Where did the Anatolian branch of Indo-European originate?

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).
 
Clearly non-elite Anatolian names in North Syria in 2500 BC almost certainly kills the steppe homeland of PIE theory. Dienekes must be smiling right now.
 


Hurrian and Urartian language elements are quite probable, as are Northeast Caucasian ones. Some authors subsume Hurrians and Urartians under Northeast Caucasian as well as part of the Alarodian theory.[32] The presence of Kartvelian languages was also highly probable. Influences of Semitic languages and Indo-European languages are highly possible, though the presence of the languages on the lands of the Kura–Araxes culture is more controversial.


In the Armenian hypothesis of Indo-European origins, this culture (and perhaps that of the Maykop culture) is identified with the speakers of the Anatolian languages.[33][34][35][36][37]



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."[38] According to Pamjav et al. (2012), "Inner and Central Asia is an overlap zone" for the R -Z280 and R -Z93 lineages, implying that an "early differentiation zone" of R-M198 "conceivably occurred somewhere within the Eurasian Steppes or the Middle East and Caucasus region as they lie between South Asia and Eastern Europe". [39] According to Underhill et al. (2014/2015), R1a1a1, the most frequent subclade of R1a, split into R-Z282 (Europe) and R-Z93 (Asia) at circa 5,800 before present,[40] in the vicinity of Iran and Eastern Turkey. According to Underhill et al. (2014/2015), "[t]his suggests the possibility that R1a lineages accompanied demic expansions initiated during the Copper, Bronze, and Iron ages."[41]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kura–Araxes_culture#Ethno-linguistic_makeup

Thank you.
However my questions are always more ....diluted.

"Someone" came to transCaucasia in 5000bc and remove the fathers of PIE.
It was fast, it was swift. Would imagine that some of the oldest attested languages in the region might belong to those peoples and its the best option a person has to understand what scenario would fit:

a. They were local/neighbours. Meaning the local "friends" such as seen in Hajji Firuz making wine, R1bs with friends J2b. suddenly turned foe? Was
it the sudden awake and fury of Hassuna -Samarra that make all that scatter and exodus os PIE people? - weird.


b. Was instead an incoming population that arrived with a bang? Why the Kura -araxes had two L1a males? who were them? where did they came from? If it were an incoming population it will be very difficult to pinpoint them, due to the fact that, they would have come by 4900bc, so seen in the area as SIONI people for instance, but not long after, Uruk and Leilatepe (4000bc) exploded the region and initiaded a world of complexity. One option for those "earlier bad guys" would be a population coming from Inside Iran or from eastern part of caspian sea... but who?
There is not way if it was Ubaid-to-Uruk people that their languagen would not be related to Sumeriam - Is it hurro-urartian related to Sumerian? If not, then those languages are from the incoming initial "bad guys" and not Uruk. Who were they who were they.... :)
 
Thanks and I find your research in older Chalcolithic/Neolithic very important :)

Definately I have to start reading up more on Halaf, Ubaid and the rest!

The key in all this is the Hurrians, Hurrians are an offshoot of the Kura Araxes Culture and Nakh speakers are able to have a linguistic grouping with Hurro-Urartian, and since we know the Nakh languages and Hurrian are not IE, it would therefore make the Kura Araxes Culture not IE.

I think your underestimating Maykop’s importance in all this, though maybe it more crucial to IE than PIE, I guess we’ll have wait and see, apparently the Maykop paper is coming soon! ;)

Can you post an academic source that claims that Hurrians are 'an offshoot' of the Kura-Araxes culture?
Actually, it is something I don't oppose (I don't know much to have an opinion about it) but it is problematic if we take something questionable for granted.

That linguistic grouping (the 'Alarodian family') isn't accepted by all linguists. Either way, I assume it is a valid family. I don't understand what makes you so certain about their haplogroups, though.

The first Kura-Araxes sample (two years ago?) was R1b1. The high frequency of J2a in Chechens can be a result of a founder effect, since the variance isn't that high as far as I know.
 
The first Kura-Araxes sample (two years ago?) was R1b1. The high frequency of J2a in Chechens can be a result of a founder effect, since the variance isn't that high as far as I know.

