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Sunday, July 1, 2018

Ahead of the pack


Eurogenes Blog January 2018 (see here):

Yamnaya and other similar Eneolithic/Bronze Age herder groups from the Eurasian steppe were mostly a mixture of Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers (EHG) and Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers (CHG). But they also harbored minor ancestry from at least one, significantly more westerly, source that pulled them away from the EHG > CHG north/south genetic cline.

...

It's interesting and, I'd say, important to note that the West Asian reference groups produce amongst the worst statistical fits (in bold text). What this suggests is that Yamnaya did not harbor extra West Asian ancestry on top of its CHG input.

...

Rather, Blatterhole_MN is simply the best proxy in this analysis for the non-CHG/EHG ancestry in Yamnaya, and the important question is why?

Considering also the presence at the top of the list of Koros_HG (which includes Hungary_HG I1507), Germany_MN and Vinca_MN, the likely answer is its high ratio of Western European Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) ancestry.

...

So is the missing piece of the Yamnaya puzzle a population with roughly equal ratios of Early Neolithic (EN) and WHG ancestries from the Carpathian Basin or surrounds? Quite possibly. But let's wait and see what happens when I add the ancient groups from the Balkans and North Pontic steppe from the forthcoming Mathieson et al. 2018 to this analysis.

And now Wang et al. May 2018 (see here).

In principal component space Eneolithic individuals (Samara Eneolithic) form a cline running from EHG to CHG (Fig. 2D), which is continued by the newly reported Eneolithic steppe individuals.

...

However, PCA results also suggest that Yamnaya and later groups of the West Eurasian steppe carry some farmer related ancestry as they are slightly shifted towards ‘European Neolithic groups’ in PC2 (Fig. 2D) compared to Eneolithic steppe.

...

Importantly, our results show a subtle contribution of both Anatolian farmer-related ancestry and WHG-related ancestry (Fig.4; Supplementary Tables 13 and 14), which was likely contributed through Middle and Late Neolithic farming groups from adjacent regions in the West. A direct source of Anatolian farmer-related ancestry can be ruled out (Supplementary Table 15).

...

We find that Yamnaya individuals from the Volga region (Yamnaya Samara) have 13.2±2.7% and Yamnaya individuals in Hungary 17.1±4.1% Anatolian farmer-related ancestry (Fig.4; Supplementary Table 18)– statistically indistinguishable proportions. Replacing Globular Amphora by Iberia Chalcolithic, for instance, does not alter the results profoundly (Supplementary Table 19). This suggests that the source population was a mixture of Anatolian farmer-related ancestry and a minimum of 20% WHG ancestry, a profile that is shared by many Middle/Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic individuals from Europe of the 3 rd millennium BCE analysed thus far.

Strikingly similar, don't you think? However, I'm not implying that they copied me. The point I'm making is that I predicted this outcome ahead of anyone else, and was able to demonstrate it without some of the key ancient samples that Wang et al. had access to. Indeed, kudos to them for finding and successfully sequencing those all important new Eneolithic steppe samples.

Moreover, these results mean that it's no longer plausible to argue that the Yamnaya population, by and large, formed due to recent gene flow from south of the Caucasus, let alone from what is now Iran, into the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Obviously, this is a major problem for anyone arguing that the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) homeland may have been located somewhere south of the Caucasus, such as Paul Heggarty of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (for instance, see here). But hey, never mind the facts when you have an awesome theory, right?

See also...

Yamnaya: home-grown

Genetic borders are usually linguistic borders too

Yamnaya isn't from Iran just like R1a isn't from India

75 comments:

supernord said...

The Yamnians in any case had to assimilate the Ukraine Neolithic substrate with its increased WHG relative to the Mesolithic. This is where you need to look for the source (Tripolia, Bug-Dniester, Dnieper-Donetsk, Soursk cultures), and not using only Globular Amphora as do in Wang et al. Afanasievo has not Ukrainian Neolithic substrate, therefore, it is pseudo-Globular Amphora == 0%. Big percents of pseudo-Globular Amphora in Yamnians in Wang et al. are because they use Caucause Eneolitic that is not ancestral to Yamnians, instead CHG.

Davidski said...

By the way, looks like Heggarty has launched a bit of a media blitz to try and sell his southern PIE homeland theory to anyone who doesn't really understand the results from Wang et al., or doesn't want to understand them.

Folker said...

Heggarty answer would be something like this: "In fact, you got it all wrong! Because you don't see it's pre-PIE which is from South of Caucasus. And look, there is Iran_N/CHG admixture in Steppe Eneolithic, this is proving a South of Caucasus migration in the Steppe". Or "datation is wrong. PIE is older and existed in the VIth millenium". And "mitochondrial haplogroups are similar between the Caucasus and the Steppe".
They will try again and again to find something backing a South of Caucasus PIE homeland.
It will perhaps change if Hittites or the sort are showing a clear stream of Steppe ancestry. But I don't think Heggarty will accept this as proof. He simply can't accept that PIE speakers were mere pastoralists aka uncivilized barbarians.

@Supernord
Wang et al. used CHG, not Caucasian Eneolithic to modelize Yamnaya. But they have also confirmed that CHG is not ancestral to Yamnaya (but could be of Caucasus Eneolithic). By the way the mix Anatolian_N/WHG found in Yamnaya is coherent with mitochondrial haplogroups found in Yamnaya, like H, J2, K1 or N1a.

supernord said...

@Folker
"Wang et al. used CHG, not Caucasian Eneolithic to modelize Yamnaya."

You're wrong that I wrote. It was written about Globular Amphora in "Big percents of pseudo-Globular Amphora in Yamnians in Wang et al. are because they use Caucause Eneolithic that is not ancestral to Yamnians, instead CHG.", see Wang et al. Fig. 4, percents of Globular Amphora and Caucasian Eneolithic in Yamnayans.

Matt said...

If I had to add anything, would add the small qualifier that I think the outliers for Yamnaya who have turned up includes one (e.g. I1917) tilted towards the Caucasus that you've talked about who suggest that there's *some* geneflow going on with the Caucasus.

But this is probably not demographically significant for most Yamnaya (other than Yamnaya_Caucasus) and can maybe be balanced by some contribution from EHG proper, not as much as the average for Khvalynsk but beyond the average for Piedmont Steppe Eneolithic...?

Poss. by bride exchange for all these edges as you'd suggested in the past? Maybe via unsampled intermediaries for the Caucasus case (e.g. I1917 can't be a straightforward "Caucasus bride" as she's too Yamnaya related, but she may be from an as yet unsampled genetic intermediary with low population size, or a herself a direct second generation mix between Yamnaya and Caucasus populations).

