Where did the Anatolian branch of Indo-European originate?

[epoch]

I don't know, though i know that Reich has the Maykop data and i'm waiting for it.

You know, I have been asking this ever since the idea came up. I haven't heard anything viable yet. Most people advocating a southern homeland simply don't answer. Olympus Mons is the only one that calls for Shulaveri-Shomu.

 

[Cpluskx]

You know, I have been asking this ever since the idea came up. I haven't heard anything viable yet. Most people advocating a southern homeland simply don't answer. Olympus Mons is the only one that calls for Shulaveri-Shomu.

The culture in Pontic-Caspian changed dramatically just as the genetic structure there became 50% southern. That is the important thing. Also earliest cattle domestication, kurgans and non-elite IE language are in the area.

 

[halfalp]

You know, I have been asking this ever since the idea came up. I haven't heard anything viable yet. Most people advocating a southern homeland simply don't answer. Olympus Mons is the only one that calls for Shulaveri-Shomu.

Alan calls for Leyla-Tepe.

 

[epoch]

Alan calls for Leyla-Tepe.

Jar-burials. There is a Kurgan site, with Leyla-Tepe pottery but also with a zoomorphic scepter, which points to steppe. Or Maykop.

 

[epoch]

The culture in Pontic-Caspian changed dramatically just as the genetic structure there became 50% southern. That is the important thing. Also earliest cattle domestication, kurgans and non-elite IE language are in the area.

But there is CHG in the preceding cultures such as Sredny Stog. Also, it didn't change to anything resembling Leyla-Tepe.

EDIT: If one excludes the Soyugbulag kurgans, that is.

 

[IronSide]

So far all IE languages apart from Anatolian can be attested to Yamnaya related ancestry. Anatolian was a very old split from it. Suppose we postulate an EHG-less origin for the oldest PIE Urheimat. Maykop has EHG (as per Kroonens linguistical paper) so we need to find it south of the Caucasus. What cultures are available?

1) Shulaveri-Shomu culture. These people buried in jars. If Yamnaya and/or Maykop originated from them, why don't we see jar burials among them? Yes, burial rites change, e.g. Indo-Europeans started to cremate in Europe and India. But we see gradual change there: cremation in Unetice and even bi-ritual burials in Andronovo, inhumations and cremations in one single barrow. We see nothing, literally nothing in Yamnaya or Maykop

2) Kura Araxes. It's too young to have created Maykop, where the earliest Kurgans are found. It could be the ancestors of Yamnaya, but how could Yamnaya have originated from KA if Maykop is firmly in between it?

3) Leyla-Tepe. Jar-burials. See 1. We have a number of Kurgans in Leyla-Tepe area but these contained a zoomorphic scepter. There are far more zoomorphic scepters found in the Steppe and along the Danube, older than those Kurgans. So if anyhting those Kurgans are intrusive from the north.

Now lets see the candidates for intrusion from the steppe:

1) Bulgarian Yamnaya. They were separated from the rest of the Yamnaya horizon, took on a lot of local customs (pottery) and possibly can be related to the change to cremation.

2) Kura-Araxes/Leyla-Tepe Kurgans. As I said, it looks like the Leyla-Tepe Kurgans are intrusive, based on the zoomorphic scepter. And while Kura-Araxes is too young to be the ancestor of Maykop, it's not to be an ancestor of a Maykop expansion. Kura-Araxes's burials are vastly diverse, and it has forms of Kurgans.

3) Perhaps Suvorovo, if Kroonen is right about the split being pre-Yamnaya? Haven't looked into that. Zoomorphic scepters are found among it, though.

4) Maykop has EHG, as Guus Kroonen revealed and seems olders than Yamnaya.

There simply isn't a nice culture to associate with PIE south of the Caucasus.

Good analysis, however, even if we exclude certain cultures as being "archaelogically unfit", you need to have 2 things:

-first and foremost, EHG ancestry must exist in the future, in an Anatolian context.
-is any of the candidate cultures you proposed have any evidence of a presence in Anatolia at the right time ? or a culture that seems to be derived from them ?

Culture can change, We know for certain and beyond doubt that Yamnaya had Caucasus ancestry, and yet most of the cultures you mention as being unfit, Maykop has many similarities to Leyla Tepe, which preceded it.

 

[Johane Derite]

Does anyone have an explanation against Ryukendo's arguments about the "Armi" that i linked above? I'm not seeing them being addressed.

