Anthony proposes that the Yamnaya derived mainly from Eastern
European hunter-gatherers (EHG) from the steppes, and undiluted
Caucasus hunter-gatherers (CHG) from northwestern Iran or
Azerbaijan, similar to the Hotu cave population, who mixed in the
Eastern European steppe north of the Caucasus. According to Anthony,
hunting-fishing camps from the lower Volga, dated 6200–4500 BCE,
could be the remains of people who contributed the CHG-component,
migrating westwards along the coast of the Caspian Sea, from an area
south-east of the Caspian Sea. They mixed with EHG-people from the
north Volga steppes, and the resulting culture contributed to the
Sredny Stog culture, a predecessor of the Yamnaya culture.[31]
Other hypotheses
Baltic homeland
Main article: Neolithic creolisation hypothesis
See also: North European hypothesis and Salmon problem
Lothar Kilian and Marek Zvelebil have proposed a 6th millennium BCE
or later origin of the IE-languages in Northern Europe, as a creolisation
of migrating Neolithic farmers settling in northern Europe, and mixing
with indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherer communities.[34] The
steppe theory is compatible with the argument that the PIE homeland
must have been larger,[44] because the "Neolithic creolisation
hypothesis" allows the Pontic-Caspian region to have been part of PIE
territory.
Palaeolithic continuity theory
The Paleolithic continuity theory or paradigm is a hypothesis suggesting
that the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) can be traced back to
the Upper Paleolithic, several millennia earlier than the Chalcolithic or
at the most Neolithic estimates in other scenarios of Proto-Indo-