Because the Scythians themselves were closely related to (but not descended from necessarily) the Yamnua culture

Yamnaya*

@Smackface define genetically uralic

The Scythians are one of a number of Steppes horde groups dating back to, iirc, 2300BC

Might be 2100

They settled in the Urals

nah, scythians date back to just 900 bc

Much like several other Steppes horde cultures

also they were mixed

with east asians and southwest asians

to some extent

No, they're given only East Asian and Yamnaya-related ancestry, that's it

Unless you have some other source to disprove this

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14615

But yeah, I think it was the Vedas that recorded a Scythian invasion that essentially ended with Scythian integration into the upper castes of Indian society, hence the Yamnaya connection, because so far I've seen no other explanation for the presence of Yamnayan blood in Indian ancestry, as they never settled anywhere close to India

the areas those samples were taken from were all pretty far north from transoxiana (which scythia also encompassed) so that's no surprise

@Smackface yamnaya didn't, but the descendants of proto-indo-iranians did

scythians probably had some genetic influence on india, but I doubt that it's because of them that R1a is nowadays such a prevalent Y-DNA lineage in south asia

Proto-indo-iranians are literally considered a hypothetical by geneticists and archaeologists

Hell, the concept of proto-indo-european itself comes from some sections of the Vedas having weird grammar that *kinda sorta looks like something a Caucasus culture /might/ have spoken*

R1a is, by standard definitions, over 20,000 years old

that's not how comparative linguistics work

Linguistics a genome do not make

R1a is 20,000 years old, but R1a1a1 isn't

and R1a1a1 encompasses 99% of modern R1a lineages

including the ones in South Asia

And the oldest sampled R1a1a1 is from Ukraine

R1a1a1 is a mere 5,500 years old

And perfectly matches with how the Indo-European expansion is dated

R1a1a* is 5k years old, and is also the precursor to R1a1a1b2 which is what 10-40% of "Indo-European speakers" possess

R1a1a1 is 8600 years old but all modern carriers of it descend from a man who lived about 5500 years ago

That's what I meant

@Smackface Do you have a point to make

99% carriers of its carriers still descend from a man who lived in Ukraine 5000 years ago

And it correlates extremely well with IE speakers

What do you suggest sparked this sudden expansion if not the spread of Indo-Europeans

That you're chasing after wind, also Indians have Z93 R1a which again comes from the steppes, which. Again. Likely comes from the Scythians.

Who did not.come.from.Ukraine

No, I'm not

You're just being dense