Ancient genomes from Caucasus inc. Maykop

Even considering BB the original carriers of IE (6th option), that would justify the spread of Celtic, Italic, Germanic and even
Balto-Slavic, and Balkanic languages (from Hungary), they might be capable to change language to former CWC people but in eastern areas, much less colonized, the autosomal would be more diluted, and even local R1a Y-DNA would be integrated, which ultimately would expand eastwards providing Indo-Iranic and Tocharian by 2000 BC in the steppes... sounds like writting a major heresy, but now, with the data on hand, one can expose even this case.

Your point about Tocharian is based in an assumption not demonstrated: that Afanasievo are linked to Tocharians (different Y-DNA profiles, 3 millenia diffrence and 2000 km distance). Also it's an assumption to link IE to Yamna.

Irrespective of the culture that gave origin to Tocharian, or where PIE was first spoken and spread from, it is certain that steppe-related ancestry, with EHG signal, spread significantly during the early and middle Bronze Age in Central Asia, but not much before. Also, it would be necessary to find a Neolithic (assuming that the expansion you hypothesize is a Neolithic spread of pastoralism, as you said) archaeological link that can indicate a spread of a particular culture from the northern Fertile Crescent to the vicinity of the Altai mountains. Is there such a culture? It's not enough to simply dismiss the current hypothesis, it's necessary to substantiate the new one and, additionally, explain the details of the expansion and not just the place of origin.

It also certain that, wherever Proto-Tocharian was spoken, it split from the rest of the IE languages very early, probably before 3000 BC (I think most linguists assume a date around 3200-3500 BC). So, I think that sets a "latest" possible date for the dispersal and differentiation of IE languages even excluding the most archaic and controversial branch, Anatolian. PIE was most certainly spoken, in undivided form, before 3500 BC and, including Antolian, very probably before 4000 BC. And if they came from the Near East as early as the Neolithic it's necessary to find a common genetic sign of that expansion right from the Near East to both Western Europe and the Tarim Basin. Otherwise, we'll just be coming back to the "steppe as a vehicle" hypothesis, that is, Pre-PIE coming from Transcaucasia or Anatolia but developing and splitting into different languages in the steppes, possibly with the exception of Anatolian.
 
Sorry, you have perhaps misunderstood me. I never said nor implied there aren't issues with the homeland in the Caucasus hypothesis.

However, to address some of your points:

Just as there is no specific archaeological context for the movement of this early form of Pre Proto IE from the Balkans to Anatolia, there is none for the movement from the Caucasus, or perhaps better, for the movement of "Caucasus like people" to the steppe carrying this early form of the language. Perhaps in one case we'll eventually find the appropriate culture, which will make things a lot clearer, but we don't have them yet.

In both cases we're probably indeed looking at around 4000 BC or so.

I don't know whether at that point only women moved onto the steppe. The fact that we've as yet found no Caucasus like y dna (according to current thinking) in the steppe at this early period certainly is evidence for that, and, indeed, women are not usually the vehicles for language change.

That is the biggest issue.

However, I think it is still possible that certain R1b groups, wherever R1b first developed, might have moved back and forth across the Caucasus, as Maciamo opined years ago, and some could have picked up a more CHG like autosomal profile before returning north. Jean Manco, although she was a standard issue steppist, did publish her speculations to the effect that the R1b groups might have pastured their herds along the Black Sea and perhaps in the Caucasus during the summer.

I don't understand the issue with EEF. It could have entered the steppe with different people and from a totally different direction. From my perspective all this blather there used to be about the "steppe" people, as if they were some unique, holy group dropped from a spaceship is ridiculous. I think what the evidence tells us is that the steppe was like a giant stew pot where everybody got mixed up. We're talking about EHG, CHG, WHG, and EEF, and then maybe this Siberian Neolithic group. Look at what happened in later periods: it turned majority "East Asian like". Even in the Bronze Age, the "modelers" keep pointing out this and that "outlier", and that's in very small sample sets. Different areas were getting different inputs. That's why it's a mistake imo to "drop" the outliers and create these artificially "cohesive" clusters. If you do that you may forget them. It was a fluid situation from very early on.


Well, I suppose there's one possibility where the language of the women is considered. It just occurred to me that perhaps a Caucasus origin "trade" language could have become the lingua franca on the steppe, spoken by the wives on behalf of their men. French acted as a sort of trade language among the Indian tribes of Canada and the northern U.S. for Indian tribes who didn't understand each other's languages, although in that case it was the French men or Coureurs de bois who usually provided those services.

