All Iberian men were wiped out by Yamna men 4,500 years ago

[Ygorcs]

As you people must have realized by now, my "bible" for the time being is that Homeland Timeline, which I abundantly referred to upthread. For most samples, what is given is not a definite dating, but a date bracket. Most of the time : 2500 to 2000 BC. If we take into account that margin of uncertainty, then Markod's timings for the successive language splits fit in rather nicely.

We could posit some still-undifferentiated IE language in the Hungarian plains some time around 2500 BC for the L51 group. At some point in time during the next two to three centuries, those people would have moved north of the Carpathians. U106 tribes went their own way, steered north - northeast, conquered and/or mixed with CW people, and over another two to three centuries (ie by 2000 BC) developed some form of pre-Proto-Germanic ; while P312 veered west into BB territory and developed Proto-Italo-Celtic. Italic and Celtic gradually separating from 1700 BC onwards would then turn out to be a pretty coherent estimate.

So that the earliest people to arrive in, eg, the British Isles, would have spoken a language still close to NWIE but already on its way to becoming some form of Celtic, while the NWIE in Iberia would have been some sort of pre-Lusitanian (that riddle language standing somewhere in between Italic and Celtic).

From Wiki : "Prósper, in her Lusitanian etymologies (2002; 2008), demonstrates that not only does Lusitanian not agree closely with the usual Celtic reflexes but that it is closer to Ligurian Italic. This suggests there may have been two well-differentiated branches of Indo-European in the Iberian Peninsula before the Romans, with Lusitanian belonging to the non-Celtic branch. Villar and Pedrero (2001) connect Lusitanian with ancient Ligurian. They base their finding on parallels in the names of deities and some lexical items (e.g., the similarity of Umbrian gomia and Lusitanian comaiam), and some grammatical elements.[2] This once again, raises more questions about the relation of the Lusitanian language with Celtic, because the ancient Ligurian language, in many ways like Lusitanian; is considered Celtic[7] by some and non-Celtic by others. Adding to lack of evidence and its geographical location, it has not been yet determined whether Lusitanian was part of the Ligurian language sub-group, Celtic or Celticised, or an even older Indo-European language. Prósper also sees Lusitanian as predating the introduction of Celtic and shows that it retains elements of Old European, making its origins possibly even older."

Thanks, that's precisely the scenario I envision as most plausible and simple for the relationship between BB, CWC and the 3 "Western European" IE branches (Germanic, Italic, Celtic). Even the later dates are no big trouble if you consider that languages do not start to split again immediately after they were born, they differentiate slowly and only split for good generations later. The uncertain linguistic position of the Ligurians, referred by Romans as distinct from the Celts in culture and language, and assume by some to have been "Para-Celtic", is also another possible remnant of other smaller splits from NWIE without the same tremendous success of Celtic, Italic and later Germanic overriding the smaller sisters.

 

[brick]

Are you sure about Liburnian? Some linguists have made connection between it and Venetic.

The oldest Liburnians are from Castellieri culture which is in origin a preindoeuropean culture. The newest ones are of different stock, IE-Illyrian? Liburnian can't be connected as language with Venetic (that is itself connected with Latin-Faliscan). Liburnian had likely an influence from Venetic rather than a connection.

 

[Sile]

The oldest Liburnians are from Castellieri culture which is in origin a preindoeuropean culture. The newest ones are of different stock, IE-Illyrian? Liburnian can't be connected as language with Venetic (that is itself connected with Latin-Faliscan). Liburnian had likely an influence from Venetic rather than a connection.

Castellieri culture derives from myceneans and trading areas in northern adriatic sea ........usually in baltic amber
liburnians are of illyrian stock from eastern tyrol as per strabo historical paper
venetic and euganei are same language and since euganei are indigenous then the conclusion is the the migrating venetics learnt the language when they got to italy

 

[markod]

Starostin's (okay, I know they are almost always controversial) glottochronological model did find much earlier dates, IIRC around 2600-2500 BC, for the split of Italic and Germanic and especially between these two and Celtic (in his model Celtic split first, believe it or not).

