A slice of the Y-chromosome tree

[Swammerdami]

Jean Manco's Ancestral Journeys reviews the prehistory of Europe with special emphasis on DNA. I looked for the book when I started this thread; couldn't find it; and assumed it was one of several books I gave to my relative who has very similar interests to mine.

But just now while looking for another book, I stumbled on Ancestral Journeys ! She suggests that the "Stelae people" were the proto-ItaloCeltics. Below I show an image of such a sandstone stela I copied from  Kernosivsky idol. (The image URL is in Cyrillic as are some of the rather few Google hits for "Stelae People.")

... the object was dated to the mid 3rd millennium BC and is associated with the late Yamnaya culture. According to the most common hypothesis, it depicts the supreme deity of the Indo-European pantheon. This connection was first proposed by Ukrainian archaeologist Valentyn Danylenko, who also proposed a connection between the idol and stories from the Rigveda.

One interpretation of the illustrations on the body of the figure is that they may show tattoos.

According to a map on page 162 of Manco's book, the "suggested route of proto-Italo-Celtic-speaking stelae makers" was from Yamnaya through Romania to Northern Italy (presumably dropping off the Italo portion of Italo-Celtic there) and then via Corsica and Sardinia to southern Spain from where Bell Beaker spread out.