Overall, as an low level set of movements, probably over a longer time, not likely to change language at all.

It does very much now seem like, based on the samples we have, it's not plausible that there a mass movement from the Eneolithic or post-Eneolithic Caucasus cultures proper, which mixed with unadmixed EHGs (whether through a massive but slow process of bride exchange, which seemed a bit strange, or a rapid culture and language bearing mass movement). Instead the bulk of the ancestry of the Yamnaya seems simply derived from Eneolithic cultures from the steppes in today's North Caucasus region of Russia (and maybe with the same autosomal mix back deeper in prehistory than the Eneolithic).

(And if a sex-biased process happened between CHG populations and EHG populations to generate Piedmont Eneolithic like populations, seems like must have happened a bit before the Eneolithic, def. not later in time).

@super nord: the Fig 4 of Wang shows 2x models of steppe cluster populations a) proportions of EHG, CHG, Anatolian, WHG, b) proportions of Eneolithic steppe (Eneolithic piedmont steppe), Globular Amphora, Eneolithic Caucasus.

Yamnaya cultures do not not take any proportion of Eneolithic Caucasus for the most part and simply modelled as Eneolithic steppe (Eneolithic piedmont steppe)+Globular Amphora. Not sure where this idea that the Yamnaya have large proportions of Eneolithic Caucasus in their models comes from.

In any case, even if their models had modeled Yamnaya with Eneolithic Caucasus (which they do not), swapping Eneolithic Caucasus for CHG would require extra Anatolian ancestry (which the opposite effect to your estimate that this would making Ukraine_N favoured over GAC). Though that's meaningless because their model does not find Eneolithic_Caucasus ancestry in Yamnaya, and that's wrong anyway.

Davidski said...

Yep, I'm pretty sure that the female Yamnaya outlier from Ozera has f*ck all to do with the spread of Indo-European languages into the steppe.

But I don't think that'll stop anyone from claiming otherwise.

supernord said...

@Folker
"But they have also confirmed that CHG is not ancestral to Yamnaya (but could be of Caucasus Eneolithic)."

No, they showed the exact opposite. It shows that Yamnaya people in general have no connection with the Caucasus Eneolithic, only the descendant of CHG.

Folker said...

@Supernord
You misunderstood me: Yamnaya have Steppe Eneolithic which is a mix of EHG and CHG-like (but not of CHG proper). Caucasus Eneolithic is not ancestral to Yamnaya, and could have some CHG ancestry.
So even if some could want to find a link between Steppe Eneolithic and Caucasus Eneolithic through CHG-related ancestry, they are misleaded as both populations don't share the same CHG related ancestry.
And since Caucasus Eneolithic could be modelized as a one-steam population, the admixture between CHG and Anatolian_N derived populations must be more back in time than mid-Vth millenium. I reckon it could be the result of Neolithization of South Caucasus with no additional admixture since then (so since around 6000BC).
But it is also meaning that the source of CHG-like ancestry in Steppe Eneolithic is a complete mystery. North Caucasus or Georgian Neolithics, largely derived of previous Mesolithic populations are the best bet. But it's difficult to say. And we have archeological discontinuities in North Caucasus.

Michalis Moriopoulos said...

If the CHG-related ancestry in the steppe is indeed divergent from CHG-related ancestry in the Caucasus, are the "southern" mtDNA clades found in Yamnaya et al old enough to plausibly originate from these earlier-diverged CHG-related people, as opposed to coming from Copper or Bronze Age Caucasian women?

Also, Dave, would you mind adding the Fregel genomes to the Global25?
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/PRJEB22699

Davidski said...

@Mike

Direct gene flow between the Caucasus and the ancestors of Yamnaya slowed to a trickle at least by the Maykop period, because Yamnaya doesn't have direct ancestry from Anatolia, which is widespread in the Caucasus by the Maykop period.

So even if there was some female mediated gene flow from Maykop to Yamnaya which introduced relatively young Caucasian mtDNA haplotypes to Yamnaya, it's pretty clear that the bulk of the southern ancestry in Yamnaya is the result of a mixture process between populations closely related to EHG and CHG, and these may actually have been foragers dating to the pottery Neolithic in Russia, which is defined as the Mesolithic elsewhere.

Btw, I'll add the Fregel genomes to the Global25 when I get the genotype data. The link you gave only has BAM files.

Folker said...

@Mike
Shared haplogroups between the Wang et al. Caucasus Cluster and Yamnaya+Eneolithic Steppe are not very numerous. If I use the results I posted previously, we have: H6, U4a (Caucasus are U4a2 and Steppe are U4a1), T1, T2 and U5. I will add other Yamnaya samples, with K1, X2h and N1a, and W3 and W6 as they could be from Caucasus.
But, as I've already said, some of these shared haplogroups could be either inherited from the Anatolian farmers ancestry (K1, N1a, or X2) or previous gene-flow (as probably T1 and T2). U5 is found in mesolithic Europeans, so could not be linked with the CHG-like ancestry in Yamnaya. H6 is dated by Behar et al. 2012 as around 11000 years old, as W6. But both could be older (others are dating H6 to at least 15000 years). The best clue is U4a, as U4a1 has been found in Eneolithic Steppe and U4a2 in Caucasus. Behar et al. datation is 8800 years for U4a2 (with 2459 + or -) and 7700 years for U4a1 (with 2600 + or -). The same are estimating U4a around 15000 years old.
Obviously since 2012, we have access to ancient DNA. And an estimation for U4a1 of 7700 years BP is probably too recent. Anyway, it would mean a split between both CHG related population around 9000 years ago (if we use the estimated age of U4a2 by Behar et al).

Samuel Andrews said...

Lots of us have been aware of EEF ancestry in Yamnaya since spring 2016. This is because Yamnaya always came out like 14% Anatolia Neolithic when modelled using D-stat spreadsheets created by David.

Davidski said...

It's interesting that the agitation by all those stupid trolls claiming that R1a, R1b, Yamnaya, Corded Ware, and so on are all from Iran and/or Maykop has now totally stopped, at least here anyway.

I'm guessing they've had something of a "holy sh*t!" moment.

The Out-of-India crowd is also now generally very subdued and quiet, except for a few crackpots who I won't let through the moderation wall.

Ric Hern said...

Most people don't like change. Sometimes it is a good thing and other times it can be detrimental especially when new discoveries point in another direction and people cling to their views like it is a religion...

