It is named after the Dnieper river islet of today's Serednii Stih (Ukrainian: Середній Стіг; Russian: Средний Стог, romanized: Sredny Stog), Ukraine, where it was first located.

[3] In its three largest cemeteries, Oleksandriia (39 individuals), Igren (17) and Deriivka II (14), evidence of burial in flat graves (ground level pits) has been found.

[13][14][15] Other studies have suggested that the Indo-European language family may have originated not in Eastern Europe, but among West Asian populations south of the Caucasus.

They also argue that this new data contradicts a possible earlier origin of Archaic-PIE among agricultural societies South of the Caucasus, rather "this may support a scenario of linguistic continuity of local non-mobile herders in the Lower Dnieper region and their genetic persistence after their integration into the successive and expansive Yamnaya horizon".

Furthermore the authors mention that this scenario can explain the difference in paternal haplogroup frequency between the Yamnaya and Corded Ware cultures, while both sharing similar autosomal DNA ancestry.

[3][20] Lazaridis et al. (2024) identified the 'Dnipro' Eneolithic genetic cline, involving populations with both Caucasus Neolithic and Lower Volga ancestry.

[20] Mathieson et al. (2018) included a genetic analysis of a male buried at Olexandria (Ukraine) and dated to 4153-3970 calBC,[21] ascribed to the Sredny Stog culture.

[22] Matilla et al. (2023) presented whole-genome analysis of a Sredny Stog individual, dated to 4320-4052 calBC, from the Deriivka II archaeological site in the Middle Dnieper Valley.

Another Eneolithic individual (4049-3945 calBC) carrying steppe ancestry, potentially from a Sredny Stog population, was identified at the Trypillian settlement of Kolomyitsiv Yar Tract (KYT) near Obykhiv in central Ukraine.

The authors suggested that genetic ancestry of the KYT individual was plausibly derived from a proto-Yamnaya population, with admixture from Iron Gates Mesolithic.

The results suggest, as a possible yet highly simplified scenario, that the Yamnaya emerged through mixing between EHG and WHG males, and EEF and CHG females.

[27] Another hypothesis about the origin of the Indo-European (IE) languages links them with the Eneolithic circum-Pontic trade network and suggests the emergence of the ancestral IE tongue in the North Pontic steppe.