page_title: Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer
section_title: Proto-Indo Europeans
hierarchical_section_title: Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer / Genetic studies / Proto-Indo Europeans
caption_attribution_description: English: Location of early Yamna culture
context_page_description: Caucasus hunter-gatherer, also called Satsurblia Cluster is the name of an anatomically modern human genetic lineage, first identified in a 2015 study, based on the population genetics of several modern Western Eurasian populations.
  CHG ancestry was also found in an Upper Palaeolithic specimen from Satsurblia cave, and in a Mesolithic one from Kotias Klde cave, in western Georgia.
  The CHG lineage descended from a population that split off the base Western Eurasian lineage very early, around 45,000 years ago, pre-dating the split that led to differentiated populations that descended separately to Ust'-Ishim man, Oase1 and European hunter-gatherers. The Caucasus hunter-gatherers managed to survive in isolation through the Last Glacial Maximum as a distinct population.
  Eastern Hunter-Gatherers are believed to have received admixture from CHGs, leading to the formation of Western Steppe Herders. WSHs formed the Yamnaya culture and expanded massively throughout Europe during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age.
context_section_description: The CHG lineage was found to have contributed significantly to the Yamnaya lineage of Chalcolithic pastoralists in the Pontic steppe, which in turn expanded into Europe from about 5,000 years ago (Indo-European expansion). CHG admixture was also found in South Asia, in a possible marker of the Indo-Aryan migration there.
  The proto-Indo-Europeans, i.e. the Yamnaya people and the related cultures, seem to have been a mix from Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers (EHGs); and people related to the near east, such as Caucasus hunter-gatherers and Iran Chalcolithic people, with a Caucasian hunter-gatherer component.   Each of those two populations contributed about half the Yamnaya DNA. According to co-author Andrea Manica of the University of Cambridge:
  The question of where the Yamnaya come from has been something of a mystery up to now ... we can now answer that, as we've found that their genetic make-up is a mix of Eastern European hunter-gatherers and a population from this pocket of Caucasus hunter-gatherers who weathered much of the last Ice Age in apparent isolation.
  According to Jones et al. (2015), Caucasus hunter-gatherers (CHG) "genomes significantly contributed to the Yamnaya steppe herders who migrated into Europe ~3,000 BCE, supporting a formative Caucasus influence on this important Early Bronze Age culture. CHG left their imprint on modern populations from the Caucasus and also central and south Asia possibly marking the arrival of Indo-Aryan languages."
caption: The early Yamna culture and its proximity to the Caucasus.
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