I mentioned in a post a few days ago the basic population stocks that make up the genetic profile of today's Europeans. Here's some maps that document their spread. There are basically four stocks, although of course, that's an overly simplistic point of view. The Western Hunter Gatherers (WHG) make up most of Western Europe, a different group called Eastern Hunter Gatherers (EHG) make up northern and eastern Europe, Caucasian Hunter Gatherers (CHG) seem to have been left over from glacial refugia in the Caucasus (as the name implies) and Early European Farmers (EEF) are the spread (from Anatolia and the Aegean) of a farmer dynasty that brought with them the Neolithic technology packet, so to speak.
Here's the oldest; before the spread of the Neolithic farmer across Europe. WHG, the Western Hunter Gatherers cover most of western Europe (of course) but contribute relatively little to the DNA today. The Eastern Hunter Gatherers (EEG) are combination of a WHG like population with ANE, Ancient North Eurasian—their very deep genetic connection with the WHG should not distract from the fact that they would have been a phenotypically noticeably different group. At the places where they "met" geographically there were some hybrid groups, like the Scandinavian Hunter Gatherers. In many ways, they formed a cline from east to west, but in Scandinavia the EHG were actually considerably to the west of the WHGs in the Baltics. The CHG, Caucasian Hunter Gatherers probably resemble closely the Caucasians today, and they are related, somewhat to the Anatolians, who will spread later to become the EEF; Early European Farmers.
After the spread of the Neolithic, this is what the map looks like; the WHG are almost completely absorbed into EEF cultures that spread from Anatolia, although a little bit of greenish on the Atlantic edge of the map shows that they're not completely gone, and of course much of their haplogroups remain, especially in the more northern area where they "cline" with EHG to form the (not labeled here) Scandinavian Hunter Gatherer population. CHG admixture into the Pontic-Caspian steppes has started, and the CHG and Anatolians have also admixed to some degree, as shown in the color blending areas.
1,000 years later, the Yamnaya complex is pretty well formed, which is a combination of CHG and EHG, and it is poised to spread from the steppes. Most models posit that climate change decimated the communities of Europe, especially the populous "Old European" EEF communities of the Balkan Peninsula, thus paving the way for the Yamnaya expansion, which later emerged as the Corded Ware of Europe.
After the spread of early Indo-European, the genetic map looks more like this, and we see how much the Yamnaya contributes to the DNA geography of Europe, through the vector of the Corded Ware horizon, mostly (which is 75% or so Yamnaya in its genetics.) EDIT: Actually, I find out more recently that this isn't really true. It's 75% steppe in its genetics. The Corded Ware horizon was primarily R1a-M458, whereas the Yamnaya culture was primarily R1b-L23. This is a bit of a misnomer, and one of the main reasons for the existence of the Demic Diffusion model; the idea that it would be odd to group both Y-DNA lineages with the spread of Indo-European. It kind of goes back to the east/west divide on the steppe (more or less at the Don River) and the fact that although the western cultures (like Dnieper-Donets, Sredy Stog and Dereivka, etc. are often considered foundational to Indo-European, it's clear that most of the cultural markers associated with PIE actually developed in the East, in the Khvalynsk and Repin cultures, whence came Yamna in the first place. When Yamna spread eastward, it didn't just absorb Sredy Stog, it displaced it, and Sredni Stog is actually the best candidate for the immediate source of the Corded Ware horizon. What does this mean? Rather than Yamna "eating" Sredni Stog and spreading northwards to become the Corded Ware, Yamna pushed Sredny Stog northwards to become Corded Ware, and only later spread over the same territory, absorbing Corded Ware as a substrate. This explains why some of the more northerly populations, like the foundations of Poltavka, Potapovka, and later Sintashta and even Andronovo show significant influences of both Yamna and Corded Ware genetically (and linguistically and archaeologically, i.e., in material culture). The notion that the spread of Yamna was more complex than often proposed, and a very specific model for the interactions of Yamnaya and Corded Ware actually solves one of the biggest hurdles on Indo-European archaeology that's been out there for decades. The solution was right there under our noses all along, but we were kind of seduced by the siren song of handwaving away the notion that some Yamnaya people went north and became Corded Ware... somehow... without proposing that they actually were two separate cultures, with separate genetics and likely separate linguistics too.
Of course, the major problems with this model are obvious too—1) Uralic isn't particularly closely related to Indo-European, and nobody has seriously proposed that it comes from the steppe; in fact, there are better models associated with the Seima-Turbino expansion further north and the spread of N1c Y-DNA. 2) Despite the seeming disparity in preponderance of Y-DNA haplogroups, at a genomic level, Yamnaya and Corded Ware are quite similar, and Corded Ware's drift away from it is better explained by hybridization with a substrate in Europe than by any other explanation. 3) If the Corded Ware were Uralic speaking, it would be astonishing that somehow the eastern Corded Ware cultures turned into the very Indo-European Indo-Iranian languages and the Central Corded Ware cultures became Balto-Slavic; equally very Indo-European. Carlos Quiles' theory is interesting, but it runs afoul of actual facts very quickly, and it never was even possible except for Western Europe anyway. I suppose the most likely explanation for the Y-DNA split is that certain families or lineages had prestige in certain areas and therefore persisted, especially in the prestige burials. But the theory isn't objectionable at all if you consider that a preponderance of R1a correlates to satem languages and R1b to centum languages...
We still don't have anything that can be associated with actual, specific Indo-European languages, although the stocks are starting to sort, and Anatolia probably has early Anatolian languages (like Hittite, Luwian, etc) in place; 19th century BC Assyrian texts seem to show a few loanwords and names from Hittite, although the real cache of language information doesn't appear until the 13th century. Mycenean Greek is usually dated to the 16th century BC. Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan are not dated as confidently, but are within the same general window. Those all start to appear not too long after this map.
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