TheYamnaya culture[a] or theYamna culture,[b] also known as thePit Grave culture orOchre Grave culture, is a lateCopper Age to earlyBronze Agearchaeological culture of the region between theSouthern Bug,Dniester, andUral rivers (thePontic–Caspian steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BC.[2] It was discovered byVasily Gorodtsov following his archaeological excavations near theDonets River in 1901–1903. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition:Я́мная (romanization:yamnaya) is a Russian adjective that means 'related to pits (yama)', as these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers. Research in recent years has found thatMykhailivka, on the lowerDnieper River, Ukraine, formed the core Yamnaya culture (c. 3600–3400 BC).[3][4][5][6]
The Yamnaya economy was based uponanimal husbandry,fishing, andforaging, and the manufacture ofceramics,tools, andweapons.[7] The people of the Yamnaya culture lived primarily as nomads, with achiefdom system andwheeled carts and wagons that allowed them to manage large herds.[8] They are also closely connected to Final Neolithic cultures, which later spread throughoutEurope andCentral Asia, especially theCorded Ware people and theBell Beaker culture,[8] as well as the peoples of theSintashta,Andronovo, andSrubnaya cultures. Back migration from Corded Ware also contributed to Sintashta and Andronovo.[9] In these groups, several aspects of the Yamnaya culture are present.[c] Yamnaya material culture was very similar to theAfanasievo culture of South Siberia, and the populations of the two cultures are genetically indistinguishable.[1] This suggests that the Afanasievo culture may have originated from the migration of Yamnaya groups to the Altai region or, alternatively, that both cultures developed from an earlier shared cultural source.[10]
Genetic studies have suggested that the people of the Yamnaya culture can be modelled as agenetic admixture between a population related toEastern European Hunter-Gatherers (EHG)[d] and people related tohunter-gatherers from the Caucasus (CHG) in roughly equal proportions,[11] an ancestral component which is often named "Steppe ancestry", with additional admixture from Anatolian, Levantine, orEarly European farmers.[12][13] Genetic studies also indicate that populations associated with the Corded Ware, Bell Beaker, Sintashta, and Andronovo cultures derived large parts of their ancestry from the Yamnaya or a closely related population.[1][14][15][16] Recent genetic analyses indicate that the Anatolian component in the Yamnaya comes via the Caucasus Neolithic population and not Anatolia-derived European farmers.[17]
The Yamnaya culture is of particular interest to researchers, as the widely-acceptedKurgan hypothesis posits that the people that produced the Yamnaya culture spoke a stage of theProto-Indo-European language. The speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language embarked on theIndo-European migrations, that gave rise to theIndo-European languages of today.
The Yamnaya culture was defined by Vasily Gorodtsov in order to differentiate it from theCatacomb andSrubnaya cultures that existed in the area, but were considered to be of a later period. Due to the time interval to the Yamnaya culture, and the reliance on archaeological findings, debate as to its origin is ongoing.[23] In 1996,Pavel Dolukhanov suggested that the emergence of the Pit-Grave culture represents a social development of various different local Bronze Age cultures, thus representing "an expression of social stratification and the emergence of chiefdom-type nomadic social structures" which in turn intensified inter-group contacts between essentially heterogeneous social groups.[24]
Further efforts to pinpoint the location came from Anthony (2007), who suggested that the Yamnaya culture (3300–2600 BC) originated in theDon–Volga area atc. 3400 BC,[29][2] preceded by the middle Volga-basedKhvalynsk culture and the Don-basedRepin culture (c. 3950–3300 BC),[26][2] arguing that late pottery from these two cultures can barely be distinguished from early Yamnaya pottery.[30] Earlier continuity from eneolithic but largely hunter-gathererSamara culture and influences from the more agriculturalDnieper–Donets II are apparent.