 

[epoch]

Good analysis, however, even if we exclude certain cultures as being "archaelogically unfit", you need to have 2 things:

-first and foremost, EHG ancestry must exist in the future, in an Anatolian context.
-is any of the candidate cultures you proposed have any evidence of a presence in Anatolia at the right time ? or a culture that seems to be derived from them ?

Culture can change, We know for certain and beyond doubt that Yamnaya had Caucasus ancestry, and yet most of the cultures you mention as being unfit, Maykop has many similarities to Leyla Tepe, which preceded it.

The Soyugbulag kurgans did not precede Maykop.

EDIT: They were dated first half of the fourth millenium. Maykop started about the same time.

EDIT2: Wrt the second question there is surprisingly little. IIRC that goes for any proposed culture, the origin of the Hittites was considered an archaeological problem. There seem to be kurgans in the neighbourhood that fit the bill but technically they are in Thrace, not Anatolia: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/to...years-biggest-archaeological-discovery--99235

 

[Angela]

it is not because the Nazi's used IE theory that every stepicist is a Nazi
and I see at least as many anti-stepicists refusing to see the scientific evidence as there are stepicists trying to twist the evidence

Honestly, Bicicleur, I expected better of you. You're honestly challenging my integrity, like some of these half-wits here?

How many times have I specifically said that what disheartens me is that most people in the amateur community seem to take "sides" based on how much "steppe" ancestry they have, or other political considerations, and then massage the data, or ignore it, or change the standards for proof in favor of their "side". Didn't I decry that in Out of India types and never in Iberia types and on and on? Have you along with everyone else suddenly developed amnesia

No, obviously every supporter of the Kurgan theory is not a Nordicist or racist. For God's sake, all the major pop gen labs in the world are, in general, supporters of the Steppe theory for the dispersal of the Indo-European languages, as am I.

What, however, about people who are so committed emotionally to the fact that there can be no possible origin for the language south of the Caucasus that they have to come back here to argue that the standard used to track every other presence of Indo-European language migrations, which is by the presence of EHG, no longer matters? You find an honest application of logic in that? Or what about this smokescreen about what cultures south of the Caucasus are like the LATER one on the steppes? Have people lost all grasp of time, chronology? The movement north would have been ages before the development of the "steppe" culture of around 3500 BC, the time frame discussed by David Anthony.

You know what, forget it. This isn't a scientific endeavor any more for most people here. It's a religion, and I don't debate with true believers of any variety.

@Johane Derite,
RKs posts are often informative. He also at leasts reads archaeology and linguistics papers, which is more that you can say for a lot of people, despite claims about how much they know about the Hittites, for example.

This is particularly informative:
"We can agree that Anatolians may ultimately originate in the Pontic-Caspian (which the authors cautiously support) and also claim that the EHG got diluted over the 1.5 millenia that the authors give for the split between Anatolian and the rest of IE, but we cannot claim that the classical model of late Anatolian elite conquest into Turkey is in any way correct given the descriptions of the new archaeological contexts, records and the fact that the earliest attestation of Anatolians is ~5 centuries before their attestation elsewhere or as a Hittite state, and at that time they were an "ethnic" population ruled by the unambiguously Semitic city state of Ebla (meaning they probably were present "in the mass" as people in SE Anatolia at a very early date)."


@Davef,

Thank you, but all I support, like the academics, is that it is POSSIBLE that pre-proto-IE had its origin south of the Caucasus. That's it. Hopefully, some actual evidence will clarify matters.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

All I support, like the academics, is that it is POSSIBLE that pre-proto-IE had its origin south of the Caucasus. That's it. Hopefully, some actual evidence will clarify matters.

It is not only possible, but likely.

R1b will be probably found in Chalcolithic Mesopotamia, as per Maciamo. Swastikas in things like the Hassuna-Samarra culture and phylogeny should be a big enough give away. I personally think they came from Anatolia, and got their CHG on the way to the Steppe from CHG women. I can’t think of any other alternative, assuming the Swastika to be indicative of R1b’s presence.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

Also my name and photo is so gay and cringey, but I can’t be arsed to change it. So count this as my apology for the eye sore.

 

[ROS]

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauburu

This symbol the swastika, which can be curvilinear or rectilinear according to the places and that appears from India to the Iberian Peninsula, has been found in the steppe?

