Archaeologists identify the birthplace of the mysterious Yamnaya

Mykhailivka, a village on the right bank of the Dnieper river in Ukraine, lies dangerously close to the front line of Russia’s war on its western neighbour. Seventy years ago it was the site of an excavation by Ukrainian archaeologists. There, they discovered one of the earliest known settlements of the Yamnaya culture.

The Yamnaya, who lived 5,000 years ago, are considered the world’s first nomadic pastoralists. Having invented a way to subsist on the hostile Eurasian steppe, moving with their herds and the seasons, they expanded east and west with wagons, possibly riding horses, leaving barely a physical trace of themselves besides long lines of burial mounds, or kurgans. Yet they and their descendants would go on to transform Europe and much of Asia genetically, culturally and linguistically. Among the many innovations these steppe migrants ushered in, scientists believe, are the Indo-European languages that are dominant in Europe today, and which are spoken by nearly half of humanity. But where this ancient culture was born has long been unknown.