Half the human beings alive today are descended from the Yamnaya: new research
63 points by SirLJ 4 months ago | 95 comments- ggm 4 months ago
- falaki 3 months agoThis article is conflating language and ancestry. The seed of the confusion is in Reich’s research but the WSJ journalist blows it up to preposterous levels. Take India as an example. Most of the population is speaking some variant of an Indo-European (Indo-Iranian to be more precise) language but only a minority is genetically traced to Indo-European steppe people [1]
[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/where-did-india-s-pe...
- rayiner 3 months agoYou also see this in places like Egypt. Nearly everyone speaks Arabic, but only a minority of their DNA is from the Arabian peninsula.
- DiogenesKynikos 3 months agoWhich is not a difficult phenomenon to understand.
The most common ancestry in the US is German, not English, but English is still the dominant language. Language isn't DNA.
- master_crab 3 months agoThis is incorrect. The most common ancestry in the US is in fact English.
- chrisco255 3 months agoGerman? Germany didn't even exist until 1871.
- singularity2001 3 months ago
but it's highly correlated. Most people in the US speak Germanic languages, ie english.Language isn't DNA - mrangle 3 months agoThis is both pedantic and probably worth the correction. English is a Germanic language, originated in an exceedingly small continental territory nestled among other Germanics. Virtually no one would be able to discern the Germanic people who originated the English language from other Germanic people. If you are referring to the English people from the UK, then of course they are more mixed. But the English language was brought to the UK by the aforementioned continental tribe(s).
- master_crab 3 months ago
- DiogenesKynikos 3 months ago
- rufus_foreman 3 months ago>> This article is conflating language and ancestry
From the article:
"DNA detectives, including at Reich’s lab, analyzed DNA samples from the remains of around 450 prehistoric individuals taken from 100 sites in Europe, as well as data from 1,000 previously known ancient samples"
Ancestry, not language.
"Reich’s award-winning lab at Harvard has one of the largest ancient DNA databases in the world and uses proprietary gene-analysis software co-developed by Nicholas Patterson, a British mathematician who once worked as a codebreaker for U.K. intelligence services."
Ancestry, not language.
"DNA evidence shows that the proto-Yamnaya population migrated from the Volga region to Anatolia"
Ancestry, not language.
"In many places, indigenous male DNA disappears upon the arrival of the Yamnaya, while indigenous female DNA is traceable in the following generations"
Ancestry, not language.
"Within years of their arrival, some 99% of the indigenous people disappeared, according to Reich’s analysis of DNA samples from the time"
Ancestry, not language.
I rate your claim that "This article is conflating language and ancestry" as false, and I award you no points.
- falaki 3 months agoThis article's confusion is where it states "half the human beings alive today are descended from the Yamnaya." He thinks because half of the world population speaks an Indo-European language, and because the original speakers of the Proto-Indo-European languages were the Yamnaya culture (as Reich's research suggests), then half of the world population are descendants of the Yamnaya culture.
Is the logical error clear now?
- falaki 3 months ago
- raincom 3 months agoArchive version of the above science.org article "Where did India’s people come from? Massive genetic study reveals surprises Analysis confirms Iranian influx, but also finds genes from Neanderthals and a mysterious human ancestor": https://archive.is/Wd4tP
- 3 months ago
- dyauspitr 3 months agoThat article says nothing about the percentage genetic component of the Indo European step people in the Indian population. It does mention a high genetic similarity to Iranians.
- falaki 3 months agoAnd interestingly Iranians are mostly not the descendants of the so-called Indo-Iranian steppe nomads (genetically). But they speak various Iranian languages.
- falaki 3 months ago
- g8oz 3 months agoThis research specifically incorporated DNA analysis. As is made clear if you actually read the article. I fail to see where the conflation happens.
- rayiner 3 months ago
- mmooss 3 months agoI believe this is the actual research:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08531-5
Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N., Anthony, D. et al. The genetic origin of the Indo-Europeans. Nature 639, 132–142 (2025)
"supported in part by the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation" [1]
Also possibly this paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08372-2
[1] https://hms.harvard.edu/news/ancient-dna-study-identifies-or...