The spread of the Yamnaya horizon was the material expression of the spread of late Proto-Indo-European across the Pontic–Caspian steppes.[31] [...] The Yamnaya horizon is the visible archaeological expression of a social adjustment to high mobility – the invention of the political infrastructure to manage larger herds from mobile homes based in the steppes.[32]
Alternatively, Parpola (2015) relates both the Corded ware culture and the Yamnaya culture to the lateTrypillia (Tripolye) culture.[33] He hypothesizes that "the Tripolye culture was taken over by PIE speakers by c. 4000 BC,"[34] and that in its final phase the Trypillian culture expanded to the steppes, morphing into various regional cultures which fused with the lateSredny Stog (Serednii Stih) pastoralist cultures, which, he suggests, gave rise to the Yamnaya culture.[35] Dmytro Telegin viewed Sredny Stog and Yamnaya as one cultural continuum and considered Sredny Stog to be the genetic foundation of the Yamna.[36] Telegin's view has been recently confirmed by genetic analyses.[17][5]
The Yamnaya culture was succeeded in its western range by theCatacomb culture (2800–2200 BC); in the east, by thePoltavka culture (2700–2100 BC) at the middle Volga. These two cultures were followed by theSrubnaya culture (18th–12th century BC).
Maps of the origins of Yamnaya culture
Sredny Stog culture (c. 4500–3500 BC)
Usatovo culture (c. 3500–3000 BC)
Khvalynsk culture (c. 4900–3500 BC)
Early Yamnaya culture (3400 BC), according toAnthony (2007)
The Yamnaya culture wasnomadic[8] or semi-nomadic, with someagriculture practiced near rivers, and a few fortified sites, the largest of which isMikhaylivka.[37]
Characteristic of the culture are theburials in pit graves surmounted bykurgans (tumuli), often accompanied by animal offerings. Some graves contain largeanthropomorphic stelae, with carved human heads, arms, hands, belts, and weapons.[38] The bodies were placed in asupine position with bent knees and covered inochre. Some kurgans contained "stratified sequences of graves".[39] Kurgan burials may have been rare, and were perhaps reserved for special adults, who were predominantly, but not necessarily, male.[40] Status and gender are marked by grave goods and position, and in some areas, elite individuals are buried with complete wooden wagons.[41] Grave goods are more common in eastern Yamnaya burials, which are also characterized by a higher proportion of male burials and more male-centred rituals than western areas.[42]
The Yamnaya culture had and used two-wheeled carts and four-wheeled wagons, which are thought to have been oxen-drawn at this time, and there is evidence that they rode horses.[43][44] For instance, several Yamnaya skeletons exhibit specific characteristics in their bone morphology that may have been caused by long-term horseriding.[43] The evidence is disputed by archaeozoologist William T. Taylor, who argues that domestication of the horse long postdates the Yamnaya culture.[45] Recent genetic studies indicate that horse domestication in Eurasia happened after ca. 2700 BCE.[46]
Metallurgists and other craftsmen are given a special status in Yamnaya society, and metal objects are sometimes found in large quantities in elite graves. New metalworking technologies and weapon designs are used.[41]
Stable isotope ratios of Yamnaya individuals from the Dnipro Valley suggest the Yamnaya diet was terrestrial protein based with insignificant contribution from freshwater or aquatic resources.[47] Anthony speculates that the Yamnaya ate meat, milk, yogurt, cheese, and soups made from seeds and wild vegetables, and probably consumedmead.[48]
Mallory and Adams suggest that Yamnaya society may have had a tripartite structure of three differentiated social classes, although the evidence available does not demonstrate the existence of specific classes such as priests, warriors, and farmers.[49]
According to Jones et al. (2015) and Haak et al. (2015),autosomal tests indicate that the Yamnaya people were the result of a genetic admixture between two different hunter-gatherer populations: distinctive "Eastern Hunter-Gatherers" (EHG), from Eastern Europe, with high affinity to theMal'ta–Buret' culture or other,closely related people fromSiberia[14] and a population of "Caucasus hunter-gatherers" (CHG) who probably arrived from theCaucasus[52][11] or Iran.[53] Each of those two populations contributed about half the Yamnaya DNA.[15][11] This admixture is referred to in archaeogenetics asWestern Steppe Herder (WSH) ancestry.
