Sunday, March 25, 2018
Central Asia as the PIE urheimat? Forget it
Right or wrong, the main contenders for the title of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) homeland, or urheimat, are Eastern Europe, Anatolia and Transcaucasia, in that order. Central Asia, is, at best, one of the also-rans in this tussle, much like India and the Arctic Circle.
However, if you've been following the discussions on the topic in the comments at this blog over the last couple of years, you might be excused for thinking that Central Asia was in fact a natural choice for the PIE homeland, and thanks to new insights from ancient DNA, on the cusp of being proven to be the only choice.
Well, it's already been a very busy year for insights from ancient DNA, including in regards to Central Asia.
For instance, back in February a paper in Science by Gaunitz et al. revealed that the Botai people of Eneolithic Central Asia kept a breed of horse that was ancestral to the Przewalski's horse (see here). This is potentially a crucial fact in the PIE homeland debate, because the horse is the most important animal in early Indo-European religion. However, the Przewalski's horse is a significantly different clade of horse from the modern domestic horse. Thus, even if the Botai people were the first humans to domesticate the horse, then so what, because they didn't domesticate the right type of horse.
It remains to be seen who domesticated the right type of horse, and apparently there's a least one major ancient DNA paper on the way that will try to solve this problem. But we already know that the Middle Bronze Age Sintashta people - who lived on the border between Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Western Siberia - did keep the right type of horse, and it was also phylogenetically somewhat more basal, and thus ancestral, to most modern-day horse breeds.
Interestingly, by far the most basal horse genome within the domestic horse clade is Duk2, from an Early Bronze Age archaeological site near the city of Dunaujvaros in Hungary. But it's not certain who this horse belonged to exactly or where it really came from, because the site in question was probably a major trading post, where livestock and crops were exchanged for bronze articles. In other words, Duk2 may have been imported from somewhere nearby or afar. My bet is that it came from the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Let's wait and see.
Moreover, earlier this week the New York Times ran a feature on the work that David Reich and his colleagues at Broad MIT/Harvard are doing with ancient DNA. The article included an image of Reich standing in front of a whiteboard, and this whiteboard just happened to have on it a migration and mixture model based on ancient human DNA for Central Asia focusing on the period 2200-1500 BCE (scroll down the page here).
I've already analyzed this model in as much detail as I could in an earlier blog entry (see here). However, in the context of this blog entry, it's important to note that the model clearly shows major population movements from Europe and West Asia into Central Asia, rather than the other way around (ie. all of the really big arrows are pointing east). The paper with the final version of this model is apparently coming soon, and after it does come, we'll probably be having our last ever discussion here about Central Asia as a potential PIE homeland. I can't wait.
Update 01/04/2018: The preprint of the paper on ancient Central Asia that I mentioned above is now available at bioRxiv. See here.
Update 03/04/2019: In a surprising twist, Duk2 has significant ancestry from a native Iberian lineage that didn't contribute any direct ancestry to modern domesticates (see here).
See also...
Of horses and men
The mystery of the Sintashta people
Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 590 Newer› Newest»@Santosh
Thanks for the review of Dravidian theories, interesting stuff.
ryukendo said:
"For example the point that "fish" and "star" were homophones in proto-Dravidian and so the prominence of the "fish" glyph might be a representation of God names as parts of personal names (super common in Mesopotamia as well), or the prominence of the squirrel, the word ("pillai", Indians should be familiar with this word, super common) for which also means "child" in proto-Dravidian, explaining the prominence of "squirrel" glyphs--otherwise a weird animal to have so prominent in your culture. Or the prominence of female warlike deities and a connection to the Buffalo (which we see shadows of in the Rigveda, because Indra, at multiple points, eats buffaloes and its specifically buffaloes before a battle that give him the strength to fight, but there is specifically no mention of buffalo sacrifice anywhere, to Indra or to anyone, making him suspect the brahmins probably weren't too happy with the vedic warrior's adoption of native traditions and wanted to suppress it)."
I wouldn't comment and I have to read what Parpola says exactly and I won't comment on the language IVC people spoke, although, I don't believe it was Dravidian.
A 'squirrel' can be important in a culture if, for example, it... helps them gather gold.
See what Herodotus had written about the "gold-digging 'ants'" and how the French ethnologist Michel Peissel had interpreted what has been written.
[From Wikipedia (which is good enough to start): "The French ethnologist had said that the Himalayan marmot on the Deosai Plateau in Gilgit–Baltistan province of Pakistan, may have been what Herodotus called giant "ants". Much like the province that Herodotus describes, the ground of the Deosai Plateau is rich in gold dust. Peissel interviewed the Minaro tribal people who live in the Deosai Plateau, and they have confirmed that they have, for generations, collected the gold dust that the marmots bring to the surface when digging burrows.]
Razib Khan wrote for ‘National Review” about Reich’s book:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/book-review-david-reich-human-genes-reveal-history/
@Mr. Kulkarni
I don’t know about Rig veda. I just knows that veda can be called “ a pyramid of mind”
So Can I ask two questions:
1.I think a horse description in “Khajuraho tepmple” seems to be steppe horse. I think they made it to be based upon hinduism, don’t they?
2. I think the hinduism was created fully based upon the Rigveda. Problem is hindu culture is so and so similar to mayan culture, even yoga. So tons of indian bloggers asks why two cultures have a great similarity, even writing books. Does it mean that the Rig veda had mayan philosophy also? I think the mayan philosophy or idea or software was still alive in altai after mayan's ancetors left.
A mandala based upon Rigveda is exactly a blue-print of mayan pyramid, I think
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Manjuvajramandala_con_43_divinit%C3%A0_-_Unknown_-_Google_Cultural_Institute.jpg
@Mr. Kulkarni
"1.The reference of Harahvaiti itself is anachronistic. It is found only in the Vendidad, which is dated to a very later time scale, c. 500 BC (Ref. Boyce), which is much later than the Rigveda."
Everything is incorrect here. The Vendidad is a Parthian-Sassanid text and the Harahvaiti is mentioned in the oldest Yasht, and possibly the oldest younger Avestan text, the Zamyad Yasht (the first part). It's location is quite clear, it is in Sistan. It's description is also the same as the Sarasvati both flowing from a mountain into a lake/sea.
"3. If you remove all bias and just focus on evidence - Rig Veda glorifies 2 rivers the most - Sindhu & Saraswati, & guess what - maximum Harappan settlements have been found along those rivers (Indus and Ghaggar paleochannel)."
While mandala 10 clearly describes the Indus river, mandala 2 does not. The Ghaggar is not a perennial river nor does it go through mountains. On the other hand, Helmand/Arghandab is a perennial river and it goes through the mountains and flows through a lake, so both the descriptions of the Avesta and the RV fits with it.
Money quote from the book, according to Razib, "the massive mixture events that occurred in the recent past to give rise to Europeans and South Asians, to name just two groups, were likely “male mediated.” That’s another way of saying that men on the move took local women as brides or concubines. Dave will be happy :-).
@vara
I will take your comment at face value. Still helmand is a forced fit.
"Still helmand is a forced fit."
I do not see how. Arachosia has always been associated with India up to the 8-9th centuries. Early Rigvedas mentions the Kubha River which is now the Kabul river and that was part of Hindustan during the Sassanid Empire. In fact Eastern Afghanistan is the most probable location for the early Rigvedas.
The kabul river is a part of the Indus system, joining the latter in what is now NW pakistan, on the other hand the helmand is purely in afghan river. Arachosia wasn't considered Indian by most in the first millenium. The westernmost linguistic and cultural boundaries of India were at the most Nangarhar and laghman. The Rigveda was composed in the punjab and its surroundings, and all other rivers mentioned by it can be located to the east of afghanistan (except the sarayu who's identity is controversial)
@Vara
The scholarly consensus on Saraswati is it's identification with the Ghaggar Hakra. There is a brilliant book by M Danino, delving into each and every aspect of this whole issue. https://www.amazon.com/Lost-River-Sarasvati-Michel-Danino/dp/0143068644
Moreover, the Avestan composers talks about a place called "Haptahǝndu" as a place that their ancestors came from. Quoting from Kazanas below:
http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/pdf/en/indology/Vedic_and_Avestan.pdf
"...in the RV we find references only to the Seven Rivers saptá síndhavaḥ (and different oblique cases of the plural). Now (e6) Avestan has the name Haptahǝndu as a place, like Airyana Vaējah, Raŋhā, Haetumant, etc, from which the Iranians had passed before settling down in eastern Iran, then spreading west and north. But what is this name? Yes, hapta- is the numeral ‘seven’ but what of hǝndhu? It is a fairly obvious Avestan correspondence to the Sanskrit síndhu.Now hǝndu is an isolated occurrence. The stem does not otherwise exist in Avestan. Hindu appears in Old Persian indicating the Indian province under the Achaemenids, and that is all. The interpretation ‘seven rivers’ comes from the Sanskrit
collocation. But the Avestan for river is usually θraotah- (=S srotas) and raodah-.In Sanskrit síndhu ‘river, sea’ comes either from √syand ‘flowing’ or from √sidh ‘reaching, succeeding’, both of which generate several derivatives, while síndhu itself appears in compounds like sindhuja, sindhupati ‘riverborn, riverlord’ etc, and has cognates like saindhava ‘marine, salt, horse’ etc.Surely nobody would be so foolhardy as to suggest that the IAs took this otherwise unattested stem from Iranian and used it so commonly and productively.Schmitt certainly makes no such suggestion. But how are we to resolve this situation? Clearly, the Avestan and Vedic names are connected. Since the Vedic name cannot reasonably be said to come from the Avestan, then the Avestan must come from the Vedic. Moreover, the Vedic collocation saptá síndhu- does not occur at all in the very early Books of the RV (i.e. 3, 6, 7) but once only in Bk2 (12.3,12) and Bk4 (28.1), then twice in Bk1 (32.12; 35.8), Bk8 (54.4; 69.12) and Bk10 (43.3; 67.12) and once in Bk9 (66.6). Now in the earliest Maṇḍalas 3,6,7 (as well as later ones) we find collocations like saptá srótas-, srávat-, yahvī- or nadí- but not síndhu-. This then suggests that the
Iranians left the Saptasindhu only after the collocation saptá síndhu- had been established by the late Maṇḍalas."
How do you explain this?
@Ryu: About turkey, I've seen data that indicate that the replacement was quite substantial, ~25-30% in the best analyses using local Greeks.
That actually seems possible if the incoming group was substantially similar to West Asian people (e.g. like West Asian equivalents of the Serbian "Gepid"). I raised this with Razib Khan before and whether this possibility challenged what I'd see as a classic elite dominance language shift picture and he seemed fairly convinced the groups moving into Anatolia would have been much more (I'm paraphrasing him a bit here) "Turkic". Reasons I don't quite remember but focused on certain historical details and extant groups today that I think he believed made anything otherwise implausible. So I don't know where I stand on it.
Expanding on what I'd see as the idealized / classic elite dominance language shifts is in terms of like, where an incoming group pretty much takes all the top 5% social elite slots and isn't really present otherwise in the population in the lower strata as farmers, peasants, herdsmen, artisans and so on and so forth. Y'know, to be crude, the kind of in extremis caricature and paraody of; "Conan the Cimmerian turns up, and he's just *so* awesome a warrior (those mighty thews!) that he takes his rightful place as king and everyone emulates his culture and invents for themselves a parallel to his noble genealogy".
Whereas something like, actually there's a mass migration of 25-30% in, and although that's still a minority, the incoming group is *only* outnumbered 3:1 and probably has a higher level of youth and probably military mobilization, and many of them still have to live as farmers, hunters, herders and so on once they arrive - I guess something I don't tend to see under that term. If that's what we could actually call an elite dominance language shift, it's more plausible.
(Not that you don't get "barbarian dynasties" at times; but I'm a skeptic specifically that they result in language shift rather than kind of dynamics that hit the Yuan and Mongols where the incoming group adopts much local language and culture.)
For example, I wouldn't be surprised if much of NW and NE Europe was Indo-europeanised within a couple of generations.... really doubt this for Greece, the Balkans, or the North India plain, where the social groups, even after assimilation (and they were not always assimilated) may have remained distinct for a time, much like the Anglo-Saxon vs Briton distinction in Britain actually
Yeah, I certainly think this is quite imaginable, though if we model on the Anglo-Saxon vs British case, I think there we're still only really looking over, I would guess at most, what, 6-10 generations or so? Or roughly 200-300 years at most it seems. So if that is parallel, for SE Europe, maybe there's a possibly we'll see these interesting sites that are like the Lombards graves that manage to catch things "in the act", but I'm not sure that very long term structure a la India will be present. It's a bit questionable and to a low extent at best in the Mycenaean sites so for, for'ex.
(Really citing the Lombard graves as an example of ancestry structure that looks to be present in a group that migrated together and was in a sense possibly a community, rather than necessarily an exact parallelism).
@Jijnasu
"Arachosia wasn't considered Indian by most in the first millenium"
Parthians called it White India as did many other Iranians.
"In the western frontier mountains of India there live
various tribes of the Afghans, and extend up to the
neighbourhood of the Sindh Valley" - Tarikh Al-Hind clearly about the Suleiman Mountains
"The Zunbils were linked with the Kabul-Shahs of the Turk Shahi dynasty; the whole river valley was at this time culturally and religiously an outpost of the Indian world, as of course it had been in the earlier centuries during the heyday of the Buddhist Gandhara civilization" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zunbils
This won't go anywhere but the Hindu Kush and Arachosia was associated with India.
@Sanuj
It's not exactly a mystery why the Avesta would use an Indo-Aryan form for a place inhabited by Indo-Aryans. But what's the basis for saying that the ancestors of the Iranians came from Saptasindhu?
@Vara
“I do not see how. Arachosia has always been associated with India up to the 8-9th centuries. Early Rigvedas mentions the Kubha River which is now the Kabul river and that was part of Hindustan during the Sassanid Empire. In fact Eastern Afghanistan is the most probable location for the early Rigvedas.”
So, where do you think the early Rigvedaian without EEF came from, who produced hindu culture,like mayan culture, later in India.
The brachy skull Okunevo petroglyphs were found near swat valley. I think Okunevo third eye seems to be connected to modern indian. I think the gracilized steppe people would not produce brachy pamir skull to be found in swat valley.
@Sanuj
No offence but this is absolutely ridiculous. Read some more about the Vendidad as It was a Parthian-Sassanid text, more agree on it being Parthian but w/e. All the 16 land mentioned were not controlled by the Parthians but mostly ruled over by Kushans and the lands in the west by Arascid Armenians. The fact that it mentions Airyanem Vaeja, which has it's origins in Media Atorpatene should tell you that. Also, the Vendidad makes a clear distinction between Haraxvaiti(10) and Hapta Hindu(15).
