R1b-L51 in Yamnaya: Lazaridis 2024

[parasar]

I'm not going to go out on that big of a limb here but, I that it is highly unlikely we will ever find R-L151 along the Danube route. The biggest tip is the lack of R1a in any of these Yamnaya samples. Based on the Czech Corded Ware study, it is much more likely that both R-L151 and R1a traveled together from the forest steppe and then founder effects took over from there. It is noteworthy that none of the three radiocarbon tested Yamnaya R-L51 samples are older than the Czech R-L151 samples.

Yes I noticed that too about the three samples.  Is it possible that L51 had a slightly earlier expansion than R1a?
I11838 2851-2498 calBCE (4085±25 BP, PSUAMS-10774)
I6884 2852-2500 calBCE
I20499 2880-2633 calBCE
 
"We observe a closer phylogenetic relationship between the Y chromosome lineages found in early CW and BB than in either late CW or Yamnaya and BB. R1b-L151 is the most common Y-lineage among early CW males (6 of 11, 55%) and one branch ancestral to R1b-P312 (Fig. 4A), the dominant Y-lineage in BB (5) ...

"We report genomic data from the earliest CW individuals to date, including STD003 (northwestern Bohemia, 3010 to 2889 calibrated (cal) BCE), VLI076 (central Bohemia, 3018 to 2901 cal BCE), OBR003 (central Bohemia, 2911 to 2875 cal BCE), and PNL001 (eastern Bohemia, 2914 to 2879 cal BCE), showing that CW was widespread across Bohemia by 2900 BCE ...

 
A three-way mixture of Bohemia_BB_Late, Bohemia_CW_Early, and Latvia_BA (P value of 0.086) not only supports a more conservative estimate of 47.7% population replacement but also accounts for the Y-chromosomal diversity found in preclassical Únětice, with R1b-P312 from Bohemia_BB_Late, R1b-U106 and I2 from Bohemia_CW_Early, and R1a-Z645 from Latvia_BA"
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abi6941

[alanarchae]

I now officially proclaim myself a Yamnayan (then CW after 3000/2900BC). It’s taken a very long time to prove that chain of Sredny Stog-Yamnaya-CW-beaker corresponding to the M269-L23-L51-L151-P312 chain but it’s now basically complete. It’s been increasingly clear that is the truth for a few years but it’s nice  to lnice to be alive to see it confirmed ? ??

A more western origin of the Core Yamnaya would also bring their latest ancestors in proximity to the place of origin of the Corded Ware complex whose origin is itself in question but must have certainly been in the area of central-eastern Europe occupied by the Globular Amphora culture west of the Core Yamnaya. The Corded Ware population, which could trace a large part of its ancestry to the Yamnaya, was formed by admixture concurrent with the Yamnaya expansion (Extended Data Fig. 2d), shared segments of IBD proving connections within a shallow genealogical timeframe, and had a balance of ancestral components from the Caucasus and eastern Europe indistinguishable from the Yamnaya. In combination, these lines of evidence suggests that it  was formed indeed by early 3rd millennium BCE admixture with Yamnaya, or, at the very least, genetically Yamnaya ancestors that need not have been Yamnaya in the archaeological sense. The geographical homelands of the Corded Ware and Yamnaya would then conceivably be in geographical proximity to allow for their synchronous emergence and shared ancestry. The Dnipro-Don area of the Serednii Stih culture fits the genetic data, as it explains the ancestry of the nascent Core Yamnaya and places them in precisely the area from which both Corded Ware, and Southeastern European Yamnaya (in the west) and the Don Yamnaya (in the east) could have emerged by admixture of the Core Yamnaya with European farmers and UNHG respectively.

I'm trying to understand this.  Is CW descending from Yamnaya, or are CW and Yamnaya both descending from the recent genetic ancestors of Yamnaya that aren't necessarily part of what is defined as Yamnaya archaeologically?

Based on the above underlined, I was inclined to think CW doesn't descend from Yamnaya, but rather, they both share recent ancestry...the father of Yamnya and CW if you will.

