The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a hypothetical prehistoric ethnolinguistic group of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family.
The Corded Ware culture comprises a broad archaeological horizon of Europe between c. 3000 BC – 2350 BC, thus from the late Neolithic, through the Copper Age, and ending in the early Bronze Age. Corded Ware culture encompassed a vast area, from the contact zone between the Yamnaya culture and the Corded Ware culture in south Central Europe, to the Rhine on the west and the Volga in the east, occupying parts of Northern Europe, Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Early autosomal genetic studies suggested that the Corded Ware culture originated from the westward migration of Yamnaya-related people from the steppe-forest zone into the territory of late Neolithic European cultures; however, paternal DNA evidence fails to support this hypothesis, and it is now proposed that the Corded Ware culture evolved in parallel with the Yamnaya, with no evidence of direct male-line descent between them.
The Yamnaya culture or the Yamna culture, also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, is a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers, dating to 3300–2600 BCE. It was discovered by Vasily Gorodtsov following his archaeological excavations near the Donets River in 1901–1903. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: Я́мная is a Russian adjective that means 'related to pits ', as these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers.
The Srubnaya culture, also known as Timber-grave culture, was a Late Bronze Age 1900–1200 BC culture in the eastern part of the Pontic–Caspian steppe. It is a successor of the Yamna culture, the Catacomb culture and the Poltavka culture. It is co-ordinate and probably closely related to the Andronovo culture, its eastern neighbor. Whether the Srubnaya culture originated in the east, west, or was a local development, is disputed among archaeologists.
The Sredny Stog culture is a pre-Kurgan archaeological culture from the 5th–4th millennia BC. It is named after the Dnieper river islet of today's Serednii Stih, Ukraine, where it was first located.
The Catacomb culture was a Bronze Age culture which flourished on the Pontic steppe in 2,500–1,950 BC.
The Khvalynsk culture is a Middle Copper Age Eneolithic culture of the middle Volga region. It takes its name from Khvalynsk in Saratov Oblast. The Khvalynsk culture is found from the Samara Bend in the north to the North Caucasus in the south, from the Sea of Azov in the west to the Ural River in the east. It was preceded by the Early Eneolithic Samara culture.
The Dnieper–Donets culture complex (DDCC) is a Mesolithic and later Neolithic archaeological culture found north of the Black Sea and dating to ca. 5000-4200 BC. It has many parallels with the Samara culture, and was succeeded by the Sredny Stog culture.
The genetic history of Europe includes information around the formation, ethnogenesis, and other DNA-specific information about populations indigenous, or living in Europe.
The Armenian hypothesis, also known as the Near Eastern model, is a theory of the Proto-Indo-European homeland, initially proposed by linguists Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov in the early 1980s, which suggests that the Proto-Indo-European language was spoken during the 5th–4th millennia BC in "eastern Anatolia, the southern Caucasus, and northern Mesopotamia".
The Proto-Indo-European homeland was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and went on to form the proto-communities of the different branches of the Indo-European language family.
The peopling of India refers to the migration of Homo sapiens into the Indian subcontinent. Anatomically modern humans settled India in multiple waves of early migrations, over tens of millennia. The first migrants came with the Coastal Migration/Southern Dispersal 65,000 years ago, whereafter complex migrations within South and Southeast Asia took place. West-Asian (Iranian) hunter-gatherers migrated to South Asia after the Last Glacial Period but before the onset of farming. Together with ancient South Asian hunter-gatherers they formed the population of the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC).
The genetic history of Italy is greatly influenced by geography and history. The ancestors of Italians were mostly Indo-European speaking peoples and pre-Indo-European speakers. During the Roman empire, the Italian peninsula attracted people from various regions of the Mediterranean basin, including Southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Based on DNA analysis, there is evidence of ancient regional genetic substructure and continuity within modern Italy dating to the pre-Roman and Roman periods.
The Indo-European migrations are hypothesized migrations of Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) speakers, and subsequent migrations of people speaking derived Indo-European languages, which took place approx. 4000 to 1000 BCE, potentially explaining how these languages came to be spoken across a large area of Eurasia, spanning from the Indian subcontinent and Iranian plateau to Atlantic Europe, in a process of cultural diffusion.
In archaeogenetics, the term Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) is the name given to an ancestral component that represents the lineage of the people of the Mal'ta–Buret' culture (c. 24,000 BP) and populations closely related to them, such as the Upper Paleolithic individuals from Afontova Gora in Siberia. Genetic studies also revealed that the ANE are closely related to the remains of the preceding Yana Culture (c. 32,000 BP), which were dubbed as 'Ancient North Siberians' (ANS), and which either are directly ancestral to the ANE, or both being closely related sister lineages, sharing a common origin from the merger of an 'Early West Eurasian' hunter-gatherer lineage (represented by Kostenki-14, c. 38,000 BP) and an 'Early East Eurasian' population (represented by the Tianyuan man, c. 40,000 BP). The Ancient North Eurasians derive around 2/3 from an Early West Eurasian lineage and around 1/3 of their ancestry from an Early East Eurasian lineage.
Early European Farmers (EEF), First European Farmers, Neolithic European Farmers, Ancient Aegean Farmers, or Anatolian Neolithic Farmers are names used to describe a distinct group of early Neolithic farmers who brought agriculture to Europe and Northwest Africa (Maghreb). Although the spread of agriculture from the Middle East to Europe has long been recognised through archaeology, it is only recent advances in archaeogenetics that have confirmed that this spread was strongly correlated with a migration of these farmers, and was not just a cultural exchange.
In archaeogenetics, the term Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG), West European Hunter-Gatherer, Western European Hunter-Gatherer, Villabruna cluster, or Oberkassel cluster is the name given to a distinct ancestral component of modern Europeans, representing descent from a population of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who scattered over Western, Southern and Central Europe, from the British Isles in the west to the Carpathians in the east, following the retreat of the ice sheet of the Last Glacial Maximum.
In archaeogenetics, the term Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG), sometimes East European Hunter-Gatherer, or Eastern European Hunter-Gatherer is the name given to a distinct ancestral component that represents Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of Eastern Europe.
Basal Eurasian is a proposed lineage of anatomically modern humans with reduced, or zero, archaic hominin (Neanderthal) admixture compared to other ancient non-Africans. Basal Eurasians represent a sister lineage to other Eurasians and may have originated from the Southern Middle East, specifically the Arabian peninsula, or North Africa, and are said to have contributed ancestry to various West Eurasian, South Asian, and Central Asian as well as African groups. This Basal Eurasian component is also proposed to explain the lower archaic admixture among modern West Eurasians compared to with East Eurasians, although alternatives without the need of such Basal admixture exist as well.
In archaeogenetics, the term Western Steppe Herders (WSH), or Western Steppe Pastoralists, is the name given to a distinct ancestral component first identified in individuals from the Chalcolithic steppe around the turn of the 5th millennium BC, subsequently detected in several genetically similar or directly related ancient populations including the Khvalynsk, Sredny Stog, and Yamnaya cultures, and found in substantial levels in contemporary European, West Asian and South Asian populations. This ancestry is often referred to as Yamnaya ancestry, Yamnaya-related ancestry, Steppe ancestry or Steppe-related ancestry.
