If you read the Wikipedia article on some of this stuff, it's still kind of out of date with current thinking. For instance, it still says that the Corded Ware is super-closely related to Yamnaya genetically; up to 75% the same. This isn't really true; there's mostly a totally different population of Y-DNA heritages; an R1a with Corded Ware and R1b with Yamnaya. In fact, it's probable that this represents one of the first cases of displacement and superimposition of one group of Indo-Europeans over another. The Sredni Stog culture that predated Yamnaya in the more westerly portion of the Pontic/Caspian steppes picked up a ton of cultural elements from the Khvalynsk to the east. Most likely, Khvalysnk peoples of some kind superimposed their culture to some degree over the Sredni Stog. When Khvalynsk evolved into Yamnaya, it literally replaced and displaced the Sredni Stog peoples, who were the probable ancestors of the Corded Ware.
But most likely both already spoke proto-Indo-European of some kind. Most likely, that had actually already been the case for a long time, so that when the Anatolians broke off prior to the last phase of common Indo-European unity, they actually came from an area that was on its way towards being Indo-European rather than an area that still needed to be Indo-Europeanized. It's not very clear exactly what the relation between the R1a and R1b lineages on the steppe were, but it's clear that they maintained some distinctiveness for quite some time.
That superimposition of the Yamnaya guys over the proto-Corded Ware guys is a type of things to come. Later Yamnaya derived cultures imposed themselves over Corded Ware cultures later as they spread westward into more of Europe. The Eastern Bell Beaker and Unetice complexes and their successor, the Tumulus culture were Yamnaya derived groups, and probably represent developing proto-languages that would lead to Italic, Celtic and Germanic languages still. Over much of northern Central Europe and southern Scandinavia, they came to dominate what was earlier Corded Ware territory. Some commentators I've seen suggest that these Corded Ware people spoke Proto-Balto-Slavic, but that's actually kind of ridiculous linguistically. While the Baltic languages almost certainly developed from a Corded Ware people (and the exact relationship between Slavic and Baltic is still a bit unclear), it's absurd to talk about the entire Corded Ware horizon as if it spoke some kind of proto-Balto-Slavic; almost as absurd in fact, as suggesting that the Yamnaya culture spoke proto-English. At best, the Corded Ware substrate that was integrated into, say, the Nordic Bronze Age spoke what was a cousin of a distant ancestor of Balto-Slavic. Enough so that some features that are common in Balto-Slavic and Germanic can be explained by both this substrate as well as subsequent contact zones, which explains why Germanic deviated more significantly from the Italo-Celtic branches when they had earlier been more closely related fellow travelers.
But it's not always the case that Corded Ware lost out. The Catacomb and Poltavka guys who remained in the steppes for a time as later evolution of the Yamnaya people seem to have at least partially been converted back into a Corded Ware language; Yamnaya derived Poltavka merged (at least in some ways, although the Y-DNA doesn't contribute as much as material culture and mtDNA) with Corded Ware-Abashevo to become the Indo-Iranian languages when their merged culture became Sintashta-Andronovo. This explains a few other linguistic things that are interesting: 1) the apparent similarities between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian; they both are derived linguistically (and with the R1a Y-DNA lineages) from Corded Ware populations rather than Yamnaya populations, and 2) apparent similarities between Indo-Iranian and the big southern branch of often poorly known languages who's relationships are a bit speculative; Greek, Armenian, Thracian, Cimmerian, Phrygian, etc. While Italic, Celtic and Germanic are the descendants of Yamnaya peoples who pressed westwards fairly early to become the eastern Bell Beaker, Unetice and Tumulus cultures, before breaking up into more specific groups like Villanova, Urnfield, Nordic Bronze Age, etc., the Balkan peoples were the descendants of Yamnaya peoples who remained on the steppes longer only to have been later displaced by reflux immigration of Corded Ware peoples back into the Steppes. This contact zone between those languages that later emerged as paleo-Balkan and Indo-Iranian explain the similarities that they have, while also explaining their significant differences (centum vs satem, for instance); it's borrowings and contact that explain the similarities, and a deeper genetic division between Corded Ware and Yamnaya that explain their differences.
Historically, of course, we know of all kinds of superimpositions of one group over another. The Romans and Germanic peoples over the Celts. The Celts and the Romans over the Thracians and Dacians. The Scythians over the Srubna (probably proto-Thracians.) The Goths over the Scythians. The Slavs over much of the above listed groups in eastern Europe, etc., etc.
But the jockeying and movement of peoples and languages in prehistory is what's fascinating, because for the first time we have enough multi-discipline data to actually say something intelligent about it and create somewhat speculative, yet likely, scenarios about how things ended up the way they ended up. It's an exciting time to be following this kind of stuff.
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