I don’t think so myself. If L151/CW’s most recent cultural common ancestor was late Sredny Stog around 4000BC, that would mean their MRCA spoke Anatolian. How then would the CW/L151 lines be ones associated with the immediate post-tocharian branches like Italo/Celtic and Germanic if they hadn’t shared a common ancestor with Tocharian since 4000BC when something like Tocharuej was spoken. Also worth noting that L51 is known in early CW, Yamnaya and Afanasievo.

[JonikW]

While possible plague resistance gets talked a lot when discussing factors contributing to Yamnaya's dominance, one thing that does not is body height and physique. This pre-Yamnaya and Yamnaya in SE Europe graphic is from a conference next week in Hungary which will be attended and led by Reich, Anthony, Volker and others. Pretty obvious that all things being equal, the Yamnaya men would have had a major advantage when raiding.

In hand to hand combat, sure, but farmer populations vastly outnumbered pastoralist populations.

Agree, and if anyone hasn't listened to it yet, I suspect Kristiansen's comments on the contemporaneous pandemic in his interview with Razib Khan, flagged on our forum by VladMC, also shed light on much of the IE success once they headed west. He also gives some interesting nuance on the apparent 90 percent replacement in Britain. It's an enjoyable listen and Kristiansen mentions other exciting aDNA studies in the works, including one I'm now looking forward to that includes Neolithic western Sweden:

https://youtu.be/KyxNP4ZZItg?si=jfgNrnHOAAN99Xug

[alanarchae]

The  earliest RC dates for Afanasiebo culture you see in David Anthony’s well known book have been overturned and it’s been redated back to c.3300BC, same as Yamnaya. TBH I think Afanasievo is just a Yamnaya group and i’d be inclined to add the L51’s from that culture to the Yamnaya list.

I think this paper is saying Yamnaya is ~4000BCE:
"First, the Yamnaya were formed by admixture ~4000 BCE and began their expansion during the middle of the 4th millennium BCE, corresponding to this linguistic split date between IE and Anatolian. Second, the Yamnaya were the source of the Afanasievo migration to the east"

maybe in their newly coined use of it as a genetic term but not in a cultural sense. Yamnaya is a pretty distinctive development in a cultural sense. They’d be better avoiding reusing an archaeological terms which only applies post 3300BC.

[R.Rocca]

I don’t think so myself. If L151/CW’s most recent cultural common ancestor was late Sredny Stog around 4000BC, that would mean their MRCA spoke Anatolian. How then would the CW/L151 lines be ones associated with the immediate post-tocharian branches like Italo/Celtic and Germanic if they hadn’t shared a common ancestor with Tocharian since 4000BC when something like Tocharuej was spoken. Also worth noting that L51 is known in early CW, Yamnaya and Afanasievo.

From what I've seen, late Sredny Stog was closer to 3500 BC, so I don't think the Anatolian question comes into play. Still and more in-line with your point, I don't know of any Corded Ware samples that are securely radiocarbon dated anywhere near 3500 BC.

[alanarchae]

While possible plague resistance gets talked a lot when discussing factors contributing to Yamnaya's dominance, one thing that does not is body height and physique. This pre-Yamnaya and Yamnaya in SE Europe graphic is from a conference next week in Hungary which will be attended and led by Reich, Anthony, Volker and others. Pretty obvious that all things being equal, the Yamnaya men would have had a major advantage when raiding.

In hand to hand combat, sure, but farmer populations vastly outnumbered pastoralist populations.

Agree, and if anyone hasn't listened to it yet, I suspect Kristiansen's comments on the contemporaneous pandemic in his interview with Razib Khan, flagged on our forum by VladMC, also shed light on much of the IE success once they headed west. He also gives some interesting nuance on the apparent 90 percent replacement in Britain. It's an enjoyable listen and Kristiansen mentions other exciting aDNA studies in the works, including one I'm now looking forward to that includes Neolithic western Sweden:

https://youtu.be/KyxNP4ZZItg?si=jfgNrnHOAAN99Xuge

Though if their opponents used bows and arrows and throwing spears the advantage of height would be minor. I personally think things like mobility, subsistence strategy in an arid period, adaptability, reproductive traditions, perhaps disease resistance and even (as some papers have suggested in the past) that some ydna groups are simply more fertile are more likely bigger factors. There is distribution evidence at macro and local level of a degree of mutual avoidance or seperate but close parallel existence in some times and places. If they lived in parallel like that with different socio-economic models then one group might just grown much faster or proved more able to survive a crisis like a v arid spell.

