Where did proto-IE language start?

[Ygorcs]

Also interesting few years ago some scientists argued based on the vocabulary of Indo Europeans, the proto homeland would be close to a sea surrounded by mountains . That horse riding Steppe thing is actually more Indo_Iranic specific.

Doesn't it also have to do with the perceived necessity of a certain time and location where the common language (PIE) that gave birth to most of the IE branches had to have a word for things "wagon", "horse" (*h1ek'wos) and "yoke" (*jugom), since they're shared as ancient words (not loanwords) but most of those daughter languages? I think that, yes, the horse riding-based warfare was mostly a later development by the time that Indo-Iranian was already developping as a distinct branch, but at least those first, basic aspects of horse domestication must've been present by the time that a Late PIE was still spoken undivided, with just dialectal differences.

 

[Milan.M]

...........

 

[hrvclv]

But why is that a big problem? I mean, there is no evidence of very early horse domestication and horsemanship in warfare in Anatolia/South Caucasus, but I presume that the word for "horse" appeared in PIE much before that cultural advance and probably originally referred to the wild horses they hunted, and AFAIK wild horses were present in the Caucasus, Northwest Iran and parts of Anatolia. By Maykop horse bones were already found with some regularity. So even the Leyla Tepe people could've been familiar with horses, though they didn't have a very important role in their culture and economy yet. Anatolian IE, which had a word for "horse", could've easily learned the use of domesticated horses just many centuries later when the horses and the chariots made the back-migration now from the steppe to Transcaucasia.

I have some questions currently nagging at me.

Leyla Tepe : - first kurgans - advanced metallurgic skills - linked with Maykop. But suspected to have been an offshoot from Ubaid/Uruk. So : what are the chances they could have belonged to haplo R, or had any connection with PIE ?

Kura-Araxes : originally, judging from burial rites, a rather egalitarian (hurrian-based?) society. Devoted exclusively to crop growing. No horses. Then, after ca 3000 BC, kurgans (with cromlechs) appear alongside the older rites; tomb treasures reflect a clear hierarchy; horse bones are found; pastoralists occupy the highlands while agriculture continues in the lowlands. And wiki says : "The expansion of Y-DNA subclade R-Z93 (R1a1a1b2), according to Mascarenhas et al. (2015), is compatible with 'the archeological records of eastward expansion of West Asian populations in the 4th millennium BCE, culminating in the socalled Kura-Araxes migrations in the post-Uruk IV period'."

So Kura-Araxes would have been partly R1a? To what extent? Arriving from the west? With horses and kurgans?
Why would steppe pastoralists have come to settle the Kura valley highlands, with their rough terrain and snowy winters ?
Were they pushed out of the steppe by Yamna R1b?
Did they speak some sort of PIE ?

The harder I try to understand, the more confused I get!

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

I have some questions currently nagging at me.
Leyla Tepe : - first kurgans - advanced metallurgic skills - linked with Maykop. But suspected to have been an offshoot from Ubaid/Uruk. So : what are the chances they could have belonged to haplo R, or had any connection with PIE ?
Kura-Araxes : originally, judging from burial rites, a rather egalitarian (hurrian-based?) society. Devoted exclusively to crop growing. No horses. Then, after ca 3000 BC, kurgans (with cromlechs) appear alongside the older rites; tomb treasures reflect a clear hierarchy; horse bones are found; pastoralists occupy the highlands while agriculture continues in the lowlands. And wiki says : "The expansion of Y-DNA subclade R-Z93 (R1a1a1b2), according to Mascarenhas et al. (2015), is compatible with 'the archeological records of eastward expansion of West Asian populations in the 4th millennium BCE, culminating in the socalled Kura-Araxes migrations in the post-Uruk IV period'."
So Kura-Araxes would have been partly R1a? To what extent? Arriving from the west? With horses and kurgans?
Why would steppe pastoralists have come to settle the Kura valley highlands, with their rough terrain and snowy winters ?
Were they pushed out of the steppe by Yamna R1b?
Did they speak some sort of PIE ?
The harder I try to understand, the more confused I get!

