Black death

Fascinating.  Now, it's suggested that prior to the post-Yamnaya and Corded Ware steppe culture spread across post-Neolithic Europe during the Chalcolithic or Eneolithic Age and Early Bronze Age, that the plague may have decimated the populations already there of Neolithic (EEF mixed with WHG) farmers.  This would explain the relative ease with which their cultures and societies were overthrown and replaced and why relatively less genetic inheritance and founder effect remains from them.  See here:  https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/12/europes-ancient-proto-cities-may-have.html

Let me quote a small portion.

Between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, many Neolithic societies declined throughout western Eurasia due to a combination of factors that are still largely debated. Here, we report the discovery and genome reconstruction of Yersinia pestis, the etiological agent of plague, in Neolithic farmers in Sweden, pre-dating and basal to all modern and ancient known strains of this pathogen. We investigated the history of this strain by combining phylogenetic and molecular clock analyses of the bacterial genome, detailed archaeological information, and genomic analyses from infected individuals and hundreds of ancient human samples across Eurasia. These analyses revealed that multiple and independent lineages of Y. pestis branched and expanded across Eurasia during the Neolithic decline, spreading most likely through early trade networks rather than massive human migrations. Our results are consistent with the existence of a prehistoric plague pandemic that likely contributed to the decay of Neolithic populations in Europe.
[...]
In this work, we report the discovery of plague infecting Neolithic farmers in Scandinavia, which not only pre-dates all known cases of plague, but is also basal to all known modern and ancient strains of Y. pestis. We identified a remarkable overlap between the estimated radiation times of early lineages of Y. pestis, toward Europe and the Eurasian Steppe, and the collapse of Trypillia mega-settlements in the Balkans/Eastern Europe.

This is an interesting parallel with the colonization of America by the British in particular, but also the Spanish in South and Central America.  It's estimated that up to 95% of the Injun population died out due to plague without ever seeing a white man.  Kinda puts an interesting spin on The Narrative™ that eebil old white men destroyed flourishing civilizations everywhere they went.  In reality, good white men built civilizations on the ashes of Mad Max-like post-Apocalyptic scenarios where the peoples who preceded them in the same territory were nearly wiped out and living in a savage existence partially caused by the collapse of their own societies.  Well, the plague and their own savagery and idolatry.  The collapse of the supposedly matriarchal, mega-settlements of Old Europe shouldn't be considered to have had one cause of its collapse, most likely.  Simplistic explanations tend to be, well... too simple to be credible.  Plague and climate change can work together, along with the "mop-up" of expanding steppe peoples who's own mobile pastoral economy had allowed them to flourish and experience a population boom, giving them the need to have more territory to expand to all jointly explain the total fall and collapse of their civilizations.

Of course, as a Christian, I believe that there's considerably more to it than that; the Lord wipes out the wicked to make room for the righteous, and white, Christian Western Civilization was one of the most righteous civilizations on earth following their Christianization up until, oh, I dunno.  Maybe the Progressive Era was the seeds of the decline, and the Sixties was when it fully metastasized. The same thing is all throughout the Old Testament with regards to the disposition of the Promised Land. As our own societies have turned away from Christianity, the same may happen to us, although I don't see that that which will replace us is any more righteous than we are, unless maybe we get replaced by Eastern Europe.  Maybe.  We live in a time when all the world is in commotion and righteousness is, in general, not easy to find.