[alanarchae]

While possible plague resistance gets talked a lot when discussing factors contributing to Yamnaya's dominance, one thing that does not is body height and physique. This pre-Yamnaya and Yamnaya in SE Europe graphic is from a conference next week in Hungary which will be attended and led by Reich, Anthony, Volker and others. Pretty obvious that all things being equal, the Yamnaya men would have had a major advantage when raiding.

In hand to hand combat, sure, but farmer populations vastly outnumbered pastoralist populations.

Agree, and if anyone hasn't listened to it yet, I suspect Kristiansen's comments on the contemporaneous pandemic in his interview with Razib Khan, flagged on our forum by VladMC, also shed light on much of the IE success once they headed west. He also gives some interesting nuance on the apparent 90 percent replacement in Britain. It's an enjoyable listen and Kristiansen mentions other exciting aDNA studies in the works, including one I'm now looking forward to that includes Neolithic western Sweden:

https://youtu.be/KyxNP4ZZItg?si= 

It’s almost laughable to imagine some pastoraliist bands ace clans could possibly overwhelmsome of those farmer population defended mega sites with truly vast populations inside. It’s much more likely they were terribly weakened by a phase of drought, crop failure, famine and disease that caused their subsistence systems then sociopolitical structure to collapse into anarchy,

[Riverman]

No necessarily. The Ccucuteni-Trypillian mega settlements were burned to the ground several times and farmer populations were likely already on the decline when the steppe men started migrating west.

Oftentimes a burnt down settlement is a clear signal for a destruction horizon, but its not that sure for TCC. In their case it might have been a regular, systematic, controlled process.

Some of the authors oftentimes claim that the main advantage of the Yamna was their more dispersed, small groups and better immune response, which in combination would give them the edge over the settled down farmers. While I generally don't buy that, I can easily see that why those settlements might have been burnt down in some sort of ritual regularly: They had, as far as I know, no evolved canalisation or even better drainage system, yet they constituted some of the biggest settlements at that time worldwide. In an area were in the winter people and animals might have lived particularly close together.
The TCC mega-settlements were, in my opinion, a prime breeding ground for plagues. Just like North China was and still is such, for similar reasons.

Therefore they might have burnt their own settlements, regularly, because of repeated plagues spreading like wildfire.

Another aspect I pointed out elsewhere, but want to stress here again: The whole settled down lifestyle was in complete decline nearly in the whole of Europe well before the steppe invasion. This is very important because its also very telling if comparing Western steppe groups and Yamnaya.

The more mobile agro-pastoralist way of life was nearly simultaneously developed by different people and the main, highly successful group, initially, was not from the steppe, but Globular Amphora people and related groups of Neolithic people with high WHG, dominated by haplogroup I2.

In fact, the Corded Ware people and even more so the earlier and more Southern Western steppe groups with corded decorated pottery (Usatovo, Cernavoda, Cotofeni) adopted a lot from GAC and TCC groups which began to switch to a GAC-lifestyle or mixed with GAC people directly.

Even physically, the GAC people were not all that different from Corded Ware, mainly a bit shorter.

In a variety of aspects, the Western steppe groups from the corded decorated ceramic horizon (Corded Ware, Usatovo-Cernavoda, Cotofeni) were most similar to each other, then quite similar to GAC and not all clones of Yamnaya.

The Yamnaya pastoralists which didn't really settle down that much rather bypassed a many habitats, invaded only for the best pastures, and didn't penetrate the neighbourhood. That was also the reason for their downfall, because their steppe pastoralism couldn't sustain a huge population and their birth rate wasn't very high. At the same time they needed or at least wanted agro-pastoralist neighbours which might helped them with mining, goods (artisans, especially smiths) and speicfic foods they didn't produce.