Davidski said...

Actually, just between us, I reckon Wang et al. did read my blog post and "borrowed" from it, shall we say. It's too similar to be a coincidence.

Grey said...

"the source of CHG-like ancestry in Steppe Eneolithic is a complete mystery"

wetlands foragers along the south shore of black/caspian (CHG-like) vs wetlands foragers along the north shore (EHG)?

(diverged cos different biome?)

might tie in with pottery as iirc it was the *sedentary* lake/sea foragers who used it

(sedentary lake/sea shore foragers as pre-adaptation for farming?)

are sedentary wetland forager EHG samples from the north shore diverged in some way from standard steppe HGs?

Grey said...

actually, looking at the map from Wang et el

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LX5_QnHA8tE/WzLe-8bQ3vI/AAAAAAAAG7o/HduY0wnObvc9O5Ce-B2g8VN1tfLxML1gQCLcBGAs/s420/Wang_etal_Fig_1.jpg

*if* the mixture was south vs north wetlands foragers the most obvious places wouldn't be south vs north black/caspian seas but the bits abutting the Caucasus so the NW corner of the Caspian or the shores of the Azov.

(in which case the critical areas might be underwater - or maybe not)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Azov

"Also, due to the river inflow, water in the sea has low salinity and a high amount of biomass (such as green algae) that affects the water colour. Abundant plankton results in unusually high fish productivity. The sea shores and spits are low; they are rich in vegetation and bird colonies."

Grey said...

apols spamming and thinking aloud

apparently sea of Azov was known as the "Maeotis swamp" to the Greeks

ice age sea levels

http://www.genesisveracityfoundation.com/aftericeage2.jpg

generally think the red bits are significant (water/land transition = most HG food?)

(maybe the other way round? CHG-like foragers from a wetlands LGM refuge spreading into the Caucasus after the LGM?)

Santosh said...

Slightly off topic. Any reason why R2 has not appeared in any of the ancient steppe DNA. ANI/ASI seems to have picked up a healthy % of R2 somewhere down the line. R2 could have come via Iran_N with J2 to the Indus valley.

Given that R2 split off the dominant Indo European Y DNA R1b and R1a, strange that it is not found in ancient steppe DNA.

Al Bundy said...

Good post Davidski.That being said, Anatolian does not come from Yamn

Al Bundy said...

I agree those hoping to find R1A M417 south of the Caucasus or Maykop are still looking and hoping.

Lee said...

@Davidiski

Your conflating origin of a language with the spread of genetics.

I am aware that genetics and linguistics often pair together--but this is not always true. Look at the spread of English as a modern example of linguistics and genetics not necessarily being aligned.

When you are talking a language with origins in pre-history, no written documentation, and a time depth of at least 6k years ago and perhaps older. Ascentainment of it's ultimate origin is likely not really possible.

With no evidence of widespread Steppe ancestry in the Hittite controlled regions, and that Anatolian and PIE are considered sister languages--it indicates that the origin of pPIE or ePie comes from a common ancestor that may have little or nothing to do with Steppe ancestry or even CHG.

However, both Anatolia_N and Steppe do have a common ancestor similar to CHG/Iran_N. So did this ancestor bring ePie to both groups? Again genetics not necessarily equivalent to language

Anatolia_BA even have more CHG heritage than the Anatoliz_N sample--so did the second pulse of CHG like heritage bring versions of ePIE to both groups?
Again genetics not necessarily equivalent to language

Probably never going to be able to know this from just the genetics or even the linguistics.

All I can say is that it is likely more complicated than just PIE=Steppe.

Undoubtable, late Pie came from the Steppe with a massive spread--which replaced other languages--perhaps even other versions of PIE.

Lee

Al Bundy said...

I think your post in late 2015 about Near Eastern farmers or something blending in with local foragers might explain what's going on, a gradual process not some huge invasion from Iran or wherever.

mzp1 said...

Conflating Steppe Ancestry with Indo-European makes sense only superficially.

Balto-Slavic and Germanic have high Steppe Ancestry and are geographically close to the steppe, with no known large, developed, pre-IE civilizations.

On the other hand, Greece and South Asia have comparatively lower levels of Steppe and are further away, with atleast South Asia also having a massive early civilization.

Yet Sankrit, Greek, and Iranian are generally the most conservative of IE branches, with early linguistic research mostly focusing on Vedic and Greek.

How do you explain the fact that Vedic is furthest away from the Steppe, has the most pre-IE development and population, lower steppe ancestry, and still has the most IE of backgrounds? Academics consider these questions Unscientific questions because they dont fit into academic fields like Linguistics or Genetics.

At the end of the day, I think with atleast the OIT vs Steppe debate, we are looking at different things, almost to the point that 'Indo-European' means different things to us. I dont see this as a productive situation that could lead to any convergence.

Davidski said...

@Santosh

Y-hg R2 is a marker from what is now Iran and surrounds, and despite idiotic claims to the contrary, Yamnaya, Corded Ware, etc. didn't have any ancestry from Iran, hence no R2 on the Bronze Age steppe, even though R2 is phylogenetically related to R1.

@Lee Albee

To get Proto-Indo-European onto the ancient steppe you need a fairly big migration of males and a central role for them in the formation of the new hybrid cultures, simply because the steppe was populated by patriarchal forager and pastoralist tribal groups that couldn't read or write. So anything less than that just looks like a lame duck theory.

On the other hand, to get Proto-Indo-European into Bronze Age Anatolia, you don't need a big migration, nor any lasting genetic impact, because this was a region ruled by proto-states which knew writing and used it for administration. So language change could be forced on the masses by whoever was in power in fairly modern ways, like, for instance, a decree.

That's not to say though that there's no point looking for a genetic signal of the first speakers of Indo-European in Anatolia. It certainly isn't, and the best place to look are royal Hittite or Nes burials.

@Al Bundy

I don't think there was any migration of early farmers from what is now Iran and surrounds onto the steppe. Rather, it seems that the only proper early farmer genetic signal in Yamnaya comes from the farmers of what is now Ukraine. In other words, from the west, not from the south.

EastPole said...

I have listened to The Guardian's Science Weekly podcast with great interest.

First part: the linguist Dr Andreea Calude admits that to find out what PiE might’ve sounded like or even confirm that it really existed we need a time machine. And we don’t have a time machine. She also admits that glottochronology was a pseudoscience and now it is acknowledged that languages evolve at different rates and even certain words within a given language evolve at different rate. To date language splits we need other tools, linguistics is not enough.
The conclusion is that we don’t know where, when and if PIE existed and we shouldn’t treat seriously arguments about the split of various languages like for example Hittite.