Anyway, there are problems no matter which alternative you choose.

I agree with your points. That's why I say that those who are claiming "game over" (funnily enough people from both sides, is that some kind of confirmation bias or really cognitive dissonance?) should be more careful, because as far as I can see we now have more doubts and questions than before, especially because the historic process of the formation of PIE and (a different issue) of the dispersal and expansion of its daughter languages looks increasingly more complex, without one only pattern that applies to everywhere.

My main point now, with all these considerations made above, is that, chronologically, there's an "elephant in the room", which is: if those who brought what would become PIE came from the South Caucasus, but that cultural change and mixing with EHG natives happened too early, say, around 5000-4300 BC, then it's simply hard, especially to linguists, to accept that "PIE was a South Caucasian language, period". We'd be talking about different stages in the evolution of the language (comparatively, it would be like saying that "Portuguese is a Central Italian language, because Latin was born there, period"). Maybe its origins were there, but PIE couldn't have been spoken in 5000 BC in the South Caucasus and still be the same undifferentiated language in 3500-3000 BC in the steppes.

In that case, nor the "steppists" nor the "caucasianists" would be completely right nor completely wrong: Pre-PIE would've been from the Caucasus, but certainly not PIE, the last common and undifferentiated language that links all IE groups together, and the IE expansion would've been almost entirely a steppe phenomenon, with Anatolian possibly (we'll see when we have more samples) splitting so early (circa 4300 BC?) that there was still some regional structure where at least one CHG-majority PIE population still existed, somewhere near the steppes, becoming the Proto-Anatolians.
 
I agree with your points. That's why I say that those who are claiming "game over" (funnily enough people from both sides, is that some kind of confirmation bias or really cognitive dissonance?) should be more careful, because as far as I can see we now have more doubts and questions than before, especially because the historic process of the formation of PIE and (a different issue) of the dispersal and expansion of its daughter languages looks increasingly more complex, without one only pattern that applies to everywhere.

My main point now, with all these considerations made above, is that, chronologically, there's an "elephant in the room", which is: if those who brought what would become PIE came from the South Caucasus, but that cultural change and mixing with EHG natives happened too early, say, around 5000-4300 BC, then it's simply hard, especially to linguists, to accept that "PIE was a South Caucasian language, period". We'd be talking about different stages in the evolution of the language (comparatively, it would be like saying that "Portuguese is a Central Italian language, because Latin was born there, period"). Maybe its origins were there, but PIE couldn't have been spoken in 5000 BC in the South Caucasus and still be the same undifferentiated language in 3500-3000 BC in the steppes.

In that case, nor the "steppists" nor the "caucasianists" would be completely right nor completely wrong: Pre-PIE would've been from the Caucasus, but certainly not PIE, the last common and undifferentiated language that links all IE groups together, and the IE expansion would've been almost entirely a steppe phenomenon, with Anatolian possibly (we'll see when we have more samples) splitting so early (circa 4300 BC?) that there was still some regional structure where at least one CHG-majority PIE population still existed, somewhere near the steppes, becoming the Proto-Anatolians.

The anatolian branch is crucial here.
Because if the anatolian branch came from the steppes, then like you say, the language south of the caucasus would be pre-PIE, while the later steppe version would be PIE.
But if the anatolian branch branched off already while south of the caucasus, then the language it branched off from would be PIE, not pre-PIE. And then the steppe IE would just become an early form of IE, not PIE.
 
I agree with your points. That's why I say that those who are claiming "game over" (funnily enough people from both sides, is that some kind of confirmation bias or really cognitive dissonance?) should be more careful, because as far as I can see we now have more doubts and questions than before, especially because the historic process of the formation of PIE and (a different issue) of the dispersal and expansion of its daughter languages looks increasingly more complex, without one only pattern that applies to everywhere.

My main point now, with all these considerations made above, is that, chronologically, there's an "elephant in the room", which is: if those who brought what would become PIE came from the South Caucasus, but that cultural change and mixing with EHG natives happened too early, say, around 5000-4300 BC, then it's simply hard, especially to linguists, to accept that "PIE was a South Caucasian language, period". We'd be talking about different stages in the evolution of the language (comparatively, it would be like saying that "Portuguese is a Central Italian language, because Latin was born there, period"). Maybe its origins were there, but PIE couldn't have been spoken in 5000 BC in the South Caucasus and still be the same undifferentiated language in 3500-3000 BC in the steppes.