That's why, nearly inevitably, they were themselves replaced on the long run, even if their initial success and impact was huge. Its the same story for Yamnaya, Multi-Cordoned Ware, Sabatinovka, Cimmerians, Scythian, Sarmatians, Huns, Avars, Magayars etc.

Big initial success, sometimes even language transmission, but on the long run they were thinned out from the fringes. Their overall impact was comparatively low. In the Eastern Carpathian zone the local Cotofeni people even adopted some Yamnaya customs on their own terms, but began to push the Yamnaya back within a couple of generations, pushing them from the highlands.

That's why if looking at Corded Ware and Yamnaya, these are really separate people and you find more influence and admixture from GAC, overall, than from Yamnaya proper in Corded Ware people. Doesn't mean there was no exchange, there was no admixture, there was even mixture of GAC and Yamnaya (!) too, but the crucial point is that Yamnaya (proper) were a different thing altogether. In some respects as or even more different than GAC from the Western steppe groups.

The Yamnaya always need large, good pastures to prosper relatively. And in continental Europe West of the Pontic steppe there are just two areas which are relatively well suited for that, for one that's the Carpathian basin, the Pannonian steppe (especially the Alföld) and second some flatland zones of Bulgaria, but these are already much worse and rather too small overall.
That's why nearly all specialised pastoralists which had to move West, usually because they had more powerful enemies a their back, landed in those two zones and could, if at all, only in those two areas establish a more lasting legacy.

The forest steppe path Corded Ware took is completely different and they really learned from both the GAC and more mobile TCC groups in the West and combined it with some innovations from the Yamnaya to the East, while staying way more conservative than both in many respects.

As for Tripolye-Cucuteni militarily, they were for the above mentioned reasons in a bad spot already, but as important is their supply: The more mobile agro-pastoralists and pastoralists could wear them down in a guerilla warfare. Just like has been described in Mesopotamia too. Whenever the army from the centre came to the periphery, to the agrarian production places, they came too late. With the attackers using horses, this becomes even more painful.
Those mega-settlements were highly dependent on regular supplies, if those broke down, there were doomed, even if the attackers were not strong enough to grab them directly.

For a very long time the Tripolye-Cucuteni people seem to have created a borderzone with kind of foederati, of friendly, allied steppe groups. These kept the raiders away and were rewarded with prestige goods and trade opportunities.

I think the really big problem started when either these warlords from the buffer zone became too powerful and confident, wanted to take the riches directly and no longer trade and being dependent, or when those buffer zone tribes came under pressure themselves from the East.

I can easily imagine that Usatovo is the result of those buffer zone tribes either attacking TCC or being pushed into their sphere from the East, and the resulting fusion of the borderzone steppe groups with TCC resulted in Usatovo-Gorodsk. 
Usatovo-Gorodsk were fairly rich and had contacts up to the Caucasus, so probably they had some kind of monopoly on specific trade goods on the steppe, which again would make them powerful, but would cause envy and distrust by other steppe tribes. 

When Yamnaya expanded from the East, this would most certainly have caused an additional domino effect, just like when the Huns attacked the East Germanic tribes and those turned on Rome with unknown eagerness, as a consequence. 

TCC came under pressure from two sides, both from GAC and the steppe groups by the way, again, GAC played a major role in causing the downfall of the earlier settled down societies.

[Piquerobi]

Probably their militaristic culture also played a role. Add in mobility and better fighting provided by their domesticated horses, plus other factors, such as possibly the plague, and that may explain it. It looks like their expansion West took place at a rather fast pace, the bulk of it taking place in the 3000-2000 BC period.

David W Anthony supposedly will publish a book on the Indo-European Koryos ritual, which is an example of an expansionist feature of their culture (cattle raiding is another one, among others).

"The Koryos: the Indo-European Warband that Changed the World"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbIwi1HxmpE

"This Ancient Rite of Passage Changed the World"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRlPt1zvg4

[Riverman]

Probably their militaristic culture also played a role. Add in mobility and better fighting provided by their domesticated horses, plus other factors, such as possibly the plague, and that may explain it. It looks like their expansion West took place at a rather fast pace, the bulk of it taking place in the 3000-2000 BC period.

