The Impact of Early Pioneers on Genetic Evolution

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks about the April 2024 preprint The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans. This blockbuster publication introduces nearly 300 new ancient DNA samples, uncovers the origins of the Yamnaya, and delves into how they transformed the genetic and cultural landscape of Eurasia ~5,000 years ago.

Razib addresses:

• The now-identified ancestors of the Yamnaya

• The genetic landscape between the Dnieper, Volga and Caucasus before the Yamnaya and that region's numerous distinct populations

• When the Yamnaya came into being as a distinct genetic-cultural cluster (after 4000 BC)

• The relationship of the Yamnaya to the Anatolian Hittites and the newly refined idea of an Indo-Anatolian (as opposed to Indo-European) language family

• The region where proto-Indo-Anatolian languages likely flourished, and why they disappeared

• The population-genetic landscape of clines vs. clusters in human genetic structure over historical time

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