@capra internetensis
Because the composers of the Avestan claim it in it as one of their ancestral location, that's what i mentioned in my earlier post!
@ vara
My earlier comment was to your point 1 which was the only one i could read on mobile. Now to point no 2:
"While mandala 10 clearly describes the Indus river, mandala 2 does not. The Ghaggar is not a perennial river nor does it go through mountains. On the other hand, Helmand/Arghandab is a perennial river and it goes through the mountains and flows through a lake, so both the descriptions of the Avesta and the RV fits with it."
Ghaggar was once a perennial river and flowed through the mountains ie glacial river sutlej flowed into Ghaggar paleochannel. 'Samudra' = lake is false, samudra clearly means 'confluence of waters/large body of water" the same definition is used today.
Mandala 6,7 (one of oldest Mandalas ) mention saraswati, but not Sindhu. Later Mandalas mention Saptasindhu and Ganga Yamuna as well. Which could mean that as Saraswati dried out, folks moved both west and east. Evidence in favour is that Ghaggar sites are the oldest of all (eg. Bhirrana, Rakhigarhi 7000BCE). ALso Harahvaiti is clearly derived from the word Saraswati, not the other way round. Same with Haptahendu.
The parsimonious model is to assume that the same Saraswati is mentioned as drying up in Mahabharata, rather than to force fit Helmand.
My claim is that earliest parts of rigveda are much older and corresponding to the oldest settlements found.
@Mr. Kulkarni
Unless Indo-Aryans had time machines there is no way the Rigveda was composed before humans made bronze or wheels. You have to find archaeological evidence that metallurgy and carts existed in 7000BCE India in order to support your theory.
And no one claimed that Saraswati is derived from Harahvaiti, Harahvaiti/Saraswati was most likely an Indo-Iranian river before the split. The Mahabharata, a book that mentions Classical Era Parthians and Scythians, is as useless as the Vendidad in determining the location of the Indo-Aryans.
PS. In case you didn't know large lakes are considered a large body of water, and the Sistani lakes have shrunk considerably. Also, see the Aral Sea/Lake.
@Sanuj
I know you said it, I was asking for the source. :) What in the Avesta says that the ancestors of Iranians came from the 16 good lands?
@Mr. Kulkarni
Well if books 6 and 7 don't mention the name Sindhu, but do mention a large powerful river that flows out of the mountains to the sea, surely most parsimonious conclusion is that for the authors of those hymns Sarasvati was the name of Sindhu? ;)
I actually think Indians should take more pride in their Dravidian and indegenous aspects of their culture. For example, if you look at Indian martial and sociopolitical achievement, not a single large indegenously-ruled Empire in India emerged on the NW or N side of the Indian subcontinent (the most Aryan part), all of them emerged on the far Eastern side of the Gangetic plains (Guptas, Palas, Shungas, Maghada and Mauryas) and the South of India (Vijayanagar, Satavahanas, Marathas) and the most cohesive and "modern" administrations and armies, representing the climax of Indian political development and the most vigorous states that could even vigorously resist Europeans, were developed in South India (Chikka of Mysore). The Kakatiyas of Telangana are also stellar in terms of political innovation and centralisation they achieved, which surpassed previous polities in India.
South Indians also had among the greatest martial traditions in India (contradicting the quite frankly ethnocentric claims of many NW Indians and N Indians about "Aryanness" "warriorness" "big size" or whatever), their armies were smaller but much more cohesive and efficient and they strongly and effectively resisted the Muslim invasions for many centuries, in contrast to the peoples of North India who were never able to organise themselves effectively and were practically supine before the invaders.
In world historical terms the greatest contributions of Indian philosophy, art and science were also of non-Vedic and even of anti-Vedic origin. For example the most influential of all Indian philosophers in the very long term is probably Nagarjuna, who through his concept of Prajnaparamita in the Madhyamika buddhist school implicitly influenced huge numbers of people, e.g. David Hume through a circuituous route through certain Franciscan monks who Hume stayed with in France who themselves lived in Tibet for a number of decades and therefore internalised Mahayana Buddhism. This led Hume to scrutinise the nature of thought, sentiment and perception, and his philosophical achievements kickstarted many aspects of the enlightenment. This concept (prajnaparamita), along with meditation, is also proving immensely influential among techies in the Bay Area, and I have no doubt that the integration of this idea implictitly among Westerners will dramatically perturb the evolution of civilisation and philosophy in the West. Nagarjuna was a South Indian, and, in conformity with the nastika and non-Vedic origin of his ideas, legends tell us that he is supposed to have received them from Nagas (snake-spirits) among the forests and rivers.
^^ cont'd The other thing that his ideas influenced is modern cognitive behavioural therapy, which is basically secularized Mahayana Buddhism with a secular implementation of Prajnaparamita, the creators of this treatment paradigm themselves admit their debt to Buddhist thought. The last set of people Nagarjuna influenced are the postmodernist French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan and their followers, they managed to con everyone with their supposedly new "insights" which really are just a rephrasing of Buddhist philosophy after the Mahayana second turning. The structure of Deleuze's philosophy is especially influenced by Buddhism, super obvious in the structure of his thought.
Likewise Tantrism too, which emerged among interactions between low caste and tribal women and antinomian sages practicing extreme rites of various kinds ("dakshini").
The influence of South Indians in the introduction of non-Vedic elements that characterise the Puranas and modern Bhakti Hinduism simply cannot be underestimated. Their achievements in art and intellect, especially mathematics, also shine, basically all of the Indian mathematicians, whether ancient or modern, came from East India or the Deccan and southwards. The Indic influences in Southeast Asia are also mediated through a South and East Indian idiom, just look at the Balinese Ramayana dances and their aesthetic qualities and many Southeast Asian words for India and Indians (c.f. Malay keling, 'Indian person').
I think the indigenous aspects of Indian civilisation are the place from which a lot of the creative impulses derived, and in comparison the Vedic layer with its very conservative focus looks kinda stale and flat. If anything it probably held back the evolving social and cultural expressions of the peoples of India over the very long term.
^^ Dakini, not Dakshini, typo.
That's exactly the kind of statement that Indians dislike. In India there is no distinct 'dravidian' or 'indo-aryan' culture. Local mythology often draws heavily from the 'Indo-Aryan' epics even while it adds new stories unknown to the authors of the originals that localize them. Also the to use the word indigenous here is absurd.
@ryukendo kendow
Please stop telling folks what to be proud of and what not to be proud of. We are proud of all our heritage, and there is nothing indigenous - or non-indigenous about it. Even if i blindly accept that the Indo-European language is an import, the Vedic tradition is 4000 year old in India, that would still make it the oldest continuously surviving civilization in the world, while ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and infact Europe too did not retain the old aspects of their culture and fell to the vagaries of time, so stop preaching, because you would not state the same to the Italians or Greeks or whosoever else that their heritage is "Non-Indigenous".
Now, coming to the resistance and empires in the North, i suppose you are not that well acquainted with history. Bappa Rawal played a crucial role in the native war against the Ummayads. He united the smaller states of Jaisalmer and Ajmer and evicted the Arabs from Mewar. His heroics in the battles against the Arabs made him a legendary figure in Rajasthan.The invading armies could not move beyond Sindh for 500 years until 1192 AD.
Nagabhata I, founder of the Gurjara-Pratiharas repulsed an Arab invasion. Nagabhata utterly defeated the Ummayad Caliphate when it tried to invade Ujjain.
Lalitaditya Muktapida, the greatest ruler of the Karkota dynasty of Kashmir defeated the mighty Arab Ummayad army that was sent by the governor of Sindh - Junaid, when it invaded Punjab.
The Hindu Shahis of Kabul (Anandpal, Jayapal, Tirlochanpal etc) bravely resisted the Ghaznavid forces for centuries. They fell to the Ghaznavids eventually after fighting valiantly and were expelled to Kashmir after losing control over Gandhara and Punjab.
The Udaipur Prashasti claims that Bhoja's armies defeated the Turushkas (Ghaznavids). The Muslim historian Firishta claimed that in 1043 CE, a Hindu confederacy expelled the Ghaznavids from from Hansi, Thanesar and Nagarkot. Bhoja was part of this mighty alliance.
Coming to why the bigger empires were located in Gangetic plains, it was simply because they always had the higher numbers, the Gangetic plains are the most populated area of India even today, and in ancient times - numbers did matter.
Aryabhata, the most well known of ancient mathematicians was born in Patna, Bihar. Surya Siddhanta, one of the primary texts of ancient Indian mathematics had a Vedic influence. Coming to Buddhism, it is a Dharmic tradition which derives from the philosophical thought of the Vedas, after all, Buddha himself was a "Indo-Aryan" prince - if you can call him that, brought up with Vedic learning, buddhist thought was not born in a vacuum, but derived a great part from vedic philosophy.
I am not even sure where you are going with this indigenous/non-indigenous thing, when you talk of Balinese Ramayana - Ramayana an Indo-Aryan epic, spread throughout SE Asia, yes, possibly through south India-so what? The earliest levels of Tamil literature is not free of Vedic influences, so i am not sure how you are drawing the distinction.
The grand conclusions that you are drawing "If anything it probably held back the evolving social and cultural expressions of the peoples of India over the very long term." are not based on any logic.
@ Jijnasu
Well I think one way to think about this is how Europeans conceive of their civilisation, they have always admitted that it was a hybrid civilisation with Abrahamic and Hellenistic-Roman influences emanating from the Mediterranean plus Germanic elements, with only the last "native" in any sense to Northern Europe especially. Nothing wrong in admitting that.
The rule of law and the prominence of assemblies and elective kingships in European political culture after the fall of Rome derives at least partly from the "native" side, along with names like "Roger, Rodriguez, William, Guillaume" etc. and the scholastic culture, nuclear families and codification of law from the "Mediterranean" side, for example, with names like "Peter, Paul, Stephen, Cornelius". Its possible and often illuminating to make these types of connections.
@ Sanuj
Aryabhata is actually from Asmaka, in the Deccan, even though he is born in Patna (and even Patna is far to the East on the Gangetic plain, close to Bengal). Fact of the matter is, the prominence of South India in producing mathematicians is so extreme and exceptional that it often comes in for comment in many places. Basically all the big names are from the South.
For the Muslim conquest thing, I am talking about a general pattern, where the South was better able to resist than the North, with successful revolts and remergence of Hindu rule, a pattern apparent after the Ghurids. Probably has to do with the lower number of caste divisions in the South in general.
For the population thing, note that China, for example, had the exact opposite pattern where expansive Chinese dynasties always tended to emerge in the arid, montaneous and low-density Northwest of China, near the bend of the Yellow river; the more populous parts of China almost never produced unifying dynasties. India has the opposite pattern.
I understand if some people get frustrated, maybe I'm not expressing myself in the most respecful manner, but I've stated what I think is a valid perspective people can have and its just my own two cents.
@ryukendow
How is Germanic culture native to Northern Europe, if Indo-Aryan culture isn't native to India? Also telling Indians to be proud of indigenous cultures is as vague as saying europeans need to give more importance to the culture of neolithic farmers. We owe our culture to the assimilation of a large number of influences, but none of these exist independently anymore.
@capra internetensis
The Avesta is not explicitly talking of a migration, but the very fact that Ahura Mazda is creating the 16 lands means that his people(Iranians) were living in those lands - and many scholars interpret it as the ancestral lands of Iraninas. Also, by Kazanas' analysis above, HaptaHendu cannot possibly be the source of Sanskrit Sapta Sindhu, as the stem Hendu does not repeat in the Avesta, it is an isolated occurrence, and points to the Avesta(composers) learning it during the later stages of RV Mandala composition - when the RV rishis started using Sapta Sindhu.
@Ryu,
we don't need your lecture. You don't enough to differentiate between dravidian and non dravidian and its relevance as to who were the first to resist/welcome colonizers.
It was a mixed bag. Ever heard of Birsa? There is no simplistic story for you to preach for anyones benefit and no western style stereotypes to fit.
Lol maybe I stepped on a hornet's nest.
One of the more impt debates recently in European historiography among historians sponsored by the European Union is the question of "how do we treat the fall or the Roman Empire and the migration period?" because Northern and Southern Europeans are just gonna think abt this differently. In this case the narrative really matters for history as community-building. Think abt it, wouldn't this kind of question face Indians too?
I'm just trying to show its possible to have a perspective that is the complete opposite of the usual, i.e. the opposite of that among many Hindu nationalists who sometimes, in their more unguarded moments, promote Sanskritic culture and tick some people off. You can play with the ideas, take the complete opposite perspective, and maybe reach a more nuanced way of seeing things. I think its interesting. Maybe I pushed the narrative a bit too hard in the opposite direction.
Its alright, not gonna post on this topic anymore, you do you.
@ryukendow
The thing is the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian divide was never visible to Indian's in pre-colonial times. Indo-Aryan High culture was too closely intertwined with local traditions. The idea that Indians should be proud of 'indigenous' culture produced a whole school of historiography that converted mythological stories into actual incidents of racial warfare. This led to absurd ideas becoming popular amongst the acdemia such as the goddess Durga (who clearly has deep links with the tribals of central India) into an Aryan Assassin who murdered a native king mahishasura (the buffalo demon), offensive to many Indians This is the reason Indians deslike AIT. (I myself am a South Indian BTW.
Chapter 6 of the book is about India:
https://s31.postimg.org/oittp1aln/screenshot_349.png
Among populations which formed India is 6b:
https://s31.postimg.org/sf75kz5uz/screenshot_348.png
RK,
"The last set of people Nagarjuna influenced are the postmodernist French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan and their followers, they managed to con everyone with their supposedly new "insights" which really are just a rephrasing of Buddhist philosophy after the Mahayana second turning. The structure of Deleuze's philosophy is especially influenced by Buddhism, super obvious in the structure of his thought."
I've always been an admirer of your erudition; you always articulate your arguments/ideas in such a crisp manner, and with such concision.
Furthermore, I wholeheartedly agree with your ruminations on the intellectual contributions made by Dravidian-speaking southern Indians. When it comes to the collective human conversation, their presence has been felt.
With all that being duly noted, I must say this as well:
When you claim that Deleuze's thought is merely a rehashing of Buddhist philosophy, I must call bullshit. That's on a level above and beyond wrong...
Lol
EastPole,
Fascinating that ASI is no longer just ENA.
Rather, a mix between Iran_N and "indigenous Indian hunter-gatherers".
Chapter 5, ‘The making of modern Europe’ is also interesting:
https://s31.postimg.org/i7om8gwgr/screenshot_350.png
I hope the Reich team gives some convincing arguments to prove steppe migration into South Asia.
So they are apparently arguing that the ANI in South Asia formed with the mixing of steppe pastoralists & Iran Neolithic groups after 4000 YBP. i.e. after the Harappan Mature phase.