Reconstruction of a Yamnaya burial from Prydnistryanske, Ukraine
Admixture between EHGs and CHGs is believed to have occurred on the eastern Pontic-Caspian steppe starting around 5,000 BC, while admixture withEarly European Farmers (EEF) happened in the southern parts of the Pontic-Caspian steppe sometime later. More recent genetic studies have found that the Yamnaya were a mixture of EHGs, CHGs, and to a lesser degree Anatolian farmers and Levantine farmers, but not EEFs from Europe due to lack ofWHG DNA in the Yamnaya. This occurred in two distinct admixture events fromWest Asia into the Pontic-Caspian steppe.[13][54]
People of the Yamnaya culture are believed to have had mostly brown eye colour, light to intermediate skin, and brown hair colour, with some variation.[61][62]
Some Yamnaya individuals are believed to have carried a mutation to the KITLG gene associated with blond hair, as several individuals with Steppe ancestry are later found to carry this mutation. TheAncient North EurasianAfontova Gora group, who contributed significant ancestry toWestern Steppe Herders, are believed to be the source of this mutation.[63] A study in 2015 found that Yamnaya had the highest ever calculated genetic selection for height of any of the ancient populations tested.[64][65] It has been hypothesized that an allele associated withlactase persistence (conferringlactose tolerance into adulthood) was brought to Europe from the steppe by Yamnaya-related migrations.[66][67][68][69]
Yamnaya wagon/cart burial from Novoselytsia, Ukraine
A 2022 study by Lazaridis et al. found that the typical phenotype among the Yamnaya population was brown eyes, brown hair, and intermediate skin colour. None of their Yamnaya samples were predicted to have either blue eyes or blond hair, in contrast with later Steppe groups in Russia and Central Asia, as well as theBell Beaker culture in Europe, who did carry these phenotypes in significant proportions.[13]
The geneticistDavid Reich has argued that the genetic data supports the likelihood that the people of the Yamnaya culture were a "single, genetically coherent group" who were responsible for spreading many Indo-European languages.[70] Reich's group recently suggested that the source of Anatolian and Indo-European subfamilies of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language may have been in west Asia and the Yamnaya were responsible for the dissemination of the latter.[5] Reich also argues that the genetic evidence shows that Yamnaya society was an oligarchy dominated by a small number of elite males.[71] Recent (2024 and 2025) publications confirmed the tight clustering of most of Yamnaya genetic profiles, but shifted the origins of PIE towards the Caucasus-Lower Volga (CLV) region.[17][5]
The genetic evidence for the extent of the role of the Yamnaya culture in the spread of Indo-European languages has been questioned by Russian archaeologistLeo Klejn[72] and Balanovsky et al.,[73] who note a lack ofmale haplogroup continuity between the people of the Yamnaya culture and the contemporary populations of Europe. Klejn has also suggested that the autosomal evidence does not support a Yamnaya migration, arguing that Western Steppe Herder ancestry in both contemporary and Bronze Age samples is lowest around the Danube in Hungary, near the western limits of the Yamnaya culture, and highest in Northern Europe, which Klejn argues is the opposite of what would be expected if the geneticists' hypothesis is correct.[74]