In that case, nor the "steppists" nor the "caucasianists" would be completely right nor completely wrong: Pre-PIE would've been from the Caucasus, but certainly not PIE, the last common and undifferentiated language that links all IE groups together, and the IE expansion would've been almost entirely a steppe phenomenon, with Anatolian possibly (we'll see when we have more samples) splitting so early (circa 4300 BC?) that there was still some regional structure where at least one CHG-majority PIE population still existed, somewhere near the steppes, becoming the Proto-Anatolians.

I can't say all, of course, but for some people the stance they take seems to me more emotionally invested, rather than rational, perhaps stemming from issues of identification.

Anyway, as to substance, the geneticists are talking about possible, late PIE on the steppe, implying perhaps early PIE south of the Caucasus or in the Caucasus, but they're not linguists and I didn't check to see if any linguists are signed onto the paper.

What I find interesting is that all three of the major labs are at least holding this out as a possibility. I don't know if it's because they have samples of which we're unaware, although this Willerslev group seems to be pretty definite that they have no samples from older time periods, or because they think perhaps Reich does and he left it open. Who knows? They just might be trying to cover all bases.

One thing I can say definitely is that they didn't present evidence here that can lay it to rest. On the other hand, I didn't think the Reich Lab's paper on South Asia presented a rock solid chain of proof either, although I agree with the conclusion in general, although more son than this paper. There are just no smoking guns lately. It's all much more complex than a lot of people were willing to credit.
 
Well once again i'm lost... i re-re-read the paper and they say that. " Our fitted model recapitulates the genetic separation between the Caucasus and Steppe groups with the Eneolithic steppe individuals deriving more than 60% of ancestry from EHG and the remainder from a CHG-related basal lineage, whereas the Maykop group received about 86.4% from CHG, 9.6% Anatolian farming related ancestry, and 4% from EHG. " But looking at their graph, the 60% in steppe eneolithic is green, wich is the dominant color in their Iran Neolithic, Iran Hotu etc.

According to Razib Khan's post in his blog, the green component means simply "basal component mainly found in Iran Neolithic". It is not even CHG or Iran_Neolithic, but the basal, older component that is found in very high proportions in these two populations, but probably also contributed to other populations like the EHG.
 
The anatolian branch is crucial here.
Because if the anatolian branch came from the steppes, then like you say, the language south of the caucasus would be pre-PIE, while the later steppe version would be PIE.
But if the anatolian branch branched off already while south of the caucasus, then the language it branched off from would be PIE, not pre-PIE. And then the steppe IE would just become an early form of IE, not PIE.

Exactly. Maybe, if that becomes increasingly likely in the scientific record, the reconstruction of PIE should be rethought to account for this "Indo-Hittie" hypothesis, that is, the reconstructed PIE, including Anatolian, wouldn't be exactly the same creature as the reconstructed Late PIE language. People often forget that this language was alive and evolving and changing along the centuries. If the later IE expansions (with the subsequent IE subgroups) happened for example ~1300 years after the split of Anatolian (imagining a scenario where Anatolian split just before the EHG+CHG mix in the steppe got formed), then we'd be talking about 2 similar and consecutive languages that could be as distinct from each other as Vulgar Latin is from Modern Portuguese, for instance.
 
I see, that makes some sense, so we just need the data to either confirm its plausibility or put it aside. I must say that, if those same herders also brought PIE to the steppes, I can only visualize them as a CHG-majority people, because the main "steppe" mix since very early (4300 BC) was only EHG-CHG, there was no ANF in the Eneolithic Steppe, and when the ANF appears it is mainly associated with "western" (European) EEF and not with Near Eastern ANF, with that happening only significantly later (probably too late to account for the departure of Tocharian from an already differentiated Late PIE, and for the wide dialectal differentiation in the steppes that was probably already quite advanced by 3000-2800 BC according to linguists).

How much "steppe" is present in Mycaenians to be recognized as IE? not so much, elites are capable to change languages. You are "glued" yet to the steppe as the source, inertia is big after so many decades of learning, but opening mind eases many contras. Even so for me the BB option would be the 6th and EEF would be the 5th, my favorite pet idea is Middle Dnieper Culture yet, it deserves more datations and genetic work.
 
