The First Indo-Europeans: The Dnieper Culture, Sredny Stog & the Anatolian Branch

The Dnieper. Its source bubbles up from a peat bog in Smolensk Oblast, Russia, before flowing through eastern Belarus and defining the geography of Ukraine. It's the fourth longest river in Europe and has played a significant role in history on many occasions, but might it have also been the origin point of one of the most revolutionary social changes of them all? Might its banks have been the first home of the language group that has spoken throughout Europe and beyond by roughly 45% of the world's population? While the Yamnaya had been the focus of earlier theories of the origins of the Indo-European language group, recent findings related to the origins of the enigmatic Anatolian language group may challenge our understanding of the development of the Indo-European language itself. I'm Kevin MacLean, and you're about to enter the Fortress of Lugh. Though the spread of the Indo-European language group has been popularly linked to the Yamnaya culture, which began to emerge around 3300 BC, more recent evidence for the timeline of the genetic spread of these ancient populations have revealed that many of the origins of the descended cultures and languages must have predated the period of the Yamnaya, in some cases by perhaps 1000 years. Ancestral dialects would have been spoken by other nearby populations, people who were more connected with its early spread. One of the strange things that studies attempted to grapple with was that specific Y haplogroups which became prominent in the Yamnaya and other later Indo-European speaking populations, like the Corded Ware and Bell Beakers, were not lineages that have to date been found among the early populations from the North Caucasus or Lower Volga region, where it has been suggested the Indo-European culture and language had its primary roots. It's widely recognized that the original Indo-European culture was heavily patriarchal and patrilocal. In such conditions, it's difficult to explain how they could have spread their language and culture without spreading their male haplogroups. The sheer diversity of Y lineages linked to the early spread of Indo-European cultures suggest a very early formation, one which was not centered on the Caucasus and Lower Volga region, but the Dnieper River and the forests to the north. By 10,000 BC there emerged a population in Eastern Europe formed from several earlier Eurasian populations. They're identified as Eastern hunter-gatherers, distinct from those of Western and Central Europe, with ancestries from Siberia and further to the east. They had an expansive zone and were highly mobile. Within this wide-reaching population, regional networks formed which maintained closer contacts and formed unique genetic clusters, representing trade and marriage networks along routes that facilitated travel. The Dnieper River was one such zone. A study by Matilla et al. demonstrated that this Dnieper population retained a great degree of genetic continuity. Between 8,500 and 4,500 BC, the population there was largely stable for over 4,000 years. These connected tribes along the Dnieper, with a common origin and lineage stretching from the forested regions of Belarus to the northern shores of the Black Sea, was the perfect place for the birth of a common language group. Already in 9,000 BC, individuals from this population dwelling between what is now Dnipro and Zaporozhye, Ukraine, possessed the haplogroups R1b and I2, and by 7,000 BC the population has a documented example of R1a, all three of the broad haplogroups most connected to the spread of Indo-European. These were a highly resourceful people who utilized the river to its extent, as a pathway north and south, as a resource for fish and fresh water. They built boats and rafts. Pottery styles came and went, but the core of the population remained stable for a massive length of time, allowing for the development of an extensive language continuum. A language continuum need not require every group along the entire range to be in direct communication. Instead, each tribe functions like a stepping stone. A talks to B, B talks to C, C talks to D. Dialectical differences would form and exist between members of the chain, but some degree of mutual intelligibility would be maintained. Later language groups, like Celtic, almost certainly formed in exactly this way. Proto-Indo-European did not exist in 8,000 BC, but some linguistic precursor to it did, much like Proto-Germanic is a precursor to English. Language evolves as a long chain, and it's possible that the origins of this Indo-European chain were forged along the banks of the Dnieper. The people of Shredny Stog were living extremely physically demanding lives. Their diet, activity levels, and everyday