The Yamnaya culture was a Bronze Age culture of the Pontic–Caspian steppe, the grasslands north of the Black and Caspian seas between the Dnieper and the Ural rivers. Its name comes from the Russian word for pit, referring to its pit-grave burials under burial mounds called kurgans. The Yamnaya were mobile pastoralists who herded cattle and sheep and used wagons with solid wheels pulled by oxen. Ancient DNA studies since 2015 have shown that people closely related to the Yamnaya moved west into Europe and east into Central Asia, contributing a large share of the ancestry of many modern Europeans. Many scholars link them to the spread of Indo-European languages, although the exact relationship is still debated.
Before and after
- from c. 3,500 BCE to 2,500 BCEAfanasevo culture
- 34th century BCEWriting is invented in Mesopotamia
- from c. 3,300 BCE to 600 BCEBronze Age
- from c. 3,300 BCE to 1,100 BCEMinoan civilization
- from c. 3,300 BCE to 2,600 BCEYamnaya culture
- from c. 3,300 BCE to 1982Origins of Qatna
- from c. 3,250 BCE to 400 CEEgyptian hieroglyphs
- from 4th millennium BCE to 1st millenniumAncient history
- c. 3,201 BCENewgrange passage tomb is built
More in Evolution & life
- from about 50,000 years ago to 2nd millenniumPre-Columbian era
- from about 50,000 years ago to 9,726 years agoUpper Paleolithic
- about 23,100 years agoPeople are already in North America
- from about 15,000 years ago to 1st millennium BCEJōmon period
- about 12,000 years agoHolocene extinction
- c. 9,750s BCEQuaternary extinction event
The era
This moment belongs to the Human prehistory (300,000 years ago to 3,200 BCE), the human story before writing.