Late last fall, I reported that scientists had discovered a European ghost population. This group of people then referred to as the ANE, Ancient Northern Europeans, was a previously unknown population from the north that had mixed into the known European populations, the Hunter-Gatherers and the farmers from the Middle East, the Neolithic.
That discovery came as a result of the full genome sequencing of a few ancient specimens, including one from the Altai.
Recently, several papers have been published as a result of ongoing sequencing efforts of another 200 or so ancient specimens. As a result, scientists now believe that this ghost population has been identified as the Yamnaya and that they began a mass migration in different directions, including Europe, about 5,000 years ago. Along with their light skin and brown eyes, they brought along with them their gene(s) for lactose tolerance. So, if you have European heritage and are lactose tolerant, then maybe you can thank your Yamnaya ancestors.

1.Haak et al. http://doi.org/z9d (2015) from Feb. 18, 2015 “Steppe migration rekindles debate on language origin” by Ellen Callaway
For those of us who avidly follow these types of discoveries, this is not only amazing, it’s wonderful news. It helps to continue to explain how and why some haplogroups are found in the Native American population and in the Northern European population as well. For example, haplogroup Q is found in both places – not exact duplicates, but certainly close enough for us to know they were at one time related. It also explains how people from Germany, for example, are showing small percentages of Native American ancestry. Their common ancestors were indeed from central Asia, thousands of years ago, and we can still see vestiges of that population today in both groups of people.
So, if the Yamnaya people are the ghost people, the ANE, who are they?
The Yamna culture was primarily nomadic and was found in Russia in the Ural Region, the Pontic Steppe, dating to the 36th-23rd century BC. It is also known as the Pit Grave Culture, the Ochre Grave Culture and feeds into the Corded Ware Culture.

“Corded Ware culture” by User:Dbachmann – Own work based based on Image:Europe 34 62 -12 54 blank map.png. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Corded_Ware_culture.png#/media/File:Corded_Ware_culture.png
Characteristics for the culture are burials in kurgans (tumuli) in pit graves with the dead body placed in a supine position with bent knees. The bodies were covered in ochre. Multiple graves have been found in these kurgans, often as later insertions. The first known cart burial is also found in a kurgan grave. A kurgan often appears as a hill, example shown below, and have been found in locations throughout eastern and northern Europe..
Additionally, some scientists believe that the Yamna culture was responsible for the introduction of PIE, Proto-Indo-European-Language, the now defunct mother-tongue of European languages. Others think it’s way too soon to tell, and that suggestion is jumping the gun a bit.
Why might these recent discoveries be important to many genetic genealogists? Primarily, because Y haplogroup R has been identified in ancient Russian remains dating from 2700-3400 BCE. Haplogroup R and subgroups had not been found in the ancient European remains sequenced as of last fall. In addition, subgroups of mitochondrial haplogroups U, W, H, T and W have been identified as well.
Keep in mind that we are still dealing with less than 300 skeletal remains that have been fully sequenced. This trend may hold, or a new discovery may well cause the thought pattern to be “reconfigured” slightly or significantly. Regardless, it’s exciting to be part of the learning and discovery process.
Oh yes, and before I forget to mention it…it seems that your Neanderthal ancestors may not be as far back in your tree as you thought. They have now found 40,000 year old skeletal remains that suggest that person’s great-great-grandfather was in fact, full Neanderthal. That’s significantly later than previously thought, by 10,000 or 20,000 years, and in Europe, not the Near East…and who knows what is just waiting to be found. The new field of ancient DNA is literally bursting open as we watch.
I’ve accumulated several recent articles and some abstracts so that you can read about these interesting developments, in summary, and not have to do a lot of searching. Enjoy!