Second part: Dr Paul Heggarty from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, reveals how advances in ancient DNA techniques are offering new insights.
Yes, aDNA may be a new tool that will help linguistics. But the problem is how to use it.
Heggarty argues at 26:19 that 6500 years ago the population of the steppe changed significantly, and they got 50% of their ancestry from the south of the Caucasus which suggest that PIE may have come from the South of Caucasus.
But what was the mechanism and why should PIE be so different from other Neolithic languages where languages usually correlate with Y-DNA?

For example:

“Correlation Between Genetic Structure and Linguistic Phylogeny in East Asia” Yunzhi Huang and Hui Li 2017

https://bit.ly/2lRpSzE

“As the linguistic families were founded in the Neolithic Age, since when people have mostly practiced traditions of patrilocal marriage, the paternal inherited Y chromosomes might be more associated to the linguistic classifications than other genetic materials.”

“The genetic patterns in human societies are often influenced by their cultural practices, such as residence patterns and subsistence strategies. Y chromosomes of East Asian populations have played an important role in documenting such influences, e.g., relationships among patrilocal populations should have stronger association with Y chromosomes than with mtDNA. East Asian languages show strong association with paternal lineages of Y chromosomes and whole genomic diversity but not maternal lineages of mtDNA.”

In Europe the correlation between paternal lineages and languages is also very strong. Why PIE should be different. Heggarty should explain.

Davidski said...

Right, so Heggarty doesn't actually understand the ancient DNA data and the genetic structure of Yamnaya, and there he is preaching on the topic to the public.

More Twilight Zone material.

Al Bundy said...

Ok, so we would need to see a lot of R1A in future Hittite remains, and this was before Yamnaya.Even with elite dominance you would need a strong signal.

Al Bundy said...

Again, what evidence is there for a preYamnaya steppe migration big enough to change the local language?

Davidski said...

@Al Bundy

Ok, so we would need to see a lot of R1A in future Hittite remains, and this was before Yamnaya. Even with elite dominance you would need a strong signal.

That's a straw man. Steppe ancestry in some of the royal Hittite remains would be plenty enough.

Again, what evidence is there for a preYamnaya steppe migration big enough to change the local language?

Again, straw man. There's no need for a big migration into Anatolia. A small migration works just fine because this is a land of proto-states.

Early Yamnaya might work, but if not, there were other Kurgan cultures distinct from Yamnaya that spread into the Near East that could fit the bill, for example...

The Arslantepe Royal Tomb and the “Manipulation” of the Kurgan Ideology in Eastern Anatolia at the Beginning of the Third Millennium

It's probably not that difficult to get the Hittites from the steppe into Anatolia. It's much harder to get anything from south of the Caucasus to the steppe at the right time that plausibly results in the formation of Yamnaya and Corded Ware.

Al Bundy said...

Are you being serious with this decree stuff?

Davidski said...

Some languages were more useful than others in ancient Anatolia. So why wouldn't rulers pass laws to use them at state level, and thus forcing everyone else to learn them?

Are you being serious asking that question?

Aniasi said...

@Mzp1

The answer is dead obvious - Those languages are ancient ones. Avestan, Old Persian, Sanskrit and Ancient Greek are all dead languages from 500 BC or earlier. They are not more conservative, like Lithuanian and Baltic, but just frozen in time because there was an oral tradition that preserved them (under some form of religious influence.)

Panini's Sanskrit is an intentionally artificial attempt to retain an archaic form of speech, which was itself a frozen form of prayer language. Avestan is a liturgical language. Old Persian has the benefit of ancient written preservation, and Ancient Greek combined all three. Their descendants are not the most conservative, with New Indo-Aryan, New Iranian, and Modern Greek showing wide innovations.

Al Bundy said...

It's a strawman to expect a lot of R1A in Hittites if Anatolian came from the steppe? You don't seem to expect much if any R1A in future Hittites so maybe they used decrees or advanced forms of telepathy.

Davidski said...

@Al Bundy

You don't seem to expect much if any R1A in future Hittites so maybe they used decrees or advanced forms of telepathy.

That's hilarious.

But how about instead of talking sh*it here you educate yourself about how language shifts are possible in state societies. Google is your friend. Maybe start with the Roman Empire and move on to the British Empire.

Here's a hint: telepathy's got nothing to do with it.

mzp1 said...

@Aniasi,

Indo Aryans according to you entered South Asia post 1500BC. This is after both Hittite and Myceanian Greek are attested. Yet Vedic is more conservative in Language and Mythology than both.

Vedic is also more conservative than Avestan, even though Vedic had to travel further along the same route, and absorb the remnants of IVC culture.

The fact that Vedic and Greek actually were 'advanced' enough to remember these things while those closer to the steppe were not, just strengthens my point.

You also forget that we have decent amounts of data from pre-Christian Germanic and BS Mythology, and a great deal of information on Scythian Language and Customs from Greek sources, Nart Sagas and Archeology, these guys are genetically Yamna/Corded Ware and nothing else, have gone nowhere other then the PS Steppe, and no one has invaded them. Yet None of this stuff looks anything like PIE, even taken as a whole.

"Early scholars of comparative mythology such as Max Müller stressed the importance of Vedic mythology to such an extent that they practically equated it with Proto-Indo-European myth.[9] Modern researchers have been much more cautious, recognizing that, although Vedic mythology is still central, other mythologies must also be taken into account."

Ditto with the language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_religion#Source_mythologies

Oral traditions were PIE, not special to IA or Greek. Christianization affected all parts of Europe. Greek and Latin still seem to have stronger IE memories than BS and Germanic. Skythians werent even Christianized, and yet what we know of them seems not to converge with the Southern Branches very well.

The fact is, whatever excuses you bring up, we have more higher quality IE material from each of IA, Iranian and Greek than we do from the Steppe or just West to it. This is the opposite of what we should see given Geography and Genetics.


N.B Scholars put Hittite as a PIE-Sister language as it otherwise doesnt fit their model. Hittite can also be considered just a highly diverged language from PIE, rather than a sister-branch.

"the absence in Hittite of the eight closest human relationships: husband and wife; father and mother; son and daughter; brother and sister.

Only Sanskrit and Avestan (=Old Iranian) have all eight. In Sanskrit: pati-, patnī; pitṛ, mātṛ; sūnu, duhitṛ; bhrātṛ, svasṛ."

