The Yamnaya Culture | Bronze Age Steppe Herders

The Yamnaya culture was a Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the Pontic steppe (north of the Black Sea) dating to 3300–2600 BC. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: yamnaya is a Russian adjective that means ’related to pits’, and these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (the famous kurgans - which we call barrows or burial mounds in Britain) containing simple pit chambers beneath the mounds. In life they practiced transhumance, a type of pastoralism or nomadism where they spent winters in wooded river valleys and summers out on the grasslands with their herds. The Yamnaya culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans, and is the strongest candidate for the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (of which English is just one of many descendants). They possibly invented the wheel, they were the first (or almost) to domesticate and ride horses, and they invented 4-wheeled, ox-drawn axeled wagons that