- crazygringo 3 months agoDoes a claim like this even have any meaning at all?
If you assume each generation is 25 years, then everybody alive today has 2^200 ancestors from 5,000 years ago. Which is obviously way more people than even existed in the world because your ancestors start overlapping, but the point is that you could probably make the claim that "half the human beings alive today" are descended from tons of groups of humans that existed 5,000 years ago. People travel and migrate and marry and genes get passed on at an exponential rate.
- singularity2001 3 months agoI'm glad someone gets the intuition of the Charlemagne paradox. In fact ALL people today are related if you go back 3000 years, but the aboriginees might have very little DNA from the pharaohs. The point is that ONE individual 1500 years ago traveling to Australia (and bringing the dingo) is enough to connect these graphs. The only question is: how related. 0.0000001%? ;)
- numba888 3 months agoActually it's even more complicated. every human has 50% DNA from each of parents. And at the same time 60% DNA common with banana.
- progmetaldev 3 months agoWouldn't that assume each parent had totally different DNA? Seems like there would be more than 50% DNA from each parent. At the very least there would be an enormous amount of DNA that just qualifies us as human, in general.
- progmetaldev 3 months ago
- numba888 3 months ago
- red75prime 3 months agoIt means that if you trace Y-chromosomes back 5000 years, you'll find that grand-grand-grand-...-fathers of 40% of people are concentrated in the area of the Yamnaya culture. Grand-grand-grand-...-mothers would be from multiple groups, yes.
- Leary 3 months agoI don't think they are claiming 40% of males today have y-haplogroups descended from the Yamnaya
r1b's population is only 190 million [1]
[1]https://www.razibkhan.com/p/the-haplogroup-is-dead-long-live...
- red75prime 3 months agoThe article reads "some four billion human beings alive today—can trace their ancestry to the Yamnaya". It's 50%. I haven't checked the research though.
> r1b's population is only 190 million [1]
Their population likely had multiple haplogroups. R1b was the most common (5000 years ago). But, yeah, the 50% number looks too high.
- red75prime 3 months ago
- Leary 3 months ago
- tshaddox 3 months ago> you could probably make the claim that "half the human beings alive today" are descended from tons of groups of humans that existed 5,000 years ago
Surely it's still notable to identify specific groups for which this is true, particularly when the group itself is primarily identified by an unrelated archaeological characteristic.
- singularity2001 3 months ago
- readthenotes1 3 months agoI wish they'd had proto indo European as a language class in high school.
- motohagiography 3 months agohard not to interpret these steppe horse cultures as being the centaurs of mythology.
lots of pet theories but this idea that much human language originated with them implies further to me that horsemanship was the origin of western ethics of stewardship and morality. riders require a unique ontology that includes sophisticated communion with other beings, and it's literally the approbation of nature. mythic surely, but it may also have some predictive power. fun stuff
- samirillian 3 months agoDoesn't Strauss like centaurs?
- motohagiography 3 months agoI haven't read him. but the competence in it is so rare these days that the understanding has been reduced to being on the spectrum of yoga and pilates vs. its history as a much deeper classical art
- samirillian 3 months agoXenophon's Cyropedia talks about Persians becoming centaurs when they get horses but Strauss has some esoteric reading about the centaur being some flawed creature, meant to symbolize a combination of the medes and persians i don't know.
Machiavelli (who strauss calls an evil teacher of evil) references Chiron who, unlike the most centaurs, was wise. Machiavelli says the prince should be like that or understand that Man himself is like that, part beast and part man.
- samirillian 3 months ago
- motohagiography 3 months ago
- samirillian 3 months ago
- svilen_dobrev 3 months agomore on the topic: 2023
- bgnn 3 months agoThis is wrong at so many levels. It's sad to see probability is used as a hand trick to make this kind of claims look scientific..