environment were obviously very different from our own, and skeletal evidence suggests that these steppe populations were generally more physically robust than many of the farmer populations living further to their west. Now, most of us are not spending our days driving livestock across a chronic steppe, but it raises an interesting question. What aspect of diet and lifestyle actually helped the body maintain and repair itself? That brings me to something I came across recently concerning stem cells. Stem cells are essentially part of the body's own repair and regeneration system, and there has been a great deal of research into the factors that influence their activity and circulation. Dr. Eric Berg has discussed this subject quite extensively, and this clip gives a useful introduction. A stem cell is kind of like this reserve cell that can pretty much change into anything that you need. They're using it now to regenerate fibrosis, which then allows the heart muscle function to improve by 30%. They can do the same thing with liver fibrosis and damage brain cells. They're getting great results stimulating new cartilage in your joint. Some people are using it for autoimmune diseases like MS and also to help rejuvenate skin cells to actually make the skin young again. There's also stem cells for cancer. It's very important to understand how to keep that stem cell population at the highest level. Now, when people hear of stem cell therapy, they generally think of highly specialized and extremely expensive medical procedures. Some treatments can cost tens of thousands of dollars. What I found more interesting is research suggesting that compounds naturally present in certain foods may influence a body's own circulating stem cells. One of these compounds is found in cocoa, cocoa flavanols. Dr. William Lee has discussed research suggesting that cocoa flavanols can substantially increase the number of stem cells circulating in the bloodstream. The flavanols in cocoa stimulate stem cells to come out of your bone marrow like bees in a beehive in your bloodstream. They go out and they find wherever needs to be repaired. If it's in your heart, they'll fix it. If it's in your liver, they'll fix it. If it's in your skin, they'll fix it. We can eat foods like high flavanol cocoa in order to be able to actually get the stem cells to work a little bit better. Now, how do we know this actually works in people? Well, clinical studies have been done with high flavanol cocoa to show that men who are in their 60s with heart disease, they could actually eat just have two cups of dark chocolate hot cocoa a day for a month and they doubled the amount of stem cells in your bloodstream and their circulation improved measurably. Now, this cocoa isn't like eating chocolate. You can't pound 10 chocolate bars and get this kind of effect. I recommend Black Forest Supplements supercharged cocoa flavanols and flavonoids. I usually mix it into coffee or a protein shake and it contains no sugar, has only around 20 calories and is extremely easy to incorporate into your normal diet. And they have an excellent promotion specifically for viewers of this channel. For the next 48 hours, if you use the link in the description or pinned comment, you can get a buy one, get one free across the entire store, as well as a free bottle of NMN with every order. In effect, that's three bottles for the price of one. This particular offer isn't available through their normal homepage. It's tied specifically to my link. So be sure to access the page through the link in the comments below. The offer will remain available for 48 hours after which the pricing returns to normal. So if you're considering trying this, do so now. And a big thanks to my friends over at Black Forest Supplements. The population continuity in the East was in stark contrast to what happened in Central Europe. The hunter gatherer population there was massively replaced over the same period of time by a new population emerging out of Anatolia, known as the early European farmers. By 6000 BC, there was a stark dividing line in Europe that cut through Ukraine. Around the Dnieper, the population retained its Eastern hunter-gatherer lineage and culture, while to the West, the hunter-gatherers dwindled and disappeared, their remnants being absorbed into the more powerful Neolithic farmer population. This Anatolian migration may have had an effect on the Balkan hunter-gatherers from the Iron Gates region, who started around 5800 BC to contribute some genetic admixture to the Dnieper population. A study proposed long-term marriage connections between the Dnieper and the Iron Gate population via the Danube, Black Sea and Dnieper, as both communities heavily utilized the rivers. By 6000 BC, archaeological evidence for their pottery tradition