In other words, Harappans were Iran Neolithic-like. Really ? Based on what ? I hope they show some actual aDNA from the Harappan period to prove that the Harappans were indeed like Iran Neolithic with no extra EHG/ANE component.
Reich is making bold claims but I hope he has good evidence to support it. Or else he will be made to look ridiculous. You cannot create a narrative first and then try to force fit the data into the narrative, no matter how clumsy the outcome.
For some reason, the Google Books preview I'm seeing is almost the entire chapter on South Asia. I don't know how Google Books works but I'm not sure if different viewers get to see different previews.
@Jaydeep
The Reich Lab sequenced or helped to sequence Harappan genomes. I knew this months ago, and it was confirmed by their Indian collaborators in the media.
@Salden
Where do you find those shots from Reich's book?
https://www.amazon.com/Who-Are-How-Got-Here/dp/110187032X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522130039&sr=1-1&keywords=David+Reich
click ‘look inside’
@Jaydeep
The conclusion of the south Asia chapter says Harappans may have been either Dravidian speaking Iran farmers, Dravidian speaking ASI (Iran farmers + ancient Indian HG), or Indo-European speaking ANI (Iran farmer + Steppe). Just finished reading the South Asia chapter.
Ehehe...
So in the book Reich left the identity of the Harappans ultimately open.
@The conclusion of the south Asia chapter says Harappans may have been either Dravidian speaking Iran farmers, Dravidian speaking ASI (Iran farmers + ancient Indian HG), or Indo-European speaking ANI (Iran farmer + Steppe). Just finished reading the South Asia chapter.
why this harping on language ? why not leave at adna? has he read the script or found a bilingual?
I will add another: a subset were Iran neo + ASI indoeuropran speakers without EHG. What stops one from correlating IE with Iran Neo?
So he hasn't dropped that ASI ANI terminology. This is not going to be OK for modelling Indian populations in the future. It should IHG (Indian Hunter Gatherer), EIF (Early Iranian Farmer), IC (Iran Chalcolithic, which is curiously absent) and Steppe_EMBA.
@postneo
I will add another: a subset were Iran neo + ASI indoeuropran speakers without EHG. What stops one from correlating IE with Iran Neo?
If the Indian cline is made up of varying levels of EHG, Iran_N and ASI, and only Dravidian speakers model strongly as Iran_N/ASI, then which Indo-European group that migrated to India was Iran_N only, and then how did EHG get into basically all of the Indo-Aryan groups?
@Jaydeep This ASI-ANI stuff is going to pose a real problem for modelling Indian populations. If modern Indians are a mix of ASI+ANI, why even think too such separate groups even existed. Why not just model Indians as indigenous HGs + farmers + pastoralists like they did in Europe.
I know the relevant samples aren't there yet, but this was a wrong step. Keeping those labels even when there is no evidence two separate ANI, ASI populations existed anywhere in India at any time
Also, is anyone a tad disappointed at the lack of any new info from the book?
Quoting from the book:
"The ASI were also mixed, a fusion of a population descended from early farmers expanding out of Iran (around 25 per cent of their ancestry) and previously established local hunter gatherers of South Asia (around 75 per cent of their ancestry). So the ASI were not likely to have been the previously established hunter-gatherer population of India, and instead may have been the people responsible for spreading Near Eastern agriculture across South Asia. Based on the high correlation of ASI ancestry to Dravidian languages, it seems likely that the formation of the ASI was a process that spread Dravidian languages as well."
velvetgunther I don't see why ASI couldn't have got a whiff of steppe ancestry as well unless they expanded south much before the end of the IVC (2000 BC). Otherwise whence comes the not-so-negligible steppe admixture in some South Indian tribal groups? Brahmins who migrated to South India are very unlikely to have mixed with tribal populations so they can't get it from there.
What is called ASI and ANI in the book is very probably HG+Farmer+Steppe in different proportions like we have known all along.
@velvetgunther
Kinda looks like the scientists knew about Reich's Paniya-like "ASI" by the time this graphic came out:
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cLOANsm3nb4/V_meb5xfGII/AAAAAAAAE-U/TLcFYlZDwP0y01aWZTgsF3DhtGFyaE2MgCLcB/s712/Krause_IE_map.png
@Seinundzeit: Rather, a mix between Iran_N and "indigenous Indian hunter-gatherers".
Anyone who's read the book so far know *how* they knew this? That is, did have they "have" samples for "indigenous Indian hunter-gatherers" who were pre-ASI?
(In which case I guess "Why not call these ASI?" but I suppose that is to preserve Moorjani's terminology and specific ALDER derived admixture event.)
Also: "5b; Steppe Pastoralists: Iranian farmers + local hunter gatherers ... 5d; Aegean Bronze Age - Iranian farmers + European farmers".
Hmmm... I assume that removing the CHG is for simplification, unless they've found a result that goes against almost all the separate CHG dimension and drift data with Yamnaya, or they're rolling CHG into "local hunter gatherers". Is Aegean Bronze Age explained by "really we're just talking about Minoans here" or something more substantial.
Velvetgunther,
Thank you.
Chetan,
Indeed, I think it is quite unwieldy to still stick to the ANI - ASI binary. Let the paper come out, we shall know why they're still sticking to it.
David,
So Reich is leaving open the possibility that the Harappans were already ANI. If he already knows what the Harappans were like, why is he leaving open the possibilities ?
Could it be that the Harappans were already ANI ?
He doesn't seem to have made some progress about Steppe ethnogenesis:
"From seven thousand until five thousand years ago, we observed a steady influx into the steppe of a population whose ancestors traced their origin to the south— as it bore genetic affinity to ancient and present-day people of Armenia and Iran —eventually crystallizing in the Yamnaya, who were about a one-to-one ratio of ancestry from these two sources.22 A good guess is that the migration proceeded
via the Caucasus isthmus between the Black and Caspian seas."
A one to one admixing is unlikely.
This was so predictable:
https://s6.postimg.org/mk9jvg8lr/India_Model.png
https://s6.postimg.org/yfnz6vgcx/India_Model_Ami.png
Hmm looks like they have aDNA from the Caucasus and C Asia to make that claim.
The image Shaikorth brought places the 25% Iran_N 75% ASI pie in the Indus, so does this refer to Harrappa, ASI or what?
@ Sein
I just disagree. The concept of difference and repetition central to much of Deleuze's ouvre is, if you read it carefully, not that different from the approach to the identity and existence of objects in Madhyamika.
Lol so it appears Paniya, Kurumba and co. (which is a bit problematic because these people do not speak languages from the basal levels of Dravidian but Tamil-Malayalam; but then, this may also reflect the fact that they decided to move out only after what is today mainstream Tamil society began to be Indo-Aryanised- in this scenario, we can imagine that Tamil-Malayalam is the culmination of the main body Dravidian speech and since Paniya, Kurumba, Irula, etc. speak Tamil-Malayalam and nearby languages, they are after all part of the main body for a long time before Tamil Indo-Aryanised.) were the original Dravidian speakers and the Velamas and co. were the folks with highly significant later Indo-Aryan admixture. This may support the hypothesis that rice agriculture in south India beginning from the mid Iron Age was borne out of significant migrations of people from the Indo-Aryan speaking north Indian plain. It is strange how thoroughly these Velamas, Vellalans, etc. got Dravidianised though. Practically none of them know if they have ever spoken Indo-Aryan languages though Velamas claim that they have come from Bengal.
@ ryukendow kendow
I never for a moment doubt your intentions but in my view, it's a bit naive to try to find Dravidian or Munda or older Indian influences on Indo-Aryan (and Indian) religion in its formative stages and later. I used to do this, not by reading scholarly Indological literature, where the claims made are often horribly contradictory, but by general non-scientific observation and a bit by linguistics. On the linguistics front, there are practically no traces of influence of original Dravidian or original Austroasiatic religion on mainstream Indian religion. Some say loan translations may have been involved but I never seem to find the equivalent source concept that is very much popular in these languages. Original Dravidian religion is such a mystery. There is a dearth of reconstructed terms for religion even in Proto-Dravidian. But at the same time, there are indications of it in Dravidian societies even today, gradually on the path to slow extinction. The most important aspect of original Dravidian religion I guess was Mother Goddess worship in the form of village deities- and absolute fear of it; contagious diseases, village boundaries, etc. are routinely personified as the Goddess and animal sacrifices offered (human sacrifices may have been involved in the older stages too- human sacrifices in Old Tamil society, Khonds, etc. are quite well-known). This can be etymologically known- though none of these can go back to Proto-Dravidian stage linguistically; they may very well be pre-Dravidian non-Dravidian. And coupled with this is the tendency to have priestesses for the village deity temples- who are married women typically drawn from what are dubbed "left-hand castes" in Tamil parlance, like potters, etc. While the former may be very common all over India, I don't know to what extent non-Dravidian societies have female priests in their village deity temples. That's it. This is virtually the only tradition that I could gather was of a remotely originally non-Indo-Aryan religion in south India.
My general observation is that surprisingly high percentage of the Indian religion derives from original Indo-Aryan religions. Even if these Indo-Aryan religious traditions were imported to various parts all over India and later exported back with relatively minor developments like the case of the Bhakti movement, they remain what they are- Indo-Aryan in origin. This is in fact one of the factors that makes me suspect if the Indo-Aryans were Indianised (by unknown cultural traditions- possibly Harappan and pre-Harappan and non-Harappan of northwest subcontinent whose linguistic affiliations we don't know at all) a long while more than currently considered and they might have been attached with the Indus valley of its heyday. Otherwise, it might mean that post-urban-Indus India just before the arrival of the Indo-Aryans was like a hell and so extremely full of misery.
@Ryu
"Hmm looks like they have aDNA from the Caucasus and C Asia to make that claim."
Probably nothing new from Caucasus or Iran. He is saying more or less the same thing as the conclusion in Lazaridis et al 2016.
And his chapter about Aegean Bronze Age seems in contradiction with Mathieson et al 2018.
Steppe admixture in Mycenaean seems quite real, so obviously not Iran farmer related.
@ Folker
Steppe admixture in Mycenaean seems quite real, so obviously not Iran farmer related.
Mycenaeans are here:
5e 3,500 ya - present
Present-day Europeans
Northern + Southern European Bronze Age populations
@ Anthro Survey
Yep, like the graphics. I envisage a similar thing
Now rest up. There'll be a lot to discuss for the south asia paper. :)
Matt,
He cites unpublished research from his own lab! So, there isn't much for us to sink our teeth.
My guess would be that perhaps the Iran_N-related signal in "ASI" is different from the Iran_N ancestry seen in "ANI", in terms of deep ancestral streams (less BEA-admixed, more ANE-related admixture, etc), and in terms of temporal depth/spatial origin (perhaps much older than the Iran_N-related stream in "ANI", and perhaps of South Central Asian/eastern Iranian plateau provenance).
I'm just spit-balling.
RK,
"The concept of difference and repetition central to much of Deleuze's ouvre is, if you read it carefully, not that different from the approach to the identity and existence of objects in Madhyamika."
Great minds often produce similar conceptual schemes. Broad similarity between distinct ideational systems does not necessitate plagiarism/deception/ripping off.
Anyway, the similarity isn't even there (the comparison is totally forced).
In the case of Deleuze, his philosophical work is (essentially) a sustained conversation with Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Bergson, developmental biology, chaos theory, thermodynamic physics, and certain tendencies within pure mathematics.
At the end of the day, the man felt no shame in describing his intellectual influences and interlocutors. I mean, much of his work is about other thinkers!
So, if he had drawn influence from Buddhist thought, we would be reading a book about it from his own pen.
There is a much deeper discussion to be had, but this isn't the venue for it...
@Folker
And his chapter about Aegean Bronze Age seems in contradiction with Mathieson et al 2018.
Steppe admixture in Mycenaean seems quite real, so obviously not Iran farmer related.
He is obviously referring to pre-IE Bronze Age Southern European (and Anatolian) societies such as Minoans and Hattians. IE languages spread to Southern Europe and Anatolia later than Northern Europe, well into the Middle-to-Late Bronze Age, according to the Kurgan hypothesis.
@all
I may be wrong, but I understand "3500 years ago", like:
"PERIOD OF DETAL Present 5,000-4,000 ya Stonehenge, one of the great European megaliths, is built.
5,500–3,000 years ago | 4,500-4,200 ya
People with ancestry from the steppe replace -90% of the British population.
4,500-4,000 ya People with ancestry from the steppe replace -30% of the Iberian population,
4,900–4,300 ya People with ancestry from *3,500 ya the steppe
replace-70% of the A second central European population. stream of migrants –"
So 3500 ya to present means 1500 BC to present.
Obviously, Mycenaeans were already present in Greece before 3500 years ago.
But since I don't have access to the details yet, the periods could be very roughly defined, and indeed limiting Mycenaeans to 3500 ya to present. If not, his chapter must be read with caution.
@ Santosh
"reading scholarly Indological literature, where the claims made are often horribly contradictory"
Lol god knows thats true. Parpola for example doesn't place the Dakini of tantrism among antinomian practices with low caste and tribal women in Bengal and surrounds, but sees it as emerging directly steppic practices, though I find his explanation a bit less believable here. Exact contradiction.
Do you know of any scholarly works that attempt to use reconstructive techniques on anthropological knowledge about religion as it is actually practiced in South India, or just India? Folk cults and such? It seems to me the knowledge base for academic Indology is often very text-centric, I've not seen books addressing philology covering more than a specific ethnographic context that relies primarily on ethnographic information.
@Folker
Obviously, Mycenaeans were already present in Greece before 3500 years ago.
I agree with that. He seems to be limiting the indication for the presence of Greeks in Greece to the written evidence. If he is not basing his dating on some unpublished data we do not know, then we can say that his dating is late by several centuries.
@ ryukendow kendow
Lol I don't know much about philology at all and thus can't recommend a single book of the kind you asked, because I never read one. A while ago, I read a small chapter in a book/paper by Buddhist author Sree Padma that connected a village goddess in Visakhapatnam area with the Buddhist goddess Hariti. (the funny, rather usual thing being that the village deity is proposed to be a later day evolution of the Buddhist goddess; similar to what you say Parpola proposes about the Indo-Aryan origins of Dakini.) I don't know if such a thing counts. There is another book I'm familiar (but which I obviously did not read) with which is titled "Vicissitudes of the Goddess: Reconstructions of the Gramadevata in India's Religious Traditions" by author B. Padma. I don't know if that's useful.
Regarding philology in general, I am sometimes tempted to dive in into it but I can't personally afford spending significant time on it. Sometimes, I have an irrational dislike towards it for reasons of my laziness and incompetence with respect to that area. I typically tend to unsystematically siphon off information from very short reviews and other works like your own comments here earlier on certain things like Nagarjuna and his Nagas, and others' commentary here on Saraswati, etc. (my knowledge about the various views regarding this Saraswati is still extremely vague lol) for example. I tend to view things from a historical linguistic perspective (though I'm purely self-taught and my knowledge and skill set is not complete and not fully functional) mostly and I believe that takes me a bit towards understanding the reality on a coarse level- sometimes finer too.
