15:["$","main",null,{"className":"min-h-screen bg-black text-white","children":[["$","script",null,{"type":"application/ld+json","dangerouslySetInnerHTML":{"__html":"{\"@context\":\"https://schema.org\",\"@type\":\"Article\",\"headline\":\"How the Yamnaya Spread Across Europe 5,000 Years Ago\",\"description\":\"No army, no empire — just horses, wheels, and open grassland. Here's how one steppe culture reshaped a continent.\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-08T04:41:34.810Z\",\"author\":{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"name\":\"ignasi\"},\"publisher\":{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"name\":\"VidLink\",\"url\":\"https://vidlink.it\"},\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https://vidlink.it/read/how-yamnaya-spread-across-europe-5-000-years-ago-e6224e\"},\"video\":{\"@type\":\"VideoObject\",\"name\":\"How the Yamnaya conquered Europe without an empire\",\"contentUrl\":\"https://vidlinkvideos.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/videos/111de6af-363e-4aa4-ac30-292b03cbd876.mp4\",\"duration\":\"PT45S\",\"uploadDate\":\"2026-05-04T13:38:09.463Z\",\"embedUrl\":\"https://vidlink.it/videos/how-the-yamnaya-conquered-europe-without-an-empire-e6224e\"}}"}}],["$","article",null,{"className":"mx-auto max-w-[760px] px-5 pt-32 pb-24","children":[["$","header",null,{"className":"mb-10","children":[["$","h1",null,{"className":"text-3xl md:text-5xl font-bold leading-tight tracking-tight mb-4","children":"How the Yamnaya Spread Across Europe 5,000 Years Ago"}],["$","p",null,{"className":"text-lg md:text-xl text-white/70 leading-relaxed","children":"No army, no empire — just horses, wheels, and open grassland. Here's how one steppe culture reshaped a continent."}],["$","div",null,{"className":"mt-6 flex items-center gap-3 text-sm text-white/50","children":[["$","img",null,{"src":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocL2ON-HYAb2xYx-sUFO8s1u_Eh5819y2As9KMvNg1tRVxpWzaW77A=s96-c","alt":"ignasi","className":"w-8 h-8 rounded-full object-cover"}],["$","span",null,{"children":"ignasi"}],["$","span",null,{"children":"·"}],["$","time",null,{"dateTime":"2026-05-08T04:41:34.810Z","children":"May 8, 2026"}]]}]]}],["$","div",null,{"className":"mb-12 rounded-xl overflow-hidden bg-black aspect-video","children":["$","video",null,{"src":"https://vidlinkvideos.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/videos/111de6af-363e-4aa4-ac30-292b03cbd876.mp4","controls":true,"playsInline":true,"preload":"metadata","className":"w-full h-full"}]}],["$","div",null,{"className":"prose prose-invert prose-lg max-w-none article-body","children":[["$","section","0",{"className":"mb-10","children":[["$","h2",null,{"className":"text-2xl md:text-3xl font-bold mt-10 mb-4","children":"Who the Yamnaya Actually Were"}],["$","div",null,{"className":"text-white/85 leading-[1.75] [&_p]:mb-4 [&_a]:text-blue-400 [&_a]:underline [&_a]:underline-offset-4 hover:[&_a]:text-blue-300 [&_em]:italic [&_em]:text-white [&_strong]:font-semibold [&_strong]:text-white","dangerouslySetInnerHTML":{"__html":"

The Yamnaya were a culture of pastoralists living in the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas, roughly between 5,300 and 4,600 years ago. That's well before Rome, before Greece, before most of what we call "ancient history."

They didn't build cities. They didn't run a bureaucracy. What they did was move — constantly, effectively, and at a scale nobody had managed before them.

Genetic data from ancient DNA research, including work out of the David Reich Lab at Harvard, shows that Yamnaya ancestry shows up dramatically across Europe and Central Asia. The signal is hard to argue with. Somewhere around 5,000 years ago, a wave of steppe ancestry flooded into regions that had been genetically stable for thousands of years. Something happened. The Yamnaya happened.

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