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Modern Europe was formed by milk-drinking Russians: Mass migration brought new genetic makeup to continent 5,000 years ago
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3119310/How-white-Europeans-arrived-5-000-years-ago-Mass-migration-southern-Russia-brought-new-technology-dairy-farming-continent.html
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DNA Deciphers Roots of Modern Europeans
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/science/dna-deciphers-roots-of-modern-europeans.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1
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Science – Nomadic Herders Left a Strong Genetic Mark on Europeans and Asians
http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2015/06/nomadic-herders-left-strong-genetic-mark-europeans-and-asians
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Nature – DNA Data Explosion Light Up the Bronze Age
http://www.nature.com/news/dna-data-explosion-lights-up-the-bronze-age-1.17723
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From the European Nucleotide Archive. http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/PRJEB9021
Investigation of Bronze Age in Eurasia by sequencing from 101 ancient human remains. We show that around 3 ka BC, Central and Northern Europe and Central Asia receive genetic input through people related to the Yamnaya Culture from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, resulting in the formation of the Corded Ware Culture in Europe and the Afanasievo Culture in Central Asia. A thousand years later, genetic input from North-Central Europe into Central Asia gives rise to the Sintashta and Andronovo Cultures. During the late BA and Iron Age, the European-derived populations in Asia are gradually replaced by multi-ethnic cultures, of which some relate to contemporary Asian groups, while others share recent ancestry with Native American
Description
The Bronze Age (BA) of Eurasia (c. 3,000-1,000 years BC, 3-1 ka BC) was a period of major cultural changes. Earlier hunter-gathering and farming cultures in Europe and Asia were replaced by cultures associated with completely new perceptions and technologies inspired by early urban civilization. It remains debated if these cultural shifts simply represented the circulation of ideas or resulted from large-scale human migrations, potentially also facilitating the spread of Indo-European languages and certain phenotypic traits. To investigate this and the role of BA in the formation of Eurasian genetic structure, we used new methodological improvements to sequence low coverage genomes from 101 ancient humans (19 > 1X average depth) covering 3 ka BC to 600 AD from across Eurasia. We show that around 3 ka BC, Central and Northern Europe and Central Asia receive genetic input through people related to the Yamnaya Culture from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, resulting in the formation of the Corded Ware Culture in Europe and the Afanasievo Culture in Central Asia. A thousand years later, genetic input from North-Central Europe into Central Asia gives rise to the Sintashta and Andronovo Cultures. During the late BA and Iron Age, the European-derived populations in Asia are gradually replaced by multi-ethnic cultures, of which some relate to contemporary Asian groups, while others share recent ancestry with Native Americans. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesised spread of Indo-European languages during early BA and reveal that major parts of the demographic structure of present-day Eurasian populations were shaped during this period. We also demonstrate that light skin pigmentation in Europeans was already present at high frequency during the BA, contrary to lactose tolerance, indicating a more recent onset of positive selection in the latter than previously believed.
Abstract
The Bronze Age (BA) of Eurasia (c. 3,000-1,000 years BC, 3-1 ka BC) was a period of major cultural changes. Earlier hunter-gathering and farming cultures in Europe and Asia were replaced by cultures associated with completely new perceptions and technologies inspired by early urban civilization. It remains debated if these cultural shifts simply represented the circulation of ideas or resulted from large-scale human migrations, potentially also facilitating the spread of Indo-European languages and certain phenotypic traits. To investigate this and the role of BA in the formation of Eurasian genetic structure, we used new methodological improvements to sequence low coverage genomes from 101 ancient humans (19 > 1X average depth) covering 3 ka BC to 600 AD from across Eurasia. We show that around 3 ka BC, Central and Northern Europe and Central Asia receive genetic input through people related to the Yamnaya Culture from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, resulting in the formation of the Corded Ware Culture in Europe and the Afanasievo Culture in Central Asia. A thousand years later, genetic input from North-Central Europe into Central Asia gives rise to the Sintashta and Andronovo Cultures. During the late BA and Iron Age, the European-derived populations in Asia are gradually replaced by multi-ethnic cultures, of which some relate to contemporary Asian groups, while others share recent ancestry with Native Americans. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesised spread of Indo-European languages during early BA and reveal that major parts of the demographic structure of present-day Eurasian populations were shaped during this period. We also demonstrate that light skin pigmentation in Europeans was already present at high frequency during the BA, contrary to lactose tolerance, indicating a more recent onset of positive selection in the latter than previously believed.
The findings echo those of a team that sequenced 69 ancient Europeans3. Both groups speculate that the Yamnaya migration was at least partly responsible for the spread of the Indo-European languages into Western Europe.
The report on the 69 ancient remains sequenced is below.
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Steppe migration rekindles debate on language origin
http://www.nature.com/news/steppe-migration-rekindles-debate-on-language-origin-1.16935
The Harvard team collected DNA from 69 human remains dating back 8,000 years and cataloged the genetic variations at almost 400,000 different points. The Copenhagen team collected DNA from 101 skeletons dating back about 3,400 years and sequenced the entire genomes.
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Population genetics of Bronze Age Eurasia
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v522/n7555/full/nature14507.html
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Dienekes Anthropology Blog
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2014/06/ancient-dna-from-bronze-age-altai.html
Forensic Science International: Genetics Received 2 January 2014; received in revised form 21 May 2014; accepted 25 May 2014. published online 04 June 2014.