@ Folker
In the Mycenaean paper authors concluded that Europe_LNBA provides best fit for northern ancestry in Ancient Greeks (as I predicted earlier). Here Europe_LNBA is represented by 5c, so it's rather straightforward.
5c 5,000 - 4,000 ya
Northern European Bronze Age
Eastern European farmers + steppe pastoralists
Map: https://d188rgcu4zozwl.cloudfront.net/content/B073NP8WT3/resources/1022676088
Dates are loose, because they represent continent-wide processes.
@ Santosh
Dude "Vissicitudes of the Goddess" is literally exactly that type of book! Thanks, will probably branch out from there.
Wonder if there's someone the stature of Georges Dumezil in terms of reconstructing past society and beliefs for S India specifically, but would be hard to match the situation for IE, since its so much more exhaustively researched.
Yes, Mycenaean Greece should be somewhat older than 3500 years before present. If the data shows that before 3500 ya, when there should already have been Indo-European language in Greece, the Aegean Bronze Age population was only a product of Iranian farmers + European farmers, then that's unexpected, unless they mean to say there's implicit steppe in European farmers. However, the only admixture event producing European farmers in EastPole's images is not described as involving Steppe pastoralists, only Anatolian farmers + Local hunter gatherers.
EastPole's image has Steppe Pastoralists as a product from 9000-5000 ya of Iranian farmers + local hunter gatherers. This appears to be repeated from Lazaridis et al 2016, though the time bracket provided starts in the Iran Neolithic, before including the Iran Chalcolithic. Reiteration by Harvard findings of any ancient Iran as an admixture source for steppe pastoralists however does not support some commenters' insistence that there's little or no ancient Iran in modern European ethnogenesis.
And in place of CHG, is Iran now definitely preferred as a source for Steppe Pastoralists? Folker provides some clarification in repeating a statement from the book,
"From seven thousand until five thousand years ago, we observed a steady influx into the steppe of a population whose ancestors traced their origin to the south— as it bore genetic affinity to ancient and present-day people of Armenia and Iran —eventually crystallizing in the Yamnaya, who were about a one-to-one ratio of ancestry from these two sources.22 A good guess is that the migration proceeded via the Caucasus isthmus between the Black and Caspian seas."
Therefore, rather than northern Caucasus-like influence, such as something Georgian, the statement seems to be specific that the source of the influx was more southern Caucasus-like such as Armenian, besides the Iranian-like element.
The conclusion about South Asia ANI also sounds significantly like in Lazaridis 2016, not that I expected it to be different with or without new data. But as the conclusion is much as before, it's hard to make out if it's based on new data. If new data, to be cautiously optimistic, does that mean there'll finally be a paper on South/Central Asia soon? Or will it also be appearing as late as the Indians' paper working on the same aDNA? At anthrogenica or here it was said the Indian paper was some long time away.
When Botai horses were considered relevant to the subject of horse domestication and PIE, archaeology articles clearly considered them as a connecting line of evidence for the Pontic-Caspian steppe origins of horse domestication and not Central Asian origins of horse domestication, despite Botai in Asia then having once been thought as the oldest possible source of horse domestication, though slightly later to similar evidence in the Caucasus (Armenia). Now that the Botai horses are found to have been ancestors to feral Przewalski horses and therefore irrelevant and a liability to arguments about geographic origins of horse domestication, why are they tacked back onto Central Asia here in order to use as arguments against Central Asia? I'm obviously not arguing that Central Asia is at all relevant for PIE or that Botai culture is not in Central Asia. I question what the motivation is behind Botai horses having been considered associated with one thing back when they were thought important, to now being associated with another thing when found irrelevant. It should be consistently associated, whether found to remain relevant or not.
A lot of people are making claims about the Ghaggar-Hakra being the Sarasvati. This is entirely false. The river was already dry by the Harappan period. The Vedic peoples were clearly attached to rivers, but this proves that Harappan sites were frequently built away from perennial rivers like the Sindh.
https://www.livescience.com/61039-ancient-indus-civilization-survived-without-rivers.html
@Arza
In the Mycenaean paper authors concluded that Europe_LNBA provides best fit for northern ancestry in Ancient Greeks (as I predicted earlier).
That's true, but the amount is very low. Using Minoans, Anatolians, Armenians, Steppe and Europe_LNBA the best 2 fits are:
Anatolia_N: 64.3%, Armenia_MLBA: 33.4%, Europe_LNBA: 2.3%
Anatolia_N: 57.8%, Armenia_ChL: 38.6%, Europe_LNBA: 3.6%
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r_ynn46zlDBbiTe-qPexD3NmPJ0Ea4LB/view?usp=sharing
Europe_LNBA could be from the Balkans itself, not necessarily further north. We'll have to see if Y-DNA shows something surprising, but the expectation is maybe some low amount of R1b-Z2103, that doesn't have a northern distribution.
Anyway I think that Reich saying that Aegean BA is European farmers + Iranian Farmers is broadly correct according to the numbers (it seems he chose Iranian to refer to Iran/Caucasus type of ancestry, probably Iran_ChL, more than Iran_N). And this is Mycenaeans. Minoans lack those traces of steppe-related ancestry. I don't think he's necessarily making any implications regarding the language, though. It's just about genetics.
@Alberto
Anyway I think that Reich saying that Aegean BA is European farmers + Iranian Farmers is broadly correct according to the numbers (it seems he chose Iranian to refer to Iran/Caucasus type of ancestry, probably Iran_ChL, more than Iran_N). And this is Mycenaeans. Minoans lack those traces of steppe-related ancestry.
Minoans have Iran_ChL ancestry. But Mycenaeans have steppe-related ancestry.
Read the paper properly.
@ ryukendo kendow
"Wonder if there's someone the stature of Georges Dumezil in terms of reconstructing past society and beliefs for S India specifically, but would be hard to match the situation for IE, since its so much more exhaustively researched."
True. Bh. Krishnamurti who attempted a linguistic paleontology sort of thing for Proto-Dravidian customs and culture (a lot of times liberally using South Dravidian stage reconstructions) controversially ended up attributing an iron age society to them full with cities, forts, kings, etc. (I strongly suspect he imagined them to have been the urban Harappan people), but even he could not extract much information about the Proto-Dravidian religion from linguistics. Speaking about more big names, George Hart is the author that I know who is an expert on the philology of Old Tamil literature (which is the most helpful since it's the oldest of literature in Dravidian languages and may contain some significant pre-Indo-Aryan elements) and his view if I remember correctly regarding the Old Tamil religion was that it involved contemporary low caste shamanic priestesses who were viewed as impure and stigmatised because of their association with the spirits. That's the amount of reconstruction of religion that I know. Kamil Zvelebil also comes to mind. I'm also familiar with a work of Velcheru Narayana Rao regarding Tirumala where one thing he notes is the traditional importance of the weavers and other left-hand castes in that region; I don't know if he mentioned it explicitly or I'm hallucinating, but I remember something of the kind of a suggestion that the weavers historically had a bit of a rivalry with the Brahmins in the Kannada-Telugu Deccan and desired high status for themselves regarding religious things. (But I may turn out be horribly wrong here though) This may point to a pre-Indo-Aryan situation with the left-hand castes (artisan castes who also tended to be lower caste within the middle caste spectrum generally compared to the land-holding agriculturalist castes aka "right-hand castes") majorly contributing to the native priests and shamans in south India.
@ryukendo kendow
A book published within the last couple of decades by American or perhaps German academics traces how Buddhist goddesses in South Asia were derived from older Vedic and Hindu ones. I can't remember the title since I only skimmed it in the library, but I'll try to keep an eye out for it. This parallels more familiar similar instances in other parts of Asia where older, local figures were adopted into Buddhism. The history of the development of Buddhism, especially in terms of what it owes to earlier local Asian folk beliefs, their philosophical views and culture, I found to be fascinating, to finally give credit where it's due.
This line was meant to be
"despite Botai in Asia then having once been thought as the oldest possible evidence of horse domestication"
@ Alberto
I agree that they probably weren't directly from that far north, but rather from Carpathian Basin or from around the river Dunaj.
I think that for now we can call this ghost population Dunaje, Dunajowie, Dunajacy, D-n-j or something similar.
@Arza
“I agree that they probably weren't directly from that far north, but rather from Carpathian Basin or from around the river Dunaj.
I think that for now we can call this ghost population Dunaje, Dunajowie, Dunajacy, D-n-j or something similar.”
Danaans (/ˈdæneɪ.ənz/; Δαναοί Danaoi; used 138 times in the Iliad) constitute one of the collective names for the Greeks in Homer's Iliad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaeans_(Homer)
Does this mean that Reich's South/Central Asia paper won't have much that is new either? What's the point in bringing out a book that gets outdated within days of it being published?
@velvetgunther
Reich's book isn't about new ancient DNA results, it's about the big picture, and the ancient DNA revolution itself. I expect very little of aDNA information will be new to *us*, but most of the public hasn't been obsessively following this stuff like we have.
So this quote from the book:
"From seven thousand until five thousand years ago, we observed a steady influx into the steppe of a population whose ancestors traced their origin to the south— as it bore genetic affinity to ancient and present-day people of Armenia and Iran —eventually crystallizing in the Yamnaya, who were about a one-to-one ratio of ancestry from these two sources.22 A good guess is that the migration proceeded via the Caucasus isthmus between the Black and Caspian seas."
basically says that "a population" and not populations migrated North before 7000 years ago and started mixing with Steppe people at 7000 years ago untill 5000 years ago.
So when did this population start to migrate Northwards ?
@akb2014b
"I question what the motivation is behind Botai horses having been considered associated with one thing back when they were thought important, to now being associated with another thing when found irrelevant. It should be consistently associated, whether found to remain relevant or not."
Excellent points. This exact thing happened with Maykop when archaeologists thought it had it's origins in the steppe warrior cultures and since they share weaponry, burials and the same lifestyle it had to come from 4000BCE Yamnaya. However, turns out they had the wrong dates and Maykop is older than Yamnaya and thus the first actual warrior culture north of the Caucasus, and now suddenly it's not considered IE. What's hilarious is that Maykop went from a warrior culture with the best weapons of their time to a bunch of defenseless farmers in the comments here. Maybe those bronze swords were made for art museums.
@Davidski
So basically the CHG people that migrated to the Steppe came from the Trialetian Culture ?
@aniasi
"A lot of people are making claims about the Ghaggar-Hakra being the Sarasvati. This is entirely false. The river was already dry by the Harappan period. The Vedic peoples were clearly attached to rivers, but this proves that Harappan sites were frequently built away from perennial rivers like the Sindh."
I am the one making the claim. Ghaggar wasnt completely dry, it still isnt, its monsoonal today. It stopped being perennial after Sutlej, a glacial river, moved away from it. Earlier than 10000BC, Yamuna was another glacial perennial river which also flowed into Ghaggar. After Sutlej moved away (completed around 7000BC, Imperial college & IIT Kanpur Study), there was a period of heavy rainfall till 5000BC (anindya sarkar et al, 2016). Ghaggar would still have a substantial flow at that time. Post which the channel dried out due to less monsoon and aridification.
The old rigvedic mandalas focus on saraswati, the later also add Sindhu, Yamuna Ganga. So the rigveda may be older, Saraswati could be Ghaggar.
@Ric Hern
"basically says that "a population" and not populations migrated North before 7000 years ago and started mixing with Steppe people at 7000 years ago untill 5000 years ago."
My bet is that these people were the putative Aryans.
A comment at Anthrogenica:
From David Reich: "Who We Are and How We Got Here" (p.120)
“Ancient DNA available from this time in Anatolia shows no evidence of steppe ancestry similar to that in the Yamnaya (although the evidence here is circumstantial as no ancient DNA from the Hittites themselves has yet be published). This suggests to me that the most likely location of the population that first spoke an Indo-European language was south of the Caucasus Mountains, perhaps in present-day Iran or Armenia, because ancient DNA from people who lived there matches what we would expect for a source population both for the Yamnaya and for ancient Anatolians. If this scenario is right the population sent one branch up into the steppe-mixing with steppe hunter-gatherers in a one-to-one ratio to become the Yamnaya as descriebed earlier- and another to Anatolia to found the ancestors of people there who spoke languages such as Hittite.”
I don’t know what Reich means by IE and how he is going to prove that it was IE.
To me more important is that Indian population 6b 4000-3000 ya was made of steppe pastoralists and Iranian farmers, because the presence of steppe pastoralists in India explains R1a-Z93 in India and many similarities in language and religion between Slavs and Indo-Iranians.
David, don’t waste your time on speculations about PIE, it may never be solved, they will always quarrel about it, because there are no real arguments there. Let’s focus our attention on genetic, linguistic, cultural, especially religious, links between Slavs and Indo-Iranians because these links are real, obvious and fascinating.
Reich can't discuss things that haven't been published or made public. You guys will see results soon enough.
“I don’t know what Reich means by IE and how he is going to prove that it was IE.“
Basic information about which languages IE were can be found in Wikipedia
@Sein, cheers for that; yeah, similarly to you I'm trying to understand if they actually *know* that there was an ASI in the form described (25:75 Iran_N:South Asian HG), how they know if there whether than Iran_N proportion just >2000 BC or actually some well earlier time, and what samples they actually have (is ASI just Moorjani's ghost population still, and Reich commenting in "Assuming this ghost population existed" or is it actually a real population they have sampled in some sense?)...
If there's not much to get our teeth into, I guess it still remains a mystery!
(Though it would be amazing for a people who were 25:75 incoming farmer:local HG to be the ones spreading an imported agriculture; not what happens in Europe, or anywhere else we know of so far...!)
Must be working on PIE coming from South of Caucasus[maybe somewhere between Levant and India]that would explain a lot- like the wording to make it outside of Europe - lack of Maykop public samples- lack of sampling from core kurgan steppe sites- explain the ydna L India to Armenia -comment
@EastPole
David Reich is saying that the Proto-Indo-European homeland may have been south of the Caucasus.
But as per Reich's quote, the evidence for this is circumstantial, because the Bronze Age Anatolian samples currently available don't show links to any known or supposed Indo-European group. This is also pointed out in the Mathieson et al. paper (although not in the preprints).
In fact, their burials resemble those of non-Indo-Europeans from the region.
Chad Rohlfsen said...
"Reich can't discuss things that haven't been published or made public. You guys will see results soon enough."
To be fair maybe books should have to go through the same peer review process; the same process to get genetic results released into public.
@ Ric
“So basically the CHG people that migrated to the Steppe came from the Trialetian Culture”
If the admixture occurred c 5-4000 BC, then trialetian is too early.