showed that they had a massive range and links across the entire region of Eastern Europe, with the Dnieper connecting them to the North with many related Eastern hunter-gatherer tribes across the Baltic The rapid spread of ceramic vessels along this network of hunter-gatherers shows that between 6000 and 5000 BC, many of these societies were at least semi-settled populations, rather than highly mobile foragers. Its rapid spread is also evidence for the tight connections that existed between these communities over a massive region. These were people that were managing the local environment, establishing seasonal settlements in different strategic locations, and planning the use of local resources as a community. There were also large communal graveyards, including at the Dnieper Rapids, which appear to demonstrate persistent group identity and ancestral burial places. This expresses an attachment to the land, reoccurring over many generations, in some cases thousands of years, with shared customs such as the use of red ochre in burials, and burial goods like stone tools, ornaments, animal tooth pendants, and shell ornaments. The Dnieper Rapids were one of the most important locations for these people, near what is now Dnipro, Ukraine. The river was the center of their life, and the rapids region, before the modern flooding of the river with power dams, was rich in their archaeological remains. Fish was a significant source for their diet, alongside hunting and foraging. They persisted in the hunting of red deer, wild boar, and aurochs. Though they had developed increasingly advanced forms of pottery, there was no element of farming in their economy, and this persisted well after the rise of significant communities of Neolithic farmers to the west. As the population and social complexity of this hunter-gatherer population increased along the Dnieper, by around 5800 BC, at least part of it becomes identified as the Dnieper Donetsk culture. Their male lineages were predominantly R1b, R1a, M417, and I2, especially the line IL699. These were eastern hunter-gatherer lineages, predominantly unmixed with any Anatolian farmer populations to the west, or with Caucasus populations to the southeast, and these specific male ancestral lines linked to the Dnieper region are critical to unraveling the mystery surrounding the world-changing events which followed. It's difficult to say where the exact northern boundaries of this Dnieper population were, as they blend in with the extensive eastern hunter-gatherer tribal networks in the forest zones of Belarus and western Russia. The Pripyat River in southern Belarus is connected to the Dnieper, as is the Dniesna and the Sozh. The rivers were roadways connecting the eastern hunter-gatherers of the region together, and though we know more about what was happening in the middle Dnieper and on the steppe, the entire area from the Pripyat to the Dnieper rapids may have formed the nucleus of a common linguistic community. And it's almost certainly in the north of this community, in the Pripyat area, where the roots of the Corded Ware culture first developed. Around 5500 BC, a seemingly minor but important cultural change begins to take place. There is the start of the keeping of some domesticated animals. The population did not become pastoralists, they remained predominantly hunter-gatherers, but slowly, slowly, they began keeping more cattle, goats, and sheep. These were likely obtained from trade and influence from the west with the Neolithic farmers, yet at least some might have been derived from the southeast through contacts with the North Caucasus population. The Anatolian branch, the earliest to separate from Indo-European, reveals some of this vocabulary, such as cows, sheep, and horses, but not milking. The full pastoralist culture would not develop among Indo-Europeans until a very late stage, and this is perhaps one of the largest misunderstandings about the Indo-Europeans. The core of their culture, for the longest period of history, was as hunter-gatherers. The common pastoralist stage was very late and fairly short. Indo-Anatolian likely separated by 4000 BC, and it lacks most pastoralist words. By 5000 BC, a powerful and advanced civilization sprang up alongside the hunter-gatherers of the Dnieper, called the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture, occupying parts of what are now western Ukraine, Moldova, and northeastern Romania. They developed early towns and advanced pottery, wheeled vehicles and domesticated cattle, and they had access to rich copperworking technology of the Balkans. They are regarded as the most advanced civilization at the time in the entire world. For the hunter-gatherer people of the Dnieper who bordered them, they must have seemed extremely powerful, and probably more than