I imagine R1b Armenoid-types from the Middle East moving up into the Pontic-Caspian Steppe and mixing with the native proto-Nordid Corded types, which then leads to the Kurgan hypothesis. This also explains why Anatolian is more archaic than other I-E languages (it is from the R1b Armenoid-types in the Middle East, who were the true culture-bearers). There was that paper suggesting Kurgans were EHG + CHG - well, in this case R1a is the EHG, and R1b is the CHG.

I think, for example, that the Sumerians would have been a lot more R1b than people currently think. And let's not forget the red hair found across the ancient Middle East, as well as exports from the Middle East bearing civilisation into the Americas (lots of evidence for this, just one example - samples of cocaine in Egyptian mummies).

 

[Angela]

The traditional explanation has been that Kura Araxes received gene flow as well as cultural influences from the north. However, no R1a has been found. There is one R1b and "L" if I remember correctly, but we have only two or three samples.

 

[hrvclv]

The traditional explanation has been that Kura Araxes received gene flow as well as cultural influences from the north. However, no R1a has been found. There is one R1b and "L" if I remember correctly, but we have only two or three samples.

No R1a? For sure, R1b would fit in more logically, with the Yamna pool a short distance away. But then, what were Mascarenhas et al. talking about ?

 

[Alan]

I have some questions currently nagging at me.

Leyla Tepe : - first kurgans - advanced metallurgic skills - linked with Maykop. But suspected to have been an offshoot from Ubaid/Uruk. So : what are the chances they could have belonged to haplo R, or had any connection with PIE ?

That was in the past, in the last years the Leyla Tepe/Maykop/KuraAraxes-Iranian Plateau connection looks stronger. Not meaning there was no influx from Uruk too.

 

[hrvclv]

That was in the past, in the last years the Leyla Tepe/Maykop/KuraAraxes-Iranian Plateau connection looks stronger. Not meaning there was no influx from Uruk too.

Does anyone know what Leyla Tepe were like genetically ? I mean, CHG, central or Black Sea Anatolian, NW Iran ?

 

[Angela]

No R1a? For sure, R1b would fit in more logically, with the Yamna pool a short distance away. But then, what were Mascarenhas et al. talking about ?

What happened is ancient dna, hrvclv. Speculations are either confirmed or falsified by it. Of course, we only have three y dna resolutions so far: 2 R1b and one L1b. Both make sense, but we'll have to see with more samples what else shows up.

From Lazaridis: 1635 (Armenia_EBA) is R1b1-M415(xM269). We'll be sure to include in the revision. Thanks to the person who noticed! #ILovePreprints

 

[MOESAN]

If that should turn out to be 2103, there might be might there not? Isn't there R1b Z2103 in Anatolia?

See Maciamo's map of what used to be called R1b-ht35, which includes Z2103.

[/IMG]

Does anyone have a map of just Z2103?

This is one of the reasons we were willing to entertain the idea, along with the fact that if you followed the culture, it was clear that lots of it, and lots of artifacts, including kurgans , if you can call them that, are attested frist south of the Caucasus not north of it.

We were arguing here about the findings relied upon by Ivanov, for example, years ago. One of our Kurdish members was passionate about it. I'm not going to pretend I was positive about it, but I was certainly willing to entertain it, based on Maciamo's work, the archaeology, and the culture etc.

I said then and I'll repeat now that Anthony benefited from the fact he wrote in English and that he's got a great, very approachable writing style, wonderful for hobbyists, whereas Ivanov and his partner's prose is very turgid and opaque in some places. Not that they were right about everything either. Their map was also wrong.

What was the R1b found in Kura Araxes? Anyone have the specific clade at their fingertips?