In fact it’s doubtful there is an entity as a “Trialetian” .
Southern ancestry on the steppe got there via female exogamy between the Proto-Indo-Europeans (Khvalynsk) and a whole bunch of southern populations around the steppe.
So there wasn't just one culture involved.
About Reich siding with a Caucasus origin for PIE. Related to Anatolian BA having no Steppe ancestry, Armenians have single digit (or teens?) Steppe ancestry. But they also have high frequencies of R1b Z2103. Possibly the route from the Steppe to Caucasus and Anatolia involved more elite dominance. Of course, Anatolia BA probably weren't even IE speakers so not legitmate evidence for non-Steppe origin of PIE.
Jomon thanks for sharing that excerpt from Reich's book.
Everyone think about this...Geneticists censored information for Indians on their ancestors who lived outside of India but openly discuss ancestors of Europeans who lived in Anatolia ("Middle East") and "Central Asia" (European Russia).
If you think about it, Anatolia is right at the border with Europe and Russia is at the eastern edge of Europe. For, a Bulgarian for example, almost all his ancestors lived relatively close to Bulgaria 10,000 years ago.
Samuel Andrews said...
"About Reich siding with a Caucasus origin for PIE. Related to Anatolian BA having no Steppe ancestry, Armenians have single digit (or teens?) Steppe ancestry. But they also have high frequencies of R1b Z2103. Possibly the route from the Steppe to Caucasus and Anatolia involved more elite dominance. Of course, Anatolia BA probably weren't even IE speakers so not legitmate evidence for non-Steppe origin of PIE."
First you will have to tackle the split/branching from R1b-L23--R1b-2103 and R1b-L51. Also explain why upstream L584 samples are from farther North.
Samuel what's the big deal, save all the endless debating, and resources[paper/ink/energy for a greener planet]for the professional-scientific community. Just spend 5 minutes and upload all those thousands of ancient juicy samples into the free domain of public internet. I bet David would have all the answers for Eurogenes wrapped up by the weekend. And while your at it, retest and ["officially"]release those 2012 King Tut samples too.
Chad Rohlfsen said...
Reich can't discuss things that haven't been published or made public. You guys will see results soon enough.
Let me guess...
They have found western R1b in non-IE context sitting next to Caucasus, or maybe even behind it?
With deep roots in Ukraine_Meso/Neo/Eneolithic, but autosomally already like Armenia_ChL?
And that's why now R1a must be Uralic and IE came from Caucasus ("hybrid" model)?
Arza said...
Let me guess...
"They have found western R1b in non-IE context sitting next to Caucasus, or maybe even behind it?
With deep roots in Ukraine_Meso/Neo/Eneolithic, but autosomally already like Armenia_ChL?
And that's why now R1a must be Uralic and IE came from Caucasus ("hybrid" model)?"
Villabruna, Iron Gates,Latvia,Ukraine- to name a few old branches with variance within Europe; I doubt it.
>Southern ancestry on the steppe got there via female exogamy between the Proto-Indo-Europeans (Khvalynsk) and a whole bunch of southern populations around the steppe.
So there wasn't just one culture involved.
This is why Reich should have consulted with experts such as yourself. He foolishly describes steppe pastorals as combination of Iranian farmers and local hunter gatherers. Moreover, he states that this influx of this population took place over 2000 years... he should have been more clear that this admixture was entirely due to females
Straight from the book
"At the moment three very different possibilities are still on the table. One is that IVC people were largely unmixed descendants of the first Iranian related farmers of the region, and spoke an early Dravidian language. A second possibility is that they were ASI – already a mix of people related to Iranian farmers and South Asian hunter gatherers – and if so would have likely spoken a Dravidian language. A third possibility is that they were ANI, already mixed between steppe & Iranian farmer related ancestry and thus would instead have likely spoken an Indo European language."
Vasant shinde, Niraj rai, Chaubey have already told us that Possibility 3 is the correct answer. Place your bets accordingly.
if IVC people were steppe + iranian hybrids, how come many low caste punjabis/northern indians have 0 steppe ancestry?
Sorry to keep posting but another point that irks me is this fixation on Iranian farmer. He describes steppe pastorals as hunter gather + Iran farmer. He describes bronze age Aegean as europe farmer + Iranian farmer. He describes ANI as steppe pastoral (which were hunter gather and Iranian farmer) + Iranian farmer.
>Straight from the book
"At the moment three very different possibilities are still on the table. One is that IVC people were largely unmixed descendants of the first Iranian related farmers of the region, and spoke an early Dravidian language. A second possibility is that they were ASI – already a mix of people related to Iranian farmers and South Asian hunter gatherers – and if so would have likely spoken a Dravidian language. A third possibility is that they were ANI, already mixed between steppe & Iranian farmer related ancestry and thus would instead have likely spoken an Indo European language."
Vasant shinde, Niraj rai, Chaubey have already told us that Possibility 3 is the correct answer. Place your bets accordingly.
Please, if you want to learn history of indo-eruopeans learn from objective people and not someone like D. Reich who clearly drank the PC koolaid when he wrote this. If you want to learn, pleae read the following objective analysis:
http://polishgenes.blogspot.ca/2015/06/badasses-of-bronze-age-analysis-of.html
read about badass culture and its archaoligy trace to inda
"if IVC people were steppe + iranian hybrids, how come many low caste punjabis/northern indians have 0 steppe ancestry?"
They surely dont have 0 steppe ancestry. Anyhow
Chaubey also adds that Dravidians (i think he should have said ASI) moved north.
sorry another point to make, (theres so many mistakes its hard to concentrate) but the language of the indus valley was para-munda as expertly demonstrated by Witzel. any other position is colored by hindutva nationalism
@Stefan
I'm sorry to inform you that this "badass culture" has it's origin in Maykop-Leyla Tepe rather than fishermen-hunter gatherer Khvalynsk.
It's okay many people are still in denial.
@Stefan Molyneux
He foolishly describes steppe pastorals as combination of Iranian farmers and local hunter gatherers. Moreover, he states that this influx of this population took place over 2000 years... he should have been more clear that this admixture was entirely due to females.
David Reich was following peer reviewed scientific literature on the topic. This is the sensible thing to do in the long run. It's another matter if the conclusions in question are eventually shown to be wrong, or at least not exactly accurate.
I don't actually think that all of the southern admixture on the Enelolithic/Bronze Age steppe arrived there with females via female exogamy. Indeed, we've already seen one male with a totally farmer genetic profile amongst the forager Neolithic samples in Ukraine.
But yes, I think that the idea that Iranian farmers were the source of the CHG-related ancestry on the Eneolithic/Bronze Age steppe, including in Yamnaya, will be debunked by more ancient data from the steppe and surrounds.
Iran is too far from the steppe, and, as ancient data show, it's always had a rather unique South Caspian genetic profile that clearly didn't have much impact on Europe. So the CHG-like females came from somewhere else, probably from several areas of the Caucasus.
@ a
Villabruna, Iron Gates,Latvia,Ukraine- to name a few old branches with variance within Europe; I doubt it.
I'm talking about (Balkans -> )? Ukraine -> Caucasus path, and only for a certain branch.
Mbuti.DG Iran_ChL Armenia_ChL Armenia_EBA 0.0045 1.984 899916
Mbuti.DG Ukraine_Eneolithic_I5884 Iran_ChL Armenia_ChL 0.0217 6.550 552212
Mbuti.DG Ukraine_Eneolithic_I5884 Iran_ChL Armenia_EBA 0.0142 4.246 547912
Mbuti.DG Ukraine_Neolithic Iran_ChL Armenia_ChL 0.0288 12.974 904042
Mbuti.DG Ukraine_Neolithic Iran_ChL Armenia_EBA 0.0166 7.202 891529
Mbuti.DG Ukraine_Mesolithic Iran_ChL Armenia_ChL 0.0286 11.689 878750
Mbuti.DG Ukraine_Mesolithic Iran_ChL Armenia_EBA 0.0174 6.965 867506
@ stefan molyneux
Don't hyperventilate. I suggest some yogic breathing exercises like Pranayam.
More of Reich's book:
“All three of the possibilities involve migration at some point from West Eurasia into India. Although Singh and Thangaraj entertained the possibility of a migration out of India and into points as far west as Europe to explain the relatedness between the ANI and West Eurasian populations, I have always thought, based on the absence of any trace of ASI ancestry in the great majority of West Eurasians today and the extreme geographic position of India within the present-day distribution of peoples bearing West Eurasian–related ancestry, that the shared ancestry likely reflected ancient migrations into South Asia from the north or west. By dating the mixture, we could obtain more concrete information.”
Mr. Kulkarni said...
@ stefan molyneux
"Don't hyperventilate. I suggest some yogic breathing exercises like Pranayam."
Mr. Kulkarni, that sounds like a suburb in Brampton. For all the yogic experience in Brampton -do have high insurance rates, second only to Detroit-both within the 1774 boundary of Quebec. But that's of topic.
Blogger Arza said...
@ a
"I'm talking about (Balkans -> )? Ukraine -> Caucasus path, and only for a certain branch."
yes Balkans are certainly interesting.
This classic is somewhat before your time, the age when R1b was considered a 'red herring on the steppe"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3399854/
you have to ask David how the peer review works;R1b in Lurs/ R1b farmers and such-[what happened to VV : )]
@All
You're not allowed to quote large sections of copyrighted material here. Thanks for your understanding.
Davidski said...
@All
You're not allowed to quote large sections of copyrighted material here. Thanks for your understanding.
Sorry feel free to correct anything I done.
Just a little ironic, when in the name of science your ancestors bones[skulls earbone drilled apart] are being used+ your ancestors cultural-linguistic heritage[as in formed patriarchal language] and someone has a copyright claim.
I agree that I made a mistake by posting long excerpts from the book. Thanks for deleting my post. I strongly recommend reading the book! Excellent reading! A careful reading of the book allows to predict the results of the ancient South Asians genetic analysis as well as the Reich's interpretation. It's scary to know the details of how important findings of the Reich's et al. (2009) work were modified to prevent political stress.
@Jomon
What is scary is that for 150 years, the aryan invasion heory has been used only for India, not anywhere else in Europe, without any on ground evidence. The reason is clear - "How could brown people create such a culture? because of language similarity, the culture must be brought by us europeans"
Paid British agent Max mueller's theories were later used to successfully create North south unrest in India.
The issue is far from settled even now. India always has been a special case because of the situation created by clearly racist 19th and 20th century europeans. Hence, even now, the situation has to be dealt with in a special manner.
@kulkarni
No reason to label the Vedic people as 'White'. The term 'White' is only meaningful in the context of modern western multiethnic societies. It is not clear how close these people were phenotypically to modern northern europeans either. Those that reached India were in any case substantially darker. There is no need to have an inferiority complex over this. After all culturally modern Indians have much more in common with these ancestors than do modern europeans or central asians irrespective of genetic simillarities
Finished reading the book, appears the Indian scientists were uncomfortable with the idea of bronze age immigration into India.
@jijnasu
I did not use the word white anywhere.
"There is no need to have an inferiority complex over this". This is your projection, not mine.
I am perfectly ok with the idea that people from central asia, or europe came to North India (but not in 1500-2000bc) and later composed the rig veda.
What I do have immense issue with is declaring a debate over without conclusive evidence. The aryan invasion theory rests on timeline as well. If the migration is say 3000BC into India, it is no longer the same aryan invasion about which hundreds of books have been written.
Why arent there thousand books about aryan invasion from Yamna into Britain?
@ Jijnasu
I really wonder what kind of a pressure is there that makes some people uncomfortable- in this case, even scientists. As far as I know, there is not even any Tamil separatism disguised as a "Dravidian separatism" on the ground now. Tamils are comfortable with Tamil nationalism and quarrels with other Dravidian speaking peoples who in turn derive much satisfaction out of quarreling with Tamil people these days. There are absolutely no problems that can arise from the Dravidian-speaking south. And why the selective treatment for only the Indo-Aryans (and may be Dravidians)? Indian geneticists have been very eager to claim that Munda languages were definitely intrusive to the subcontinent and recently so, even using terminology based on language family, like "Ancestral Austroasiatic" when there is a good enough possibility that they were there a good while before the recently-popular number of 2000 BC (yes, para-Munda or Munda could even have been present in the IVC as one of the languages there; very valid possibility).
@Mr. Kulkarni
Max Mueller thought the Indo-European homeland was "somewhere in Asia". He favoured Afghanistan, which was a popular theory throughout most of the 19th century.
@ Davidski
Apparently the Trialetian Culture is poorly researched but it looks like a Mesolithic Culture who was bordered to the Southwest by the Natufians and East by the Zarzians.They inhabited a region that stretched from Eastern Anatolia to Hotu. It looks like they were replaced or displaced by the Shulaveri-Shamo around 8000 years ago.
Maybe they had some influence from the bordering cultures before their disappearance from the South. We see how Natufians started to influence the Imeretian Culture for example...
Since they were found as far as Eastern Anatolia it could be that they were near the epicentre of cattle domestication....
@capra
i said muellers theories were 'later used'.
So according to David Reich, it is AIET - Aryan(Iranian) Invasion into Europe Theory :)
@santosh Except perhaps on some university campuses nobody will probably care. Except for a few isolated groups such as the andamanese, all of us are the products of neolithic/bronze age migrations
If the Indian scientists are uncomfortable talking about 'aryan invasions' given its racist past, they should avoid linguistic labels but not delay publishing data
@Mr. Kulkarni
"What is scary is that for 150 years, the aryan invasion heory has been used only for India, not anywhere else in Europe, without any on ground evidence. "
Slowly spell out the title of this paper:
"Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe"
@epoch2013
And we have seen long and winding debates on this forum on how Steppe is Europe and not Central Asia, so it is an intra-European 'migration'(still not an invasion).
Now, one of the most respected scientist of the field thinks it started from somewhere out of Europe altogether.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trialetian
@Sanuj
OK. So the issue is race? Wow.
@Jinasu
"If the Indian scientists are uncomfortable talking about 'aryan invasions' given its racist past, they should avoid linguistic labels but not delay publishing data"
If I understood what Reich said, it is not only the linguistic part which bothered Indian searchers, but also (and mainly) a migration to India. Defining the European-related migtrants as ANI (Ancestral North Indians) was only a way to publish results while saving Indian searchers'face, as they could still argue for a migration from India to Europe (of Ancestral North Indians).
It is ridiculous, but it's a common practice in many emerging countries, where research and politics are closely linked (often to build a National narrative).
@Vara,
"I'm sorry to inform you that this "badass culture" has it's origin in Maykop-Leyla Tepe rather than fishermen-hunter gatherer Khvalynsk."
I want challenge the idea of badass Steppe folk. I do find it valid to say they were more violent, macho man than other cultures which helped them conquer Europe and south Asia.
