[ExI] The Yamnaya question

[Stuart LaForge]

Quoting John Clark:


> On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 11:42 PM Rafal Smigrodzki  
> <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
>

> Long before your Yamnaya something dramatic happened to humans about  
> 33,000BC, stone weapons suddenly got much more refined  
> and specialized tools for cleaning animal skins and awls for  
> piercing appeared, shoes were invented and so was jewelry. Before  
> 33,000BC there was little or no art, after 33,000BC it was everywhere.

This was the beginning of culture. The point at which a genetic  
mutation that gave rise to the meme pool thus allowing for evolution  
in a higher-dimensional fitness space.
 
> If this change in human behavior happened because of a change in the  
> gene pool then it almost certainly started in a mutation that  
> occurred in a individual living in a small isolated population, the  
> gene made the individual who had it a better hunter and a better  
> warrior and this evolutionary advantage could easily rapidly spread  
> through the entire population because it was so small.

For hunter gatherers, you would be right. But the Yamnaya lived after  
the agrarian revolution. The settled people would have been herdsman  
and farmers. The Yamanaya on the other hand were warriors and hunters.  
They were populations selected under different environmental pressures  
than the former.

> After that
> there would be little to stop the small isolated population from  
> spreading out and becoming large, in fact becoming the dominate  
> human population. But if the mutation had occurred in a horse  
> centered nomadic population that ranged over a huge area it might  
> have produced a few widely separated clever people here and there  
> but the mutated gene would become so diluted by the huge gene pool  
> it could never get a foothold.

Rafal's hypothesis is also applicable to other historic peoples other  
than the Yamnaya. Take this guy for example.

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/06/09/genghis-khan/

The success of his genes and those of his armies would support Rafal's  
hypothesis as well.

Stuart LaForge