David W Anthony supposedly will publish a book on the Indo-European Koryos ritual, which is an example of an expansionist feature of their culture (cattle raiding is another one, among others).

"The Koryos: the Indo-European Warband that Changed the World"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbIwi1HxmpE

"This Ancient Rite of Passage Changed the World"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRlPt1zvg4

But other groups of that era had similar behaviours. Interestingly, the GAC might have been even more polygynic than the steppe people.

What's really fascinating about the IE is that they didn't just succeed in the habitat they were kind of "made for", but outside of their "comfort zone" as well. Like Yamnaya really succeeded ONLY in their very own habitat. The forest steppe and Carpatho-Balkan IE succeeded in vastly different environments, even on the sea and in Anatolia. Especially the early entry point into Anatolia is one of the most interesting, because horses and many other features of later IE played much less of a role there. And even genetically, already when coming in, they were highly mixed in all likelihood, yet the Anatolian ethnicities succeeded as well against deeply entrenched local groups.

[ArmandoR1b]

What I would really like for them to find someday is a R-L23xZ2103 specimen, with good coverage, directly radiocarbon dated to 4000-3500 BC or older. So a specimen at least 500 years older than SHT001 from Shatar Chuluu, Mongolia Afanasy with at least the same amount of coverage, preferably even better so that there is coverage on both R-L51 and R-L52. This way all of the people that point to the single oldest specimen as the ancestor of the specimens with downstream SNPs will use that one and it's location as opposed to sibling clades, dead ends, and so on. Until then we don't know for sure where the source of R-L23 is because none of the specimens in this study are as old as the calculated origin of R-L23 of 4400-4100 BC. What we do know is that all R-L23 specimens to date have Steppe autosomal DNA. I would like to see if an R-L23xZ2103 specimen, with good coverage, directly radiocarbon dated to 4000-3500 BC or older has Steppe autosomal DNA or a high percentage of the autosomal DNA that makes up Steppe autosomal DNA. Davidski had already been saying for years that CWC and Yamnaya have a common ancestor that originated in Sredny Stog. Did R-L23 get into Sredny Stog? If so when did it get into Sredny Stog. If it did and it did so about 4500-3500 BC then people are going to have to accept that is where the ancestors of all R-L151 people originated.

[R.Rocca]

Viking decimation of coastal towns in Britain is likely more akin to the type of opportunistic raiding the Yamnaya performed on hamlets in SE Europe.

[alanarchae]

No necessarily. The Ccucuteni-Trypillian mega settlements were burned to the ground several times and farmer populations were likely already on the decline when the steppe men started migrating west.

Oftentimes a burnt down settlement is a clear signal for a destruction horizon, but its not that sure for TCC. In their case it might have been a regular, systematic, controlled process.

Some of the authors oftentimes claim that the main advantage of the Yamna was their more dispersed, small groups and better immune response, which in combination would give them the edge over the settled down farmers. While I generally don't buy that, I can easily see that why those settlements might have been burnt down in some sort of ritual regularly: They had, as far as I know, no evolved canalisation or even better drainage system, yet they constituted some of the biggest settlements at that time worldwide. In an area were in the winter people and animals might have lived particularly close together.
The TCC mega-settlements were, in my opinion, a prime breeding ground for plagues. Just like North China was and still is such, for similar reasons.

Therefore they might have burnt their own settlements, regularly, because of repeated plagues spreading like wildfire.

Another aspect I pointed out elsewhere, but want to stress here again: The whole settled down lifestyle was in complete decline nearly in the whole of Europe well before the steppe invasion. This is very important because its also very telling if comparing Western steppe groups and Yamnaya.

The more mobile agro-pastoralist way of life was nearly simultaneously developed by different people and the main, highly successful group, initially, was not from the steppe, but Globular Amphora people and related groups of Neolithic people with high WHG, dominated by haplogroup I2.

