Archaeological identification of the Yamnaya culture
Identificación arqueológica de la cultura yamna
- Date
- 1901-1903 · confidence high
- Place
- Donets river basin, Ukraine
- Credited to
- Vasily Gorodtsov
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Gorodtsov identified and archaeologically defined the Yamnaya culture from excavations in the Donets basin, a pastoralist people of the Pontic-Caspian steppe now considered the main vector for the spread of Indo-European languages.
The link between the Yamnaya culture and Indo-European languages, though the majority view, is not universally accepted among linguists and archaeologists.
What it led to
- The steppe hypothesis of Indo-European origin and expansion
- Later genetic studies of massive Bronze Age migrations