Avestan 8, Greek 7, Latin 6, BS 6, Hittite 1."

Horse: S aśva, Latin equus, Gk hippos and (Mycenaean) iqeja, Celtic ech etc. Instead Hittite has the word anśukurra which is of Sumerian

http://indiafacts.org/fallacies-proto-indo-european-2/





mzp1 said...

(edit: previous post had formatting issues)

@Aniasi,

Indo Aryans according to you entered South Asia post 1500BC. This is after both Hittite and Myceanian Greek are attested. Yet Vedic is more conservative in Language and Mythology than both.

Vedic is also more conservative than Avestan, even though Vedic had to travel further along the same route, and absorb the remnants of IVC culture.

The fact that Vedic and Greek actually were 'advanced' enough to remember these things while those closer to the steppe were not, just strengthens my point.

You also forget that we have decent amounts of data from pre-Christian Germanic and BS Mythology, and a great deal of information on Scythian Language and Customs from Greek sources, Nart Sagas and Archeology, these guys are genetically Yamna/Corded Ware and nothing else, have gone nowhere other then the PS Steppe, and no one has invaded them. Yet None of this stuff looks anything like PIE, even taken as a whole.

"Early scholars of comparative mythology such as Max Müller stressed the importance of Vedic mythology to such an extent that they practically equated it with Proto-Indo-European myth.[9] Modern researchers have been much more cautious, recognizing that, although Vedic mythology is still central, other mythologies must also be taken into account."

Ditto with the language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_religion#Source_mythologies

Oral traditions were PIE, not special to IA or Greek. Christianization affected all parts of Europe. Greek and Latin still seem to have stronger IE memories than BS and Germanic. Skythians werent even Christianized, and yet what we know of them seems not to converge with the Southern Branches very well.

The fact is, whatever excuses you bring up, we have more higher quality IE material from each of IA, Iranian and Greek than we do from the Steppe or just West to it. This is the opposite of what we should see given Geography and Genetics.


N.B Scholars put Hittite as a PIE-Sister language as it otherwise doesnt fit their model. Hittite can also be considered just a highly diverged language from PIE, rather than a sister-branch.

"the absence in Hittite of the eight closest human relationships: husband and wife; father and mother; son and daughter; brother and sister.

Only Sanskrit and Avestan (=Old Iranian) have all eight. In Sanskrit: pati-, patnī; pitṛ, mātṛ; sūnu, duhitṛ; bhrātṛ, svasṛ."

Avestan 8, Greek 7, Latin 6, BS 6, Hittite 1."

Horse: S aśva, Latin equus, Gk hippos and (Mycenaean) iqeja, Celtic ech etc. Instead Hittite has the word anśukurra which is of Sumerian

http://indiafacts.org/fallacies-proto-indo-european-2/

Al Bundy said...

Yes those empires spread language through elite dominance and administrative apparatus, I just doubt that's what caused the spread of Anatolian.

Davidski said...

@mzp1

You're focusing way too much on language for someone who isn't even interested in language.

Admit it, for you this is all about ancestry, racial hierarchy and severe butt hurt that some guys from the steppes showed up in India not that long ago, pushed their way into the upper castes of society, and spread their R1a all over the place.

So enough with this crap, because you're not cut out for linguistics debates. Or in fact any sort of debates.

mzp1 said...

Actually it is all about Vedic (or IE) Religion and Art. This is stuff is hard to understand and I need to have confidence in the integrity of the literature to be able to trust and develop the vague ideas that can come from it.

There is too much uncertainty in the Steppe-Hypothesis and dating Vedic to 1500BC just doesnt work for me. I see it much earlier.

I am happy to say we dont know where PIE came from. We wont ever really know anyway I think. I just feel there is too much pressure pushing the AIT from the mainstream and little guys are getting run over.

There's just no value in AIT. If there was some great inspirational literature from there then maybe the situation would be different, but we dont have that. So how does AIT help my understanding of Vedic. AIT doesnt help in understanding Vedic or IE Religion in any way at all. So those of us in my position dont accept it.

It's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned, that many parts of have growing movements interested in reviving pre-Abrahamic IE religions and culture. Origin-theories will only cause problems and in-fighting between different branches of them, and that wont be very productive.

There is much more to IE than what people like Anthony talk about. As I said we consider different things Indo European.

Steppe Theory generally considers PIE society to be about Dominance and War in an otherwise 'backward' or comparatively undeveloped society. These are the values Anthony seems to celebrate.

I see PIE to be about Dominance and War too, but also Art, Poetry and Religion, Engineering, Civilization, Technology etc.

So ultimately it is a question of values. Which values would win out in the end?

One exclusively based on Skythians in the Steppe that excludes IVC, BMAC and Maykop
or
One based on IndoIranian, Greek, Skythians, Germanic, BS, IVC, BMAC, Maykop etc

Ric Hern said...

Excluding people from the jobmarket and Trade quickly turn them to learn another language...this is how English spread so quickly...filling the Highest paid jobs with people speaking a specific language have the effect that many people below them want to be like them....

Ric Hern said...

We already see an example of how a Tribe appearing out of the blue suddenly became the rulers of the Sumerians.The Gutians.

Why is it so difficult to believe that Hittites most probably used almost the same strategy but were more successful ?

Makes me think of a State ruled by Police. Sorting out the turmoil....

EastPole said...

@mzp1

Rigveda is not understood and it is more IE than Indian:

“The history of the interpretation of ancient texts undoubtedly has its own particular value and interest. But nineteenth-century scholars had very soon reached the conclusion that, when it came to understanding the poems of the Rigveda, native tradition was entirely misleading. In the introduction to the seven-volume Sanskrit-Wörterbuch published in St. Petersburg between 1855 and 1875, the German lexicographer Rudolph Roth had made a point of stressing that, although the authors of the commentaries might throw useful light on later theological works, when it came to the songs of the most ancient poets they were “untaugliche Führer” ‘unfit guides’ (Böhtlingk and Roth 1855-75: v). The poems stood out as being of a very different nature. As the American William Dwight Whitney observed, the content of the poems “seems almost more Indo-European than Indian” (1873: 101), and the native commentators were very much at sea. The German linguist Theodor Benfey, writing in 1858, had been clear that “anyone who has carefully studied the Indian interpretations knows that absolutely no continuous tradition between the composition of the Vedas and their explanation by Indian scholars can be assumed; that on the contrary, there must have been a long, uninterrupted break in tradition between the genuine poetic remains of Vedic antiquity and their interpretations” (1858: 1608).”

http://www.rigveda.co.uk/asut1.pdf

Rigveda is not understood, PIE religion is not understood, PIE language is not properly reconstructed. We just hope that genetic studies will help to direct the research in the proper direction. There are plenty of clues but people just don’t want to see it.

