Pastoralism in East Europe

We have now quite large number of samples before the Yamnaya period in East Europe ( before 3300BC) to have some conclusions about the origins of pastoralism in Pontic Caspian steppe and forest steppe regions.

If we keep aside local hunter gatherer lineages and those associated with Maykop culture in North Caucasus, then we are left with haplotypes that are associated with South Caucasian farmers. Shulaveri Aratashen culture.

• J2-M319 - an obvious farmer lineage, which usually is associated with Minoans but it's deeper origins are without doubt in historic Armenia. Absent in European farmers.
• J2b2b from Eneolithic Moldova associated with migrations from east. This branch was never found in any Euro-Anatolian farmer site but was found in Mentesh tepe in northwest of Azerbaijan.
• J2b2a1-L283 currently the oldest sample from this branch is from Yamnaya but there is little doubt that it was present in Eneolithic steppe also. It became part of Yamnaya communities, moved to west Balkans and had a successful founder effect there. It's parallel branch the J2b2a2 is a lineage found in farmers from Central Asia who from there moved to India. Thus, indirect evidence supports that it was a south Caucasian farmer lineage. Its hunter gatherer origin is less likely.
• J1b - it was a west Caucasian hunter lineage. It could be a CHG lineage in steppe. But a farmer lineage can't be ruled out completely given that this branch was found in many farmers sites stretched from Pakistan to Crete. In steppe it was found in Volga region and Usatovo cultures.
• J1-CTS1026 - similar to J1b uncertain affiliation. It's south Caucasian origin in steppe is without doubt.

Besides those cases there were also J1* in Karelia in hunter gatherer context. Those were almost certainly from CHG.

On the other hand, there was no single European farmers lineage found in Pontic Caspian steppe. Archaeologists believed that west Ukraine farmers played an important role in the introduction of pastoralism, but the genetic data do not support that idea. In west Ukraine Cucuteni Trypllia farmers we have G2a2a, G2a2b, E1b-L618, C1a2, I2a2a etc. None of them is found in steppe.

An unpublished sample from Nalchik proves that farmers from South Caucasus moved to north. Despite this southern input, the Eneolithic steppe was predominantly R1b-V1636 and I2-L699. This latter was a Ukraine hunter gatherer lineage in its deep origin.

What was the reason of the mismatch between autosomes and Y DNA is hard to say but a similar scenario occurred in main Europe where after an initial success, the G2 farmers lost their positions and I2 became more frequent. While the autosomes didn't change in a significant manner.

Those genetic results is supported by the linguistics data also. Sahala notice that the Sumerian word gud, gu meaning ox, bull is a good parallel with PIE *gou(s) meaning cow, ox. From which the Armenian word kov is derived.

Matasovic notice that the reconstructed PIE language morphology shares features with North Caucasian languages.

PS You can see the Caucasus Lower Volga cline on the map which had both CHG and South Caucasian farmers ancestry mixed with local hunter gatherers