Just aside, it's a pity we have not maps with side by side relative %'s (like here) and absolute %'s AND that this map does not separate L51 from Z2103, what is an important point inPIE question
J

 

[Ygorcs]

I imagine R1b Armenoid-types from the Middle East moving up into the Pontic-Caspian Steppe and mixing with the native proto-Nordid Corded types, which then leads to the Kurgan hypothesis. This also explains why Anatolian is more archaic than other I-E languages (it is from the R1b Armenoid-types in the Middle East, who were the true culture-bearers). There was that paper suggesting Kurgans were EHG + CHG - well, in this case R1a is the EHG, and R1b is the CHG.

I think, for example, that the Sumerians would have been a lot more R1b than people currently think. And let's not forget the red hair found across the ancient Middle East, as well as exports from the Middle East bearing civilisation into the Americas (lots of evidence for this, just one example - samples of cocaine in Egyptian mummies).

But if Sumerians were significantly R1b, then their males certainly couldn't be from the same or similar clades of R1b of the supposed PIE-bearing R1b males in Transcaucasia, because Sumerian is attested so early (~3,000 BC) that it WOULD HAVE to be very similar to IE branches, at least a more archaic branch like Anatolian IE, and in fact it is most likely an isolate with very few if any genetic relationship with any PIE variant (loanwords, which are few anyway, are irrelevant). Unless, of course, they shifted their language and adopted the language of the natives where they conquered, instead of imposing their own, which I don't think is very likely considering that they were much, muuuuch more advanced than the natives of Southern Mesopotamia. I think that any society that was clearly an offshoot from the Uruk (pre-)civilization has a very low chance of being the direct ancestor of PIE, unless, of course, they were subsequently invaded by foreign pastoralists and shifted their language and merged their cultures with them (now that hypothesis starts to become maybe too complex). PIE, in my opinion, would've been either a EHG Pontic-Caspian language or a North West Asian (anywhere near the Black Sea coast to the Caspian Sea), the fact our attestations of "Fertile Crescent" languages are so early make it extremely improbable that PIE, even Early PIE, had anything to do with Sumerian, Semitic languages or Hurro-Urartian, for none of these languages are even remotely PIE-like. That degree of divergence would require that they had split so early that it would probably be even in early/mid Mesolithic times even though they lived more or less next to each other, a very distant and improbable relationship.

 

[markozd]

But if Sumerians were significantly R1b, then their males certainly couldn't be from the same or similar clades of R1b of the supposed PIE-bearing R1b males in Transcaucasia, because Sumerian is attested so early (~3,000 BC) that it WOULD HAVE to be very similar to IE branches, at least a more archaic branch like Anatolian IE, and in fact it is most likely an isolate with very few if any genetic relationship with any PIE variant (loanwords, which are few anyway, are irrelevant). Unless, of course, they shifted their language and adopted the language of the natives where they conquered, instead of imposing their own, which I don't think is very likely considering that they were much, muuuuch more advanced than the natives of Southern Mesopotamia. I think that any society that was clearly an offshoot from the Uruk (pre-)civilization has a very low chance of being the direct ancestor of PIE, unless, of course, they were subsequently invaded by foreign pastoralists and shifted their language and merged their cultures with them (now that hypothesis starts to become maybe too complex). PIE, in my opinion, would've been either a EHG Pontic-Caspian language or a North West Asian (anywhere near the Black Sea coast to the Caspian Sea), the fact our attestations of "Fertile Crescent" languages are so early make it extremely improbable that PIE, even Early PIE, had anything to do with Sumerian, Semitic languages or Hurro-Urartian, for none of these languages are even remotely PIE-like. That degree of divergence would require that they had split so early that it would probably be even in early/mid Mesolithic times even though they lived more or less next to each other, a very distant and improbable relationship.