Matt said...

Though steppe origin of the proto-Indo-European clade seems fairly clear (though depending on our idea of the Indo-Anatolian tree structure) I really don't know how to solve to proto-Indo-Anatolian problem.

On the one hand, seems like Anatolian speaking presence is too early to be a sudden/late migration of any distinct group that is "intrusive" and takes over, and the absence of EHG related ancestry suggests no significant migration of EHG bearing groups into Anatolia as a whole (apparently with new evidence from Arslantepe confirming this pattern again under "Population dynamics at Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Arslantepe, Anatolia" which as a site linked to early Hittites should ground zero for if *any* EHG ancestry should show up).

On the other, evidence in this post suggests no significant large migration to the north of the Caucasus from Caucasus or south of Caucasus in timeframes leading to Yamnaya!

So not really a clear solution there.

I wouldn't say that it's a slam dunk that language spreads without ancestry spreads can only happen after states arise.

There's some work a couple years old now that Pama-Nyungan basically spread through Australia without bulk gene flow, and that's between hunter-gatherer societies. Though we don't know the mechanics of *how* this happened. So if that's correct, it's not like that's impossible to have language change without genetic shift well before states or any of their institutions.

All this said, I think at the moment, it still makes most sense for Indo-Anatolian to defer to the linguistic preference for steppe copper age urheimat and synthesize with the genetics that suggest this was specifically in the southern steppes in the Ciscaucasus region.

Davidski said...

@Matt

So not really a clear solution there.

Yeah, good post. It seems to me that an impasse is on the horizon as far as the origin of Indo-Hittite is concerned, between the majority of linguists who see its homeland on the steppe and the minority who don't, like the Max Planck crowd, because ancient DNA has failed to be the magic bullet in this instance.

I don't think the Max Planck crowd have cottoned on to this yet, but they should soon.

Davidski said...

@Matt

However, in regards to your comments about Arslantepe, I don't think that's necessarily ground zero for steppe influence in Anatolia, despite the presence of the Maykop-like burial there.

The Hittites only got there rather late, and who knows how really Hittite these people were who represented the Hittite Empire in the region.

A further radical change occurred in the second millennium BCE, when the site interacted with the rising Hittite civilization, which exerted a strong influence on it. But it was with the Late Bronze I and, more evidently, Late Bronze II, that the expanding Hittite state, which expanded as far as the banks of the Euphrates, imposed its cultural and political domination over the populations in the Malatya region, heralding another important stage in the history of Arslantepe.

http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195376142.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780195376142-e-45

The bolded part is what I was trying to explain to Al Bundy above, but apparently to no avail.

Folker said...

@Al Bundy & Mzp1
Hittite as other anatolian IE languages (like Luwian or Palaic) were used in the reconstruction of PIE till the 1920's. Therefore, the Anatolian branch is considered to have split from Early PIE, as most other modern languages are considered to have split from Late PIE. Using a Pre-PIE language to explain the Anatolian branch is just an absurdity, as it is in complete contradiction with the reconstruction made of PIE. This is clearly against the firm consensus existing among linguists about PIE.

By the way, if you have studied Hittites only a little, you should know they created a very popwerful administation, were writing was central to their power. And they used Hittite as an admistrative language, meaning everybody trying to gain himself a place in the sun needed to learn Hittite (not to write, but to speak it). The first international treaties were Hittites, and we know they wrote private contracts (even if it was mostly on wood, meaning they disappeared, for mariage and other private evenments), among other things. Writing was so central to Hittites, that, as they believed that gods must be adressed in their original language, they transcripted even extinct languages to be able to still use them (that's why we have tablets in Hattic from the XIIIth century, even if this language was extinct, as attested on how the sribes wrote. Clearly it was difficult for them to understand the meaning, hence also some IEnization of Hattic as they were not able to refer to an existing language to complete the missing parts).

By the way, R1a is not THE IE haplogroup. Some subclades of R1b are very frequent among IE (as you may know), and at least one subclade of I2a is clearly a Steppe marker (S12195) as David already said several times. This subclade is especially interesting as it is showing an early migration from the Steppe to the Balkans, and especially Thrace (with one Yamnaya, and one boy buried in a kurgan-like tomb, whose father could very well be a Yamnaya, both from around 3000BC).

@matt
Anatolian IE presence in Anatolia is not early. There is a wide consensus among Hittitologists to date their venue from the IIId millenium, and mostly from the later part. This is entirely compatible with linguistic, as the split between Late PIE and the Anatolian branch is dated to the IVth millenium. The increase in archeological findings of Pontic/Balkanic influence is dated from around 2300 in Northern Anatolia.
Again, Hittites became a very important minority at Kanesh only around the time of the Assyrian Colonies. And never were the majority (even at Kanesh!).
Cremation, seen as privilege for Royals or high aristocraty, is also seen as originated from Balkans.
The first Steppe people who probably used this form of burial were Yamnaya from Thrace (the Southern group of Bulgarian Yamnaya) in the first part/mid IIId millenium.

EastPole said...

@Folker
“By the way, R1a is not THE IE haplogroup. Some subclades of R1b are very frequent among IE (as you may know), and at least one subclade of I2a is clearly a Steppe marker.”

In my opinion the probability that R1a is THE IE haplogroup is much higher than the probability that R1b is THE IE haplogroup or that I2a is THE IE haplogroup.
R1a correlates well with very archaic, conservative and related IE languages in Europe and in India. You cannot say the same about R1b or I2a.

Ric Hern said...

@ EastPole

Some Indo-European Languages seemingly retained different Archaisms. The rate at which similar sound changes happen within different languages differ.

So although certain languages could be closer in form to Proto-Indo-European it does not automatically make them the oldest.

And Naturally if you take 10 Indo-Aryan languages and 5 Western Indo-European Languages and you compare them to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European the Indo-Aryan will outway the Western Indo-European Languages and put Western Indo-European Languages further from the Centre than the others...

It can also mean that a specific language was isolated for longer or that it left the Proto-Indo-European Homeland the latest....

Folker said...

@Eastpole

There is no "THE IE haplogroup". Other haplogroups were present in the Steppe and could be connected to IE migrations. R1b L23 subclades and I2a S12195 are among them.