But it's always important to remember every people group has variation. Plenty of Neolithic farmers were badasses too. I find it crazy to think Steppe folk stole EF's women, leaving all EFF men with no children. Plenty of steppe men were ugly, plenty of farmer men were unresistable for women.
@Rob
‘“I don’t know what Reich means by IE and how he is going to prove that it was IE.“
Basic information about which languages IE were can be found in Wikipedia”
I think that Wikipedia page should be revised because it was based on the assumption that PIE homeland was in the steppe. According to this old model Baltic and Slavic languages were very archaic and many reconstructed PIE words and grammatical features were very similar to Slavic or Baltic. The explanation was that Balto-Slavs stayed close to PIE homeland and R1a-M417 was PIE.
Now this model is not longer valid.
It turns out that in reality PIE homeland was in Iran/Armenia. PIE spread north of Caucasus to Maykop, Yamnaya, Bell Beakers etc.
Some PIE influence also reached forest-steppe and Late Sredny Stog Dereivka culture where Balto-Slavic languages evolved and later expanded with Corded Ware Culture.
So it is no longer true that Balto-Slavic were old, archaic and central. In reality they were young and peripheral with a lot of not-IE influence.
It follows that PIE cannot be reconstructed from Balto-Slavic influenced languages like Indo-Iranian, Greek and others as it was done before because what you reconstruct is Balto-Slavic and not PIE.
There is no doubt that in addition to PIE expansion there was another later expansion of forest-steppe people who spread R1a marker and Balto-Slavic linguistic and cultural influence:
https://s22.postimg.org/n2g526x9t/screenshot_168.png
Many common features in languages and religions of IE people are not due to original PIE but were the result of later Balto-Slavic expansion which influenced many IE cultures in India, Greece and Western Europe.
Original PIE languages, religions and cultures from PIE homeland in Armenia/Iran probably were very different from later IE languages and religions spread by R1a dominated Balto-Slavic groups and later by influenced by them Indo-Iranians and Hellenes.
So PIE should be redefined and Reich should tell us what is meant by IE, because traditional definition of IE as what is common to India and Europe may no longer apply as many common things to India and Europe didn’t come from original PIE expansion from Armenia/Iran but were the result of later Balto-Slavic expansion and may be actually not IE but Balto-Slavic.
Ric Hem
The age of Shulaveri in most likelihood will be pushed back by 1000 years with this new finding in 2017.
https://armenpress.am/eng/news/918703/
Shulaverians themselves were pushed? to North by so called Uruk people. But even this probably not the whole story. Because we have U4 in Eneolithic Armenia. And there was some migration from EHG side also.
@Mr Kulkarni "At the moment three very different possibilities are still on the table. One is that IVC people were largely unmixed descendants of the first Iranian related farmers of the region, and spoke an early Dravidian language. A second possibility is that they were ASI – already a mix of people related to Iranian farmers and South Asian hunter gatherers – and if so would have likely spoken a Dravidian language. A third possibility is that they were ANI, already mixed between steppe & Iranian farmer related ancestry and thus would instead have likely spoken an Indo European language."
Why only Dravidian and Indo-European? Why couldn't it have been a para-Munda language like Witzel proposes? Or why couldn't it be a language related to the Caucasian family because CHG and Iran_Neolithic have affinities? Worse still, why couldn't a completely different language which is noe extinct?
Parts from the book like this bring out the complete lack of linguistic/archaeological research that should have been done before trying to interpret the genetic data.
@Chad
"Reich can't discuss things that haven't been published or made public. You guys will see results soon enough."
Is this about newer Anatolian Bronze Age samples? Of perhaps Maykop/Leyla-Tepe?
Let's play advocate of the devil: Leyla-Tepe has both Kurgan and Jar burials and at least one linguist I know of has proposed an Indo-European substrate in Sumerian.
@Salden
Nope, Yamnaya where not european genetically. They did not look like modern europeans and they where not white either. You are trying to take credit for something which you have nothing to do with.
Fact is, if these Yamna people invaded South Asia, they also invaded Europe, including eastern europe. However at least for south asia it doesnt seem to have been an invasion but rather an early migration.
@ EastPole
Ah yeah i see, so you’re following the new theory of Reich & Krause/Heggarty. Fair enough, although the idea of a “Balto-Slavic” migration to South Asia might raise a few eyebrows . Not withstanding, I’m in agreeance with the idea of layering of IE in Eurasia.
@ Ric
Not sure what you are trying to reply by a random link to Wikipedia which any joe Bloggs can edit.
My original point is the idea of an entity known as an expansive Trialetian culture is tenuous, invented by grouping a variety of late peleolithic (imeretian, Zarzian) and aceramic neolithic sites together which otherwise no have no real connection. In other words, it has been deconstructed as a real entity
In any case, 5000 BC falls fully within the South Caucasus neolithic, so the point is somewhat moot
@east pole
wrong, there definitely was not any balto-slavic mogration towards India, and they are not responsible for R1a in India. End of story. Your wishful thinking is pathetic.
@Bronze
Please educate yourself.
Matters of geography
And the main difference between what happened in Europe and South Asia during the Bronze Age is that the conquest of South Asia by the steppe peoples was more heavily male biased.
It also came much later than in Europe. Stick that thought into your head and keep in there.
@Rob
Interesting that you said the same about Sredny Stog....
Anyway, At 5000 BC they already started to mix with Steppe people. This means that they had to have started Migrating to the Steppe Before 5000 BC. This Archaeological Complex if you will, ended around 6000 BC. Is it so far fetched to think that they slowly migrated Northwards or that they settled South of the Spilway between the Black and Caspian Seas until it dried up... ?
@ Ric
No Ric I did not say the same Thing about sredny stog
I said there is an early SS (I) phase and later SSII phase, and people be specific about what they’re referring
“This means that they had to have started Migrating to the Steppe Before 5000 BC”
No evidence of that at present
@Rob
Sometimes you should read what you actually wrote...Hilarious...
I don't buy the Armenia theory. It was on the Steppe a culture and economy that made massive exapansion possible and i find it hard to believe that the Hittites are totally unrelated to this.
@Elliv J
Reich isn't saying otherwise, he's just stating that in his opinion the original speakers came from the South Caucasus starting around 7000BP until 5000BP. Essencially under his statement nothing post-Yamnaya changes. Whether he's right or wrong we'll see, I find it hard to believe, but on the other hand he clearly knows more than anyone else on internet blogs
I think "a steady influx" of CHG ancestry over a 2000 years period hardly suggests that a massive Language Change took place on the Steppe....
lol Just one book published by David Reich which makes some ambiguous claims and several dissenting voices are already in the air.
PIE = Iranian farmers. Seriously??
Has the 150 year old research into Proto-IE and Proto IEs all been for nothing?
salden - 'Well look, Yamnaya aren't much farther away from modern Europeans than the Ancient Greeks apparently were. Let alone a later Steppe inhabitant like the Sintashta being right there. Greeks aren't European now?
And how do you figure that? Them being swarthy? Do you think all Europeans look like Brad Pitt? Have you seen any Greeks or Italians? Also:
Looks European. Or what, does that look like Osama Bin Laden to you?
Europeans have more of a genetic claim to the Yamnaya and similar (if they aren't just European) than South Asians and West Asians outside of a few possible exceptions. I know this triggers the Bash Whitey crowd (like you) but try to keep yourself in check.'
this is exactly the kind of racism that shouldn't be encouraged on while discussing historical population genetics. will white nationalists like salden invite their cousins from afghanistan to immigrate to the west just because they have as much or perhaps more 'steppe' ancestry as northern europeans. ethnicity is far more complex than just genetics, we should avoid labelling people who lived millenia ago with modern made-up identities or using pre-historic events to justify modern politics.
I wonder what Asko Parpola would say about these latest developments.
@Mr Kulkarni
Yeah "Max Mueller was a paid British agent", you drank the koolaid.
Nope, the indo-european conquest of europe was just as much male biased as south asia of we go by the y-dna evidence.
And no modern europeans have any genetic claim to yamnaya, half their ancestry is from a chg/neolithic iranian source, (and no this was not mediated primarily by females as much regardless of how much David wants it to be).
west asians biggest phenotypic difference between europeans is skin and hair color. So since we know Yamnaya where swarthy they most likely looked more like modern west asians than modern europeans. Greeks have a lot of near eastern dna anyway so that explains their looks.
No one has any "claim" on Yamnaya, what a pointless discussion. They were a population of their time that has long disappeared, no one today is really like them.
"@epoch2013 said...
@Sanuj
OK. So the issue is race? Wow."
But I did not make that an issue, others did(still doing above).
I don't know why there is so much fuss about about it. Europeans should be proud of their old-european heritage, which was replaced/assimilated by the incoming Proto-Indo-Europeans from Iran(?), and was later added onto by the christianization from middle-east.
There is no need to look at other living cultures and back project into some long lost past of how it might have been. To do that academically is fine, but i see it going much beyond that.
André de Vasconcelos said...
"No one has any "claim" on Yamnaya, what a pointless discussion. They were a population of their time that has long disappeared, no one today is really like them."
Fact check-
The Burzyan Bashkirs, with a changed language and religion are the direct paternal ancestors of the Yamnaya-- populated and firmly rooted in the Volga/adjoining region for the last 5300+ years.
http://suyun.info/index.php?LANG=ENG&p=4_17062017_7_4
Video of Bashkirs typical phenotype @ 1:43 into video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCmNuI3X5jQ
Not really the same population (autosomally) which was the point
André de Vasconcelos said...
Not really the same population (autosomally) which was the point
Don't be fooled with political affiliations-agendas.
Strictly look at genetic samples without speculating on origin .
Pca plot of modern day Bashkirs. Do they plot closer to ancient Yamnaya^R1b-KMS-75 or farmers from Iran^R1b-L584?
R1b-KMS75 has been in the same location for the last 5300 years. No samples from Iran.
Some of the Yamnaya from Volga are L23+ L51- and Z2103-
I think the Lurs in Iran are L584+, to date not one sample has been found in the Yamnaya Kurgans.
@ Aram
Very interesting. Thanks.
Guys calm down. I think what Reich means by Iran Neo is CHG like. He is proposing a 5000-3000BCE migration, basically a Shulaveri-Leyla Tepe migration, so there was no Iran Neo by that time.
@Davidski: " And the main difference between what happened in Europe and South Asia during the Bronze Age is that the conquest of South Asia by the steppe peoples was more heavily male biased. "
Note that Reich's original "Reconstructing Indian population history" (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08365) back in 2009 found the following with regards to X chromosome vs autosome and y/mt vs autosome:
https://imgur.com/a/V6ZzS
So at the level of the actual subpopulations he was looking at, there seems to have been no evidence of male biased ANI ancestry and female biased ASI ancestry - the X chromosome typically was estimated to have less East Eurasian ASI ancestry, essentially in all groups and the most ANI groups tended to have the most ANI ancestry relative to ASI on their X.
And at the same time, there was not a majority of groups showing a tendency to have more "ASI characteristic" y-dna relative to their autosomes (if anything a mild tendency to have less "ASI characteristic" mtdna relative to autosome).
Of course, there is a question here of representativeness of these populations. Would be good to see this recapitulated with a contemporary massive, representative study of India. Reich's 2009 results could just mean that the paper sampled many caste/tribal subpopulations and they generally did not get included particularly in any putative male bias / founder effect.
As far as I'm aware, only Reich has ever done an actual correlation study between ANI ancestry genome wide and y-chromosome or mtdna profiles. Most other authors just seem to start waffling about obvious male biased geneflow without actually doing this so much...
@Sanju,
"I don't know why there is so much fuss about about it. Europeans should be proud of their old-european heritage, which was replaced/assimilated by the incoming Proto-Indo-Europeans from Iran(?), and was later added onto by the christianization from middle-east."
Yamnaya's southern ancestry wasn't from Iran. According, to formal stats & Global25, Yamnaya was 35% CHG but 58% EHG. The rest is EEF.
There was no admixture event between a uniform old European group and new comers from Iran or Caucasus or whatever.
@ Matt
In the book, Reich mentionates a very strong male biased migration with ratio of fifty to one. While the indian mtDNA is almost entirely restricted to India, 20 to 40% of Indian mens share some type of Y-DNA with europeans.
@Sanju,
"@Sanju,
"I don't know why there is so much fuss about about it. Europeans should be proud of their old-european heritage, which was replaced/assimilated by the incoming Proto-Indo-Europeans from Iran(?), and was later added onto by the christianization from middle-east.""
We aren't imitators or sock pockets of the Middle East if that's what you're trying to say. Sorry to put in those terms.
Anyways, I believe that Cultural origins can't be described the same way ancestry can. Its origins are more recent like the origins of languages are recent. Most of what defines the Spanish language is not its PIE origin. In the same sense, most of what defines western culture are new ideas created by recent Europeans not ancient forbearers.
And in the same sense, in no way can credit for Indian culture be given to Steppe invaders like EastPole wants.
@Rob,
Nothing Ric Hern confirms Reich has DNA of individuals in Russia with CHG ancestry in 8000 BC. We should all read Reich's book and interpret it for ourselves. I don't trust others interpritations unless Reich direct states "Genomes in Russia dating to 8000 BC have CHG ancestry."
"No there was no migration of CHG people ."
Call it what you'd like. I suspect there were CHG people in southern Russia. At somepoint they migrated, mixed with EHG-heavy people.
@Jomon, interesting to see what evidence for that there is in the end.
If we assume Indian men have 20-40% y-dna from males, almost no female contribution, we'd end up with only a 10-20% autosomal contribution with a median of 15% (30+0/2=15). But it seems like Indians are more West Eurasian than that.
@Samuel Andrews
“And in the same sense, in no way can credit for Indian culture be given to Steppe invaders like EastPole wants.”
It is not true. You don’t know what you are talking about. Indian culture is great and it was created by Indians. The same with Greeks, Greek culture is great and it was created by Greeks. We are not claiming any credit for Greek or Indian culture.
But there are some common elements in our cultures which are very ancient and which need explanations.
@Samuel
"I want challenge the idea of badass Steppe folk. I do find it valid to say they were more violent, macho man than other cultures which helped them conquer Europe and south Asia. "
Aren't you contradicting yourself? I think violent and macho is what Stefan meant by badass. And there definitely was no conquest.
Either way the pre-Yamnaya and Corded Ware Steppe folk were not badass nor did they have an IE warrior culture. Khvalynsk was as Indo-European as Kelteminar, the only difference is the first was considered PIE because it lays in the center of the world(not anymore) while the latter does not.
@EastPole
"But there are some common elements in our cultures which are very ancient and which need explanations."
This has been explained many times, It's called PIE culture and the rest comes from here: http://www.geocities.ws/reginheim/sarmatians.gif
Is there any paper outlining when haplogroup H reached armenia?
