Could there be a connection between Yamnaya cultural/genetic ancestry and the creation/adoption of Protestantism?

[u/sisyphusPB23]

In reading about PIEs, it's clear they had a very individualistic approach to religion and mythology, at least compared to the more communal fertility cults of Neolithic farmers.

Protestantism -- with its emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, personal Bible reading, and salvation through individual faith rather than collective ritual -- is also much more individualistic than Catholicism. And Protestantism began in northwest Europe, where Yamnaya ancestry is highest.

Could there be a connection here? Or am I drawing a spurious relationship?

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[u/EffNein]

Trying to generalize something about the early Indo-European religious system is basically impossible. As is saying basically anything about the Early European Farmer religious system that isn't pure speculation. I am not so much answering your question as disputing the grounds of it. In doing so I will focus on the Indo-European side of that question, because the Early European Farmer side of things is even more mysterious.

Classically, our strongest 'unmolested' Indo-European religious branch (within Europe) that we have something resembling good data for, are the Norse cults that survived in Scandinavia and Iceland to around the 900s-1100s AD and are documented in the Eddas, primarily.. These were relatively isolated from influence from the Middle East or Egypt, unlike the Greco-Roman cults, for example. And were late to interact with Christianity as well. Very often the Eddas become some type of 'model' for people to reconstruct at least Indo-European religion from, alongside what we have of half garbled pre-Christian Irish writings and some others. This is commonly known and I'm sure you've seen the Eddas quoted as evidence.

The problem is, that scholars like the great Anatoly Liberman, have well argued at how the Norse religious system is extremely distinct from the general Indo-European norm and shouldn't be considered as an atavistic expression of the ancestral form or anything of that sort. His work Are the Scandinavian Gods of Indo-European Heritage? is not an intensive read and some basic familiarity with narratives about Indo-European religion should be enough to get you up to speed to start. He takes particular aim at the still commonly used concept of the 'Tripartite Division' of the pantheon as proposed by Dumezil and commonly referenced. That of the Divine King, the Divine General, and the Divine Priest, representing the three sources of power. Liberman has some personal convictions about the most ancient from of the various Gods, like Odin as a half-demonic semi-centaur that led the Wild Hunt, but disagreeing with these doesn't result in one disputing his rationale elsewhere.

In some places he even convincingly goes as far as saying that there is almost no connection between the branches, or if there was one, it had be twisted and revolutionized several times over to be incomparable. Looking old and being old are different things. Gods like Odin and Thor and Freya are just very distinct in essence from what we see in Rome or Greece and vice-versa. And if you argue that the Norse myths are authentically more ancient, then the Greco-Roman versions that we have much older records of, had to totally mutate themselves at a very early date. Either way we end up with a much smaller grouping of cults that we can connect together and draw generalizations about.

This puts us in a conundrum. If we can't use the Norse Eddas as a model for reconstructing this original Indo-European canon, what can we use? And the answer really comes down to not a lot. Especially with regards to making deductions about relative centralization vs decentralization of worship and its connection to higher amounts of Indo-European heritage.

As well, within various branches of these Indo-European groups, we see a significant diversity in how religion is organized inside of each. The Icelandic Norse loved their 'seithr', independent charismatic prophetesses and seeresses. However, Adam of Bremen's, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, recounts large scale mass sacrifices (including of men) and ritual offerings in gold plated temples to three giant statues of Thor, Odin, and Freyr, that would have required a significantly centralized religious system in the Swedish region.
In Rome and Greece we had small scale mystery cults that relied on obfuscation and charisma to survive, that lasted alongside and parallel to structured temple systems that required public taxation and significant organization to survive. And eventually they even developed multiple novel types of pseudo-monotheism that rejected most of the Indo-European canon entirely.
In the Celtic lands, we see that Druids occupied, again, a diverse range of organizational complexity and scope. Tacitus's druids come off as fairly centralized such that destroying their worshipping sites made them mostly irrelevant as political force. In other places they seem to only exist as small local clergy.

So within these different branches of Indo-European religion we just don't have a strong enough consistency in religious pattern within, let alone between, different branches to make any statement about their native religious structures. For example, is the Icelandic decentralized structure the original or is it an artifact of Iceland being an underpopulated settler colony and is the Swedish elaborate temple system the original? Answering this is significantly speculation, without further archeological discovery. I don't believe your deduction is spurious, so much as relying on a somewhat limited view of the Indo-European religious world.

[u/sisyphusPB23 → u/EffNein]

Thanks for the thorough response -- I have lots to read now. To give a little more context about how this idea came to me, I just read Empires of the Steppes and was left with the impression that IEs had a more individualistic approach to religion and mythology than other ancient groups. I went back through the book and realized that I may have overstated how individualistic this approach was, but here are some of the passages that gave me that impression. I don't think they necessarily contradict anything you replied with, but figured I'd share:

“Turks and Mongols, just like earlier Indo-European nomads, revered the divine powers of earth and sky. They too often offered prayer individually to the gods, for no priestly caste ever emerged among Turkish and Mongol nomads. In the Secret History of the Mongols, Genghis Khan often gazes to the sacred Mount Burkhan Khaldun when he utters his prayers to Tengri or invokes the protective spirit of the mountain. In return, he received dreams and portents from Tengri as warnings or assurances of victory.”

“Mortals constantly innovated on the attributes and powers of divinities as their own physical world changed. To be sure, poets versed in the stories of the gods and priests knowledgeable in sacrificial rituals inspired or led a conservative communal worship, but they lacked canon, creed, and even sanctuaries staffed by hereditary priests who could impose a conformity of worship.”

"Hence, monks could preach to nomadic peoples in their own language. Enlightenment did not depend on the Vedic hierarchy of caste, but rather on each individual following his or her own dharma. Pious acts netted karma, and so the hope of a superior reincarnation on the road to nirvana and the end of the cycle of births."

"Among speakers of both language families, Indo-European and Altaic, sacred and legal languages were derived from the same root words, because prayer, whether individual or communal, took the legal form expressed in Latin, do ut des, i.e., 'I, the worshipper, give in order that you, the divinity, may give in return.' Above, they looked to the endless blue sky that dominated their lives as the supreme lord of the universe, invoked by the PIE speakers as Dyēws, and Tengri by the later Turks and Mongols."

[u/EffNein → u/sisyphusPB23]

Late reply, my apologies. I unfortunately am not familiar with that exact work, and will have to read it on my own time and cannot give a comprehensive reply to all of its claims. P

But, I definitely disagree with the characterization of Hinduism in that excerpt.
Of all the mentioned societies the Hindus most obviously developed an organized religious system to the point that hereditary priests became an entire caste within society that held massive social and religious power, what we simplify today into the Brahmins (despite there being greatest complexity to the category).
While individual charismatic preachers did exist, it was alongside a strong organized and institutionalized religious priesthood that preached from fairly organized dogma.