In fact, the Corded Ware people and even more so the earlier and more Southern Western steppe groups with corded decorated pottery (Usatovo, Cernavoda, Cotofeni) adopted a lot from GAC and TCC groups which began to switch to a GAC-lifestyle or mixed with GAC people directly.

Even physically, the GAC people were not all that different from Corded Ware, mainly a bit shorter.

In a variety of aspects, the Western steppe groups from the corded decorated ceramic horizon (Corded Ware, Usatovo-Cernavoda, Cotofeni) were most similar to each other, then quite similar to GAC and not all clones of Yamnaya.

The Yamnaya pastoralists which didn't really settle down that much rather bypassed a many habitats, invaded only for the best pastures, and didn't penetrate the neighbourhood. That was also the reason for their downfall, because their steppe pastoralism couldn't sustain a huge population and their birth rate wasn't very high. At the same time they needed or at least wanted agro-pastoralist neighbours which might helped them with mining, goods (artisans, especially smiths) and speicfic foods they didn't produce.

That's why, nearly inevitably, they were themselves replaced on the long run, even if their initial success and impact was huge. Its the same story for Yamnaya, Multi-Cordoned Ware, Sabatinovka, Cimmerians, Scythian, Sarmatians, Huns, Avars, Magayars etc.

Big initial success, sometimes even language transmission, but on the long run they were thinned out from the fringes. Their overall impact was comparatively low. In the Eastern Carpathian zone the local Cotofeni people even adopted some Yamnaya customs on their own terms, but began to push the Yamnaya back within a couple of generations, pushing them from the highlands.

That's why if looking at Corded Ware and Yamnaya, these are really separate people and you find more influence and admixture from GAC, overall, than from Yamnaya proper in Corded Ware people. Doesn't mean there was no exchange, there was no admixture, there was even mixture of GAC and Yamnaya (!) too, but the crucial point is that Yamnaya (proper) were a different thing altogether. In some respects as or even more different than GAC from the Western steppe groups.

The Yamnaya always need large, good pastures to prosper relatively. And in continental Europe West of the Pontic steppe there are just two areas which are relatively well suited for that, for one that's the Carpathian basin, the Pannonian steppe (especially the Alföld) and second some flatland zones of Bulgaria, but these are already much worse and rather too small overall.
That's why nearly all specialised pastoralists which had to move West, usually because they had more powerful enemies a their back, landed in those two zones and could, if at all, only in those two areas establish a more lasting legacy.

The forest steppe path Corded Ware took is completely different and they really learned from both the GAC and more mobile TCC groups in the West and combined it with some innovations from the Yamnaya to the East, while staying way more conservative than both in many respects.

As for Tripolye-Cucuteni militarily, they were for the above mentioned reasons in a bad spot already, but as important is their supply: The more mobile agro-pastoralists and pastoralists could wear them down in a guerilla warfare. Just like has been described in Mesopotamia too. Whenever the army from the centre came to the periphery, to the agrarian production places, they came too late. With the attackers using horses, this becomes even more painful.
Those mega-settlements were highly dependent on regular supplies, if those broke down, there were doomed, even if the attackers were not strong enough to grab them directly.

For a very long time the Tripolye-Cucuteni people seem to have created a borderzone with kind of foederati, of friendly, allied steppe groups. These kept the raiders away and were rewarded with prestige goods and trade opportunities.

I think the really big problem started when either these warlords from the buffer zone became too powerful and confident, wanted to take the riches directly and no longer trade and being dependent, or when those buffer zone tribes came under pressure themselves from the East.

I can easily imagine that Usatovo is the result of those buffer zone tribes either attacking TCC or being pushed into their sphere from the East, and the resulting fusion of the borderzone steppe groups with TCC resulted in Usatovo-Gorodsk. 
Usatovo-Gorodsk were fairly rich and had contacts up to the Caucasus, so probably they had some kind of monopoly on specific trade goods on the steppe, which again would make them powerful, but would cause envy and distrust by other steppe tribes. 

