gatherers.[24] According to Lazaridis et al. (2016), "farmers related to
those from Iran spread northward into the Eurasian steppe; and people
related to both the early farmers of Iran and to the pastoralists of the
Eurasian steppe spread eastward into South Asia".[70] They further note
that ANI (Ancestral North Indian) "can be modelled as a mix of ancestry
related to both early farmers of western Iran and to people of the
Bronze Age Eurasian steppe",[70] which makes it unlikely that the Indo-
European languages in India are derived from Anatolia.[24]
Alignment with the steppe theory
According to Alberto Piazza "[i]t is clear that, genetically speaking,
peoples of the Kurgan steppe descended at least in part from people of
the Middle Eastern Neolithic who immigrated there from
Anatolia."[71] According to Piazza and Cavalli-Sforza, the Yamna culture
may have been derived from Middle Eastern Neolithic farmers who
migrated to the Pontic steppe and developed pastoral nomadism:
... if the expansions began at 9,500 years ago from Anatolia and at
6,000 years ago from the Yamnaya culture region, then a 3,50 0 - year
period elapsed during their migration to the Volga-Don region from
Anatolia, probably through the Balkans. There a completely new,
mostly pastoral culture developed under the stimulus of an
environment unfavorable to standard agriculture, but offering new
attractive possibilities. Our hypothesis is, therefore, that Indo-European
languages derived from a secondary expansion from the Yamnaya
culture region after the Neolithic farmers, possibly coming from
Anatolia and settled there, developing pastoral nomadism.[72]
Wells agrees with Cavalli-Sforza that there is " some genetic evidence
for migration from the Middle East":