a little intimidating. Yet, the Dnieper-Donets culture showed a remarkable resilience and self-confidence in the face of such a powerful neighbor. They did not adopt their serial farming culture, but they were likely increasingly influenced by them in the adoption and spread of domesticated animals. The economy was gradually shifting from that of a purely hunter-gatherer one to a mixed pastoral one. This led to increased wealth and likely an increased population. In some areas, like the northern border between the Dnieper people and the Trypillia, sporadic adoption or trials of agriculture were taken on, and it is likely from this influence that Proto-Indo-Anatolian acquired what little common agricultural terms that it shares with the rest of the Indo-European branch. They did not know the plough or the wheel, but they did know the yoke, harness, and a few early common crops. By around 4700 BC, the Dnieper-Donetsk people were situated between powerful forces to their west and their east. They were receiving cultural influence from the Trypillian farmers to their west, with whom they formed a trade network that reached to the Balkans. Yet, they were also increasingly interacting in the south with a population that was expanding west from the Caucasus' lower Volga region. These people had adopted a form of mobile pastoralist and had a culture that focused on individual burials and horses. They began to expand westward around 4700 BC and came into significant contact with the people along the south Dnieper towards Azov. Burials in the Mariupol necropolis show evidence of early mixing between the populations during this period, but also reveal that contact between them had existed for some time before the more significant admixture. As these peoples began to mix in the south, they also underwent cultural innovations. This change was first noted at Sredni Stol, an island in the lower Dnieper. Here, not only were they adopting certain eastern influences, but were increasingly experimenting with farming, influenced by the Cucuteni-Trypillia, showing the population was entering a more rapid phase of adoption and change, not simply caused by admixtures from the east. Over several hundred years, the admixture and cultural innovations that began in the south would spread north to the Dnieper Rapids, and eventually into the Forest Steppe. Their communal burial tradition gradually shifted to individual burials, with status differentiation. They became increasingly focused on pastoralism and the horse specifically. This was the dawning of the Sredni Stol culture, with its earliest onset date to around 4700 BC, reaching its complete form and extent around 4200 BC. Derivka, a site now underwater in Kyrovorodoblast, Ukraine, dating to around 4400 BC, becomes one of the significant sites of the Sredni Stol, and potentially an important place for the history of early horse domestication. With extensive evidence for increased pastoralism, mass consumption of horses, and also experimentation with farming and sustained hunter-gatherer traditions, it was truly a society in flux, adapting, changing, and yet maintaining a coherent core. It is this combination of eastern hunter-gatherer represented primarily by the population living along the Dnieper, combined with the Caucasus Lower Volga Ancestry, which is classified as Steppe Ancestry, the admixture which later gave rise to the far more famous, yet actually less impactful Yamnaya culture. Yet this admixture event did not involve the replacement of Dnieper male lineages, nor did it involve the widespread adoption of Caucasus Lower Volga male lineages among the Sredni Stol. This reveals an important fact. Whatever occurred between these two groups was not a Caucasus Lower Volga male-driven conquest. It looks far more like it was the absorption of certain Caucasus Lower Volga individuals, predominantly women, into a Dnieper hunter-gatherer society. Elements of the culture changed through contact and influence, along with the overall autosomal admixture, but the core of the society, and specifically the elite males of that society, remained the same. In such a scenario, the entire replacement of the Dnieper hunter-gatherer language is almost impossible to imagine. In fact, the early male lines of emergence of the Sredni Stol, spreading east, west, and south, becoming the dominant lines of the majority of Sredni Stol, despite the large admixture from the east. By the time of the Yamnaya, well over a thousand years later, a particularly powerful founder effect dramatically shifted the Y haplogroups of the steppe, except for one place, a pocket of the Lower Don Yamnaya, who tested almost exclusively IL699, a genetic line that originated from the hunter-gatherers of the Dnieper culture. It is this same male genetic line that has