Blast from the past: Yamnaya prediction from 2016

I wonder what’s holding up the publication of the Wang et al. “Greater Caucasus” preprint? It was released back in May at the bioRxiv (see here). On a related note, I was looking back at some of the stuff that I wrote about the origin of the Yamnaya people (aka Steppe_EMBA), and found this…

But here’s my prediction: Steppe_EMBA only has 10-15% admixture from the post-Mesolithic Near East not including the North Caucasus, and basically all of this comes via female mediated gene flow from farming communities in the Caucasus and perhaps present-day Ukraine.

The relevant blog post from 2016 is here. I totally forgot that I made such a bold prediction. But it actually has a very good chance now of being proven correct, more or less.
This, however, depends on the precise origin of the Yamnaya-like Eneolithic populations of the southernmost parts of the Pontic-Caspian steppe. But, considering the data in Wang et al., I think the chances that they date back to the Pottery Neolithic period, and are thus indigenous to the region, look pretty good.
About a year later I made a prediction about the genetic structure of the Maykop people, and was basically proven right by Wang et al. (see here). Admittedly, my jaw dropped when I saw how the Steppe Maykop individuals came out in the preprint, with their Botai-like ancestry that is missing in all Yamnaya populations sampled to date. But it was an interesting outcome and nice to be surprised by ancient DNA yet again.
See also…
Genetic borders are usually linguistic borders too
Ahead of the pack
Indo-European crackpottery

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