The first ones , were L1a! and that is the problem I have. Would anyone expect it or has any explanation for it? - "Indian" L1a? how come?
 
Clearly non-elite Anatolian names in North Syria in 2500 BC almost certainly kills the steppe homeland of PIE theory. Dienekes must be smiling right now.

Depends if you think Hurrian is related to Hatti
we know Hatti is related to Carian, Lydian, Lycian, Luwian, Palaic .................but hurrian I doubt it
 
Can you post an academic source that claims that Hurrians are 'an offshoot' of the Kura-Araxes culture?
Actually, it is something I don't oppose (I don't know much to have an opinion about it) but it is problematic if we take something questionable for granted.

That linguistic grouping (the 'Alarodian family') isn't accepted by all linguists. Either way, I assume it is a valid family. I don't understand what makes you so certain about their haplogroups, though.

The first Kura-Araxes sample (two years ago?) was R1b1. The high frequency of J2a in Chechens can be a result of a founder effect, since the variance isn't that high as far as I know.

I just did, in post 109.

The Phylogenetic tree of J2 and current Y lines we see.

When we get a few more Kura Araxes genomes we will see the how this culture is important for the spread of J2a-PF5116 lineages. Yes you are absolutely correct, though Chechens don’t only belong to 1 line of J2a, the main one is J2a-Z7671>Y3260. Luckily BigY tests are proving that Chechens belong to other branches of J2a.
 
its cool.

He can be right.... For Anatolian. or even others.

Imagine this.
a. Imagine I am right about Shulaveri-Shomu and they were it. they were PIE with R1b-M269-L23. however they were not alone. Shulaveri were massive but only in a 100km area. They were 100 km from northwestern Iran (different stock). Most important: just next to them, miles way near balck sea, there were the Ansueli, paluri, etc, which I think were pure CHG with J2 as well as much of Iran neolithic was J2. Shulaveri never got truly into the fertile lowlands of the azerbaijan (strange), but the surely must have mixed with....the CHOKH cultures (caucasus mountains) had which Y dna? what autosomal composition? why couldn't they have EHG? no spillage at all of EHG from North caucasus over 3000 years?

b. So, many of the PIE speaker would really be J2. many core SS (coming from Balkans 6200bc) were R1b but by 5000bc, many PIE speakers were J2. You will even would have found large bands of the PIE speakers that were J2.

c. Don't be surprise if Hittite will be solely J2.

d. Dont be surprise if we find Chokh mixing with Shulaveri and if they had EHG already, dont be surprise to find shulaveri very Anatolian as others very CHG. 1500 after arrival very admix. in first half of 6th milenium... be careful. :) reality will be much more complex that we currently are able to make it.

on your C ...........doubt it very much ........there are high % of R1 and G2 let alone over 15% of T in the area today, I can even see L being part of it
 
on your C ...........doubt it very much ........there are high % of R1 and G2 let alone over 15% of T in the area today, I can even see L being part of it

Yes. Maybe. Just don't be surprised. Maybe surprised like the J2 in Myceneans.
 
@Angela I realize you can see when someone gives a negative or positive figure, it was the belittling comment about the culture in support of someone who was contributing nothing productive and posting for the sake of causing disruption. Nothing personal because outside of this context you usually are very helpful, but IronSide was right and this guy was off his rocker.
 
@Angela I realize you can see when someone gives a negative or positive figure, it was the belittling comment about the culture in support of someone who was contributing nothing productive and posting for the sake of causing disruption. Nothing personal because outside of this context you usually are very helpful, but IronSide was right and this guy was off his rocker.
She said they were originally very primitive. Pretty much every group started that way. And she complimented on their ability to adapt to novel environments and other pressures, so she essentially said they were fast learners. @Angela, If I read you wrong, i apologize
 
And IE did spread with Neolithic farmer from Anatolia. I mean at least VIA Anatolia.
That is becoming the elephant in the room: Assuming Krause is right, Now Reich is right and so many others (as me and you)… then it needs to be assumed, it follows, that populations we see moving via Anatolia and arriving to Balkans at 4500bc, such as Kum6 (4600bc), loaded with CHG and different farmers ancestry from Anatolia_N (8000bc) and having heavy shared ancestry with Greece Neolithic, such as Klei10, and Pal7 in Greece, a thousand years later (3500bc) and with even Otzi the Iceman (3300bc) …. They ALL SPOKE PIE/IE!