So you basically think that CWC gave birth to Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Germanic, Italic and Celtic, even if these two latter are clearly much less linked to Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian in particular than the first 3 are among themselves (particularly, of course, Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian)? Or what is your personal hypothesis? I have a really hard time putting myself to believe that the earliest Celtic and Italic attested texts were removed a mere 1200 years from their undifferentiated common ancestor... lol. That'd be basically like Italian and Spanish nowadays (Old Spanish and Old Italian definitely having started to split from the common Romance at least by the 8th century AD).

Besides, I think we're forgetting to consider that languages remain a common speech, with little dialectal differentiation, for at least some time. Latin, for instance, had a recorded undivided history of some 1,000 years before it certainly split into recognizably distinct languages. A proto-language that split by 1900-1700 BC probably started to be spoken as the common speech of a language community by at least ~2500 BC (and from which earlier IE proto-language did it split? That's another mystery, but probably not directly from Common Late PIE in my opinion).

As for possible extant IE languages that were totally superseded by Central European NWIE languages (Celtic, Italic and Germanic), we have the possible examples of Venetic, Liburnian (controversial, but many linguists believe it's IE) and also Ligurian, who is still assumed by some linguists to have been at least a "Para-Celtic" language, not Celtic proper. As for languages much to the north of the Mediterranean, well, they simply did not write at all until the Late Antiquity times, so we'll never know.

I don't have any particular hypothesis for now, so I'm waiting for more samples from Greece, India and Anatolia. I am convinced that if early BB spread Indo-European languages, those weren't like the possibly para-Celtic and para-Italic languages that we see in Western Europe. Lusitanian, Venetic etc. are nestled within the NWIE clade. It is possible of course that BB languages were completely expunged in Western Europe, and that they were a deeply diverged type of Indo-European.

By the time of early BB expansions until 2200 B.C. Slavic-NWIE still must have existed as a unified language. It seems that throughout the Middle Bronze Age the Carpathian basin was the epicenter of Central European expansions, so I think it's possible that the diffusion of Indo-European languages was effected from or by way of Romania or Hungary. Whether the IE speakers in the Carpathian basin came from CWC, Yamnaya or Asia Minor I don't know.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

I don't have any particular hypothesis for now, so I'm waiting for more samples from Greece, India and Anatolia. I am convinced that if early BB spread Indo-European languages, those weren't like the possibly para-Celtic and para-Italic languages that we see in Western Europe. Lusitanian, Venetic etc. are nestled within the NWIE clade. It is possible of course that BB languages were completely expunged in Western Europe, and that they were a deeply diverged type of Indo-European.

By the time of early BB expansions until 2200 B.C. Slavic-NWIE still must have existed as a unified language. It seems that throughout the Middle Bronze Age the Carpathian basin was the epicenter of Central European expansions, so I think it's possible that the diffusion of Indo-European languages was effected from or by way of Romania or Hungary. Whether the IE speakers in the Carpathian basin came from CWC, Yamnaya or Asia Minor I don't know.

What makes you so sure of that? I very much doubt that, at least based on instinct, but also if we play the link-a-haplogroup-to-language game (which seems to work reasonably well) it doesn't make any sense, L51 being IE or not.

 

[Sile]

North Picene language is probably a Liburnian dialect (preindoeuropean) and South Picene is Oscan-Umbrian.

could also be a histri dialect, they seem to have had a lot of land and sat between the venetic and liburnians..........they where as far west as Oderzo to as far east as Trieste and the istrian peninsula ..............another illyrian sub tribe

 

[markod]

What makes you so sure of that? I very much doubt that, at least based on instinct, but also if we play the link-a-haplogroup-to-language game (which seems to work reasonably well) it doesn't make any sense, L51 being IE or not.

I'm referring to the Chang et al. tree:

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

I'm referring to the Chang et al. tree:

No way was the split between Germanic and Italo-Celtic after 2000BC, that's absurd. Just from an anthrogenetic point of view, I'd put it at about 3000BC.

 

[markod]

No way was the split between Germanic and Italo-Celtic after 2000BC, that's absurd. Just from an anthrogenetic point of view, I'd put it at about 3000BC.

The reason such a late split may seem surprising is probably this:

'Germanic exhibits such unique and characteristic developments, e.g. the rigid
fixation of word stress, the radical simplification of the verbal system and in
many other ways, always directed from the plurality of exceptions towards
schematic regularity, that make the inference particularly attractive that the
richly developed Indo-European language was adopted by people with a for-
merly different mother tongue who learned the rules but not the exceptions.
Additionally, it is impossible to trace back a large part of the Germanic core
vocabulary to Indo-European - a third, according to estimates. This too sug-
gests the influence of a different, non-Indo-European language.'