In his newer paper Whittaker proposed an already differentiated (i. e. definitely non-Anatolian) in Sumerian: https://www.academia.edu/3592967/Euphratic_-_A_phonological_sketch

I lack the expertise to evaluate how solid this is, but here's Indo-European linguist Prof. Piotr Gasiorowski thinks:

I've met Gordon at a couple of conferences and had an opportunity to exchange thoughts with him. My opinion is generally positive. To be sure, comparing anything with Sumerian is relatively easy, given the shortness, simple structure and uncertain semantics of Sumerian morphemes. As a result, Sumerian is one of the favourite targets of the linguistic fringe (not to mention complete kooks). But Gordon's approach is careful. He is very open to criticism and has refined his analyses as a result of discussion. The PIE forms he maps onto Sumerian lexemes are impeccable and represent actual reconstructible words, complete with ablaut grades and derivational and inflectional suffixes, so he isn't just another root-equation maniac. Controversial as Euphratic is, I would say Gordon Whittaker has made a pretty solid case for it.

He adds that some of those same IE-looking loans are found in Akkadian as well, and it doesn't look like they were mediated through Sumerian.

Anyway, I don't see why early IE-speakers couldn't conceptually have been much further south. The lack of attestation could just mean that at this point they weren't particularly civilized or impressive. It'll in any case be interesting to see what comes of it when more research is done in those areas - there was a bit of a commitment to a northern homeland in the field of IE linguistics/philology until recently, so this line of investigation is in a way breaking new ground.

 

[Ygorcs]

In his newer paper Whittaker proposed an already differentiated (i. e. definitely non-Anatolian) in Sumerian: https://www.academia.edu/3592967/Euphratic_-_A_phonological_sketch

I lack the expertise to evaluate how solid this is, but here's Indo-European linguist Prof. Piotr Gasiorowski thinks:



He adds that some of those same IE-looking loans are found in Akkadian as well, and it doesn't look like they were mediated through Sumerian.

Anyway, I don't see why early IE-speakers couldn't conceptually have been much further south. The lack of attestation could just mean that at this point they weren't particularly civilized or impressive. It'll in any case be interesting to see what comes of it when more research is done in those areas - there was a bit of a commitment to a northern homeland in the field of IE linguistics/philology until recently, so this line of investigation is in a way breaking new ground.
I've met Gordon at a couple of conferences and had an opportunity to exchange thoughts with him. My opinion is generally positive. To be sure, comparing anything with Sumerian is relatively easy, given the shortness, simple structure and uncertain semantics of Sumerian morphemes. As a result, Sumerian is one of the favourite targets of the linguistic fringe (not to mention complete kooks). But Gordon's approach is careful. He is very open to criticism and has refined his analyses as a result of discussion. The PIE forms he maps onto Sumerian lexemes are impeccable and represent actual reconstructible words, complete with ablaut grades and derivational and inflectional suffixes, so he isn't just another root-equation maniac. Controversial as Euphratic is, I would say Gordon Whittaker has made a pretty solid case for it.I've met Gordon at a couple of conferences and had an opportunity to exchange thoughts with him. My opinion is generally positive. To be sure, comparing anything with Sumerian is relatively easy, given the shortness, simple structure and uncertain semantics of Sumerian morphemes. As a result, Sumerian is one of the favourite targets of the linguistic fringe (not to mention complete kooks). But Gordon's approach is careful. He is very open to criticism and has refined his analyses as a result of discussion. The PIE forms he maps onto Sumerian lexemes are impeccable and represent actual reconstructible words, complete with ablaut grades and derivational and inflectional suffixes, so he isn't just another root-equation maniac. Controversial as Euphratic is, I would say Gordon Whittaker has made a pretty solid case for it.I've met Gordon at a couple of conferences and had an opportunity to exchange thoughts with him. My opinion is generally positive. To be sure, comparing anything with Sumerian is relatively easy, given the shortness, simple structure and uncertain semantics of Sumerian morphemes. As a result, Sumerian is one of the favourite targets of the linguistic fringe (not to mention complete kooks). But Gordon's approach is careful. He is very open to criticism and has refined his analyses as a result of discussion. The PIE forms he maps onto Sumerian lexemes are impeccable and represent actual reconstructible words, complete with ablaut grades and derivational and inflectional suffixes, so he isn't just another root-equation maniac. Controversial as Euphratic is, I would say Gordon Whittaker has made a pretty solid case for it.I've met Gordon at a couple of conferences and had an opportunity to exchange thoughts with him. My opinion is generally positive. To be sure, comparing anything with Sumerian is relatively easy, given the shortness, simple structure and uncertain semantics of Sumerian morphemes. As a result, Sumerian is one of the favourite targets of the linguistic fringe (not to mention complete kooks). But Gordon's approach is careful. He is very open to criticism and has refined his analyses as a result of discussion. The PIE forms he maps onto Sumerian lexemes are impeccable and represent actual reconstructible words, complete with ablaut grades and derivational and inflectional suffixes, so he isn't just another root-equation maniac. Controversial as Euphratic is, I would say Gordon Whittaker has made a pretty solid case for it.I've met Gordon at a couple of conferences and had an opportunity to exchange thoughts with him. My opinion is generally positive. To be sure, comparing anything with Sumerian is relatively easy, given the shortness, simple structure and uncertain semantics of Sumerian morphemes. As a result, Sumerian is one of the favourite targets of the linguistic fringe (not to mention complete kooks). But Gordon's approach is careful. He is very open to criticism and has refined his analyses as a result of discussion. The PIE forms he maps onto Sumerian lexemes are impeccable and represent actual reconstructible words, complete with ablaut grades and derivational and inflectional suffixes, so he isn't just another root-equation maniac. Controversial as Euphratic is, I would say Gordon Whittaker has made a pretty solid case for it.I've met Gordon at a couple of conferences and had an opportunity to exchange thoughts with him. My opinion is generally positive. To be sure, comparing anything with Sumerian is relatively easy, given the shortness, simple structure and uncertain semantics of Sumerian morphemes. As a result, Sumerian is one of the favourite targets of the linguistic fringe (not to mention complete kooks). But Gordon's approach is careful. He is very open to criticism and has refined his analyses as a result of discussion. The PIE forms he maps onto Sumerian lexemes are impeccable and represent actual reconstructible words, complete with ablaut grades and derivational and inflectional suffixes, so he isn't just another root-equation maniac. Controversial as Euphratic is, I would say Gordon Whittaker has made a pretty solid case for it.