The Altai Mountains have been a long term boundary zone between the Eurasian Steppe populations and South and East Asian populations. Mitochondrial DNA analyses revealed that the ancient Altaians studied carried both Western (H, U, T) and Eastern (A, C, D) Eurasian lineages. In the same way, the patrilineal gene pool revealed the presence of different haplogroups (Q1a2a1-L54, R1a1a1b2-Z93 and C), probably marking different origins for the male paternal lineages.
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Dienekes Anthropology Blog
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/06/mtdna-from-late-bronze-age-west-siberia.html
Includes mitochondrial haplogroups C, U2e, T, U5a, T1, A10.
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Population Genetics copper and Bronze Age populations of Eastern Steppe, thesis by Sandra Wilde
http://ubm.opus.hbz-nrw.de/volltexte/2015/3975/ (in German)
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Eurogenes blog discusses
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2015/03/population-genetics-of-copper-and.html
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Polish Genes Blog
http://polishgenes.blogspot.com/2015/05/r1a1a-from-early-bronze-age-warrior.html
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Early European May Have Had Neanderthal Great-Great-Greandparent
http://www.nature.com/news/early-european-may-have-had-neanderthal-great-great-grandparent-1.17534
40,000 year old Romanian skeleton with 5 – 11% Neanderthal, including large parts of some chromosomes – as close as a great-grandparent. Previously thought that interbreeding was in the Middle East and 10,000 or 20,000 years earlier.
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How is this all happening?
The Scientist Magazine has a great overview in the June 1, 2015 edition, in “What’s Old is New Again.”
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43069/title/What-s-Old-Is-New-Again/
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I first read Archaeologist & Linguist J P Mallory’s account of the origins of the Indo-European language family in his book In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth some 20 years ago. These recent and multiply-originating findings from ancient Bronze Age DNA do appear to confirm the hypotheses he promoted in his various works. His writings were generally in support of the Kurgan hypothesis of the late Archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. It is really quite striking to see these developments occur is such rapidity and from multiple sources.
Thank you, Roberta! Nicely done. And great information. 🙂
Roberta, change mild-drinking Russians to milk-drinking Russians?
Good eye. Thank you.
This may explain my whole mix ! You have my ftdna numbers to compare. Explains a bit of the Eurasian gumbo , also I ve known of the popular drink of fermented mares milk, both used in the Carpathian and the Steppes , hence the build up of lactose tolerance. Intoxicating assumption.
Great, I did almost the same summary in my blog, in UA lang with translation from EN. But anyway, your post has more resources to read. Thanks.
According to CollinsDictionary explanation great-great-grandfather is the grandfather of a grandparent(s).
Ok, I take into consideration my father. His grandfather birth 1901 (Nicolaus). Grandfather of Nicolaus is person with birth 1827 (Eustachius).
Tracing village history well known facts, Eustachius looked as normal HomoSapiens as we all are now.
So how to understand that your sentence/statement? Shouldn’t I understand it literally? 🙂
As I wrote in my blog (lundiak.wordpress.com), I’m not surprised here. Since 2014 when I received Y-DNA test, I realized R HG was super HG 🙂 And they gave a birth vast majority of Europe (including Aryan). I didn’t know about Yamnya, but as far as I researched – vast majority of Y-DNA is really for R hg. So why a surprise? Isn’t it expected that Yamnaya has huge influence on Europe people? Or now, after atDNA research it some disbalanced?
Regards,
Y-DNA I-P37 member (CTS-10228)
Roberta, fascinating stuff, indeed!!!! My paternal group is R1b1a2. I’ll bet that we came from that area.
Please check your reference to the first article. As it is spelled, ‘mild-drinking Russians’. I suspect it should be ‘milk-drinking Russians’. However, coming from a strong Irish heritage in the last 200 years, as far as I can prove, a mild-drinking gene would be welcome. Ha.
Kay
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2015 14:47:12 +0000 To: kayschmid@hotmail.com
My family certainly didn’t get that “mild-drinking” gene. Yes, you’re right, it’s supposed to be milk. Thank you.
The “Book of Mormon” describes in detail who these ancient inhabitants were and where they came from.
Very Interesting !!
Great blog, Roberta. I read this stuff too, but how do you find the time and do everything else and write a blog as well?
I’m waiting for the traditional archaeologists to really engage. For example, Prof. Barry Cunliffe, who a few years ago expressed reservations about using DNA from present populations to make judgements about people movements and origins. In essence, he said he would like to see archaeological DNA but there was very little around then. Now we are starting to see lots of evidence, and tackle questions of migration of waves of peoples, their haplogroups, languages and technologies and see whether the latter arrived by conquest, large scale or small scale migration.