- ultra-boss 3 months agomore of this kinda stuff, please! :)
- heavymetalpoizn 3 months ago[dead]
- johnea 3 months agoGiven that the currently dominant human primates are also murderous rampagers, glorifying the killing of the men and raping of the women in order to spread their "culture", does seem to align well with evidense of this DNA diaspora.
All just additional evidense that we are still basically cave people with nuclear weapons.
- mmooss 3 months agoI don't find this kind of comment helpful. Humans do awful things and also do wonderful things. Probably very few people reading this live in anarchy, and the great majority live in peaceful, prosperous, and free place where rights are protected - humans did that and do that.
The issue is, how do we do more of the latter? To say it never happens and/or it's hopeless is obviously false and contributes nothing.
- BirAdam 3 months agoPeople always over emphasize negatives. As a species, we always want to know about risks that we may better remain alive. So, we notice them more. The good things that happen, people don’t always emphasize. This also means that the good outcomes are studied less and thus harder to replicate.
- singularity2001 3 months agoI believe such comment might be helpful if only you envision that before the 'rogue state switch' 4000 BC people were much more peaceful (still debated, but you can fantasize!)
- wqaatwt 3 months ago> still debated
Is there any strong evidence at all supporting that hypothesis? Besides lower population density = less interaction/violence I don’t think there is anything that would let us to conclude that “pre-civilization” people were less violent.
- Nevermark 3 months agoHard to measure “peaceful” relative to now in contexts without the structures we have that let us trust each other more.
I.e. we don’t need to be constantly paranoid strangers we run into won’t resolve the same inability to trust dilemma they have with us, by being first to violence.
I.e. People could have been generally peace loving, not prone to violence in their familiar communities, but still situationally more provoked beyond those communities. Both more peaceful & more violent isn’t a contradiction.
- ETH_start 3 months agoIt's pretty well established that the vast majority of hunter-gatherer societies saw a much larger proportion of the population die from violence than typically seen in more advanced types of societies.
- 3 months ago
- wqaatwt 3 months ago
- johnea 3 months agoSo it contributes nothing, for you?
Amazingly though, you found it enough of a contribution to spend your time in reply.
Let me quote from the original article:
> "This suggests that the newcomers exterminated the men in the farming and hunter-gatherer populations they encountered, while incorporating the surviving women into their community"
They "incorporated" the women, uh huh...
> In other places, “it’s a process of almost no mixture with the previous people, who just disappear”
So in places where the women were more resistant to "incorporation" they were killed along with the men.
Oh, no they weren't all killed, they "just disappear". We do love our euphemisms don't we 8-/
I don't want to be a detractor from having happy fantasies about this, but it seems to me they're pretty much like every human culture: the one who kills all the others is in charge.
While this may have been a beneficial survival strategy in prehistory, overcoming this is on what the future survival of our species depends. That's the idea I'm trying to contribute.
Sorry this wasn't helpful enough for you... I'll try harder next time...
- BirAdam 3 months ago
- renewiltord 3 months agoInterestingly, it is not the case in the modern era. Cooperation is very effective. Take New Zealand as an example: when the Moriori were beaten by the Maori the latter ate them. When the Maori were beaten hollow by the British, they just incorporated them. At least for a century the Borg wins over the Klingons. But we don't know what the future will hold.
- mmooss 3 months ago> When the Maori were beaten hollow by the British, they just incorporated them.
I thought the way the Brits treated the Maori wasn't entirely positive?
- renewiltord 3 months agoBut they didn't eat them. And they gave them room in the government.
- renewiltord 3 months ago
- mmooss 3 months ago
- mistrial9 3 months agounpopular and perhaps also inaccurate.. there are more mysteries in the origins of modern humanity yet
- jazzyjackson 3 months ago[flagged]
- darkr 3 months ago> those nuclear weapons quell a lot of our more violent habits, hasn't been a world war since
It’s only been 85 years, give it a bit more time…
- darkr 3 months ago
- mmooss 3 months ago