Marija Gimbutas identified the Yamnaya culture with the lateProto-Indo-Europeans (PIE) in herKurgan hypothesis. In the view of David Anthony, the Pontic-Caspian steppe is the strongest candidate for theUrheimat (original homeland) of theProto-Indo-European language, citing evidence from linguistics and genetics[14][75] which suggests that the Yamnaya culture may be the homeland of the Indo-European languages, with the possible exception of theAnatolian languages.[76][77] On the other hand,Colin Renfrew has argued for aNear Eastern origin of the earliest Indo-European speakers.[78][79]
According toDavid W. Anthony, the genetic evidence suggests that the leading clans of the Yamnaya were of EHG (Eastern European hunter-gatherer) and WHG (Western European hunter-gatherer) paternal origin[80] and implies that theIndo-European languages were the result of "a dominant language spoken by EHGs that absorbed Caucasus-like elements in phonology, morphology, and lexicon."[81] It has also been suggested that the PIE language evolved through trade interactions in the circum-Pontic area in the 4th millennium BC, mediated by the Yamnaya predecessors in the North Pontic steppe.[82]
Guus Kroonen et al. 2022 found that the "basal Indo-European stage", also known asIndo-Anatolian or Pre-Proto-Indo-European language, largely but not totally, lacked agricultural-related vocabulary, and only the later "coreIndo-European languages" saw an increase in agriculture-associated words. According to them, this fits a homeland of early core Indo-European within the westernmost Yamnaya horizon, around and west of theDnieper, while its basal stage, Indo-Anatolian, may have originated in theSredny Stog culture, as opposed to the eastern Yamnaya horizon. TheCorded Ware culture may have acted as major source for the spread of later Indo-European languages, includingIndo-Iranian, whileTocharian languages may have been mediated via theCatacomb culture. They also argue that this new data contradicts a possible earlier origin of Pre-Proto-Indo-European among agricultural societies South of the Caucasus, rather "this may support a scenario of linguistic continuity of local non-mobile herders in the Lower Dnieper region and their genetic persistence after their integration into the successive and expansive Yamnaya horizon". Furthermore the authors mention that this scenario can explain the difference in paternal haplogroup frequency between the Yamnaya and Corded Ware cultures, while both sharing similar autosomal DNA ancestry.[83]
Genetic studies have found that Yamnaya autosomal characteristics are very close to theCorded Ware culture people, with up to 75% Yamnaya-like ancestry in the DNA of Corded Ware skeletons from Central and Eastern Europe.[84] Yamnaya–related ancestry is found in the DNA of modernCentral, andNorthern Europeans (c. 38.8–50.4 %), and is also found in lower levels in present-day Southern Europeans (c. 18.5–32.6 %),Sardinians (c. 2.4–7.1 %), andSicilians (c. 5.9–11.6 %).[85][75][16]
However, according to Heyd, et al. (2023), the specificpaternal DNA haplogroup that is most commonly found in male Yamnaya specimens cannot be found in modern Western Europeans, or in males from the nearbyCorded Ware culture. This makes it unlikely that the Corded Ware culture can be directly descended from the Yamnaya culture, at least along the paternal line.[86]
Autosomal tests also indicate that the Yamnaya are the vector for "Ancient North Eurasian" admixture into Europe.[14] "Ancient North Eurasian" is the name given in literature to a genetic component that represents descent from the people of theMal'ta–Buret' culture[14] or a population closely related to them. That genetic component is visible in tests of the Yamnaya people[14] as well as modern-day Europeans.[87]
According to Allentoft (2015), the Sintashta culture probably derived from the Corded Ware Culture.