How much "steppe" is present in Mycaenians to be recognized as IE? not so much, elites are capable to change languages. You are "glued" yet to the steppe as the source, inertia is big after so many decades of learning, but opening mind eases many contras. Even so for me the BB option would be the 6th and EEF would be the 5th, my favorite pet idea is Middle Dnieper Culture yet, it deserves more datations and genetic work.

AFAIK around 10-20% in the few simples we've found (and I think that could even be more like 15-25% if you consider that Mycenaeans probably arrived around 2000 BC, so their makeup was definitely not very high in EHG even before they mixed with Pre-Greeks). I think that's more than enough considering that they aren't early PIE speakers, but people firmly established in populous Mediterranean, Southeastern Europe some 1500 years after PIE is supposed to have been last spoken. I'm not deeply attached to the steppe hypothesis, and in fact I myself think the most likely hypothesis is just a "mild" version of it mainly with heavy Caucasian influence, but until now all the data seems to fit a scenario where at least most (not all necessarily) IE branches came from the steppes or somewhere immediately neighboring it, so in my opinion if things will change it will be a bit to the north or to the south, or maybe to the west, but still around the Pontic-Caspian area (the Middle Dnieper culture is actually IMO too late to account for the origin of Common - undivided - PIE, but it's still just a minor change in terms of geographical origins and genetic associations for PIE, we're still placing it in the forest-steppe of Ukraine and in a culture with a very high autosomal DNA similarity in relation to earlier Sredny Stog II and Yamnaya).
 
I agree with your points. That's why I say that those who are claiming "game over" (funnily enough people from both sides, is that some kind of confirmation bias or really cognitive dissonance?) should be more careful, because as far as I can see we now have more doubts and questions than before, especially because the historic process of the formation of PIE and (a different issue) of the dispersal and expansion of its daughter languages looks increasingly more complex, without one only pattern that applies to everywhere.
I hear Yanni ;).

But seriously, a great paper but very difficult to decipher movement of all the cultures. They should have used specific admixtures for cultural groups or the once we are used to. I'm yet to read it anyway, ... perhaps on my vacation, when time allows.
Maybe when they publish the genomes we could figure additional info running them through gedmatch.
 
Exactly. Maybe, if that becomes increasingly likely in the scientific record, the reconstruction of PIE should be rethought to account for this "Indo-Hittie" hypothesis, that is, the reconstructed PIE, including Anatolian, wouldn't be exactly the same creature as the reconstructed Late PIE language. People often forget that this language was alive and evolving and changing along the centuries. If the later IE expansions (with the subsequent IE subgroups) happened for example ~1300 years after the split of Anatolian (imagining a scenario where Anatolian split just before the EHG+CHG mix in the steppe got formed), then we'd be talking about 2 similar and consecutive languages that could be as distinct from each other as Vulgar Latin is from Modern Portuguese, for instance.
I agree.

And yes, it could be very interesting if someone made a PIE reconstruction where anatolian is included as well(im not sure if it has been done yet, or if anatolian was excluded in the reconstructions we have today)
I know that Max planck institute are making a whole new database for IE, with root, root-language and other stuff. But it is not yet public. Although there is a screenshot of it on Max Plancks site, and i think it looks very promising: http://www.shh.mpg.de/207610/cobldatabase

I have also had the thought that a language would change radically when crossing a mt. range like the caucasus in prehistory and then mixing in something like a one-to-one ratio with another people with a completely different language(in this case the language of the EHG-like peoples).

But then again, some tribes who mixed to a lesser degree would retain a more archaic dialect, while those tribes who mixed more would have a higher rate of change linguistically. Like specific sound changes('b' becoming 'v' for instance) or even borrow new words from the hunter gatherers for some more basic things like 'head', 'arm', 'meat', 'caribou' etc.

But i think the words linked to metal, pastoralism, agriculture, seafaring etc. would have been shared in the same form by most of the tribes(regardless of their EHG/CHG proportions), as these things were probably more or less unknown to the hunter gatherers prior to the arrival of the southerners. So they probably just borrowed those words directly.
 
Now it would make sense if R1b-Z2103 from Hajji Firuzz-Iran[and descendants] lived anywhere near these useful tools [arsenic bronze]and materials-[wood ]they would incorporate innovations as they travel north into the steppe.

That things happened in south Caucasus around 2,400bc.

