Word.ws English Dictionary

Yamnaya

/ˈjæmnaɪə/

Yamnaya proper noun: a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BCE, often associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans.

Proper noun

Yamnaya

  1. A late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BCE, often associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans.
    • Although European Late Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures such as Corded Ware, Bell Beakers, Unetice, and the Scandinavian cultures are genetically very similar to each other (Fig. 2), they still display a cline of genetic affinity with Yamnaya, with highest levels in Corded Ware, lowest in Hungary...2015, Nature, Allentoft et al., Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia

Noun

Yamnaya pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) The people of the Yamnaya culture.
    • This pattern is also seen in ADMIXTURE analysis (Fig. 2b, SI6), which implies that the Yamnaya have ancestry from populations related to the Caucasus and South Asia that is largely absent in 38 Early or Middle Neolithic farmer s but present in all 25 Late Neolithic or Bronze Age individuals.2015, Nature 522 (7555), Haak, W. et al, Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe
    • Archaeologists by 2002 had identified 17 Yamnaya cemeteries in the Samara Valley containing 45 kurgans and 51 graves (Figure 4.2).2016, David W. Anthony (translator), Pavel F. Kuznetsov, Oleg D. Mochalov, Chapter 4: The Samara Valley in the Bronze Age: A Review of Archaeological Discoveries, David W. Anthony, Dorcas R. Brown...

Adjective

Yamnaya (not comparable)

  1. Of or relating to the Yamnaya people or culture.
    • At the frontiers where Yamnaya pastoralists interacted with settled agriculturalists, local variants developed among bilingual populations.2025 December 12, Tom Hercules Davies, “Horses, Wheels, Languages: Greek, Mesopotamian and Indic Epic on the Eurasian Steppe”, in The Classical Quarterly, volume 75, number 1, page 13

Forms of Yamnaya

alternative formYamna

Origin of Yamnaya

From Russian Ямная (Jamnaja), short for я́мная культу́ра, using the feminine form of я́мный, an adjective formed from я́ма (jáma, “pit”), referring to the culture's pit-grave burial practices. The alternative form Yamna is the corresponding form of the Ukrainian adjective я́мний.

Questions about Yamnaya

What does Yamnaya mean?
Yamnaya means a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BCE, often associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans.
What part of speech is Yamnaya?
Yamnaya can be a proper noun, a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce Yamnaya?
Yamnaya is pronounced /ˈjæmnaɪə/.

Words near Yamnaya in the dictionary

  1. yammers
  2. yammers on
  3. Yammies
  4. yamming
  5. yammy
  6. Yamnaya
  7. YAMO
  8. yamogenin
  9. YAMOs
  10. Yamoussoukro
  11. yamp

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Yamnaya (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Eleanorrrrrrrrrr-Yamnaya.wav.

Cite this entry: “Yamnaya.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/yamnaya. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.