The centum/satem division does in fact exist, and unless you are prepared to come forth and announce what it is that makes you an expert and gives you the power to abrogate it, it is what it is.
Besides that, there is the mere geographical fact that Indo-European languages are overwhelmingly spoken in the West, where R1a is scarce.
I do not deny that the Centum/Satem division exists, because it clearly does. But it is not the whole story. What I have been trying to say is that the Centum/Satem divisions are later innovations and that many common features in the branches of Indo-European do not obey to the Centum/Satem split. On top of that, the R1a/R1b division (or, well, I should perhaps more appropriately say,
"R1a" v.s "no R1a", because that is much closer to reality) does not correlate as well with the Centum/Satem split as you might think it would.
I don't have all the answers. I am amazed when I run into so many folks who think they do.
Honestly, I really do not claim to have all the answers, but I have definitely observed a lot of other evidence (some which I have presented here) which paints the picture that you seem to have as extremely problematic.
The early Anatolian IE languages are especially archaic, as Anthony indicates in his book. If Euphratic in fact exists, that pushes Indo-European in that region still farther back in time.
They are archaic, yes, and they also have many innovations found nowhere else at the same time. This is certainly an argument that speaks for the Anatolian languages to be the first branch of IE to have diverged. However, even if we assume that Anatolian, diverged earlier, then we still must that the other branches of IE (which
includes Celtic and the other western IE languages like Italic, Germanic and Greek) diverged from a common language at a later point.
Great. Hmmm. You are a guy who posts at Eupedia's Y-DNA forum. Gordon Whittaker is a linguist and professor at the University of Göttingen.
Your skepticism of Whittaker's work is duly noted.
No offense to you, but I find such a statement mildly insulting. The "call to academic authority" is quite flawed in my opinion. As a matter of fact, aquisition of an academic grade does not make people immune from commiting blunders. The world would be a better place if that was the case. My opinion is that authority in such discussions does not come from the academic grade, but from the arguments themselves. I see the linguistic methodology lacking in Whittaker's work (mind you, sound correspondence is part of the linguist's tools-of-trade since the 19th century), and thus I see it's argumentative authority quite diminished.
But the Basques clearly have been surrounded for millennia by Celts and other Indo-Europeans! That much is obvious. Are you attempting to deny that?
Well, I definitely think it is worth to ask the question: have they really been surrounded for that long? Note that I do not have an answer here, but I definitely think that the relative scarcity of Celtic loanwords in Basque is outstanding. But it's clear that towards their southeast, the Basques were adjoined in Antiquity by the Iberians, another non-Indo-European people which inhabited a large stretch of Iberia, from the Roussillon to central-eastern Andalusia.
Note that the exact relationship of Basque and Iberian is unclear (the two languages may not have been part of the same language family, but it seems likely that there at least was some kind of a
sprachbund between the two languages), but if we look today into the former areas of the Iberians, we also find large amounts of R1b.
If Basque marital tradition was matrilocal, which I believe it was, then you have the perfect scenario for the introduction of outsider y-dna and the retention of the maternal language, since, in a matrilocal society, the groom goes to live with the bride's family. The male children would carry their father's y-dna but would speak their mother's language.
I do not deny that early Basque marital tradition may have been matrilineal, but that does not explain how the Basques end up with non-Indo-European words for metal-working.
A similar scenario must surely explain how the Ossetians have become predominantly G2a over the centuries.
The Ossetian language, it should be noted, is the sole survivor of the Scythian/Sarmatian languages.
I think it likely the Beaker Folk spoke an early form of Celtic. How that happened exactly I cannot explained, but I don't feel the need for complete and tidy explanations of all facets of a phenomenon.
Sorry, I think that the fact that the Basque language, which is clearly an isolate language today, has "native" words for metals and metal-working which are clearly not borrowed from the Celtic languages is not just a tiny detail, this is in my opinion a very large obstacle.
The Kurgan Theory has plenty of problems. All other explanations of the spread of Indo-European have their problems, too.
Well, if we look at the core vocabulary of PIE, we do find common terms for agriculture, for domesticated animals (notably the horse!), for metal-working, and for warfare. This, in my opinion, narrows the context in which the language must have been spoken down quite a bit.
But I definitely do not except the "R1a is ultimately responsible for all Indo-European languages" idea. It just doesn't make sense to me.
I did not say this, but I think nonetheless that a strong case can be made that the original Proto-Indo-Europeans were indeed majorly carriers of R1a, and not R1b.