Going back to Southern Caucasus, the apparent stability of the Kura-Araxes communities went through a crisis around the mid-third millennium BC, and by 2400 BC their traditions and system of values were replaced by that of the “Early Kurgans.” It is not yet clear if, between ca. 2600 and 2500 BC, another “gray” cultural phase of coexistence between Kura-Araxes and “Early Kurgans” traditions (table 1) took place in the region (Rova, 2014). However, by 2400 BC changes are consistently visible, starting with settlement patterns; the abandonment of the former Kura-Araxes villages and a shift toward less permanent occupations and higher mobility coupled with the construction of monumental funerary tumuli (Edens, 1995).

These earthen kurganswith their preserved wooden-log funerary chambers containing wheeled wagons (Djaparidze, 2003; Makharadze and Murvanidze, 2014; Lyonnet, 2014) and rich funerary inventories composed of skillfully crafted golden and silver artifacts, arsenical copper, and tin-bronze objects (Chernykh, 1992; Carminati, 2014)—are paradigmatic of the radical changes in the region. While the focus on land as a primary resource for agro-pastoral activities was a pillar of the socioeconomic organization of the Kura-Araxes communities, the symbolic presence of wheeled vehicles in the new kurgans emphasizes the importance of mobility, which is not only the result of a new focus on a pastoral economy but presumably also a fundamental prerequisite to connect with routes of communication and trade networks focused on metals (Lyonnet, 2014; Smith, 2015).

So drastic changes:
See, Armenia had pretty violent history. Here is the chart telling it. First is CHG, the second one is Armenian Farmer of Early Bronze Age. We can see it he is very similar to CHG but with additional admixtures of Iranian and Anatolian Farmers.
Next two point to drastic changes Armenia went through during Bronze Age. The telling sign is sharp rise of North East Euro admixture. The closest source was Bronze Age Steppe, therefore Steppe invasion through Caucase.
The big surprise is that Modern Armenians don't have much of NE Euro left. They look surprisingly like EBA Armenian before Steppe invasion. It looks like the all the late BA Armenians, possibly the communities extensively mixed with IEs, left the area or were wiped out, and "original" Armenians took over once again.

M603839M536324I1658M691697RISE407Modern
Kotias CHG8 KYAArmenia EBAArmenia LBAArmenian
Run time13.98Run time8.22Run time3.92Run time
S-Indian0.62S-Indian0.27S-Indian-S-Indian1
Baloch36.63Baloch25.53Baloch28.22Baloch20
Caucasian54.15Caucasian56.75Caucasian30.75Caucasian52
NE-Euro3.84NE-Euro4.79NE-Euro24.77NE-Euro3
SE-Asian0.59SE-Asian-SE-Asian-SE-Asian-
Siberian0.77Siberian-Siberian-Siberian-
NE-Asian-NE-Asian-NE-Asian-NE-Asian-
Papuan0.15Papuan-Papuan-Papuan-
American-American-American1.54American
Beringian-Beringian-Beringian-Beringian-
Mediterranean-Mediterranean5.88Mediterranean6.98Mediterranean10
SW-Asian-SW-Asian6.45SW-Asian6.38SW-Asian13
San-San-San-San-
E-African-E-African-E-African-E-African-
Pygmy0.25Pygmy-Pygmy-Pygmy-
W-African3.01W-African0.33W-African1.36W-African
 
There are numerous issues linguistically in terms of the Anatolian languages, and no hypothesis totally lays them to rest. That's been apparent for years, although it was most clearly articulated by Mallory relatively recently. It is by no means a question of a satisfactory answer or hypothesis already existing about which there is a consensus, but which various people are now trying to destroy by raising new concerns.

For those who haven't read it.
https://www.proto-indo-european.ru/ie-cradle/_pdf/clouds-over-ie-homelands-nallory.pdf

"The essential argument as it is normally presented is that Anatolian lacks a considerable numberof features that would characterize Brugmanian Proto-Indo-European (aorist, perfect, subjunctive,optative, etc.; Fortsom 2004, 155) and, therefore, its links with an earlier continuum musthave been severed before Proto-Indo-European (or the rest of the Indo-European languages) developedin common. This can essentially be explained in one of two ways:1. The ancestors of the Anatolian languages migrated from the homeland of the protolanguagebefore it developed common Indo-European features. In this model, Anatolianwould have preserved an archaic structure while the ancestors of the rest of the IndoEuropeanlanguages still remained together and evolved later stages of Proto-Indo-European.2. The ancestors of the Indo-European languages migrated from the homeland of theproto-language. Here it is Proto-Indo-European that moves off to innovate while, presumably,Anatolian was left in the homeland to preserve its archaisms.Obviously we could complicate matters further by proposing a homeland from whichboth the ancestors of Anatolian and (Proto­)Indo-European migrated in different directionsbut this would hardly be likely and it would have little bearing on the following discussion."