I had read something about the hypothesis of a Proto-Euphratean/Euphratic language in Mesopotamia dating to before the shift to Sumerian and Semitic, including this Indo-European proposal, but your post was much more clarifying. That's really an interesting proposal and it doesn't look like it is the work of some ultra-nationalist or ethnocentric agenda made some lunatic, but I still have to stress that it is pretty much fringe, the more accepted hypothesis is that that supposed substrate actually comes from more than one language and some of the proposed words came to Sumerian and Akkadian as loanwords.

Any way, I still don't think that this Euphratic proposal applies to the assumption that Sumerians (or more generally the Uruk period as a whole) were Indo-European, though they could plausibly have had high percentages of R1b, though I think that's still a bit doubtful (if that were precisely R1b-Z2103 it's another matter). I mean, the whole Euphratic hypothesis clings on the notion that the Euphratic speakers ha brought agriculture to Southern Mesopotamia or were at least one of the peoples involved in that process (that happened more or less in 5,500-5,000 BCE, in my opinion way too early for it to have been an already differentiated PIE, or even Indo-Hittite PIE).


But the most important thing is that, in any case, as that hypothesis goes, the Euphratic language was the SUBSTRATE found in local deities and place names and so on, which indicates that it wasn't the language of the expansive conquerors in the Uruk period, but the language of the defeated peoples that were assimilated into Sumerian and Akkadian cultures. It's all based on the idea that Sumerians were not the indigenous population of Mesopotamia by the time of the Uruk expansion, but these possibly Indo-European-speaking Euphrateans.


I don't know if that's right or not, but what matters, at this point, is that Sumerians were the foreign, non-IE element if Euphratic really existed, and Indo-European would've been just a local substrate that influenced the non-IE expansive language, first Sumerian and later Akkadian. I don't think that hypothesis does much more than perhaps allow us to think that, genetically, some Sumerians were connected to Indo-European tribes, but still their language and core culture came from elsewhere.