. From this it follows that both Hittite and Greek are said to contain about one third of non-inherited words, which is viewed as being a
high proportion. Needless to say, for the part of its primary verbs Germanic
surpasses this figure considerably, but since the quantitative study carried
out by Tischler (1979) comprises the core vocabulary and not specifically
the primary verbs, these figures are hardly comparable to the ones in this
study. Therefore, the next section includes quantitative analyses for the
primary verbs of Sanskrit and Ancient Greek in order to calculate the rele-
vance of the Germanic results from a comparative point of view.

 

[halfalp]

I think this reasoning is absurd, i see Germanic link to Italo-Celtic at the same level Tocharian was to Italo-Celtic. The supposition that Germanic once was part of an Italo-Celtic group just shadows their deep relationship. Italic and Celtic languages just neighbor or kept the same rules of linguistic to be related, but all those languages are coming from little groups of adventurers that talked related languages. Italic and Celtic are just closer than they are of Germanic even if the three are clearly related, but it doesn't mean that it was something like Common Centum -> Tocharian-Germanic-Italic-Celtic -> Germanic-Italic-Celtic -> Italo-Celtic. Also, we generally make the correlation R1b-Centum and R1a-Satem, but Scandinavia is mostly I1. Also here we just suppose that Celtic language came once and stay and not that different Celtic dialects supperposed to each other following the dominant culture related to the Celtic world. Temporally, each IE tribes didn't have huge notion of relationship with the other one. This means that Bell Beaker could have spoked a Celtic-related IE languages but the dominant dialect was superposed by other Celtic dialects when demic and cultural migration happened.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

I think this reasoning is absurd, i see Germanic link to Italo-Celtic at the same level Tocharian was to Italo-Celtic. The supposition that Germanic once was part of an Italo-Celtic group just shadows their deep relationship. Italic and Celtic languages just neighbor or kept the same rules of linguistic to be related, but all those languages are coming from little groups of adventurers that talked related languages. Italic and Celtic are just closer than they are of Germanic even if the three are clearly related, but it doesn't mean that it was something like Common Centum -> Tocharian-Germanic-Italic-Celtic -> Germanic-Italic-Celtic -> Italo-Celtic. Also, we generally make the correlation R1b-Centum and R1a-Satem, but Scandinavia is mostly I1. Also here we just suppose that Celtic language came once and stay and not that different Celtic dialects supperposed to each other following the dominant culture related to the Celtic world. Temporally, each IE tribes didn't have huge notion of relationship with the other one. This means that Bell Beaker could have spoked a Celtic-related IE languages but the dominant dialect was superposed by other Celtic dialects when demic and cultural migration happened.

Scandinavian I1 is puzzling, but it seems that its presence is Funnelbeaker in origin. Perhaps R1a Corded folk migrated to Scandinavia, and weren't successful in wiping out the males, and instead there was a bidirectional assimilation process, where I1 retained its dominance. Then, later, U106 arrived.

 

[Ygorcs]

I'm referring to the Chang et al. tree:

Oh my, I know they have done a methodically sound and scientifically valid estimate, but if we can judge anything based on the languages that we know much about from historical documents they definitely underestimated the splits of earlier languages, too.

I mean, come on, they estimate the split of Portuguese and Spanish at ~500 years, when actually 800-year-old documents in Galician-Portuguese and Old Spanish were already distinct enough to make them instantly recognizable (and distinct) languages, and actually some of the earliest features of Galician-Portuguese independent development can be found as early as ~900 AD in some mixed Late Latin documents. Some 500 years ago is actually the period when Portuguese and Galician started to diverge, and they're still very similar languages despite heavy "Castillianization" in Galician.