The issues for me with Anthony's proposal that the people speaking perhaps a "pre-Anatolian" language left the steppes first and moved into Anatolia via the Balkans is that although he locates a culture he considers probable as the one bringing a "steppe" language to the Balkans, there is no archaeological trail from that culture into Anatolia at that time. The archaeological trail goes in the other direction.

If we assume that despite that they moved quickly into Anatolia, where is the EHG they would have carried.

If they stayed long enough in the Balkans to lose their EHG, why is their language still so archaic. Wouldn't they have come in contact with the wheel, with other Indo-European languages?

I could go on and on, but the point is that there are issues.

There are, of course, also issues with the "origin" being in Anatolia, and the stream leading to the Anatolian languages developing there, but at least the archaism is completely explained. The lack of EHG in this case also presents no problems, because the genetic marker we'd be tracking would be CHG, not EHG.

The Balkan "trail" is 1) steppes (5,000 BCE), Balkans (4,000 BCE), Anatolia (Troy, 3,000 BCE), Hattusa (1,600 BCE). They would have spent a thousand years in the Balkans as an IE "island" surrounded by non-IE speakers, until booted out by the Yamnaya. If from Sredny Stog, they were originally WHG, not EHG, right? Without real royal Hittite DNA, we might never know.
 
According to Razib Khan's post in his blog, the green component means simply "basal component mainly found in Iran Neolithic". It is not even CHG or Iran_Neolithic, but the basal, older component that is found in very high proportions in these two populations, but probably also contributed to other populations like the EHG.
Oh ok thanks. So Iran_Neolithic is something ANE + something Basal Iranian, but Basal Iranian is not Basal Eurasian ? And CHG is something Iran_Neolithic ( Basal Iranian ) + something on the spectrum of WHG / EHG but at the same time, most EHG that we found also have some of that Basal Iranian on the spectrum of CHG. How do we understand the true pattern of migration ?
 
There are numerous issues linguistically in terms of the Anatolian languages, and no hypothesis totally lays them to rest. That's been apparent for years, although it was most clearly articulated by Mallory relatively recently. It is by no means a question of a satisfactory answer or hypothesis already existing about which there is a consensus, but which various people are now trying to destroy by raising new concerns.

For those who haven't read it.
https://www.proto-indo-european.ru/ie-cradle/_pdf/clouds-over-ie-homelands-nallory.pdf

"The essential argument as it is normally presented is that Anatolian lacks a considerable numberof features that would characterize Brugmanian Proto-Indo-European (aorist, perfect, subjunctive,optative, etc.; Fortsom 2004, 155) and, therefore, its links with an earlier continuum musthave been severed before Proto-Indo-European (or the rest of the Indo-European languages) developedin common. This can essentially be explained in one of two ways:1. The ancestors of the Anatolian languages migrated from the homeland of the protolanguagebefore it developed common Indo-European features. In this model, Anatolianwould have preserved an archaic structure while the ancestors of the rest of the IndoEuropeanlanguages still remained together and evolved later stages of Proto-Indo-European.2. The ancestors of the Indo-European languages migrated from the homeland of theproto-language. Here it is Proto-Indo-European that moves off to innovate while, presumably,Anatolian was left in the homeland to preserve its archaisms.Obviously we could complicate matters further by proposing a homeland from whichboth the ancestors of Anatolian and (Proto­)Indo-European migrated in different directionsbut this would hardly be likely and it would have little bearing on the following discussion."

The issues for me with Anthony's proposal that the people speaking perhaps a "pre-Anatolian" language left the steppes first and moved into Anatolia via the Balkans is that although he locates a culture he considers probable as the one bringing a "steppe" language to the Balkans, there is no archaeological trail from that culture into Anatolia at that time. The archaeological trail goes in the other direction.

If we assume that despite that they moved quickly into Anatolia, where is the EHG they would have carried.

If they stayed long enough in the Balkans to lose their EHG, why is their language still so archaic. Wouldn't they have come in contact with the wheel, with other Indo-European languages?

I could go on and on, but the point is that there are issues.