 

[Sile]

Hattic is not even IE, it is not related to those Anatolian languages. It is just a substate that was the source for a lot of loanwords, and in later times there was also borrowing of words from Hurro-Urartian languages in Anatolia.

Hattian language
Written By:

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

See Article History
Alternative Titles: Hattic language, Khattic language, Khattish language, Proto-Hittite language

Hattian language, also called Hattic or Khattic or Khattish, non-Indo-European language of ancient Anatolia. The Hattian language appears as hattili ‘in Hattian’ in Hittite cuneiform texts. Called Proto-Hittite by some, Hattian was the language of the linguistic substratum inside the Halys River (now called the Kızıl River) bend and in more-northerly regions. It is impossible to ascertain the length of time that the Hattians had been present in Anatolia before the Indo-Europeans entered the country, but it seems certain that by the beginning of the Hittite New Empire (c. 1400–c. 1190 bce), Hattian was a dead language.

The Indo-European newcomers of Hittite stock took the same name as their predecessors. All the Hattian material preserved by Hittite scribes concerns the religious sphere of life; the texts include rituals (such as those connected with the erection of a new building), incantations, antiphons, litanies, and myths. Among the Hattian interpolations in Hittite texts, there are some to which a Hittite translation has been added. A striking feature of the grammar of Hattian is its agglutination; it has both prefixes and suffixes. There are no formal marks to distinguish nouns from verbs.

Depends on what period you want to talk about.....pre-hittite or not
We know from linguistic scholarship history that it took over 100 years to decipher hittite language because it had zero semitic even though it was written in cuneiform.
pre-hittite language was the brother of Kaska language its northern neighbour

 

[Sile]

There are different opinions on where Palaic speakers should be placed. (I have seen scholars support a more western or northwestern position, next to Alys river but outside the bend.
Also, some support that Lydians originated outside the ultimate Lydian homeland, in a more northern (?) position, where Phrygian speakers are found later (?) I don't remember exactly.
Also there are different opinions about when Phrygians moved to Anatolia. The traditional view was that this happened after the Trojan War but some scholars have different views.
And then there are the Trojans too. Some believe they were Luwians. I personally think they were speaking a 'non-Anatolian' IE language. Possibly a language that had similarities with one, some or all of the following: Phrygian, Thracian and Greek. Possibly partly similar to Latin too, if the myth of Aeneas was based on real events. (a language that influenced Latin without being proto-Latin itself?)



How many are the Hattic loanwords in Anatolian languages?

on that top map the phygians sit between lydians and palaic people......they had a long war against the lydians circa 500BC.
The thracians filled the space north of these phygians.........thracian society is noted as starting around 3200BC.
.
finding one luwian tablet in the troad/troy does not indicate they spoke luwian.
.

 

[Sile]

The map for Anatolian languages is strange

Why is it not spoken in the Northern half of Anatolia ? the answer could be in the Middle Bronze Age migration
Even though Melaart is the one theorizing about it, and we know he fabricated stuff.
This migration and destruction was used as evidence for the Hittites, but other evidence suggests they could be older, but the destruction is still there, and so other people migrated, perhaps IE tribes like Phrygians, Armenians, and Greeks.

Palaic should reach the sea
Palaic language, one of the ancient Anatolian languages, Palaic was spoken in Palā, a land located to the northwest of Hittite territory and across the Halys (now the Kızıl) River. The resemblance of Palā to the later place-names Blaëne (Greek) and Paphlagonia (Roman) is surely not coincidental. Evidence for Palaic consists of scarcely more than a dozen ritual fragments preserved in the cuneiform archives at the Hittite capital of Hattusa (near the modern town of Boğazkale, formerly Boğazköy, Tur.) that appear as palaumnili ‘in Palaic.’ Palaic texts are contemporary with Hittite texts, including one or two manuscripts from the Old Hittite period (1650–1580 bce). The meagre evidence limits scholarly understanding of the texts and makes all generalizations about the language provisional, but the grammatical features and lexicon (vocabulary) of Palaic assure that it is an Indo-European language of the Hittite and Luwian subgroup. A unique feature is the apparent borrowing from Hattian of the /f/ sound in several loanwords.
and to their east are the kaska people of modern samsun , and to the west would be thracians, then trojans.
.
.
Kaskian (Kaskean) was a non-Indo-European language of the Kaskians of northeastern Bronze Age Anatolia, in the mountains along the Black Sea coast.
It is sometimes suspected that Kaskian was related to the pre-Hittite Hattic language, based on toponyms and personal names. There may also be connections to the Northwest Caucasian languages; the name Kaskian[1] may be cognate with an old name for Circassia,[2] and the name of one of the tribes in the Kaskian confederation, the Abešla, may be cognate with the endonym of the Abkhaz people and some Circassian people,[3] suggesting the Kaskians proper and Abešla might have been the ancestors of the Circassians and other Caucasian peoples.[4] It has also been conjectured that Kaskian might belong to the Zan family of languages, and have affinities to Megrelian or Laz.[5]