now been found in Hittite associated contexts in Anatolia. From the earliest period of Sredni Stol, those on the southern steppe began to spread further southwest. Around 4600 BC, in an elite Neolithic gravesite near Varna, northeast Bulgaria, a woman with high steppe ancestry was buried among an otherwise strongly Copper Age Balkan population of early European farmers. Her remains were carbon dated to between 4600 and 4500 BC. Her presence there reveals contacts, or an alliance, between the Varna population and the increasingly expansionist Lower Dnieper population. There were almost certainly early links between these populations prior to Sredni Stol, with evidence for some Balkan admixture in the region, but the cultural exchanges that the Dnieper population was undergoing saw them becoming increasingly mobile and expansionist, perhaps driven by a new and growing elite ideology. Further southwest, near the village of Smyatovo, a man dating to between 4600 and 4450 BC was shown to have approximately one-third steppe admixture, and carried an R haplogroup, analyzed by some to be R1b. He was not buried in a typical steppe fashion, but according to a local burial custom. He may have been an assimilated migrant, representing a population movement already several generations old. What these two finds demonstrate is that by 4500 BC, a population movement from the southern end of the Dnieper population, which was rapidly transforming into the Sredni Stol, was already reaching as far as Bulgaria. These populations were merging with and moving alongside people from the Caucasus Lower Volga culture. An individual from Hungary, dated to between 4300 and 4000 BC, was modeled as 88% Berezhnovka group, and 12% local. The specific level of local admixture demonstrates that he was part of a population which had spread west, and had been settled in Hungary for several generations, avoiding admixture, but having at least one local admixture event in his ancestral chain. These examples show much earlier spreads south and west than most people expect, and far earlier than the spread of core Indo-European. Near Bitola, in the southwestern corner of North Macedonia, a horse-headed scepter was found there, dating to around 4300 BC. It's nearly identical to one found in Kasumcea, Romania, and both are similar to examples found in the South Dnieper region, showing that influence from the Dnieper steppe was already reaching far into the southwestern Balkans. On an archaeological level, this influence and spread is most clearly represented by the Suvorovo culture, which began near modern Zaporozhye, Ukraine around 4400 BC, and over the next 200 years, stretched along the Black Sea coast to Suvorovo, in northeastern Bulgaria. Genetic samples have confirmed that this Suvorovo layer represents an almost entirely unmixed first wave of migration from the steppe. Burials feature copper tools, flint blades, and stone axe heads, demonstrating an elite warrior culture, but they also frequently contained the same sort of horse-headed scepters found near Bitola, showing that they were undoubtedly the origin for the spread of this artifact type, far southward. The Suvorovo culture represents this early expansion from the lower Dnieper into the Balkans, and the very first wave of Indo-European migration, which would have represented the Indo-Anatolian branch. In southeastern Romania, on the south side of the Danube near the border of Bulgaria, is a town called Sernovoda. The site gives its name to an ancient archaeological culture which built hillforts, and shared pottery and burial influences with the Shredniy Stog. It is widely agreed to be the result of further Shredniy Stog expansion along the Danube, and a qualitative transformation of the earlier Suvorovo culture. The Sernovoda site in Kartel, southwestern Ukraine, shows a near-equal split between steppe ancestry and Cucuteni-Trypillia farmer ancestry. It was absorbing, and very likely conquering, other local populations, and the Karanovo and Gumelnita cultures were wiped out by their advancing warriors. Stone axes cracking skulls, flying spears piercing flesh, with a heavy destruction layer showing up in the archaeology. Yet it did not stop with only these. Around 4000 BC, all of Bulgaria's Copper Age cultures fell, one by one. This appears to have been caused by the militant conquest of the Sernovoda, and potentially other steppe populations. Of the three male genetic samples that exist from the Sernovoda around 4000 BC, two of them belonged to haplogroup IL699, the dominant male lineage of the Dnieper hunter gatherers. The third carried R1B RV1636, probably a lineage derived from the Lower Volga migrations, revealing that this population was a fusion of the Dnieper hunter gatherers and the Caucasus Lower Volga, though the Dnieper