Archaeological culture · c. 3300–2600 BCE
Yamnaya culture
The Yamnaya, or Pit Grave, culture were herders of the Pontic–Caspian steppe between the Southern Bug and Ural rivers. They buried their dead in pits under earth mounds called kurgans.
They relied on horses to manage large herds and used wheeled carts and wagons. Ancient DNA shows that people with Yamnaya-related ancestry spread far into Europe, and many scholars think they spoke an early form of Indo-European.
See Yamnaya culture on the map in 3300 BCE
- On the map
- 3300–2600 BCE
How we know
No writing existed; its burial mounds are dated by radiocarbon, and the widely held idea that it spoke an early Indo-European language is a reconstruction, not a recorded fact.