individuals from the Yamnaya culture.[5] The authors concluded that
their "results provide support for the theory of a steppe origin of at
least some of the Indo-European languages of Europe".[24][51]
Two other genetic studies in 2015 gave support to the steppe
hypothesis regarding the Indo-European Urheimat. According to those
studies, specific subclades of Y chromosome haplogroups R1b and R1a,
which are found in Yamnaya and other proposed early Indo-European
cultures such as Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk,[52][53] and are now the most
common in Europe (R1a is also common in South Asia) would have
expanded from the Ukrainian and Russian steppes, along with the Indo-
European languages; these studies also detected
an autosomal component present in modern Europeans which was not
present in Neolithic Europeans, which would have been introduced
with paternal lineages R1b and R1a, as well as Indo-European
languages.[5][54][55]
However, the folk migration model cannot be the only diffusion theory
for all linguistic families, as the Yamnaya ancestry component is
particularly concentrated in Europe in the northwestern parts of the
continent. Other models for languages like Proto-Greek are still
debated. The steppe genetic component is more diffuse in
studied Mycenaean populations: if they came from elsewhere, Proto-
Greek speakers were certainly a minority in a sea of populations which
had been familiar with agriculture for 4000 years.[18] Some propose that
they gained progressive prominence through a cultural expansion by
elite influence.[17] But if high correlations can be proven
in ethnolinguistic or remote communities, genetics does not always
equate with language,[56] and archaeologists have argued that although
such a migration might have taken place, it does not necessarily explain
either the distribution of archaeological cultures or the spread of the
Indo-European languages.[57]