Ancestral Whispers@Sulkalmakh
Reconstructions based on 6,300-year-old early Proto-Indo-European elites from the Lower Don (Krivyanski I11828/I31755, Y-DNA J-M319, mtDNA T2a1b), and from Hungary—the first known horse rider (Csongrád I5124, Y-DNA Q-Y6802, mtDNA K1b2)
The Krivyanski individual was buried in a round pit with a concave bottom, its floor covered in red ochre. The adult male lay on his back with knees raised, skull oriented NNE; the left arm was extended and the left thigh disturbed by a later grave cut. The burial position, grave goods, and date are characteristic of the Sredny Stog culture.
The inventory included a retouched flint blade (its broken tip found deeper in the grave), two bifacial projectile points, and a bifacial axe-shaped blank. Additional displaced finds included another blade and the missing blade tip. The tools are patinated brown to gray flint with fine retouch and use-wear.
He carried Y-haplogroup J2a (J-M319), linked to Caucasus populations such as the Maikop culture and Aknashen, but showed only older Mesolithic CHG ancestry. His mtDNA (T2a1b) was common among steppe groups. On PCA, he clustered close to the Yamnaya culture (Lazaridis et al. 2025).
The Csongrád individual from Hungary, attributed to the Suvorovo culture, represents one of the earliest known cases showing osteological evidence consistent with riding, well before the classic Yamnaya horizon. He exhibited clear skeletal markers of habitual horseback riding, especially in the lower trunk and pelvic region, consistent with “horseman syndrome” (Trautmann et al. 2023).
He carried Y-haplogroup Q-Y6802, linked to Khvalynsk. Autosomally, he was primarily Steppe Eneolithic, with a Khvalynsk grandparent—likely the source of his Y-DNA (Lazaridis et al. 2025).
Culturally, some Steppe Eneolithic groups such as Berezhnevka are also attributed to the Khvalynsk culture (Khokhlov A.A., Gromov A.V., Grigoriev A.P., Kazarnitsky A.A., Kapinus Yu.O., Kitov E.P., 2024).
In addition, horses were sacrificed and buried alongside cattle, sheep/goats, and humans at Khvalynsk, where no obviously wild mammals were included. Polished stone mace-heads shaped like horse heads proliferated across the steppes and spread into the Lower Danube valley between 4400–4000 BCE. Eneolithic horses, even if more skittish than modern ones, may have been ridden in quiet settings such as herding, allowing a mounted shepherd to oversee three times more sheep than a pedestrian one, producing a surplus useful for hosting feasts (Lazaridis et al. 2025).
He is depicted with a “composite sword” from a related Giurgiulești burial in Moldova, which belonged to another Early Proto-Indo-European elite individual with Q1a Y-DNA (Blagoje Govedarica and Igor Manzura, Eurasia Antiqua 22, 2016 [2019]).
The two individuals belonged to the Protoeuropoid type, a robust type that was widespread among the Ukr_N/Dnieper–Donets/Mariupol culture.
This type is also documented in the early phase of the Rakushechny Yar culture in the Lower Don. This culture showed some similarities with the Mariupol culture, but also distinct differences, such as the absence of ochre (T.D. Balanovskaya, 1972, “Paleolithic and Neolithic of the USSR,” Volume 7).
Samples from north of Rakushechny Yar, in the Middle Don (e.g., Golubaya Krinitsa, attributed to the Mariupol culture), show a substantial increase in CHG ancestry. This may indicate that the Neolithic Lower Don Rakushechny Yar culture (often linked by archaeologists to the Caucasus) was a possible source of CHG ancestry in Proto-Indo-Europeans, contributing, alongside the Dnieper-Donets/Mariupol culture, to the Protoeuropoid strain in early Steppe group, as well as to the majority of Proto-Indo-European ancestry.
The migration of this Don population to the North Caucasus foothills, where they mixed with Mesopotamian-derived Caucasus farmers at Nalchik and its surroundings, and then to the Volga, where they mixed with local EHGs of the Ancienturalic strain, resulted in the Steppe Eneolithic proper genetic profile, which, after returning to the Don, formed the Proto-Indo-European Sredny Stog culture.