This is the good part of “May you live in interesting times”.
You know Corded Ware Culture feeds into Kiukainen culture. See e.g. Neolithic dairy farming at the extreme of agriculture in northern Europe http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4132672/
In Finland we have two “strawberry places” for archaeology, Eura (includes Kiukainen) and Vesilahti region.
Roberta, perhaps you remember one certain Y-DNA you analyzed… And even a picture of the fine King’s grave in Kiukainen, Finland. etc 🙂
Indeed I do….and I remember an X match too:)
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That is impressive work, but may or may not be confirmed by ongoing and future studies. I always wondered why there was that little sliver of Native American/East Asian contribution to my genome. I thought it was just a chance, speculative finding on my 23andMe DNA test. Maybe not? My Y haplogroup is found under the now dated designation of R1b.
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So then these are the people who called themselves the Aryans? As in the Aryans we see in Indian History?
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Well this may very well explain my Asian and European ancestry
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Is there any information on the ancient Ukrainian civilization of Aratta-Trypillia (‘Cucuteni’ in Romania & Moldova) and the connection with the Yamna culture?
I think they may be the same people but described by a different name. Thanks.
I don’t know and can’t research from where I am. I would look up both and compare.
My ancestry origin based on my DNA test results was 51% Yamnaya ( Aryan ) and 41 % European farmers.
It was a big surprise to me as persian who was born close to Caspian sea the result was a proof of my Aryan origin.
Through what company? I’ve never seen that category.
I wonder if the commenter means the Ancient Origins piece of FTDNA?? I’m 47% Farmer, 40% Hunter-Gatherer, and 14% “Metal Age Invader” (“Nomadic herding cultures from the Eurasian steppes”). Numbers don’t total to 100; I guess due to rounding. My mother — of present-day northern Italian and German heritage — has numbers close to mine. I guess the Yamnaya didn’t get too far into the Italian peninsula — or to Ireland ?? Regardless, it’s fascinating stuff. I’m reading right now a just-published book “Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past” by David Reich.
I’m reading that book too.
It sounds like a bit of wishful thinking on their part. Especially regarding the “Aryan” part.
I remember being so deluded. I was convinced, for a while, that I was descended from the Skuda (Scythians) on my father’s side. His ancestors were mostly from Ukraine, which was the Royal Scythian heartland. Is very likely that modern Ukrainians, of whom many resemble the recreations of Yamna people, are mostly of that ancestry. They were nomads so it is possible that the Scythians came from that culture.
In the end, the specifics shouldn’t be so important to people. Especially when you cannot actually prove such ancestries. You need perfect evidence, which pretty much no one has. That’s a task for people into past life regression, but that’s a totally different beast here.
Do you have screenshots of that?
Is there evidence of Anatolian decent? Also, is there a connection between Anatolian people and Yamnaya people?
I am Sardinian, that is the only European people that were not ‘visited’ by the Yamnaya and our DNA is very close to that of the so-called Tyrolean Iceman (or Ötzi) while showing almost no traces of Yamnaya DNA.
(ref: https://phys.org/news/2017-02-sardinian-dna-genetic-clues-islandand.html and https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2019/07/first-europeans-immigrants-genetic-testing-feature/)
And all of us (but for normal exceptions) are lactose tolerant.
This should contrast with the thesis that the Yamnaya people brought lactose tolerance to European people.
Hello Roberta, I stumbled upon your articles while trying to do some research on my brother’s haplogroup now changed to R-KMS75. He has sent me articles regarding the Yamnaya people but as we are a bit novice in regards to our level of your DNA expertise. His Y line matches were not what we were expecting. In fact we only have about 7 or 8 matches on the 12 marker and nothing above that. Our Y line goes back to Mexico to about 6 generations where I encounter a brick wall. None of our Y matches have our halplogroup. I can’t find any matching project groups regarding this haplogroup and we were told at FTDNA that at this time they did not see any point in doing anything above the 67 marker test at this time. We feel like the Lone Ranger when it comes to our DNA. We don’t seem to fit anywhere. We come from generations (according to our paper trail) of Mexican (North American Indigenous) and Spanish descent with some lines going back to the conquest. Would you be able to point us to any particular projects that would be interested in our joining or have any other information that could lead us to find out more about our haplogroup? Thank you for your very interesting articles.
What is the haplogroup you’ve been assigned?
My brother was reassigned to haplogroup R-KMS75 with the last year. I can send you his kit number if you like.
Not sure if my previous reply went through or not so I am resending. Apologies if it is a duplicate. My brother’s haplogroup is now R-KMS75. I believe it was previously R-L23.