Razib Khan at Unsupervised Learning: On this episode, Razib talks about the April 2024 preprint The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans. The 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
More here.
