🐎 Where Indo-European ancestors formed

Genetic data show the Yamnaya formed on the Dnipro–Don steppe from local hunter-gatherers mixing with people of the Caucasus–lower Volga (CLV) cline.

The CLV group provided about four-fifths of Yamnaya ancestry, and the key mixing began around 4000 BC, followed by a rapid expansion after ~3300 BC.

The authors propose that speakers of proto-Indo-Anatolian — the ancestor of Indo-European and Anatolian — were among CLV people sometime between 4400 and 4000 BC, with CLV-related ancestry later reaching Central Anatolia.

Takeaway: Indo-European origins trace to a Dnipro–Don fusion dominated by a CLV-derived ancestry, timed to the late fifth–early fourth millennium BC.

Source: Lazaridis et al., 2025. The genetic origin of the Indo-Europeans.