lines were dominant. Between 4000 and 3000 BC, there is a black hole in Bulgarian genetic history, but when our next genetic samples are available around 3000 BC, they reveal the traces of an already old steppe migration, as well as some truly unexpected results, such as a sample from Durankula, north of Varna, which was around 50% steppe and 50% globular amphora, perhaps the earliest evidence for the formation of the Corded Ware culture, and the mobility between these ancient populations at the time, which may have spoken a common language. A sample from Merichleri, Bulgaria, located between Stara Zagora and Haskovo, and dated to around 3000 BC, carried around one third steppe admixture, and significantly the Y haplogroup IL699, that of the Dnieper population. He was buried in a tumulus in a fashion that showed a fusion of steppe and local Balkan traditions, appearing to represent a long existing hybrid culture created by an earlier migration of Shredni Stok. He very likely spoke a form of Indo-European, but his language surely would have differed substantially from that spoken by the Yamnaya nearly a thousand years later, who were already beginning a second wave of migrations into the Balkans around 3200 BC. The language was very likely ancestral to the Anatolian branch, spoken in later history by the Hittites and Luwians, and there is a genetic trail which strongly points to exactly this. Due to a lack of samples, not an extensive amount is actually known about Hittite genetics. There are some samples from populations potentially ancestral to them, which Lazaridis et al. recently showed did possess some CLV-associated ancestry, which they modelled as coming from the BP group. This was used to argue for an eastern entrance of the Anatolian languages through the Caucasus. There was also found the haplogroup RV1636 in Arsentepe, dating to around 3000 BC, known to have originated from the BP group. Though the sample predates the Hittites by over a thousand years, with no better evidence available, the question seemed to be settled. Lazaridis concluded that Proto-Indo-European must have originated among the Caucasus' lower Volga population, spread to Sredniy Stog and south into Anatolia, though the complications of the dominant Dnieper-Y lineages of Sredniy Stog remained unanswered. Then there was a serious problem. Yediye et al. revealed a sample dating to around 1890 BC from Kamen-Kalehoyuk, a site about 150 km from the heart of the Hittite kingdom of Hattusa. The dating is slightly too early to be strictly Hittite, but it is nearly contemporary. That individual bore a haplogroup downstream of IL699. In other words, an elite male lineage linked specifically to the Dnieper hunter-gatherers and Sredniy Stog, and not the eastern Caucasus' lower Volga population, was possessed by an elite male in central Anatolia who lived just a few hundred years prior to the emergence of the Hittites in a region in part of the core of the Hittite state. Moreover, the study claims that a second sample, also carrying the same haplogroup, has been found. Given the very small sample size for Hittite-associated men, these two finds of IL699 represent around 30% of the known Y haplogroups. Only one of them registered as having the smallest fraction of steppe ancestry, so small as to be potentially an anomaly, but this in itself is an important clue that these haplogroups represent an ancient migration into Anatolia by a population which had long since mixed with the local population, yet retained their language and elements of their culture, much like what occurred with the Hungarians within the historical period in Europe. Furthermore, we have a clear genetic line of travel. Haplogroup IL699 first appears among the Dnieper hunter-gatherers around 6000 BC. Then, during the early phase of Sredni Stog it begins to spread, being found in the Serenovoda culture alongside RV1636 around 4000 BC. It pops up again in south-central Bulgaria around 3000 BC. Then, it's found in central Anatolia, in a Hittite-associated context, around 1800 BC. Interestingly, though the sample dates to around 3000 BC, it's perhaps suggestive that RV1636 is likewise found in Anatolia as it appears alongside IL699 in the Serenovoda culture. Our sample size for this period is tiny, so we don't have a clear idea of how prevalent these haplogroups were, but that IL699 keeps appearing despite having so few samples. Suggests that it was very significant. Though there is a gap in the Bulgarian evidence, archaeology strongly suggests that the Serenovoda culture generated the subsequent Ezero culture in south-eastern Bulgaria and western Turkey, dating to around 3400 BC, which had close links to the stages I and II of Troy, very likely originating the city. Unfortunately, there are basically no resolved samples for