@ Santosh
Thanks so much for the names you've dropped, I've downloaded and dug into some very interesting works.
The "Goddess" book is actually starting from currently practiced cults in communities of the region and going backwards toward archaeology, historical records and so on, in the opposite direction of most academic Indology, this is incredibly refreshing.
I'm also familiar with a work of Velcheru Narayana Rao regarding Tirumala where one thing he notes is the traditional importance of the weavers and other left-hand castes in that region; I don't know if he mentioned it explicitly or I'm hallucinating, but I remember something of the kind of a suggestion that the weavers historically had a bit of a rivalry with the Brahmins in the Kannada-Telugu Deccan and desired high status for themselves regarding religious things. (But I may turn out be horribly wrong here though)
This is very, very interesting! I can't find the book at all though, the only thing coming up for "Tirumala Velcheru Narayana Rao" is this:
"God on the Hill: Temple Poems from Tirupati"
Which are translations of poetry. Can you share your reference?
I also find it a little difficult to believe that we can't reconstruct Dravidian mythology at all. E.g. Proto-Finnic religion can be reconstructed very well, and they've had very intense interaction with Balts throughout their entire history. The Dravidian expansion seems to date back to the Iron Age too, why is it that we can't do so for Dravidian?
Isn't it the case that god names like Thirumaal (Tirumal), Murugan and Venkata are of Dravidian origin, and only got assimilated into Aryan gods later on? Couldn't we use those as well? Or is the issue that these gods do not exist in the pantheon of tribal Dravidians?
It actually seems to me that because Indian communities are so diverse and phylogenetically rich and their ritual practices tend to be quite conservative, there should be an "ethnographic bonanza" where you can take all the rituals and myths from the different communities, use the comparative method, and reconstruct the original forms in the past. Is it just that what Padma did in the "Goddess" book is not super common due to the prestige of the textual material? I know Witzel, for example, tries to reconstruct mythology, but almost never relies on ethnographic material for IAr religions and far more on texts.
Vara said...
---Either way the pre-Yamnaya and Corded Ware Steppe folk were not badass nor did they have an IE warrior culture. Khvalynsk was as Indo-European as Kelteminar, the only difference is the first was considered PIE because it lays in the center of the world(not anymore) while the latter does not.--
The dimensions of --Arkaim 16 ft walls by 15 wide --surrounded by a 6-7 ft moat. Add to that chariots and bronze weapons. Thats pretty warlike.
Pre Yamnaya and post Yamnaya are the same group of males R1b-Z2108+
The R1b-Sarmatian buried near Sintashta--R-Y20993Y20993 * KMS88 * KMS62+3 SNPsformed 5200 ybp, TMRCA 4700 ybpinfo id:GRC14392092
https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-Z2108/
Eurogenes IBS of the only R1b sample(F38) ever found to date match yfull with-Dagestan--Russia basal node--
https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-L584/
R-Y23838Y23999 * CTS4582 * Y23838formed 4300 ybp, TMRCA 4300 ybpinfo
R-Y23838*
id:F38
As you can see both samples pull towards the Dagestan region and Steppe.
@a
"The dimensions of --Arkaim 16 ft walls by 15 wide --surrounded by a 6-7 ft moat. Add to that chariots and bronze weapons. Thats pretty warlike. "
Sintashta is not before Yamnaya. I said the Pre-Yamnaya were not warlike. Yamnaya and Corded Ware were definitely warlike IE cultures.
"Pre Yamnaya and post Yamnaya are the same group of males R1b-Z2108+"
But they had completely different cultures. One was a fisherman-hunter culture the other a pastoralist warrior culture like the ones in the south, and PIE was not a fisherman-hunter culture.
I think they might have found some R1 south of the Caucasus which is why Reich went for a southern homeland.
@ Samuel Andrews
I said nothing close to what Rob is apparently referring to. Please read my comments for yourself just to make sure what I actually said. Thanks.
@Vara
Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog kept horses and the genomes of these horses are being sequenced, or have already been sequenced.
If they belong to the horse clade under Duk2, then it'll be difficult to argue that Khvalynsk wasn't Indo-European.
There are some hints about this in the articles about the Gaunitz et al. horse paper. The authors are suggesting that they found the people who domesticated these Duk2-related horses, and that the process ties in with human population expansions, probably from the steppe, during the Bronze Age. See here...
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/ancient-dna-upends-horse-family-tree
A PIE home
Vara said...
"Pre Yamnaya and post Yamnaya are the same group of males R1b-Z2108+"
---But they had completely different cultures. One was a fisherman-hunter culture the other a pastoralist warrior culture like the ones in the south, and PIE was not a fisherman-hunter culture.---
Yamnaya had wheeled wagons and used them on the Steppe. The Sarmatians used horses, again perfect for Steppe. They needed a vocabulary for such, they left no physical foot print 0%(buildings forts etc...) other than the kurgans. South Caucasus would be in contact with primitive proto Afro-Asian speaking groups of farmers, who had no word for wheel, no word for wagon. These primitive groups of Proto Afro-Asiatics borrowed from other cultures--for example---- Sumerian (concept of writing tablets and wagons)Pottery of Elshanka is also stratified beneath Yamnaya pottery- burials, it differs by design from the earliest Iranian pottery. They have found many branches of R1b where Yamnaya come from(êven Italy has not been tested with Villabruna 14000 year old sample of R1b) , not just R, so the variance is also in favour. Let us see what evidence they provide. Already admit that no ydna Hittite sample to compare, which would have been optimal since we already know Afanasievo culture is R1b-Z2103 which of course matches Yamnaya and is in the vicinity of the ancient Tocharian speakers. I would like to see more than smoke and mirrors, hard physical genetic data, put through Davids computer with full worldwide genetic samples.
Its very unlikely that the "warlike spirit" of steppe pastoralists derived from any precursors nearby. The Comanche on the plains developed their extreme warlikeness and tendency to terrorize their opponents, to the extent of depopulating Texas, completely independently from any precursors. Unless the pre-existing agriculturalist cultures already had a horse culture and honour culture (which itself tends to develop from a horse culture + high levels of dependency on pastoral nomadism), you are not gonna find the germs of that culture there.
Even highland Sardinians, who are almost completely EEF, developed an honour culture among their shepherds, where a boy was not a man unless he robbed or stole livestock as part of socially-sanctioned marauding.
"South Caucasus would be in contact with primitive proto Afro-Asian speaking groups of farmers... These primitive groups of Proto Afro-Asiatics borrowed from other cultures"
??? Completely wrong.
There were no "proto-Afroasiatics" in West Asia at that point, early Semites maybe. And the peoples of the South were anything but primitive, the Yamnaya and Maykop coincided with the Uruk expansion where urbanity expanded in a sudden wave across West Asia and the Caucasus from South Mesopotamia.
@ Sam
No I was being sarcastic Dude
I agree there was a CHG migration of some sort . But it seems Ric is always fishing for explanations around it, perhaps because he’s uncomfortable with such a reality for one reason or another. It’s just a running gag we have
^^ Furthermore the Semites were themselves nomadic pastoralists, much like the proto-IE, deriving from the circum-Arabian nomadic pastoral complex, the difference is the process of Semiticisation of Mesopotamia through the Assyrians, Babylonians, Amorites, Hapiru and so on is recorded.
@ Rob
What do you make of the relationship between Maykop and Yamnaya?
@ RK
Ill reply tonight bro
@Davidski
This is some good stuff. If they find domesticated horses in Khvalynsk then they're back in PIE debate even if recent findings suggest otherwise. Though I think it's Sredney Stog's 3800-3400 BCE Dereivka that's going to show domesticated horses.
However, after doing some research on the divine twins things are not as they appear. I'll write about it later.
@a
"Yamnaya had wheeled wagons and used them on the Steppe."
I'm not sure what you're arguing about because I did not say otherwise. But do you know who had wheeled wagons, horses and kurgans before Yamnaya? Maykop.
@ ryukendo kendow
"Thanks so much for the names you've dropped, I've downloaded and dug into some very interesting works.
The "Goddess" book is actually starting from currently practiced cults in communities of the region and going backwards toward archaeology, historical records and so on, in the opposite direction of most academic Indology, this is incredibly refreshing."
Glad you found that book very useful. I did not expect that to happen at all. Now I should probably read it too lol.
"This is very, very interesting! I can't find the book at all though, the only thing coming up for "Tirumala Velcheru Narayana Rao" is this:
"God on the Hill: Temple Poems from Tirupati"
Which are translations of poetry. Can you share your reference?"
Unfortunately, it appears I really did have a false memory there as far as the "left-hand folks having rivalry with Brahmins regarding religion" part is concerned. But the info about left-hand castes having high importance mainly pertaining to temple administration, in the medieval Tirupati region, I very much took from the source that you mentioned- it should be in the afterword of "God on the Hill: Temples Poems from Tirupati". I actually did not read the English original but happened upon a Telugu translation of this afterword by linguist Suresh Kolichala on eemata.com when I was reading his other linguistics articles there. And regarding the priest business, Narayana Rao does mention on the page 312 of the book "Text and Tradition in South India" that village deity temples requiring animal sacrifices have lower-caste priests in medieval Telugu-speaking areas too, such as Malas and Gollas. That much is the truth even today. So from combined Telugu and Old Tamil evidence, it does seem that pre-Brahmin priests/priestesses were from lower castes though we don't know if the profession made them lower-caste or if the caste got them that profession, perhaps the former. Perhaps the left-hand/right-hand thing was entirely my invention as the temple (which hosts two deities- one Ellamma, likely meaning "Boundary Mother" and another Pochamma, likely meaning "Protecting Mother") that our family has the habit of visiting near our home has a warm potter lady who lives by making and selling pots, in the same colony as us, acting as the priest. But then, I checked now that Narayana Rao does mention in several locations that Virasaivism, which was anti-Vedic and anti-Brahminic, had some strong association with these left-hand castes- in books like "Classical Telugu Poetry: An Anthology" (page 19). He also mentions in the page 18 of this book that left-hand castes are closely linked to singing of texts, in some context of some kind of a dilemma that arose in the history of Telugu classical poetry.
Matt,
Tell me what you think about this quote from Reich's new book.
"Our finding that both the ANI and ASI had large amounts of Iranian-related ancestry meant that we had been wrong in our original presumption that one of the two major ancestral populations of the Indian Cline had no West Eurasian ancestry. Instead, people descended from Iranian farmers made a major impact on India twice, admixing both into the ANI and the ASI.
Patterson proposed a major revision to our working model for deep Indian history".
Is this their way of saying that their original estimates of "ASI" were inflated? Hopefully, we get to see the data soon.
Jijnasu,
"... will white nationalists like salden invite their cousins from afghanistan to immigrate to the west just because they have as much or perhaps more 'steppe' ancestry as northern europeans..."
It's funny that you mention this; my mind went back to this article I read some time ago...
https://hotmilkforbreakfast.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/faces-a-quick-and-dirty-study-on-ethnicity-in-afghanistan/
"First, let’s kick off with the mythical Pashtun. In short, Pashtuns run the country. They are the “master race” of Afghanistan, and tend to believe themselves predestined to rule over all the other races. In fact, Adolph Hitler saw Pashtuns as the original “Aryans” and imported 57 Pashtun men to German before WWII to impregnate as many German females as possible to “purify” his so-called “Aryan stock". I’ve heard Pashtuns talk about this era in glowing terms. The word “Afghanistan” means “Land of the Pashtuns.” Likewise the word “Aryan” and “Aryana”. Just about every published source puts the percentage of Pashtuns as 42% in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, this percentage is almost certainly fiction, since the Central Statistics Office is Pashtun dominated and there has never been a census, because Pashtun areas resist it, with violence."
If true, and I'm not sure if it really is (the author doesn't seem to like Pashtuns, so perhaps he made this Nazi story up, just to make us look bad), this is pretty hilarious.
Also, I should again note the the above author can't be taken too seriously: he dislikes Pashtuns (very strongly), he thinks Nuristanis and Pashtuns have Viking/Scandinavian ancestry (lol), he thinks Balkhi people have Greek ancestry, and that the Hazara are an indigenous population.
Basically, he is biased, and his handle on ethnogenesis/history is shockingly poor.
(contd. from previous comment)
@ ryukendo kendow
"I also find it a little difficult to believe that we can't reconstruct Dravidian mythology at all. E.g. Proto-Finnic religion can be reconstructed very well, and they've had very intense interaction with Balts throughout their entire history. The Dravidian expansion seems to date back to the Iron Age too, why is it that we can't do so for Dravidian?
Isn't it the case that god names like Thirumaal (Tirumal), Murugan and Venkata are of Dravidian origin, and only got assimilated into Aryan gods later on? Couldn't we use those as well? Or is the issue that these gods do not exist in the pantheon of tribal Dravidians?"
I don't know. But taking Bh. Krishnamurti's comments in his textbook at face value, it appears that using comparative method on lexical entries of several sub groups of Dravidian did not yield a sufficiently big or clear picture to him. Some patterns related to religion do get mention in his book though- such as like the word pey having a 'god' meaning in South Dravidian-II languages like Gondi, Konda and the same word having a 'devil' meaning in South Dravidian-I Tamil, Malayalam, etc.; the word for 'temple' kOyil originally meaning 'house (il) of king (kO)' and the 'king' sense in there likely deriving from a word for 'mountain'; the translation of either fire sacrifice concept known from Indo-Aryans or any other earlier forms of sacrifice derives from a verb meaning 'to desire'- vELvi in Tamil for example for 'sacrifice' from vEL- 'to desire', etc. I personally believe village deities were one of the most important though I think every one of them can't be reconstructed to Proto-Dravidian or such older stages based on available evidence: for example, ellamma (ella + amma) likely derives from Proto South Dravidian ella, 'boundary' and amma, 'mother'; this deity is known in Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Other deity names with Dravidian etymologies that I can see as derived from Telugu stage are pOlamma (<-- older Telugu prOlamma = prOlu, 'town' + amma, 'mother') and pOcamma (<-- older Telugu prOcamma = prOcu, 'protecting' + amma). pOcamma (older prOcamma) may have a Tamil-Malayalam counterpart in one pura-tt-amma that I'm familiar with, but I'm not sure. As I mentioned, there was a tendency of personifying contagious diseases too and we have names like mAri, perhaps related to Sanskrit mara, 'to die', also seen in compounds like mahammAri in colloquial usage, meaning 'epidemic', Telugu mutyAlamma, 'mother of pearls'; the 'pearls' in the above I conjecture to be semantically related to some 'rash' kind of meaning of a skin disease, though I'm not sure. I may very well be wrong.