French and Italian splitting less than 1000 years ago (more like ~800) is also a gross underestimation. Even the oldest evidences of Old French, dating back to ~800 AD, are already recognizably different from the phonetic developments of Old Italian, and by 1100-1200 AD they were already very distinct languages, not recently split ones. Ditto for French and Provençal, already definitely different languages by the High Middle Ages, and estimated by this tree to have started splitting little more than 500-600 years ago. I know less about the Germanic languages, but AFAIK some of the first Germanic runes, dated to ~200 AD, already show traces of a specifically Proto-Norse development and not undifferentiated Proto-Germanic (thogh still very close to reconstructed Proto-Germanic). Here they estimate West & North Germanic to have split around 400-500 AD, but the earliest Old Norse and Old English texts (~ 700 AD) are already reasonably distinct, not like Portuguese vs. Galician or other recently split languages. I'd say that at least for these historically known and textually attested languages they're close to the truth, but missed the mark by a few centuries.

Not that a Proto-Italo-Celtic vs. Proto-Germanic split by ~1900 BC is a big problem, after all that in fact means that the Proto-Italo-Celto-Germanic language must've been first spoken at least by ~2400 BC, as languages rarely if ever start differentiating, in important ways, right after they started to be spoken. Their assumption that Balto-Slavic is closer to Italo-Celtic than to Indo-Iranian must have angered many linguists, by the way. lol

 

[Ygorcs]

Scandinavian I1 is puzzling, but it seems that its presence is Funnelbeaker in origin. Perhaps R1a Corded folk migrated to Scandinavia, and weren't successful in wiping out the males, and instead there was a bidirectional assimilation process, where I1 retained its dominance. Then, later, U106 arrived.

Not THAT dominant. I1 in most of Scandinavia averages 30-35%, not more than that. It may be that some native males were absorbed (the same thing happened elsewhere in the Indo-Europeanization process, otherwise we'd see no G2a, E and J2 in much of Europe), and later for some random reason a lineage of men carrying I1 was particularly successful and powerful, enhancing the presence of a once minority haplogroup in a mainly R1a+R1b society.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

Not THAT dominant. I1 in most of Scandinavia averages 30-35%, not more than that. It may be that some native males were absorbed (the same thing happened elsewhere in the Indo-Europeanization process, otherwise we'd see no G2a, E and J2 in much of Europe), and later for some random reason a lineage of men carrying I1 was particularly successful and powerful, enhancing the presence of a once minority haplogroup in a mainly R1a+R1b society.

The phylogeny of I1 should give the answer, but I suspect that I1 was well over 50% of the lineages in Sourhern Scandinavia before U106 arrived.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

Not THAT dominant. I1 in most of Scandinavia averages 30-35%, not more than that. It may be that some native males were absorbed (the same thing happened elsewhere in the Indo-Europeanization process, otherwise we'd see no G2a, E and J2 in much of Europe), and later for some random reason a lineage of men carrying I1 was particularly successful and powerful, enhancing the presence of a once minority haplogroup in a mainly R1a+R1b society.

It seems the explosion of Y DNA I1 roughly dates to the arrival of the Corded Ware folk in Scandinavia.

That leads me to two hypotheses - either, the arrival of the CWC brought some technology that allowed the existing I1 population to rapidly multiply, or climate change brought that change about. Perhaps the CWC in Central Europe was mostly I1 but the elites were mostly R1a - but I don?t know if Corded Ware society was stratified or not.

 

[markod]

Oh my, I know they have done a methodically sound and scientifically valid estimate, but if we can judge anything based on the languages that we know much about from historical documents they definitely underestimated the splits of earlier languages, too.

I mean, come on, they estimate the split of Portuguese and Spanish at ~500 years, when actually 800-year-old documents in Galician-Portuguese and Old Spanish were already distinct enough to make them instantly recognizable (and distinct) languages, and actually some of the earliest features of Galician-Portuguese independent development can be found as early as ~900 AD in some mixed Late Latin documents. Some 500 years ago is actually the period when Portuguese and Galician started to diverge, and they're still very similar languages despite heavy "Castillianization" in Galician.

French and Italian splitting less than 1000 years ago (more like ~800) is also a gross underestimation. Even the oldest evidences of Old French, dating back to ~800 AD, are already recognizably different from the phonetic developments of Old Italian, and by 1100-1200 AD they were already very distinct languages, not recently split ones. Ditto for French and Provençal, already definitely different languages by the High Middle Ages, and estimated by this tree to have started splitting little more than 500-600 years ago. I know less about the Germanic languages, but AFAIK some of the first Germanic runes, dated to ~200 AD, already show traces of a specifically Proto-Norse development and not undifferentiated Proto-Germanic (thogh still very close to reconstructed Proto-Germanic). Here they estimate West & North Germanic to have split around 400-500 AD, but the earliest Old Norse and Old English texts (~ 700 AD) are already reasonably distinct, not like Portuguese vs. Galician or other recently split languages. I'd say that at least for these historically known and textually attested languages they're close to the truth, but missed the mark by a few centuries.

