it reminded me about the Kurgan Hypothesis and Marija Gimbutas.

That she was proved right at all after all these years is a feat, but that she nailed so many details to the T, is a feat of feats.


Kurgan Hypothesis

This lines up rather nicely with the latest research?

Wave 1 - pre-Yamnaya (Srednih Stih Cline?, potentially IE linguistically)
Wave 2 - core-Yamnaya (IE linguistically)
Wave 3 - ...

Edit: Might as well post this too, which is the main split between the latest publication and her work.

Yes I think her model of smaller wavelets and larger waves, from a few different sub zones is right on, of course with some modernised nuances .

[ChrisR]

Actual warriors are different from where a bunch of pastoralists or farmers are willing to defend their herds from theft. Or where sometimes in extremis they do a bit of rustling themselves. I don’t think there is really evidence for actual classes of warriors until around 2200BC. Thats roughly when the first specialist weapons appear in temperate Europe  (items that are not things that could not also be used as tools or for hunting). I don’t think the concept of warrior as a class or specialism is at all valid in say 3300-2700BC.

History Carved by the Dagger : the Society of the Usatovo Culture in the 4th Millennium BC by Igor Manzura

Abstract 
The article discusses the social organization of the Usatovo culture which occupied the North-West Pontic region in the second half of the 4th millennium BC. The
analysis of material from burial sites revealed three groups of cemeteries. The first group is characterized by monumental earthen and stone constructions above graves, large to very large burial chambers and a great number of prestigious painted pottery as well as concentrations of metal objects, exotic articles and symbols of the highest social status. The second group embraces cemeteries which could also have complex surface structures or other constructive elements like ditches. The burial pits are smaller and the quantity of painted pottery and other valuable things is less than in the first group. The third group consists of cemeteries with simple burial mounds or flat graves. It is distinguished by small size pits, an obvious predominance of coarse pottery, very rare metal finds and the total absence of exotic adornments or symbols of high status. The division of cemeteries in three distinctive groups can testify to existence of three social strata within the Usatovo society. The upper stratum was represented by supreme chiefs and representatives of their families and lineages. The second social layer was occupied by noble people, perhaps with some priestly functions. The third lowermost stratum probably included commoners who were involved in economic activities connected with agriculture, herding and handicrafts. 

Just shows that some steppe societies were heirarchical in the late Eneolithic, without having to absolutely agree on the classifications. Also the 'Usatovo population origins' he touches on are pre-aDNA.

Interesting. I'm looking for info regarding earliest evidence for warrior (organized warfare) and social classes (permanent difference of power and wealth) in Europe.
It seems there not many publications focusing on those topics and analyzing the Steppe Cultures and CWC regarding this.

[Archetype0ne]

Actual warriors are different from where a bunch of pastoralists or farmers are willing to defend their herds from theft. Or where sometimes in extremis they do a bit of rustling themselves. I don’t think there is really evidence for actual classes of warriors until around 2200BC. Thats roughly when the first specialist weapons appear in temperate Europe  (items that are not things that could not also be used as tools or for hunting). I don’t think the concept of warrior as a class or specialism is at all valid in say 3300-2700BC.

History Carved by the Dagger : the Society of the Usatovo Culture in the 4th Millennium BC by Igor Manzura

Abstract 
The article discusses the social organization of the Usatovo culture which occupied the North-West Pontic region in the second half of the 4th millennium BC. The
analysis of material from burial sites revealed three groups of cemeteries. The first group is characterized by monumental earthen and stone constructions above graves, large to very large burial chambers and a great number of prestigious painted pottery as well as concentrations of metal objects, exotic articles and symbols of the highest social status. The second group embraces cemeteries which could also have complex surface structures or other constructive elements like ditches. The burial pits are smaller and the quantity of painted pottery and other valuable things is less than in the first group. The third group consists of cemeteries with simple burial mounds or flat graves. It is distinguished by small size pits, an obvious predominance of coarse pottery, very rare metal finds and the total absence of exotic adornments or symbols of high status. The division of cemeteries in three distinctive groups can testify to existence of three social strata within the Usatovo society. The upper stratum was represented by supreme chiefs and representatives of their families and lineages. The second social layer was occupied by noble people, perhaps with some priestly functions. The third lowermost stratum probably included commoners who were involved in economic activities connected with agriculture, herding and handicrafts. 

Just shows that some steppe societies were heirarchical in the late Eneolithic, without having to absolutely agree on the classifications. Also the 'Usatovo population origins' he touches on are pre-aDNA.

Interesting. I'm looking for info regarding earliest evidence for warrior (organized warfare) and social classes (permanent difference of power and wealth) in Europe.
It seems there not many publications focusing on those topics and analyzing the Steppe Cultures and CWC regarding this.

I think there ought to be better/earlier examples, but for the date alanarchae mentioned (2200BC) there was this study on Mokrin, which had interesting autosomal profiles and Y lineages:

Kinship, acquired and inherited status, and population structure at the Early Bronze Age Mokrin necropolis in northern Serbia

[qijia]

-----------------
Jafety

The Kurgan culture was proposed by Gimbutas but D.Anthony clearly narrowed it down to Yamnaya when looking for PIE origins. I think Jim Mallory shifted together with Anthony.
And genetics same to prove Anthony right. It seems that many cultures that Gimbutas considered "kurganized" or early Kurgan were actually still fully Neolithic Farmers (e.g. Baden, GAC) - or fully Caucasians like Maykop. As qijia psoted, Kurgans were also erected elsewhere, so it is better to keep to Yamnaya than kurgans when discussing PIE origins.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is still too early to think that way. New sample changes existing result easily. Harvard also changed their opinion just after one year.  Moreover, west siberia is too huge but sparsely populated. really long way to go. However, american mythologist already knew PIE migration below about 150 years ago. looks like modern scientist ignores mythologist unlike Gimbutas:

"The European branch of the Aryans crossed the Urals and the Volga about 2500 B. c, and occupied southern Russia till 1500 B. c. They brought into Europe a knowledge of gold, silver, and bronze, as well as the plow and the loom. In process of time they ramified into Thraco-Hlyro-Ligures, Greco-Italo- Kelts, and Slavo-Germans."



According to Frachetti,

"The calibrated C14 dates of Afanas'evo material are generally slightly earlier than those taken from Yamnaya contexts in the western steppe, which complicates a diffusionist explanation of the emergence of pastoralists in the eastern steppe. Although their origins may be obscure, communities associated with Afanas'evo materials still represent the earliest mobile pastoralists east of the Ural Mountains... [their] incipient strategy of cattle and sheep/goat herding, supplemented by hunting and fishing. The Afanas'evo subsistence economy might best be characterized as a mixed or transitional form between hunting/fishing and localized pastoralism, arising from local antecedents or combining native strategies with diffused domestic innovations among local populations. ...Perhaps the strongest evidence that divides the Yamnaya and Afanas'evo pastoralists in the mid-fourth millenium BCE is the discontinuity of pastoral economic strategies among societies living between these territories." [6]"

- and 

Childebayeva et al. Bronze Age Northern Eurasian Genetics (genarchivist.com)

The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans (genarchivist.com)