 

[markozd]

I had read something about the hypothesis of a Proto-Euphratean/Euphratic language in Mesopotamia dating to before the shift to Sumerian and Semitic, including this Indo-European proposal, but your post was much more clarifying. That's really an interesting proposal and it doesn't look like it is the work of some ultra-nationalist or ethnocentric agenda made some lunatic, but I still have to stress that it is pretty much fringe, the more accepted hypothesis is that that supposed substrate actually comes from more than one language and some of the proposed words came to Sumerian and Akkadian as loanwords.

Any way, I still don't think that this Euphratic proposal applies to the assumption that Sumerians (or more generally the Uruk period as a whole) were Indo-European, though they could plausibly have had high percentages of R1b, though I think that's still a bit doubtful (if that were precisely R1b-Z2103 it's another matter). I mean, the whole Euphratic hypothesis clings on the notion that the Euphratic speakers ha brought agriculture to Southern Mesopotamia or were at least one of the peoples involved in that process (that happened more or less in 5,500-5,000 BCE, in my opinion way too early for it to have been an already differentiated PIE, or even Indo-Hittite PIE).


But the most important thing is that, in any case, as that hypothesis goes, the Euphratic language was the SUBSTRATE found in local deities and place names and so on, which indicates that it wasn't the language of the expansive conquerors in the Uruk period, but the language of the defeated peoples that were assimilated into Sumerian and Akkadian cultures. It's all based on the idea that Sumerians were not the indigenous population of Mesopotamia by the time of the Uruk expansion, but these possibly Indo-European-speaking Euphrateans.


I don't know if that's right or not, but what matters, at this point, is that Sumerians were the foreign, non-IE element if Euphratic really existed, and Indo-European would've been just a local substrate that influenced the non-IE expansive language, first Sumerian and later Akkadian. I don't think that hypothesis does much more than perhaps allow us to think that, genetically, some Sumerians were connected to Indo-European tribes, but still their language and core culture came from elsewhere.

I really botched the formatting there.

I'm mostly in full agreement with the general picture you described here. I'm still unsure about the language & Y-DNA correlations, but only ancient DNA will tell I guess. Hopefully some usable DNA from ancient southern Iraq can be retrieved.

If the Euphratic hypothesis has any merit, the Euphrateans would have probably been associated with the pre-Uruk population that was - given the warlike imagery in Uruk - in some way defeated probably. The seemingly more peaceful Ubaid phenomenon that also starts in southern Iraq and expands northwards could be interesting in this regard. Stanislav Grigoriev defines the Samarra culture that overlaps with the Ubaid phenomenon as PIE (as in Indo-Hittite) homeland in his 'Ancient Indo-European'. Samarra has some impressive artefacts, including the first swastikas that looked exactly like the thing that the Hindus and Nazis came to use (I don't know if there's a more specific term to describe those motifs).

 

[Ygorcs]

I really botched the formatting there.

I'm mostly in full agreement with the general picture you described here. I'm still unsure about the language & Y-DNA correlations, but only ancient DNA will tell I guess. Hopefully some usable DNA from ancient southern Iraq can be retrieved.

If the Euphratic hypothesis has any merit, the Euphrateans would have probably been associated with the pre-Uruk population that was - given the warlike imagery in Uruk - in some way defeated probably. The seemingly more peaceful Ubaid phenomenon that also starts in southern Iraq and expands northwards could be interesting in this regard. Stanislav Grigoriev defines the Samarra culture that overlaps with the Ubaid phenomenon as PIE (as in Indo-Hittite) homeland in his 'Ancient Indo-European'. Samarra has some impressive artefacts, including the first swastikas that looked exactly like the thing that the Hindus and Nazis came to use (I don't know if there's a more specific term to describe those motifs).

