The Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe

Project Information

YMPACT

Grant agreement ID: 788616

DOI

10.3030/788616

Project closed

EC signature date 27 November 2018

Start date 1 January 2019

End date 31 December 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 494 209,00

EU contribution

€ 2 494 209,00

Coordinated by

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - YMPACT (The Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe)

Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2024-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe (YMPACT) 2019-2024 project was a successful international and interdisciplinary effort to understand the massive changes having taken place in Europe some 5000 years ago, with its reverberations still visible today when it comes to European genetic ancestry, social organisation, and languages. The project first and foremost dealt with the Yamnaya and here the western end of its 5000 km wide distribution area in the steppe landscapes of current-day countries of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary, where also field studies and sample collections were conducted. The main research objectives addressed issues such as the funerary archaeology of the Yamnaya kurgans and their material culture; exchange and interaction pattern with local societies; physical appearance and population dynamics; mobility, diet, occupation and lifestyle; interplay with the environment; as well as the cultural and biological nature of the wider Yamnaya Impact. Here particularly in our focus were the transmission of ideas, innovations, customs, and genes to regions further to the west and northwest, and thus also the emergence and expansion of the Corded Ware and Bell Beaker complexes. The project was a team effort, being fully inter/cross-disciplinary from its inception, also reflecting the position of modern prehistoric archaeology as an intermediary discipline between humanities and sciences by incorporating methods, techniques and results from bio-, geo- and environmental sciences. Besides the core funeral archaeology, material culture studies, and landscape approaches, our bio-sciences were covering genetics/ancient DNA, bio-anthropology and isotope biogeochemistry and biomarker lipid analyses. Geo- and environmental sciences were contributing with palaeoclimatology, climate change research, soil formation processes and environmental chemistry.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Although paralysed by the Covid-19 pandemic between 03/20 and 06/21, YMPACT performed a good deal of work and achieved the following main results during its 6 project years:
- Over 50 publications out, many in peer-reviewed international journals; outstanding with >45k downloads and Altmetric score of 2822 is the study: First Bio-Anthropological Evidence for Yamnaya Horsemanship. Sci Adv 9, eade2451 (2023).
- 6 books published, with #7 in press and #8 in prep, as part of the new book series 'The Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe'; 4 of them are conference/session proceedings and 2 co-edited regional studies, with altogether another c120 articles (or c135 when including articles dealing with 3rd mill. BC/steppe in the PI’s Festschrift);
- 3 summer excavations of Yamnaya kurgans: Romania (Boldesti) 2019, Bulgaria (Mogila) 2021, Hungary (Hajduböszörmeny) 2023, plus 2 fieldwork campaigns of lake coring in Romania 2019 and remote sensing in Bulgaria in 2024; numerous expedition trips for assessing skeletons, collecting bio- and kurgan soil samples in SE/EC Europe;
- Extensive sampling for bio-sciences; anthropology: >350 skeletons assessed; genetics: c100 fresh petrous bones screened for aDNA and evaluated; isotopes/biomarker lipids: c500 isotopic bio-samples and c250 EBA potsherds; c.180 new radiocarbon dates; analyses/results partially published, partially still work in progress;
- Sampling and analysing for environmental sciences; palaeoclimatology: coring of lakes in RO 2019; sampling in ES in 2020; brGDGT analyses in Zurich (CH) 2019 & 20; soil sciences: coring and sampling of kurgan profiles in RO, BG, HU; geochemical analyses in Budapest;
- 3 big conferences organised in 2019 (Helsinki), 2023 (Riva del Garda), 2024 (Budapest); 3 additional workshops (2x Helsinki, 1x remote); 4 EAA sessions in 2019, 2020 (remote), 2022 and 2024; 3 more public events; 6 APMs (3x remote); many scientific presentations given: PI alone c50, in 14 countries;
- Dozens of contributions/mentions in newspapers and science magazines, in which the message of 'How migrations 5000 years ago shaped modern Europe' was disseminated; website and multiple social media also used;
- Many extra activities, neither originally planned nor budgeted for, by colleagues, students, project members: 10 extra funding applications, of which successful the use of AI in understanding Europe’s steppe transition (DE DFG) and of mobility isotopes (FI Kone grant); and 2x BA, 3x MA, 2x PhD projects by Helsinki students.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Results beyond state of the art, either published during or with data still to be published after the project has ended, can be summarized under 14 topics:
1) Better defining Yamnaya; understand genetic bottleneck of the mid-4th mill. BC; genetic origins of steppe ancestry and aDNA ‘core’ Yamnaya signal vs. the archaeological definition of primary graves; better link burial customs, material culture and aDNA; distinguish from ‘pre-Yamnaya’ steppe burial customs.
2) Chronology and periodisation; origins based on modeled 14C dates and grasping extreme speed of initial expansion.
3) Social organisation; importance of kinship and dominance of patriarchy/ -linearity/ -locality; lack of women in primary graves; role of children in inter-generational inheritance.
4) Warrior self-esteem; kurgans and stelae as ideological monuments.
5) Paleodemographics, following genetic bottleneck and subsequent expansion, also compared to pattern of local societies in SE Europe.
6) Subsistence economy and their domesticates; role of cattle, sheep and horses; their landscape use; but also procurement of raw materials, such as ochre/cinnabar.
7) Food base, terrestrial diet and way-of-life, but also imbalances in diet (vitamin deficits), cases of malnutrition, and diseases, such as role of prehistoric plague.
8) Yamnaya bio-properties, activity pattern, bone/joint adaptations and pathologies as for habitual riders; their stature and fitness compared with other contemporary societies; but lack of interpersonal violence.
9) Expansion and regional establishment in connection with environment, long-term/rapid climate change, and soils of their steppe landscapes.
10) Interaction with Early Bronze Age locals, regional and temporal admixture pattern; links with the ‘pre-Yamnaya’ steppe occupants and the end of Yamnaya dominance.
11) Pattern of kurgan destruction in nowadays SE Europe; destructive role of modern intensive agriculture to monuments.
12) Yamnaya and its relation with Corded Ware users; aDNA background of groups with steppe ancestry and differing Y-chromosomes; CW origins and formation in the 30th century BC, and subsequent expansion in C, N and E Europe; role of Globular Amphora culture in this formation and expansion; GAC user’s own expansions.
13) Background of 'steppe' Bell Beaker users in C Europe, their origin and further expansion to the W after 2600 BC.
14) AI applications to better comprehend the complexity of these formation and expansion processes in 3rd mill. BC Europe.

Public event of the YMPACT project, Tiedekulma stage, University of Helsinki, 04/2019.

The Strejnicu I/3 individual (RO):Adaptive changes to bone morphology of the horsemanship syndrome.

Archaeologists and students discuss a grave during the Malomirovo (Yambol, BG) excavation in 07/2021

Mogila (Yambol, BG), the central Yamnaya graves of YMPACT’s kurgan excavation in 07/2021.

Book cover of the forthcoming YMPACT #7: The Transformation of Europe in the Third Millennium BC, 1.