(contd. from earlier comment)
@ ryukendo kendow
Now regarding the more mainstream-like seemingly-Dravidian deities of mAl, murukan and the hill vEnkaTam, yes linguistically they are very much Dravidian, but we can't be sure if all of them are independently developed in Dravidian societies or loan-translated from other societies like Indo-Aryan: the word muruku from which Tamil murukan derives, apparently means 'youth' and it appears as a loan translation of Sanskrit kumAra, 'youth' (kumAra (the word, need not be the concept) is itself non-Indo-Aryan though and could be Munda in etymological origin); the meaning of the deity 'Kumara, Subrahmanya' is also limited to Tamil-Malayalam and Tulu, Telugu, Konda cognates don't have that meaning (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/burrow/ entry 4978). For vEnkaTam, I tried to etymologise it as arising out of a compound of *veyam, 'extensiveness' (DEDR 5404) and Tamil kaTam, 'forest' (DEDR 1438) or the first part being already vEn, which also belongs to DEDR 5404 and means 'excess' in Tamil- with the idea that vEnkaTam is likely to be a Tamil coinage. There are likely no religious senses involved in the derivation if it is indeed of a Dravidian etymology (the usual etymologies are from some Sanskrit units like vem meaning 'sin' and kaTa meaning 'destroyer' and things like that; I don't know if those are folk-etymologies or genuine). Again, much like murukan, Tamil mAl and mAyOn which derive from the root mA (DEDR 4781) meaning 'black' appear as loan translations of the Sanskrit word kRShNa, 'black'. I think this is the case because except for Tamil, no other language has the sense of 'Vishnu/Krishna' in the cognate list (not even Malayalam in this case).
"It actually seems to me that because Indian communities are so diverse and phylogenetically rich and their ritual practices tend to be quite conservative, there should be an "ethnographic bonanza" where you can take all the rituals and myths from the different communities, use the comparative method, and reconstruct the original forms in the past. Is it just that what Padma did in the "Goddess" book is not super common due to the prestige of the textual material? I know Witzel, for example, tries to reconstruct mythology, but almost never relies on ethnographic material for IAr religions and far more on texts."
I like this idea very much. We can only wonder why people have not yet tapped into this apparent gold mine yet though, if they haven't that is. Regarding the question of the importance of the prestige of textual material over ethnographic material, I believe it may be that but I also tend to think that may be because the textual sources are too vast and people did not complete their research of those yet satisfactorily or so they feel?
Just finished the chapter on India. Here is an interesting quote:
The tensest twenty-four hours of my scientific career came in October 2008, when my collaborator Nick Patterson and I traveled to Hyderabad to discuss these initial results with Singh and Thangaraj.
... Singh and Thangaraj seemed to be threatening to nix the whole project. Prior to the meeting, we had shown them a summary of our findings, which were that Indians today descend from a mixture of two highly divergent ancestral populations, one being “West Eurasians.” Singh and Thangaraj objected to this formulation because, they argued, it implied that West Eurasian people migrated en masse into India.
Singh and Thangaraj suggested the term “genetic sharing” ... a formulation that could imply common descent... However, we knew from our genetic studies that a real and profound mixture between two different populations had occurred ... while their suggestion left open the possibility that no mixture had happened. We came to a standstill. At the time I felt that we were being prevented by political considerations from revealing what we had found.
... Patterson and I ... tried to understand what was going on. The cultural resonances of our findings gradually became clear to us. So we groped toward a formulation that would be scientifically accurate as well as sensitive to these issues.
Thus ANI and ASI. I suspect, after the publications from the Reich lab, some scientific bridges are going to be permanently burnt.
@ Santosh
I like this idea very much. We can only wonder why people have not yet tapped into this apparent gold mine yet though, if they haven't that is. Regarding the question of the importance of the prestige of textual material over ethnographic material, I believe it may be that but I also tend to think that may be because the textual sources are too vast and people did not complete their research of those yet satisfactorily or so they feel?
LOL ok. Lemme ask ya, how many Dravidian languages can you speak, and just as a general impression, are they difficult to learn?
Blogger Vara said...
@a
"Yamnaya had wheeled wagons and used them on the Steppe."
---I'm not sure what you're arguing about because I did not say otherwise. But do you know who had wheeled wagons, horses and kurgans before Yamnaya? Maykop.--
We are making some headway. Maykop is not Iranian farmer until we get those genetic results released. You think with the wagon burials from Maykop-Yamnaya and Balkans, they would have tested those remains first to see how much Iranian farmer component they had, if any. Anyway I think Maykop is just as interesting as the Bronocice pot, near Nidzica River, Poland, with an image of wheeled vehicle 3635–3370 BC,-- thats right up there contending with the advanced civilizations of Maykop and Sumerians. Odd men out would be- Egypt and Assyrian technology- for sure copycats both culture deriving from proto Afro-Asi speaking tribes and lacked common word for wheel and or wagon/chariot(in the proto form)unlike the Indo-European.
@Vara
Horse worship on the steppes predates the Divine Twins mythos. This is suggested by the presence of horse headed scepters in burials on the Eneolithic steppe. There's quite a bit of info on that online, including in the Indo-European encyclopedia.
Also, you mentioned the possibility of Y-hg R1 south of the Caucasus. But there's already a sample from Kura-Araxes (Armenia_EBA) with R1b, so R1 was present in that part of the world already at that time and it's likely to show up again.
However, the first instance of R1b-M269 in West Asia is from an Iron Age burial at Tepe Hasanlu in Northwest Iran. The sample is Iran_IA F38, dated to 971-832 BCE, and this individual clearly shows steppe ancestry. No matter how he's modeled, he always shows Yamnaya and/or Srubnaya-related ancestry.
So the situation in northern West Asia might have been like that in Western Europe, with some R1b already present, but perhaps not R1b-M269, which may have only arrived there during the Bronze or Iron Age with steppe ancestry.
@ Santosh
Thanks for the rest of the explications too. Its very disappointing that anti-Vedic movements, like Virashaivites/Lingayats and others, are such late developments and with their complex and self-consciously reformatory theologies are likely, as you said, to arise due to later sociological processes as opposed to intellectual/cultural genealogy, which would instead be far more influential in local 'folk' gods and thus be difficult to study.
@ ryukendo kendow
"LOL ok. Lemme ask ya, how many Dravidian languages can you speak, and just as a general impression, are they difficult to learn?"
Lol I can speak the just one Telugu, my mother tongue; I may have got a little bit of intuition about how Tamil works during the course of my reading Krishnamurti's textbook, as Tamil is like Proto-Dravidian in several respects. Regarding difficulty, I frankly don't know; some like Toda and other Nilgiri languages have developed quite complex phonologies and have a lot of sound changes, while the phonologies of literary languages (the parts without Sanskrit phonology) are fairly simple and like Proto-Dravidian. Tamil is arguably the most disciplined of the literary Dravidian languages (others are nearly quite disciplined too; after all, every language can be considered as disciplined) so learning it may be easier than the rest. On the other hand, the other literary languages have stolen tons of Sanskrit words for themselves so they may be easier to learn for a person familiar with Sanskrit. With respect to syntax all the Dravidian languages behave according to the Indian areal pattern and like Sanskrit; though NIA languages like Hindi are a bit different because of Persian influence. Syllable structure (of literary languages particularly and among them Tamil the most) and noun and verb morphology are also fairly simple, I think. Since morphology is agglutinative, it may be thought of as easier compared to the inflectional morphology of Sanskrit, though that may be the case only for me. For the non-literary languages, I'm not sure if there are learning resources available in the common market other than linguistic descriptions. Kodagu (aka Kodava) and Tulu should have more resources compared to others.
"Thanks for the rest of the explications too. Its very disappointing that anti-Vedic movements, like Virashaivites/Lingayats and others, are such late developments and with their complex and self-consciously reformatory theologies are likely, as you said, to arise due to later sociological processes as opposed to intellectual/cultural genealogy, which would instead be far more influential in local 'folk' gods and thus be difficult to study."
Yes I agree.
@ Santosh
Thanks dude, you've been super helpful!
@Ryu
Its very hard to separate out a specific dravidian mythology except for certain patterns of deity names. Most mythology based cults are covered by some pauranic or epic pan Indian template. The cult of draupadi. Cukt of Aravan by Eunuchs and transgenders in southern India claim inspiration from Arjunas one year stint as a non-male. . I have met with Himalayan sheep herding nomads who connect themselves with the pandavas and shiva. There is the "rhinoceros sacrifice" of garwhal a spinoff from the Mahabharata. Some aspect of which is reinforced by the tribal Bhil Mahabharata a completely unconnected people . The pattern is not covered in the mainstream Sanskrit text. If you look at a very specific southern tradition such as that of Ayyappa it has motifs of Vishnu as mohini. It has the opposition of tiger and buffalo. These non textual traditions could not all have been mediated by Brahmanas. They either played no role or were passive facilitators at best.
The ancestors of R1b (V88) and maybe some other clads could have spread from the Balkans into Anatolia and beyond during the Mesolithic.
After all R1b was found at least as far as the Ukraine 10 000 years ago, so why not South of the Black Sea and South of the Caucasus as well ?
This probable early expansion into the Nortern parts of SouthWest Asia clearly wasn't as successful as the R1bs who migrated to Northern Africa.
@Vara Khvalynsk was as Indo-European as Kelteminar, the only difference is the first was considered PIE because it lays in the center of the world(not anymore) while the latter does not.
Whatever you may choose to believe, the archaeological progression of Khvalynsk-> Repin-> Yamna is well accepted. Davidski and other have also shown this using modelling. Sredny Stog and other North Pontic cultures MAY lack such a direct connection to Yamna but that remains to be seen.
Yamna culture remains to this day the best identification for Proto-Indo European not any farming culture from Iran or the Caucasus. And there is Z2103 in the Volga-Ural area from Late Khvalynsk period to Poltavka period. It's pretty easy to imagine where the R1b in Yamna and later in the Balkans come from.
Also thanks to those very revealing quotes from the book that ryukendo posted, I think we are now in a position to guess what really happened.
Seinundzeit: Is this their way of saying that their original estimates of "ASI" were inflated? Hopefully, we get to see the data soon.
Seems like it would mean their original estimates of ASI were deflated if anything, as if they're redefining ASI to include West Eurasian Iran_N content, then the end of the "ASI" cline is going to be closer to all South Asians, and so the levels should be higher.
Doesn't seem like the level of "ENA-ASI" (South Asian ENA related HG) would be changed. Though as we discussed before, may be differences resulting from using Iran_N / Yamnaya related references to define the f4 ratio than using Basque/Georgian.
@Vara
“ EastPole said
"But there are some common elements in our cultures which are very ancient and which need explanations."
This has been explained many times, It's called PIE culture and the rest comes from here: http://www.geocities.ws/reginheim/sarmatians.gif ”
Yes, western “science” used to explain everything related to Eastern Europe by this kind of BS. But it is no longer valid.
Actually I am happy that finally PIE homeland was found south of Caucasus, where wine was produced. I am also glad that probably some western R1b was located in Maykop and the trail Maykop –>Yamnaya–>Bell Beaker was established. Western Europeans can trace their IE history independently from us and will stop interfering in our history.
I am also happy that some IE Iranian farmers migrated from PIE homeland in Iran to India. So it is not true that all IE in India came from Europe.
But genetics, linguistics and archeology tell us also that later around 1500 BCA some European influences reached India from the north. It came with R1a-Z645 dominated steppe pastoralists.
It is confirmed in Reich’s book which says that Indian population 6b 4000-3000 ya was made of steppe pastoralists and Iranian farmers.
The origin of those R1a-Z645 dominated steppe pastoralists who influenced India can be traced to Balto-Slavic forest steppe Late Sredny Stog Dereivka culture and CWC.
This will explain many similarities between Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages and religions which are definitely not PIE but much later.
https://s22.postimg.org/n2g526x9t/screenshot_168.png
Many common features in Greek, Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages and religions which are better explained by North-Eastern European climate and folk traditions or have Slavic etymology etc. and are in agreement with confirmed by genetics southern migrations of R1a-Z645 dominated Balto-Slavic groups should be considered as coming from Eastern Europe to Greece and India and not the other way round.
Off topic (though this thread seems mostly like an open thread now ;) ): Slight update on the "Genetic landscapes reveal how human genetic diversity aligns with geography" preprint from Peter et al: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/26/233486
New features are 1) big changes to their Southern African sampling set, 2) few more Central Asian populations change corridors (this could be of interest to Ryu and others who are interested in the recent Central Eurasian population migration and gene flow patterns), 3) some more comparisons in the supplement between EEMS vs 10 dimensional and 100 dimensional PCA, not just 2D.
On the last point, it's interesting to see that in West Eurasia a) basic distance performs really badly at predicting between group relatedness (r2=0.17), while b) EEMS performs really well (r2=0.95!), better than 10D PCA (r2=0.7), and that 100D PCA performs no better than 10D PCA (r2=0.73).
This all suggests that population structure in West Eurasia is very geographical with barriers, but no "leapfrogging" migrations that can't be fit by EEMS, and that at this level of fine structure there is some subtle genetic structure between groups that PCA can't really ferret out very well.
In contrast the East, South and Central Eurasia panel (they call it East Eurasia which is a bit of an unfortunate misnomer I feel) really still does not work well with EEMS at all (r2=0.45 against 2PC r2=0.85); population movements are just too leapfrogging (e.g. for instance spatially populations are A->B->C->D but genetically populations are A->C->B->D), and EEMS can't cope with this at all, sometimes giving worse outcomes than simple distance correlation.
Makes me wonder if there is any mileage in using a combination approach; use 2D PCA, then use EEMS only on residuals (as a residual relatedness map), to see if this gets rid of the main problems with leapfrogging.
Matt,
For what it's worth, the vibe I'm getting from that (and a few of his other remarks) is like so:
Their "ASI construct" itself was partially West Eurasian, which is why one can construe the estimates as being inflated, if we are assuming those estimates to be of "only" South Asian-specific ENA.
In simpler terms, the original percentages of "ASI" (from their original paper) are still the same (though probably not the same, since as you mentioned, those percentages already take a hit with Iran_N and Yamnaya, in place of Georgians or Basque), but those percentages included 25% Iran_N.
This isn't based on aDNA, but rather some sort of unified model produced by Nick Patterson (this information is to be found on the same page from which my prior quote emanates).
So, the 75% Onge-like + 25% Iran_N-related construct isn't due to some ancient South Indian population being modeled by this lab. Instead, it's just them reassessing their older ghost.
I think this will make much more sense/be less mysterious, once they publish these "Unpublished results from David Reich's laboratory" (that's the exact citation/note to be found in the book).
Hopefully, we'll find out soon enough.
@ Chetan
You’re incorrect about Khvalynsk
Khvalynsk doesn’t have any Z2103. Khvalynsk we’re also flat burials, not kurgans
Z2103 appears in the Volga area after 3000 BC.
And whatever you believe, the fact remains that the Y chromosomal shift in Khvalynsk is accompanied by an autosomal shift
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