So, best put, Otzi could very well be a IE speaking person and have never even have met a Steppe person! – Lets start wrapping our minds around it!

I challenge anyone to truly fault this reasoning.

I'm pretty sure neither Krause nor Reich are claiming that all CHG expansions are associated with the spread of IE languages, especially because in many such cases of CHG or CHG-related expansions we have historic attestations that IE languages were NOT brought into said territories, instead the local population most certainly spoke other languages (case in point: much of the BA Levant, Minoans etc.). You can't just "assume" - as you say - that because Krause and Reich seem to be leaning to an ultimate, first, most ancient homeland of IE in the South Caucasus then all the expansion of CHG-related admixture into Europe even before the Early Bronze Age was already about the IE expansion. I would also advise you to take linguistics at least a bit more seriously if you also want your hypotheses to be taken seriously. There is no way that IE would've expanded as far as both Anatolia and Europe (even in the Alps, in the case of Ötzi) without splitting into unintelligible languages centuries later.

So by the time of the first attestations of IE languages around 1500-1000 BCE you would have us assume that those languages had started to split apart 3000-3500 years before they were written, including one in Anatolia (Hittie), one in South Asia (Indic) and one in Greece (Mycenaean), and nevertheless the 3 still bore significant commonalities, and, in the case of Greek and Old Indic, two of them were even still remarkably similar enough to make the identification of their close common origins easy even to amateur linguists of the 18th century (who actually based their thoughts on Iron Age Sanskrit and Iron Age Classical Greek, not even the earliest texts from 1000 years earlier!).

Considering what we know of linguistic evolution and of how IE subfamilies developed and evolved after the Early Bronze Age until the medieval era (roughly 3000-3500 years too), unless you want to consider an extremely implausible "slow almost frozen evolution" of the earlier IE proto-languages, there is no way we can easily, without much stronger evidences, accept a theory of IE dispersal that is based on Early or Middle Neolithic demographic events, and not on Copper Age/Bronze Age ones.

There may have been Early PIE or maybe para-PIE speakers among those CHG people spreading to Europe and other parts of West Asia by 4500-5000 BCE, I'm sure that's possible, but THE - "THE" I reinforce - IE expansion and split into several subfamilies that are still spoken, and that we all talk about ,was just NOT that event, but certainly a much later phenomenon.
 
@Angela I realize you can see when someone gives a negative or positive figure, it was the belittling comment about the culture in support of someone who was contributing nothing productive and posting for the sake of causing disruption. Nothing personal because outside of this context you usually are very helpful, but IronSide was right and this guy was off his rocker.

I don't know who the other poster is or what his "deal" is...

What I know is that everything I wrote is completely supported by the latest archaeological studies. I have posted many of them here over the years. There is no disputing it.

It is not belittling anyone to say that the early steppe people did not have an advanced civilization and borrowed from the more advanced peoples around them both in Europe and the Near East. That is an age old pattern, as Davef pointed out.

THESE ARE ALL FACTS.

Perhaps I over-reacted. I normally have no problems at all with your input.

It's just that I am beyond tired of people in this amateur community taking "sides" based on however they identify themselves, i.e. if they are predominantly of northern European ancestry and are therefore 50% steppe, rather than 25% steppe like Southern Europeans, then everything has to be interpreted, or rather, massaged, to somehow rebound to the credit of the steppe people.

It's ignorant, dishonest, and racist all at the same time.

As I said, I'm not including you in this group, but there's too much of it not only here but all over the internet. This is why so many academics were leery of putting their names to this kind of work: there are too many people who use it in just this way.
 
Just how was he "hating on steppe folk"? This thread has gotten very long, and I probably missed some posts.

To "hate on " any ancient people is silly, but to try to distort archaeology and linguistics to support some self-identification is also silly, and dishonest as well.

Well, at least I'll give you that you stand behind your ideas. That's better than the Promenade method of downvoting posts instead of providing academic sources for his disagreement. Oh wait, that's because my opinions ARE based on the academic sources. :)

I'm still a little confused, though. If people's opinions should be based on their ethnicity, what's your excuse for your steppe worship? You're supposed to be a Saudi, yes? One conquering nomadic people for another?

