Johane Derite
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This is what he was referring to:
"There is an extensive linguistic supplement to the paper itself, found here:
G. Kroonen, G. Barjamovic, M. Peyrot, Linguistic supplement to Damgaard et al. 2018: Early Indo-European Languages, Anatolian, Tocharian and Indo-Iranian. 10.5281/zenodo.1240524 (9 May 2018).
It is at least as important as the genetic paper in terms of discussion, I think.
The authors of the supplement summarise the literature on the topic:
1) There is no consensus on the Balkan or Caucasian route for the Anatolian languages, though there are arguments that lead to a preference for the Balkan route among some linguists.
2) The languages are diverged for at least a millenium before we get the written records of their varieties (Palaic, Luwian, Hittite etc)
3) The linguistic evidence does not indicate mass migration or elite conquest, because the language characteristics are relatively in line with the language area, rather it appears "diffusional".
4) New evidence is presented from the Eblaite state with personal names from "Armi" (we don't know where that is, probably a statelet under the control of Ebla) with Anatolian derivation, in the Turkey-Syria border, 500 years before the earliest attestation of the other Anatolian languages in 2500BC (which therefore push the split of the language group even further back). These personal names also appear in Assyrian records about trade with "Armi". These names occur contemporaneous with Yamnaya, so the hypothesis that even Anatolian derives from Yamnaya can be safely rejected."
I will dump the rest of his commentary and quotes on this tangent because its relevant and serious:
^^ The personal names from "Armi" appear mixed together with names of Semitic origin and names of unclear derivation.
The "Assyrian colony" thing is also explained well. Interestingly the Assyrians never make a distinction between Nes and Hattics in their administration of the local population, the two groups were probably not that socially differentiated by this time.
I recommend everyone go and read the archaeological and linguistic supplements, they contain incredibly important pieces of information (I wonder why they were exiled to the supp mats??) and drop hints as to future papers (Maykop released v soon probably, "in preparation"). Also the names are also the leading lights in their fields.
The Northern European labs have really have assembled a superstar team in all respects... they seem to have moved to interdisciplinarity much faster than those from Havard have.
The authors themselves state that, since there is no "mass immigration or elite conquest" scenario for Anatolian really the hypothesis of Pontic-Caspain homeland of IE and ("EHG language") is still not ruled out, in fact they point to the dominance of this model among linguists as one reason why we should still remain unsure.
But the "Armi" thing definitely changes things quite a bit. I have to say, also, looking at the archaeological context and also the fact that all the languages are so diverged, and also that the Assyrians seem not to even be aware that an ethnic distinction between Anatolians and locals existed (but did classify people from different states, not different ethnicities) it really doesn't seem plausible that the social differentiation was as extreme as would be needed to enforce strict lack of gene flow from "Anatolian elites" and locals over more than a millenium.
the new linguistic evidence indicates that the Anatolians were not, in fact, an elite in Anatolia at their earliest attestation (from 'Armi', which is the first evidence of Anatolian speakers, ever, they were non-elite and an "ethnic" population ruled over by Semitics from the city of Ebla), and also the newest linguistic work indicates that the migration of the Anatolians themselves did not involve states or elite dominance (the linguistic evidence cited by Kroonen et al and Melchert etc. point out that it was far more of a 'folk' phenomenon) and by the time of the Assyrians there is no clear distinction between Anatolian-speaking "elites" and non-Anatolian speaking commoners, (they were referred to as a common population in Assyrian records), in fact disitinctions between states are far more relevant.
The 'endogamy' hypothesis makes very little sense, the newest evidence means that, by the time of these genomes, the Anatolians existed in Anatolia for at least 5 centuries (looking at the dating its more like 7 centuries), what is the chance that complete endogamy persisted till then?
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).
Well, we really need to focus less on the 'Hittite royal tombs'...
The problem now is that, because we know Anatolians existed in SE Anatolia up to 5-7 centuries before any 'Royal Hittite Tombs' could have existed, the 'Royal Hittite tombs' may not even tell us what we want to know (because they may and also may not be representatives of a recent migration from the Steppe because Anatolian speakers are attested in Turkey half a millenium before them already).