In the Baltic, Jones et al. (2017) found that theNeolithic transition – the passage from a hunter-gatherer economy to a farming-based economy – coincided with the arrival en masse of individuals with Yamnaya-like ancestry. This is different from what happened in Western and Southern Europe, where the Neolithic transition was caused by a population that came from Anatolia, with Pontic steppe ancestry being detected from only the late Neolithic onward.[88]
Per Haak et al. (2015), the Yamnaya contribution in the modern populations ofEastern Europe ranges from 46.8% amongRussians to 42.8% inUkrainians.Finland has the highest Yamnaya contributions in all of Europe (50.4%).[89][e]
There is a significant presence of Yamnaya descent in the nations of South Asia, especially in groups that are referred to asIndo-Aryans.[90][91] Lazaridis et al. (2016) estimated (6.5–50.2 %) steppe-related admixture in South Asians, though the proportion of Steppe ancestry varies widely across ethnic groups.[53][f] According to Pathak et al. (2018), the "North-Western Indian & Pakistani" populations (PNWI) showed significant Middle-Late Bronze Age Steppe (Steppe_MLBA) ancestry along with Yamnaya Early-Middle Bronze Age (Steppe_EMBA) ancestry, but the Indo-Europeans ofGangetic Plains andDravidian people only showed significant Yamnaya (Steppe_EMBA) ancestry and no Steppe_MLBA. The study also noted that ancient south Asian samples had significantly higher Steppe_MLBA than Steppe_EMBA (or Yamnaya).[91][g] According to Narasimhan et al. (2019), the Yamnaya-related ancestry, termed Western_Steppe_EMBA, that reached central and south Asia was not the initial expansion from the steppe to the east, but a secondary expansion that involved a group possessing ~67% Western_Steppe_EMBA ancestry and ~33% ancestry from the European cline. This group included people similar to that ofCorded Ware,Srubnaya,Petrovka, andSintashta. Moving further east in the central steppe, it acquired ~9% ancestry from a group of people that possessed West Siberian Hunter Gatherer ancestry, thus forming the Central Steppe MLBA cluster, which is the primary source of steppe ancestry in South Asia, contributing up to 30% of the ancestry of the modern groups in the region.[90]
According to Unterländer et al. (2017), all Iron AgeScythian Steppe nomads can best be described as a mixture of Yamnaya-related ancestry and anEast Asian-related component, which most closely corresponds to the modern NorthSiberianNganasan people of the lowerYenisey River, to varying degrees, but generally higher among Eastern Scythians.[92]
^Yamnayan cultural aspects, for example, were horse-riding, burial styles, and to some extent thepastoralist economy.
^The Eastern European hunter-gatherers were themselves mostly descended from ancient North Eurasians, related to the palaeolithicMal'ta–Buret' culture.
^PerHaak et al. (2015), adding a north-Siberian people as a fourth reference population improves residuals for northeastern European populations. This accounts for the higher than expected Yamnaya contribution and brings it down to expected levels (67.8–50.4 % in Finns, 64.9–46.8 % in Russians).
^Novembre 2015, "evidence to support theories of a back-migration from Corded Ware-related populations that contributed to the origins of the Sintashta culture in the Urals and their descendants, the Andronovo."
^P., Mallory, J. (2003) [1989].In search of the Indo-Europeans : language, archaeology, and myth. Thames and Hudson. p. 213.ISBN0-500-27616-1.OCLC886668216.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Wang 2019. sfn error: no target: CITEREFWang2019 (help)
^Eske, Allentoft; Morten E. Pokutta; Dalia Willerslev (2015).Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia. University of Copenhagen, Denmark.OCLC1234973657.
^Nikitin et al. 2017, "In the 12 successfully haplotyped specimens, 75% of mtDNA lineages consisted of west Eurasian haplogroup U and its U4 and U5 sublineages. Furthermore, we identified a subgroup of east Eurasian haplogroup C in two representatives of the Yamna culture in one of the studied kurgans".
^Callaway, Ewen."DNA data explosion lights up the Bronze Age". Nature. "the 101 sequenced individuals, the Yamnaya were most likely to have the DNA variation responsible for lactose tolerance, hinting that the steppe migrants might have eventually introduced the trait to Europe"
^Furholt, Martin (2018)."Massive Migrations? The Impact of Recent DNA Studies on our View of Third Millennium Europe".European Journal of Archaeology.21 (2):159–191.doi:10.1017/eaa.2017.43. "For example, one lineage could have a biological evolutionary advantage over the other. Allentoft et al. (2015: 171) have found a remarkably high rate of lactose tolerance among individuals connected to Yamnaya and to Corded Ware, as opposed to the majority of Late Neolithic individuals."
