What is steppe ancestry?

Steppe ancestry is the genetic ancestry of herders on the Pontic–Caspian steppe about 5,000 years ago, best represented by people of the Yamnaya culture. It was itself a mixture of Eastern hunter-gatherer and Caucasus or Iranian-related ancestry, and it spread widely into Europe in the Bronze Age.

Which Europeans have the most farmer ancestry?

Sardinians have the most ancestry related to Early European Farmers of any present-day European population. Farmer-related ancestry is generally higher in southern Europe.

What are WHG, EEF and Yamnaya?

WHG are western hunter-gatherers of Mesolithic Europe. EEF are Early European Farmers, descended from Neolithic Anatolians with some hunter-gatherer admixture. Yamnaya are Early Bronze Age steppe herders whose related ancestry spread into Europe about 5,000 years ago.

Can I find out my own steppe ancestry percentage?

Yes, as a model. Merge your raw DNA file with the AADR and fit a qpAdm model with western hunter-gatherer, Anatolian farmer and Yamnaya sources. Report the weights with their standard errors, and check that the model is not rejected.

Hunter-gatherer, farmer and steppe ancestry: the three-way model of Europeans

Most Europeans descend from hunter-gatherers, Anatolian farmers and Yamnaya-related steppe herders. Who they were, and how to model them.

Updated October 25, 20263 min read

Most present-day Europeans can be modeled as a mixture of three ancient groups: western hunter-gatherers, Neolithic farmers from Anatolia, and steppe herders related to the Yamnaya culture. The shares differ across Europe. Sardinians have the most farmer-related ancestry, and northern and eastern Europeans have the most steppe-related ancestry.

Lazaridis et al. 2014 proposed three ancestral populations for Europeans. Haak et al. 2015 identified the third as steppe ancestry that arrived about 5,000 years ago.

1. Western hunter-gatherers (WHG)

Hunter-gatherers lived across western and central Europe after the last Ice Age. The Loschbour man from Luxembourg, about 8,000 years old, is a standard proxy (Luxembourg_Loschbour_Mesolithic in the AADR). WHG ancestry is a minor part of most Europeans today, highest around the Baltic.

2. Anatolian and Early European Farmers (EEF)

Farming reached southeastern Europe from Anatolia about 8,500 years ago and spread across the continent over the next two thousand years. The farmers were genetically close to Neolithic Anatolians (Turkey_N), and as they spread they absorbed some hunter-gatherer ancestry. Early European Farmers are this mixture. Present-day Sardinians are the closest living population to them.

About 5,000 years ago, people of the Yamnaya culture herded on the Pontic–Caspian steppe north of the Black and Caspian Seas (Russia_Samara_EBA_Yamnaya). Their own ancestry was a mixture of Eastern hunter-gatherers (EHG) and a source related to Caucasus hunter-gatherers (CHG) and Iranian Neolithic farmers.

Within a few centuries, steppe-related ancestry spread far into Europe. Haak et al. 2015 estimated that Corded Ware people in Germany had about three-quarters of their ancestry from a Yamnaya-related source. In Britain, Olalde et al. 2018 found that the arrival of the Beaker complex replaced about 90% of the island's gene pool within a few hundred years.

Many researchers connect this migration with the spread of Indo-European languages into Europe.

How the shares vary

As a broad pattern, in present-day Europeans:

farmer-related ancestry is highest in the south, above all in Sardinia;
steppe-related ancestry is highest in the north and east;
WHG ancestry is a minor component everywhere, highest around the Baltic.

The three-way model is a first approximation. Many populations need more sources: southern and southeastern Europeans carry later ancestry related to the eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia, and Finns and Saami carry ancestry related to Siberians.

Modeling it with qpAdm

A three-way qpAdm model of a European target uses:

Sources: Luxembourg_Loschbour_Mesolithic (WHG), Turkey_N (Anatolian farmers) and Russia_Samara_EBA_Yamnaya (steppe).
Right populations: a panel that separates the sources, for example Mbuti, Russia_UstIshim_IUP, Russia_Kostenki_UP, Russia_Malta_UP, Georgia_KotiasKlde_Mesolithic, Iran_GanjDareh_N, Israel_Natufian, Han, Papuan and Karitiana. See Choosing right populations.

Check the result as How to read qpAdm results describes. If the three-way model is rejected, the target probably carries a fourth source: try adding one, or use more recent sources such as Bronze Age or Iron Age populations from its region.

You can run this model in Nexju on any AADR population, or on your own genome from 23andMe, AncestryDNA or MyHeritage. Single qpAdm models are on the free plan.

References

Lazaridis I. et al. 2014. Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans. Nature 513. doi:10.1038/nature13673
Haak W. et al. 2015. Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature 522. doi:10.1038/nature14317
Jones E. R. et al. 2015. Upper Palaeolithic genomes reveal deep roots of modern Eurasians. Nature Communications 6. doi:10.1038/ncomms9912
Mathieson I. et al. 2015. Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians. Nature 528. doi:10.1038/nature16152
Olalde I. et al. 2018. The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe. Nature 555. doi:10.1038/nature25738