Fascinating! Reading a bit more about the Ubaid expansion, this is an excerpt found in the Wikipedia article on that period: "Stein and Özbal describe the Near East oecumene that resulted from Ubaid expansion, contrasting it to the colonial expansionism of the later Uruk period. "A contextual analysis comparing different regions shows that the Ubaid expansion took place largely through the peaceful spread of an ideology, leading to the formation of numerous new indigenous identities that appropriated and transformed superficial elements of Ubaid material culture into locally distinct expressions".<sup>[17]"

So, it seems like the Ubaid may have expanded northwards and overlapped with the Samarra without necessarily changing their local language. The Samarra culture, though, is certainly more North Mesopotamian, unlike Sumerians, who at least by the Uruk period were mostly in Southern Mesopotamia, but they could've picked up that substrate if the language of Samarra had spread to the south too or if the "Proto-Sumerians" came from the north (I think I read something along these lines, together with the hypothesis that they came from the east and the southwest/Arabia). But I still have A LOT of trouble accepting that, even if all this were true, that IE language would be an already differentiated IE. These periods are still firmly Neolithic, IE would have to have been extremely conservative to change so (relatively) little between 5,000-4,000 BCE and the first IE attestation around 1,600 BCE, even after migrating to completely different regions, shifting to other cultures and absorbing new peoples. I find that extremely unlikely, that's for now my main problem with this Euphratic hypothesis...</sup>

 

[Mark]

This whole argument boils down to the very mechanics of what you believe about language development. Personally I believe that languages have two bases of transmission, natural genetically or innovation and wave. Just as early forms of writing were copied by other cultures/societies that were capable and could find utility in them, so too would be useful lingual concepts. I think this would be especially true in pre-history. The Vedics are supposed to have memorized their works and passed them down unchanged into history. I have no reason to believe this was not also true of many other complex pre-historical civilizations or societies.

Surely there were polyglots throughout all ages who would translate and trade far and wide. We know extensive ancient trade networks existed long before the start of any historical record. When one encountered a language or groups of languages with interesting and adaptable innovations that might make ones own more efficient, it would be natural to do so, such innovations that “strike a chord” could spread throughout a region very quickly. And that’s the thing, more than just words were shared between languages. I’d think this would be more the case with languages with no written form, language was less formal, blended across cultural borders and more prone to adaptation. I think there were more language innovation waves historically than trees though trees went with invasions and changes of lifestyle so, of course, they make the bigger splashes. We ignore and kind of overlook the regulating effects of the language habits/practices/accents of native or extant populations on the language of the invaders or new lifestyle.

I believe the Basque and their apparent mass exogamy event hold a massive piece of the tree versus wave puzzle. If you want to understand what the evolution of pre-historical languages might have been like though you must pay attention to the historical evolution of languages. A lot of isolates were eaten up in the envelopment of empires but left their mark on adapted IE languages which later Romanticized or Germanicized throughout Western Europe. When I look at historical language development, I don’t see too many trees, I see blending of languages, influences and waves of innovation... why would we expect the past to have been any different? Italian, French, Spanish, English, despite many attempts to standardize remain quite diverse in terms of regional dialects... many of the differences now are due in part to recent events but at the root they’re based in long standing differences of influences between regions.

 

[markozd]

Fascinating! Reading a bit more about the Ubaid expansion, this is an excerpt found in the Wikipedia article on that period: "Stein and Özbal describe the Near East oecumene that resulted from Ubaid expansion, contrasting it to the colonial expansionism of the later Uruk period. "A contextual analysis comparing different regions shows that the Ubaid expansion took place largely through the peaceful spread of an ideology, leading to the formation of numerous new indigenous identities that appropriated and transformed superficial elements of Ubaid material culture into locally distinct expressions".<sup>[17]"

So, it seems like the Ubaid may have expanded northwards and overlapped with the Samarra without necessarily changing their local language. The Samarra culture, though, is certainly more North Mesopotamian, unlike Sumerians, who at least by the Uruk period were mostly in Southern Mesopotamia, but they could've picked up that substrate if the language of Samarra had spread to the south too or if the "Proto-Sumerians" came from the north (I think I read something along these lines, together with the hypothesis that they came from the east and the southwest/Arabia). But I still have A LOT of trouble accepting that, even if all this were true, that IE language would be an already differentiated IE. These periods are still firmly Neolithic, IE would have to have been extremely conservative to change so (relatively) little between 5,000-4,000 BCE and the first IE attestation around 1,600 BCE, even after migrating to completely different regions, shifting to other cultures and absorbing new peoples. I find that extremely unlikely, that's for now my main problem with this Euphratic hypothesis...</sup>