PIE emerged in the Pontic Steppes among Sredny Stog, Khvalynsk and other related cultures. They all sharing similar cultural traits, and probably spoke early PIE.

Ric Hern said...

@ EastPole

Some Indo-European Languages seemingly retained different Archaisms. The rate at which similar sound changes happen within different languages differ.

So although certain languages could be closer in form to Proto-Indo-European it does not automatically make them the oldest.

And Naturally if you take 10 Indo-Aryan languages and 5 Western Indo-European Languages and you compare them to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European the Indo-Aryan will outway the Western Indo-European Languages and put Western Indo-European Languages further from the Centre than the others...this I think is where Genetics can help to figure things out...

It can also mean that a specific language was isolated for longer or that it left the Proto-Indo-European Homeland the latest....

Ric Hern said...

I wonder how an Proto-Indo-European reconstruction will look like using only Gaelic, Lithuanian and Tocharian ? The three most extremely isolated Indo-European Languages ? And roughly found along the same latitude ?

mzp1 said...

It would be really interesting if PIE could be reconstructed afresh, language, religion and culture, working off the Steppe-Hypothesis.

How would that differ from our current reconstruction?

MajorTom said...

This and other recent posts have got me thinking about European mtdna and subclades which potentially came over with "exotic" women brought over by Steppe pastoralists. My own mtdna is N1b1b (per 23andme), with maternal grandmas side coming from Belarus. Note that it is not the Ashkenazi-specific N1b2. Is it safe to assume my dear old g g g g etc grandma was one of those warbrides?

Perhaps slightly off topic , I do apologize if that's the case.

Lee said...

@Davidski

The answer is probably more nuanced than you state or seem to espouse.
Viable alternatives:

Again, a singular and powerful tribe from the south could have moved north and influenced by elite dominance in eneolithic or late neolithic brining a new language with them.

Another possibility is that the caucuses wives brought their language with them. Steppe societies gave women fairly high status. So it is certainly possible that PIE came with the women. Children were likely bilingual. Possible that early on PIE became lingua franca between tribes due to linguistically distinct tribes all taking brides from same or highly related CHG like groups. Not an unprecedented thought: Indigenous Women and the use of Language in the transmission of ...
PDFUniversity of Manitoba › ca › institutes


Again, early history is going to be speculative. We can never know.

But i can come up with 3-4 scenarios, that early PIE did not come from steppe. Two possible one briefly discussed above.

Again ultimately, it is likely complicated, unknowable and may have little to do with genetics data.

Lee

Dmytro said...

I'm no linguist, but I suspect that the original pre-PIE and even PIE may well have had diverse if closely related dialects from times of (very) old. I'm not really sure that the reconstructed "pre-PIE" recognizes this sufficiently. It would not surprise me at all if these dialectical contact zones included areas slightly north of the actual steppe zone i.e. some forest steppe and even forest areas. Especially the R1a "dominant" areas (but also of course other though probably less numerous haplogroups). This does not deny the central importance of the steppe, but perhaps it explains some aspects of the origins of some IE groups esp. in Eastern Europe. And it stands to reason that the migrating groups would to a larger or lesser extent have been influenced linguistically by populations they mixed with as they spread. I'm sure we are far from hearing the last word on all these issues.

Sanuj said...

@EastPole

"Rigveda is not understood and it is more IE than Indian"

You really have to get out of the this type of historicity laden approach to understanding Indian texts, pioneered by the 19th century German Indologists. You cannot dissociate the text from the tradition that has handed them down to you. There is no "scientific" way of approaching the reading, and this entire historical-critical approach is a Protestant Theological innovation, superimposed on the Vedic knowledge system. Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee in their book 'The Nay Science' explain the fallacy of such a method in not just Indology but infact, to larger humanities as well.
https://www.academia.edu/34240375/Indian_Studies_After_Indology_An_Interview_With_Vishwa_Adluri_And_Joydeep_Bagchee

"German Indology is an approach to Indian texts. It originated in specific intellectual-historical conditions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany. Its salient features are an emphasis on literal meaning, attention to the historical conditions (the so-called realia) assumed to exist at the time and considered decisive for the texts composition, and a rejection of traditional reception.Obviously, this is all quite problematic: first, how do we know what the texts mean if not for the exegetic, commentarial tradition that hands them down to us? German Indology presumes there is such a thing as an unmediated, purely "scientific" access to texts but at least since Gadamer we know this is naive.Second, German Indology did not just see historical data as supplementing and perhaps refining our understanding of texts; rather, it saw historical information as replacing the task of understanding. Ultimately, it set up an antithetical relationship to the tradition that proved unsustainable: German Indology was scientific, trustworthy because it was not the tradition. Third, there is something reductive about reading historical conditions out of thetexts and then using those inferred conditions in turn to interpret them. In thecase of the texts we studied, the Mahabhrata and the Bhagwata Gita , we found this led to manifest circularity. An entire discipline was constituted based on a few uncritical principles ,for example, the assumption of an Aryan invasion or that Brahmans corrupted the "original" texts.
...
the historical-critical method is neither historical nor critical;least of all is it a method. It is, rather, a way of making predictions about the text - predictions that, if unchallenged, will appear true because they are self-confirming. For example, without the supposition that the Brahmans corrupted the "original" texts, the method cannot be applied to Indian texts.Thus whoever applied the method and howsoever they did so, they would end up confirming the narrative of Brahmanic corruption. Herein lies the method's brilliance: its prejudices are built in."

We are in a situation where we don't know where, when and if something like a PIE even existed, good look with reconstructing any deeper meaning out of it.

Palacista said...

@Dmytro
Guess what, the historical linguists though of dialects in IE about 150 years ago.

mzp1 said...

@Lee,

"Steppe Societies gave women fairly high status"

I have noticed this too and it seems to conflict with Southern Indo European branches.

Dmytro said...

"Guess what, the historical linguists though of dialects in IE about 150 years ago." (Palacista)

Can you recommend any work where this is developed further? I would have to use my imagination to go beyond the original assumption. But perhaps some theorists have come up with more specific hypotheses. I would be particularly interested in any attempt to distinguish "original dialects" (before the dispersion) from speeches which emerged AFTER contacts between migrants and locals. And whether "reconstructed PIE" was an actual speech or just a scientific concoction on the basis of known greatgranddaughters--> (so to speak) of the original IE dialects. I won't hold my breath BTW (:=))

Lee said...

Some did. One exception i can think of is the Etruscan people

Ric Hern said...