^Reich, David (2018).Who we are and how we got here: ancient DNA and the new science of the human past. Oxford, United Kingdom. p. 121.ISBN978-0-19-882125-0.OCLC1006478846.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Reich, David (2018).Who we are and how we got here: ancient DNA and the new science of the human past. Oxford, United Kingdom. p. 239.ISBN978-0-19-882125-0.OCLC1006478846.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Klejn, Leo (2017). "The Steppe Hypothesis of Indo-European Origins Remains to be Proven".Acta Archaeologica.88 (1):193–204.doi:10.1111/j.1600-0390.2017.12184.x.
^Balanovsky, O. (2017). "Genetic differentiation between upland and lowland populations shapes the Y-chromosomal landscape of West Asia".Human Genetics.136 (4):437–450.doi:10.1007/s00439-017-1770-2.PMID28281087.S2CID3735168. "The ancient Yamnaya samples are located on the "eastern" R-GG400 branch of haplogroup R1b-L23, showing that the paternal descendants of the Yamnaya still live in the Pontic steppe and that the ancient Yamnaya population was not an important source of paternal lineages in present-day West Europeans."
^Klejn 2017, p. 201: "In the tables presented in the article by Reichs’ team (Haak et al. 2015) the genetic pool connecting the Yamnaya culture with the Corded Ware people is shown to be more intense in Northern Europe (Norway and Sweden) and decreases gradually from the North to the South (Fig. 6). It is weakest around the Danube, in Hungary, i. e. areas neighbouring the western branch of the Yamnaya culture! This is the reverse image to what the proposed hypothesis by the geneticists would lead us to expect. It is true that this gradient is traced back from the contemporary materials, but it was already present during the Bronze Age [...]"
^Unterländer et al. 2017Genomic inference reveals that Scythians in the east and the west of the steppe zone can best be described as a mixture of Yamnaya-related ancestry and an East Asian component. Demographic modelling suggests independent origins for eastern and western groups with ongoing gene-flow between them, plausibly explaining the striking uniformity of their material culture. We also find evidence that significant gene-flow from east to west Eurasia must have occurred early during the Iron Age." and "The blend of EHG [European hunter-gatherer] and Caucasian elements in carriers of the Yamnaya culture was formed on the European steppe and exported into Central Asia and Siberia". We therefore considered an alternative model in which we treat them as a mix of Yamnaya and the Han (Supplementary Table 25). This model fits all of the Iron Age Scythian groups, consistent with these groups having ancestry related to East Asians not found in the other populations. Alternatively, the Iron Age Scythian groups can also be modelled as a mix of Yamnaya and the north Siberian Nganasan (Supplementary Note 2, Supplementary Table 26).
Anthony, David W. (2007).The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0-691-05887-0.
Lazaridis I, Nadel D, Rollefson G, Merrett DC, Rohland N, Mallick S, et al. (16 June 2016). "The genetic structure of the world's first farmers".bioRxiv10.1101/059311.Supplementary Information
Nordgvist, Kerkko; Heyd, Volker (2020). "The Forgotten Child of the Wider Corded Ware Family: Russian Fatyanovo Culture in Context".Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.86:65–93.doi:10.1017/ppr.2020.9.S2CID228923806.
Saag, L.; Metspalu, M. (5 February 2025). "Genetic and geographical origins of Eurasia's influential Yamna culture".Nature.doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00089-0.PMID39910367.
Shishlina, Natalia I. (11 May 2023). "Yamnaya Pastoralists in the Eurasian Desert Steppe Zone: New Perspectives on Mobility". In Kristiansen, Kristian; Kroonen, Guus; Willerslev, Eske (eds.).The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited (1 ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 34–41.doi:10.1017/9781009261753.006.ISBN978-1-00-926175-3. Retrieved2023-05-23.
![Horses were domesticated on the Pontic-Caspian steppe.[50]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWild_horses_in_Rostovsky_nature_reserve.jpg)