There are, of course, also issues with the "origin" being in Anatolia, and the stream leading to the Anatolian languages developing there, but at least the archaism is completely explained. The lack of EHG in this case also presents no problems, because the genetic marker we'd be tracking would be CHG, not EHG.

First this: You stated literally that it could also be that the origin was in the south, but the Anatolian languages spread from the steppe later. That scenario would off course mean exactly the same issues as with the origin in the Pontic steppe.

However, let's see if a south of the Caucasus or even Anatolian origin actually fixes the two issues you seem to see. Is it more logical that Anatolian kept a more archaic character if they kept living on their ancestral grounds? The most archaic of Germanic languages is a migrants language: Icelandic. But also English, a migrants language that changed enormously strangely kept the archaic Germanic "th" sound which disappeared in the place where they migrated from.

Then the archaeological trail. You state that an archaeological trail into the Balkans exist. But if that originated from the Anatolians and led to the Pontic steppe second PIE homeland, the late PIE homeland, then why doesn't late PIE have a substrate that Anatolian lacks? This tidbit seems to be forgotten by all promoting a different homeland for early PIE than for late PIE, but if PIE was transferred to the steppe, how on earth could that have happened without picking up anything from the original language of its new speaker? This becomes especially important as we see more and more clearly that the CHG part in the steppe is female mediated. I already have a hard time to see female mediated language change in such highly patriarchal societies as pastoral cultures. It becomes almost impossible to see this female mediated language change happen without a noticable substrate.

And if that archaeological trail into the Balkans did not led to anything related to PIE, how is it relevant for the Urheimat question?

Do also take note that Hittite apparently has a Hattian substrate, but not a Hurrian.
 
I agree.

And yes, it could be very interesting if someone made a PIE reconstruction where anatolian is included as well(im not sure if it has been done yet, or if anatolian was excluded in the reconstructions we have today)
I know that Max planck institute are making a whole new database for IE, with root, root-language and other stuff. But it is not yet public. Although there is a screenshot of it on Max Plancks site, and i think it looks very promising: http://www.shh.mpg.de/207610/cobldatabase

I have also had the thought that a language would change radically when crossing a mt. range like the caucasus in prehistory and then mixing in something like a one-to-one ratio with another people with a completely different language(in this case the language of the EHG-like peoples).

But then again, some tribes who mixed to a lesser degree would retain a more archaic dialect, while those tribes who mixed more would have a higher rate of change linguistically. Like specific sound changes('b' becoming 'v' for instance) or even borrow new words from the hunter gatherers for some more basic things like 'head', 'arm', 'meat', 'caribou' etc.

But i think the words linked to metal, pastoralism, agriculture, seafaring etc. would have been shared in the same form by most of the tribes(regardless of their EHG/CHG proportions), as these things were probably more or less unknown to the hunter gatherers prior to the arrival of the southerners. So they probably just borrowed those words directly.

The present reconstruction of PIE takes into account the lexicon, phonology and some of the grammar (too innovative and different in comparison with the rest) of the Anatolian languages, especially because one of the biggest successes of comparative linguistics (which reinforced that it is imperfect, but effective), the laryngeal theory, was developed before the decipherment of Hittite and in the end was confirmed by the findings of Hittite vocabulary. However, I think that this reconstruction of PIE still considers most of the noun and verb morphology of the "Residual" Late PIE branches, with Anatolian's being considered either a very archaic feature or a very innovative novelty. However, my point is that, if linguistics and especially genetics point increasingly to the likelihood of a very long time gap between Anatolian IE and Residual IE, then linguists should probably start working much more deeply into an Early PIE heavily based on the Anatolian "unique" features, and go back, as they did before Hittite and other Anatolian languages were better known, to reconstructing a Late PIE without Anatolian being taken into account in their comparative work, probably a Late PIE already with the "classical" IE grammar (masculine, feminine and neuter; verb tenses and aspects, optative mood, etc.) and without the laryngeals, which would've already disappeared and fully developed into distinct vowels. More or less like two closely related languages, a mother and a daughter (e.g. 11th century Old French vs. 21st century French).