 

[berun]

http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1111635/FULLTEXT01.pdf

it would be nice if archaeologists involved in the last papers about South Asia and Central Asia would made clear the problem to test ancient peoples that incinerated the deceased.

 

[berun]

By the way "The first horse herders" paper is the first to point to Kievan Rus region as an important place for PIE dispersals.

Both Early Bronze Age (3000-2500 BCE) steppe pastoralists Yamnaya and Afanasievo and Late Bronze Age (2300-1200 BCE) Sintashta and Andronovo carry substantial amounts of EHG and CHG ancestry, but the latter group can be distinguished by a genetic component acquired through admixture with European Neolithic farmers during the formation of the Corded Ware complex, reflecting a secondary push from Europe to the east through the forest-steppe zone."

As a fifth choice alternative the IE could be assigned to early farmers, as this component is all over Europe and is among the new Hittite samples.

 

[Ygorcs]

Hattian language
Written By:

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

See Article History
Alternative Titles: Hattic language, Khattic language, Khattish language, Proto-Hittite language

Hattian language, also called Hattic or Khattic or Khattish, non-Indo-European language of ancient Anatolia. The Hattian language appears as hattili ‘in Hattian’ in Hittite cuneiform texts. Called Proto-Hittite by some, Hattian was the language of the linguistic substratum inside the Halys River (now called the Kızıl River) bend and in more-northerly regions. It is impossible to ascertain the length of time that the Hattians had been present in Anatolia before the Indo-Europeans entered the country, but it seems certain that by the beginning of the Hittite New Empire (c. 1400–c. 1190 bce), Hattian was a dead language.

The Indo-European newcomers of Hittite stock took the same name as their predecessors. All the Hattian material preserved by Hittite scribes concerns the religious sphere of life; the texts include rituals (such as those connected with the erection of a new building), incantations, antiphons, litanies, and myths. Among the Hattian interpolations in Hittite texts, there are some to which a Hittite translation has been added. A striking feature of the grammar of Hattian is its agglutination; it has both prefixes and suffixes. There are no formal marks to distinguish nouns from verbs.

Depends on what period you want to talk about.....pre-hittite or not
We know from linguistic scholarship history that it took over 100 years to decipher hittite language because it had zero semitic even though it was written in cuneiform.
pre-hittite language was the brother of Kaska language its northern neighbour

You're confusing the terminology. Pre-Hittite means "the language that was spoken there before Hittite", it is most definitely NOT the same thing as Proto-Hittite, which would be "the immediate mother language of Hittite". Pre-Hittite is like Pre-Indo-European: it means it was an indigenous language in the area before the later IE spread there, and it implies no relationship at all between the two languages, at best only an influence as a substrate to the later language. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding your particular use of the terminology, and you're using "Anatolian languages" as a merely geographical reference, to refer to the non-IE language families that existed in Anatolia before the arrival of IE.

 

[Alan]

That's indeed one of the linguistic theories about Hittite.

And that might be the reason why scientists speak of PIE and LPIE. LPIE could almost be considered it's own branch. We are indeed talking here about Hittite vs all other Indo European families.

A very possible theory
PPIE--> Steppe Indo European/Hittite

Hittite could very well have diverged from the ancestor of those known to be Steppe Indo Europeans.

 

[Alan]

And remember: I have the PIE and Shulaveri as people traumatized by Snakes. remember, the oldest PIE tale is the hero that kills the snake right? - Ubaid were the snake people.

That snake thing is really sitting deep in IE cultures. The legend about the Kurdish origins goes this way, There was a blacksmith called Kawa who killed a tyranic King,who grew Snakes out of his shoulders and those snakes had to be fed with brains of young boys and girls. He brought these kids into the Zagros mountains and fed him brains of sheeps until the Kids were grown and they revolted against the King. Many Historians connect the King with the Assyrian rule.

http://www.kurdishinstitute.be/kawa-and-the-story-of-newroz/