When Yamnaya expanded from the East, this would most certainly have caused an additional domino effect, just like when the Huns attacked the East Germanic tribes and those turned on Rome with unknown eagerness, as a consequence. 

TCC came under pressure from two sides, both from GAC and the steppe groups by the way, again, GAC played a major role in causing the downfall of the earlier settled down societies.

100% agree. I could have written that post myself with no changes needed. I don’t think anyone is arguing that L151 stayed in a Yamnaya culture mode much beyond 2900/3000BC. They clearly had to adapt away from a classical Yamnaya model to move into the non steppe territory to the north/north-west of Ukraine. There was a steppe-GAC contact zone from the Carpathians to the Dnieper around 3000-2900BC. Basically where the forest steppe and forest zone in  meet. So it’s highly likely the adoptions that tranformed some forest steppe Yamnaya to a CW model was created in that location and at that timeframe. And I totally agree, the GAC contact was the key in turning a subset of Yamnaya into CW. The contacts would have greatly increased as they then pushed into Poland c.2950BC. There was likely a few early pioneers in some kind of exploring phase and perhaps a short a number of decades where contact was friendly. 

I was never particularly hung up on the steppe part literally having to be Yamnaya itself but I think on current data and ydna branching dating that Yamnaya is the most likely group to have has a subset who created a hybrid with GAC around 3000-2900BC. Plus L151 is linked mostly to early post-Tocharian branches and I don’t think the idea that L51 only shared a common cultural ancestor i Yamnaya and Afanasievo from about 4000BC really works as that is the Anatolian kind of stage. That Yamnaya, Afanasievo and CW al contain L51 strongly suggest to me that L51 wasn’t confined to some Sredny Stog descended Eneolithic group in west Ukraine but likely was c.3300BC, when Afanasievo headed east, in the Don-Volga area. On balance an east-west movement from that kind of area through much of forest steppe Ukraine in the 3300-3000BC era fits best. And that sounds like Yamnaya.

[alanarchae]

Viking decimation of coastal towns in Britain is likely more akin to the type of opportunistic raiding the Yamnaya performed on hamlets in SE Europe.

yes a settled population will really struggle against hit and run destructive raiders and the atrition can really weaken them. Destruction of buildings, theft of animals and goods, human deaths etc. It would undoubtedly have caused major demographic decline over time. Even before that the climate had been becoming more and more problematic for cevturies for farmers following a classic Neolithic farmer subsistence strategy in eastern Europe. They seem to have tried the approach of mega sites and that failed and they moved to the more vulnerable dispersed model. They were a case like seen in other areas where during a climate optimum they moved into areas with a model that then struggled when normal not so favourable climate conditions resumed.

[R.Rocca]

What I would really like for them to find someday is a R-L23xZ2103 specimen, with good coverage, directly radiocarbon dated to 4000-3500 BC or older. So a specimen at least 500 years older than SHT001 from Shatar Chuluu, Mongolia Afanasy with at least the same amount of coverage, preferably even better so that there is coverage on both R-L51 and R-L52. This way all of the people that point to the single oldest specimen as the ancestor of the specimens with downstream SNPs will use that one and it's location as opposed to sibling clades, dead ends, and so on. Until then we don't know for sure where the source of R-L23 is because none of the specimens in this study are as old as the calculated origin of R-L23 of 4400-4100 BC. What we do know is that all R-L23 specimens to date have Steppe autosomal DNA. I would like to see if an R-L23xZ2103 specimen, with good coverage, directly radiocarbon dated to 4000-3500 BC or older has Steppe autosomal DNA or a high percentage of the autosomal DNA that makes up Steppe autosomal DNA. Davidski had already been saying for years that CWC and Yamnaya have a common ancestor that originated in Sredny Stog. Did R-L23 get into Sredny Stog? If so when did it get into Sredny Stog. If it did and it did so about 4500-3500 BC then people are going to have to accept that is where the ancestors of all R-L151 people originated.

Yamnaya sample I0443 from Lopatino II, Sok River, Samara is L23+ L51- Z2105- (a Z2103 equivalent). It is dated to 3500-2700 BC, although not radiocarbon tested.