clear Ezero culture male haplogroups, but the nearby burial of an IL699 man dating to around 3000 BC is likely reflective of the overall situation. The Ezero overall steppe admixture varied, but perhaps averaged between 20 and 30%. The Ezero culture provides a clear link between a steppe population that moves into Anatolia. A period of Balkan formation proceeding as spread into Anatolia is also supported by some other finds. A few samples around 2000 BC in western Anatolia reveal the presence of Y haplogroup IL702. This is a sister branch to IL699, but was located in the Balkans rather than the steppe. Some of these samples carried small amounts of steppe ancestry, between 3 and 5%. Such haplogroups were likely spread by a mixed Indo-Europeanized population that developed in the Balkans before moving to Anatolia. A western spread from Bulgaria also matches with the location of the Anatolian language group, which was concentrated in west and central Anatolia. Languages can obviously shift locations over time, but the specific dispersal of the languages suggests a west to east movement, with many linguists seeing Hittite as the first to split off from Proto-Anatolian. Something that generally happens when a group moves further away from other groups and loses frequent contact. The Hittites were the ones who moved furthest east and were the first to break off. In the historical period we also have the example of the Phrygians, whom the Greeks claimed migrated from Thrace sometime in prehistory, and whose language is recognized to be the most similar to Greek of all recorded Indo-European languages. Exactly when and how it ended up there is unknown, but it became one of the major languages of Anatolia, and it is widely agreed that its origins were in the Balkans. Possibly it represents a massive population movement during the Bronze Age collapse. The Greeks themselves had settled all along the Anatolian coast prior to recorded history. The Celts likewise crossed into and settled in central Anatolia from the Balkans. The most significant and common trend in Anatolian history appears to be groups migrating from there into the Balkans, such as the early European farmers, or from the Balkans into Anatolia. Yet the Sredni Stog were not only the foundations of the Anatolian branch, they were also the origins of the Corded Ware culture, from which the Germanic, Celtic, Italic and Indo-Iranian languages come. While the classical Corded Ware culture does not appear archaeologically until around 2900 BC, its lightning-fast expansion from the forested regions of Poland and Belarus reveals that the population underlying it was already mature and spreading. The particular Y-haplogroup R1a M417, which later became dominant in Corded Ware, is found among the Sredni Stog around 4000 BC, and not found among the Yamnaya. R1b L5-1, linked to Bell Beaker, is a sister branch with R1b Z2103 that became dominant among the Yamnaya, but it still has not been located among either population. This brings us to a critical point. The Yamnaya are strongly linked to the haplogroup R1b Z2103, a sister to the branch associated with the Bell Beakers. The haplogroup was not present among the Caucasus Lower Volga group, and its parent haplogroup R L23 has not been found anywhere. Yet closely related paternal lines are found among the Dnieper Donets culture. It is possible, therefore, that the critical element for the formation of the Yamnaya came from an old lair of the Sredni Stog, the hunter-gatherers along the Dnieper. Support for this idea can be found in the fact that the Yamnaya of the Don, in contrast to the majority, were almost entirely IL699, a line indisputably originating from the Dnieper Donets culture. In fact, both lines may have originated to the west and spread east, forming the core of the Yamnaya. From a purely geographical standpoint, the Sredni Stog was well positioned to spread Proto-Indo-European. In its earliest phase, it spread southward into the Balkans and led to a subsequent movement into Anatolia. On its eastern flank, it gave rise to the Yamnaya, and at the same time populations in its north, in the forests of Poland and Belarus. They mixed with the peoples of the globular Amphora culture and led to the rise of the Corded Ware, from which most modern Indo-European languages come. While the Caucasus' lower Volga populations to the east certainly added various cultural elements, the origins of Indo-European itself lies not with a mixed Caucasus population along the Volga, but hunter-gatherers along the Dnieper who maintain their continuity for thousands and thousands of years, where the warrior spirit of Europe still lives. Thank you all for watching, big thanks to all of my supporters who make videos like this possible. I'm Kevin MacLean, and as always, Stand Tall.