You're right, the pace of language change is certainly a big issue for this hypothesis, since the Euphratic substrate is most definitely typologically differentiated in the direction of the northern & western branches of IE, though it might not actually be on the same clade and instead some type of paraclade. If we're talking about state of the art phylogenetic models, this would be inconsistent with the date estimates for PIE given by Chang et al. (2015), but it would work with the earlier model of Bouckaert et al. (2012). I'm not sure how precise those computational models are however.

 

[MOESAN]

MOESAN @ YETOS : I answer in blue inclinedsymbols


so lets analyze it,
after read the above,

1, the usage of Ephedra shows clear NOT AN AFASANEVO NOT AN ANDRONOVO CULTURE Mark as #1

Did supposed Tokharians (the ones of Tarim Basin) used ephedra (BTW I red the very ephedra use in BMAC is under debate, but it does not change the question here of use or no-use of some close sort of plant) ?

2 the mtDNA is clear, I think, and the searchers also report, and probably since ephedra seeds found is at 4000 years old in the 'oasis' Mark as #2
Which mtDNA ? If the mt haplos of the Tarim basin mummies, the huge majority was mt-C4, a siberian one, associated with some West Eurasian haplo’s in the deeper layers, and later with some possibly BMAC (SWV Asia) ones – we can suppose these LBA/IA mummies were the ancestors of the recent Agni (Yuezhi of the Chineses) people, speaking Kutchi language named Tokharian by someones -in fact we are not sure, spite it seems sensible –
could we suppose an I-E langage was introduced lately by these mtDNA bearers ? Because the very huge % of associations Y-R1a1+mtC4 does not point too evidently to a colonisation from South in the older layers


3 the Y-DNA is R1a1,
Here I accept your question, and I must admit I do not know which deeper subclade so to confirm if it was Siberian or Middle East origin. Mark as ?
I rather think they were Z93 or direct Z93 ancestors but all the way it seems born or at least developped in Altay region, neither in South nor in North (founder effect?) - that said new studies could provide more ancient Y-R1a in diverse places and times, I wait for -

so what we can extract,

a, connection clear with Middle East and S caucasus it is obvious
by their life style they were far enough from these supposed ancestors of South

and a b. with 2 forms,

b1. If Y-DNA is Siberian, THEN WE HAVE THE FIRST MATRIARCHICAL LINGUISTIC IE CLADE,
Means we first see an IE oasis where IE remain due to females,
which does happened in all IE migration periods
Notice mark #1, that may indicates that Afasanevo and Andronovo were not IE,
pls indicates, I am not using certifies
I stay cautious and don’t exclude any possibility yet – but I think they were already IE speaking ; the languages fragile reconstructions and loanwords point to an I-I or Iranian (proto)language for Andronovo – the question would remains : since when and from where ?

b2 If Y-DNA R1a1 and is connected with Middle East, then we know its presence, place and time
we speak IE of Middle East and possible origin of Anatolian possible from R1a1 existance 4000 years ago
Don’t see any proof to date that Y-R1a1 is connected with Middle East -

b3 IEanisation of R1a1,
? Is this not b1. ?

plz help my thoughts if I am wrong
If you would resume clearly your position and arguments? What is the centum argument supposed to serve for ?

@others: sorry for this "apparté"; my point to Yetos was: what do we know about AD Tokharians links to BC Tarim Basin supposed IE pops, before to go further in the argumentation?

 

[Yetos]

@moesan

I Think I will open a thead about this,
and for Hettite questions,

 

[Sile]

another theory

https://indo-european.eu/2018/03/proto-indo-european-homeland-south-of-the-caucasus/