@ Lee Albee

As far as I can remember the discussions about CHG, it is relatively clear that CHG like people admixed over a timespan of 2000 years.

This hardly points to a spectacular Linguistic input from the CHG like side....and over a 2000 year timespan we are certainly looking at different Languages or even different linguistic families entering PIE during that time...

Davidski said...

@Lee Albee

Again, a singular and powerful tribe from the south could have moved north and influenced by elite dominance in eneolithic or late neolithic brining a new language with them.

If you're claiming now that the minor CHG part of the Eneolithic Steppe samples can be associated with the entry of a powerful tribe and PIE into the steppes, then realistically you have to push back the dating of PIE to the early Neolithic or something like that.

Unless of course you also claim that those Eneolithic Steppe samples just happen to be the first of their kind to be sampled, and lived right after the migration of the CHG PIE population north of the Caucasus.

That's rather unlikely. It seems that this stable, Yamnaya-like EHG/CHG blend was already well established north of the Caucasus well over 6,000 years ago, and may have been part of a cline that existed as far back as the Mesolithic.

And no, I don't think it's realistic that women introduced PIE into the steppes, for one because there's no single culture or even horizon, and thus likely linguistic source, that we can associate with this.

Onur Dincer said...

@Sanuj

You really have to get out of the this type of historicity laden approach to understanding Indian texts, pioneered by the 19th century German Indologists. You cannot dissociate the text from the tradition that has handed them down to you. There is no "scientific" way of approaching the reading, and this entire historical-critical approach is a Protestant Theological innovation, superimposed on the Vedic knowledge system. Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee in their book 'The Nay Science' explain the fallacy of such a method in not just Indology but infact, to larger humanities as well.
https://www.academia.edu/34240375/Indian_Studies_After_Indology_An_Interview_With_Vishwa_Adluri_And_Joydeep_Bagchee


Why should non-Hindu scholars treat the Vedas the same way most Hindus do? They are not bound by Hindu religious restrictions. This is nothing to do with Protestantism, but to do with applying the historical-critical method. Western scholars have applied the historical-critical method to all sorts of religious texts and much more. You may not like their results when it comes to the Vedas for religious reasons, but do not expect the non-Hindus here to share the same concerns with you.

Matt said...

@Davidski, re: Arslan Tepe, yeah, I'll await the paper and see what the sequence and archaeological details there are I guess, before taking it as too much one way or the other.

Davidski said...

@Matt

I actually just had a proper look at that abstract on Arslantepe from ICAANE 2018. I might write something up on it, because it sort of looks like a prelude to an announcement by Max Planck that the PIE homeland was in Iran rather than the steppe based on the aDNA from there.

Bob Floy said...

The position of Anatolian on the IE family tree, now coupled with the recent data from bronze age Anatolia(under-sampled though it is, need samples from the Nes, etc.)makes me suspect that PIE itself did originate somewhere in the caucuses...won't speculate as to which specific culture it began with(sorry OM), or exactly how it was transmitted to the steppe(where it certainly diversified, and spread from, in any case). But PIE is definitely not from Iran, much less Mesopotamia as some folks(if I understand right) are suggesting. That's contrived bullshit.

Sanuj said...

@OnurDincer

It has nothing to do with Hindu/Non Hindu scholar, it is a critique of that entire method for very valid rational reasons, and the apparent fault in the so-called "method". Read the interview and the book.

Davidski said...

@Bob Floy

Yep, here you go, an article in New Scientist claiming that Iran might be the PIE homeland.

It's behind a paywall, but that's OK, because it's not even worth reading.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2169896-worlds-most-spoken-languages-may-have-arisen-in-ancient-iran/

Ric Hern said...

Sister Branch of Proto-Indo-European. What does that actually mean ? If we take it literally it should mean that Hittite was Not Proto-Indo-European and can not be classified as Indo-European, and retained only very little similarities to its Sister after +-2000 years of separation and admixture of its speakers with other Languages before it was written down.

So if it is true that Hittite was a Sister, why should Hittite even be mentioned when talking about Indo-Europeans ? After all, the Sister went and evolved her own way....

Bob Floy said...

@Davidski

That's my response every time I see a New Scientist article..."paywall? Meh, not that important".
So do you figure this is just part of an effort to soften the blow of the recent data for the Nirjhars of the world? Just trying to couch the PIE question in terms which are as non-controversial as possible, at the expense of the truth?

Davidski said...

@Bob Floy

Just trying to couch the PIE question in terms which are as non-controversial as possible, at the expense of the truth?

Absolutely. There are two main reasons why Iran is considered an attractive PIE homeland by many right now...

- it's a more politically correct location for this purpose than the Eastern European steppe

- it makes it easier to sell the fact that there were large scale population movements from the steppe to South Asia during the Bronze Age

But obviously, neither of these reasons has anything to do with science or any sort of real scholarship.

Onur Dincer said...

@Sanuj

It has nothing to do with Hindu/Non Hindu scholar, it is a critique of that entire method for very valid rational reasons, and the apparent fault in the so-called "method". Read the interview and the book.

I read the interview. All the authors are doing is trying to save the "traditional" interpretation of the Hindu religious texts and calling academics to stop interfering in the monopoly of the Hindu religious establishment on the interpretation of the Hindu religious texts by denigrating and demonizing the interpretations that are unpleasing to the Hindu religious establishment. Needless to say, no non-Hindu scholar will pay attention to any of what they say.

Bob Floy said...

@Davidski

Obviously this sort of thing is not unprecedented, but it's still scandalous and shameful. How will they be able to keep this ruse going when the Yamnaya uniparental markers(male and female) are clearly not in line with an Iranian origin? Surely the presence of CHG-like ancestry alone won't be enough.

Davidski said...

@Bob Floy

How will they be able to keep this ruse going when the Yamnaya uniparental markers (male and female) are clearly not in line with an Iranian origin?

That's been obvious for a while now. I've pointed it out many times. In fact, the only strong link between Yamnaya and Iran within a reasonable time frame are migrations from the Bronze Age steppe to Iran. And this can indeed be seen in the ancient DNA data already available.

So if Iran is still to be championed as the PIE homeland, or part of it, then the focus will have to turn to an almost purely linguistic transmission from there to Yamnaya via, say, Maykop, or some other Caucasus archaeological culture. But Yamnaya doesn't appear to be closely related to Maykop, and after that the options are very limited.

It's something of a mine field, and always was, as I pointed out almost two years ago...

Big deal of 2016: the territory of present-day Iran cannot be the Indo-European homeland