Btw, I would never call the Indo-Europeans "weak". On the other hand, strength has nothing to do with civilization. The Nazis were "strong", but they were ignorant barbarians motivated by idiot anthropology, conspiracy theories, and moronic beliefs in the occult. So, two different things.
Please sometimes i feel you play double standards, when something is going on a IE origin south of the caucasus you play fair, say that we have to follow the studies and in the same time baiting a little on the steppe hypothesis. When something goes for a steppe hypothesis you start to talk about nazis, davidski, white supremacist and go on. It become completely hysterical to read anything about IE's on this site looking at how much people have double standards and in reality, they are bigoted and one-sided. How want you to discuss if in a sentence you say that we have to follow studies and in the others, " steppe people were barbarians undeveloped, i can't believe anything to do with them, even if i clearly dont say it ". I think at the end, Anthrogenica happenned to be way more open-minded than Eupedia.
 
Steppe peoples ORIGINALLY were indeed very primitive. They were hunter-gatherers living in yurts. How can you possibly compare them to the more civilized cultures of their day, such as the people of "Old Europe", or contemporaneous cultures of the Near East?

That's not a put down of any kind. It's just the facts.

They borrowed agriculture from other peoples, metallurgy from other peoples, it seems they may even have gotten kurgans, burial rites, and the wheel from other peoples.

Even Andronovo/Sintashta from the perspective of culture owes little to the steppe groups to the west. There is no trail of metallurgy to them from the Pontic-Caspian steppe for example, which was still more "primitive" in terms of metallurgy. Many of their advancements may have come to them from the south, by way of the Inner Asian Corridor.

What they were was excellent borrowers and adapters. That's an admirable trait in its own way. They weren't so rigid that they refused to adopt more sophisticated technology.

As for your comment about R1 nomads spreading the plague, that's also a fact, just as Genovese trade ships spread it after picking it up from steppe people in the Crimea during the Middle Ages.

Are you seriously suggesting that because men carry an R1 ydna haplogroup they should attempt to distort the historical record so their ancestors "look better" from the standpoint of history?

If you are, I'm sorry to say this is an example of everything that's wrong with the amateur population genetics community.

That's all a very nicely explained and true observation, but only if you're referring to the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age steppes, but it seems the original comment about IE steppe tribes being "primitive" was comparing them with Hittite culture and populations of the Hittite Empire, most of which we know from findings dated to the mid-late Bronze Age. By that time, we couldn't really say that steppe and steppe-derived ethnicities were "primitive" at all, even if they had mostly borrowed, adapted and in some cases improved technologies and techniques that were not created by them (but hey Japan also did the same in the late 1800s and early-mid 1900s and nobody will deny they became very advanced by current standards). The true fact is that that comment was completely misguided, based on a chronologically undefensible comparison of a ~1500-1200 BC Hittite civilization with a ~3500-2500 BC Yamnaya steppe culture, and a very weak assumption that Hittites would have simply brought their fully complete and consolidated culture and technology from their original homeland (so they just mustn't have come from those "primitive steppe tribes"), and not evolved, changed, borrowed and exchanged ideas with the surrounding (and possibly initially more civilized) societies they found along centuries or even milennia.

Also, I think IronSide was not talking about the plague, but about the sarcastic use of the term "virus" to refer to the spread of IE languages/cultures. That comment was not about the plague or other disease, but about the sarcastically defined "steppitis" or something like that, as if everyone who argues for a steppe origin for at least most IE branches is some sort of obsessive admirer of a sick culture or whatever. Indeed, I must say that comment that IronSide complained about did sound very uncalled for and arrogant.
 
I think your underestimating Maykop’s importance in all this, though maybe it more crucial to IE than PIE, I guess we’ll have wait and see, apparently the Maykop paper is coming soon! ;)

What would this IE be if not PIE? Are you referring to the early history of already divided and independent IE subfamilies? PIE does not mean pre-IE, but proto-IE, it just means "the last common stage of Indo-European language before its dialects split into unintelligible languages".
 

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