Not that a Proto-Italo-Celtic vs. Proto-Germanic split by ~1900 BC is a big problem, after all that in fact means that the Proto-Italo-Celto-Germanic language must've been first spoken at least by ~2400 BC, as languages rarely if ever start differentiating, in important ways, right after they started to be spoken. Their assumption that Balto-Slavic is closer to Italo-Celtic than to Indo-Iranian must have angered many linguists, by the way. lol

Latin isn't exactly good for comparison because of the Roman and Ecclesial superstrates that had a significant influence on even non-Latin languages. Look at Germanic: East - West split, the West Germanic - Norse split, English colonoziation are all accurately predicted by a computer model. That's amazing imho.

I don't believe in the Indo-Slavonic & Italo-Celtic phyla however. They are outdated to my knowledge.

 

[Ygorcs]

The reason such a late split may seem surprising is probably this:

What's particularly intriguing about Germanic is that Germanic-speking North Europeans are among the peoples (if not actually "the" people) with highest proportion of BA Steppe-derived ancestry, which suggests that the early Indo-Europeanization process in their homeland involved a real massive population replacement, with a majority of people originating in presumably already IE-speaking tribes. It's not like Greek, Hittite and even Sanskrit, languages spoken by people in regions where the BA Steppe genetic impact was arguably much smaller and an actual majority of the speakers may have been initially secondary speakers assimilated to IE languages, not native ones. It seems likely then that the non-IE natives were somehow more socially influential, powerful and/or culturally valued for a much longer time in Germanic lands than in some other lands conquered by Indo-European tribes, because it can't be attributed solely to the first speakers being in their large majority non-IE (and the substrate is too big and comprehensive to be the language of a totally marginalized, socially undervalued community of people).

 

[markod]

What's particularly intriguing about Germanic is that Germanic-speking North Europeans are among the peoples (if not actually "the" people) with highest proportion of BA Steppe-derived ancestry, which suggests that the early Indo-Europeanization process in their homeland involved a real massive population replacement, with a majority of people originating in presumably already IE-speaking tribes. It's not like Greek, Hittite and even Sanskrit, languages spoken by people in regions where the BA Steppe genetic impact was arguably much smaller and an actual majority of the speakers may have been initially secondary speakers assimilated to IE languages, not native ones. It seems likely then that the non-IE natives were somehow more socially influential, powerful and/or culturally valued for a much longer time in Germanic lands than in some other lands conquered by Indo-European tribes, because it can't be attributed solely to the first speakers being in their large majority non-IE (and the substrate is too big and comprehensive to be the language of a totally marginalized, socially undervalued community of people).

That's assuming that Germanic originated where it's spoken nowadays. I see no reason to think so. In fact I believe it is rather unlikely: if Underhill's data is to believed, the major Scandinavia specific haplogroup R1a-Z284 is confined to Scandinavia more or less, suggesting that there were no significant expansions coming from Scandinavia.

 

[Pip]

We've gone off the subject of the Yamna wipe-out of the Iberians a bit, which looks as if could only have been R1b-DF27 moving in from the North. Perhaps Basque speaking?

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

That's assuming that Germanic originated where it's spoken nowadays. I see no reason to think so. In fact I believe it is rather unlikely: if Underhill's data is to believed, the major Scandinavia specific haplogroup R1a-Z284 is confined to Scandinavia more or less, suggesting that there were no significant expansions coming from Scandinavia.

But what about East Germanic, the tribes speaking which can only really be assumed to have migrated from Scandinavia. That would place the Germanic homeland in Scandinavia, akin to this video, which seems very accurate to me:

The problem with Z284 could be explained if it wasn't the group that entered Scandinavia, but a group that originated in a particular part of Scandinavia that wasn't involved in the diversification of Germanic - such as Norway, where Z284 is most common.