Khvalynsk people determined that they were Caucasoid, a now outdated racial classification. A similar physical type prevails among the Sredny Stog culture and the Yamnaya culture, whose peoples were powerfully built. Khvalynsk people were however not as powerfully built as the Sredny Stog and Yamnaya. The people of the Dnieper-Donets culture further west on the other hand, were even more powerfully built than the Yamnaya. Genetics Recent genetic studies have shown that males of the Khvalynsk culture carried primarily the paternal haplogroup R1b, although a few samples of R1a, I2a2, Q1a and J have been detected. They belonged to the Western Steppe Herder (WSH) cluster, which is a mixture of Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) and Caucasian Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) ancestry. This admixture appears to have happened on the eastern Pontic–Caspian steppe starting around 5,000 BC. Mathieson et al. (2015, 2018) found in three Eneolithic males buried near Khvalynsk between 5200 BC and 4000 BC the Y-haplogroups R1b1a and R1a1, and the mt-haplogroups H2a1, U5a1i, and Q1a and a subclade of U4. A male from the contemporary Sredny Stog culture was found to have 80% WSH ancestry of a similar type to the Khvalynsk people, and 20% Early European Farmer (EEF) ancestry. Among the later Yamnaya culture, males carry exclusively R1b and I2. A similar pattern is observable among males of the earlier Dnieper-Donets culture, who carried only R and I and whose ancestry was exclusively EHG with Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) admixture. The presence of EEF and CHG mtDNA and exclusively EHG and WHG Y-DNA among the Yamnaya and related WSHs suggest that EEF and CHG admixture among them was the result of mixing between EHG and WHG males, and EEF and CHG females. This suggests that the leading clans among the Yamnaya were of EHG paternal origin. According to David W. Anthony, this implies that the Indo-European languages were the result of "a dominant language spoken by EHGs that absorbed Caucasus-like elements in phonology, morphology, and lexicon" (spoken by CHGs) Notes References Sources J. P. Mallory, "Khvalynsk Culture", Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997. Marija Gimbutas, "The Civilization of the Goddess", HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, or External links Bronze Age Textiles of the Caspian Sea Maritime Steppes Archaeological cultures of the Caucasus Archaeological cultures in Russia Chalcolithic cultures of Europe Nomadic groups in Eurasia Indo-European archaeological cultures Archaeological cultures of Eastern Europe 5th millennium BC Prehistoric Russia