Comments by "Iain Mc" (@iainmc9859) on "Yamnaya Culture: The Most Powerful Culture You May Not Know About..." video.

  1. Although I'm a R1b, supposedly with some R1a via genealogy, I really hope there's some Western Hunter Gatherer still knocking about in there. As to the theories: Although logical, there isn't any greater evidence of WHG coming through the matriarchal DNA, as far as I know. So I'm not convinced of the 'kill all the men and take all the women' theory. I still think there's a larger underlying 'failure to reproduce' issue here; whether that is the WHGs were already teetering on the edge of extinction (like our Neanderthal cousins before them) or a viral pandemic carried by the Yamnaya that principally effected the WHGs, or a massive and immensely effective genocide. The genocide theory seems too centralised and too based on a massive cultural investment of all Yamnaya in removing the 'natives'; although possible we're not finding mass war graves (as yet). The 'technological superiority' theory doesn't hold in any way true as better technology always assimilates into earlier cultures after the shock of the new is absorbed, eg: the horse and the gun into Native American culture. Lactose tolerance would also have been assimilated genetically by interbreeding (if people from the two cultures interbred, as did Homo Sapien and Neanderthal before) after a few generations, no surprise that our first herder ancestors developed lactose tolerance. Not convinced that WHGs all committed suicide by drinking milk either. The jury is still out on this ... I'm edging closer to the 'plague' idea though, which might explain why we're not finding inhumations or cremations of WHGs. You die the survivors simply walk away from the body, no ceremony, just fear. If anyone knows of any relatively up-to-date scientific/academic research relating to this mystery, that is publicly available (no space aliens or ancient Atlanteans, thank you) I'd be really interested to know.
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