Long-distance exchanges along the Black Sea coast in the Eneolithic and the steppe genetic ancestry problem

The appearance of steppe genetic ancestry in Europe in the 3rd millennium BCE coincided with the beginning of a new cultural and economic era dominated by pastoralist economy and progressively more centralized social institutions, brought by the descendants of Eneolithic inhabitants of the Ponto-Caspian steppe. We propose that steppe genetic ancestry, as well as the cultural attributes that characterize the Early Bronze Age steppe pastoralists such as the Yamna(ya) (Pit Grave) culture complex, formed as the result of activities associated with the function of the circum-Pontic trade network. A millennium-long association among the Eneolithic cultures of the Ponto-Caspian steppe and forest-steppe, the Balkan cultures of west Pontic, and populations of the Caucasus and northeast Anatolia, led to the integration of the elements of genetics, subsistence strategies, material culture, and worldview, to produce the foundation of a novel genetic and socio-cultural phenomenon by the last third of the 4th millennium BCE.