I agree with you that the EHG-CHG must've happened in different proportions, contexts and demographic/cultural processes in the steppes, and I actually think that it is very likely that there were, in the earlier period at least, several distinct PIE-like dialects belonging to the same common source, and the Late PIE from which all the non-Anatolian branches sprang was more or less a successful and prestigious dialect, probably associated with the Yamnaya horizon expansion, that gradually absorbed all the other dialects or even sister languages, or made them slowly re-converge towards it under heavy linguistic influence, maybe because their much more mobile, nomad and far-reaching pastoral culture now needed a common lingua franca (if PIE already existed before 4000 BC, by 3200-3000 BC it was certainly already differentiated into clearly separate dialects). Just speculating here, but I think these are plausible observations if you consider how languages work and the multiple times where there was a process of dialectal differentiation and afterwards, due to some cultural/political expansion, a backwards effect of elimination of the dialect continuum and reconvergence of the dialects-bordering-on-distinct-languages into mere accents of the same common tongue.
 
First this: You stated literally that it could also be that the origin was in the south, but the Anatolian languages spread from the steppe later. That scenario would off course mean exactly the same issues as with the origin in the Pontic steppe.

However, let's see if a south of the Caucasus or even Anatolian origin actually fixes the two issues you seem to see. Is it more logical that Anatolian kept a more archaic character if they kept living on their ancestral grounds? The most archaic of Germanic languages is a migrants language: Icelandic. But also English, a migrants language that changed enormously strangely kept the archaic Germanic "th" sound which disappeared in the place where they migrated from.

Then the archaeological trail. You state that an archaeological trail into the Balkans exist. But if that originated from the Anatolians and led to the Pontic steppe second PIE homeland, the late PIE homeland, then why doesn't late PIE have a substrate that Anatolian lacks? This tidbit seems to be forgotten by all promoting a different homeland for early PIE than for late PIE, but if PIE was transferred to the steppe, how on earth could that have happened without picking up anything from the original language of its new speaker? This becomes especially important as we see more and more clearly that the CHG part in the steppe is female mediated. I already have a hard time to see female mediated language change in such highly patriarchal societies as pastoral cultures. It becomes almost impossible to see this female mediated language change happen without a noticable substrate.

And if that archaeological trail into the Balkans did not led to anything related to PIE, how is it relevant for the Urheimat question?

Do also take note that Hittite apparently has a Hattian substrate, but not a Hurrian.

I just listed all the possibilities. It's also possible that the language originated south of the Caucasus, and the stream leading to the Anatolian languages remained behind and they developed there.

Icelandic speakers were isolated on an island after arrival. I don't see how the two situations are at all analogous. You think that if the precursor to the Anatolian languages was in the Balkans for 1000 years they wouldn't have picked up influences linguistic and technological from the people surrounding them?

What I said is that David Anthony locates the archaeological trail for the spread of the Anatolian languages from the steppe into the Balkans in cultures established early in the Balkans. What he doesn't do, to the best of my recollection, is locate a continuation or trail of that specific culture into Anatolia.

This is where all the Indo-European Anatolian languages were spoken. This is what has to be explained:

Ancient-Anatolian-Languages-Map.png





Of course, there are issues with the south of the Caucasus homeland hypothesis as well. As I said, there are unanswered questions in both hypotheses. If people are objective, I think they'd acknowledge that.
 
Found an article by the Copenhagen group. It's in German, looks like they think Caucasus is the home of Early PIE: https://www.academia.edu/36689289/Invasion_aus_der_Steppe

invasion-yamnaya-steppe.jpg

Interesting indeed when it comes from K. Kristiansen. He has practically had verbal blood feuds with, for example, Renfrew through the years over the spread of IE.
He has always been a huge advocate for the steppe hypothesis. So when even he is pointing to the south of the caucasus, we can be very sure that the Denmark team has found something huge that we don't know about yet.


@Ygorcs, what you wrote makes a lot of sense. There is always some constructive feedback and ideas in your posts. That is great.

I actually read a good paper about the phenomenon you mention here, you know the one where a language swallows up all or most of the neighbouring dialects of the same language, so they all reconverge into a language that is pretty much like the expanding language.

The paper is not about the Indo-europeans, it is about later steppe languages like mongolic, turkic and hungarian. But some of the concepts are the same as those you mention. If you have not read it yet, i think you will find it interesting.
Its a linguistic paper, and im not a linguist, so i don't know how good the paper is quality-wise. But i sure felt like i learned a lot while reading it:

FORERUNNERS TO GLOBALIZATION: THE EURASIAN STEPPE AND ITS PERIPHERY

JOHANNA NICHOLS
Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics
Vol. 38, Language Contact in Times of Globalization (2011), pp. 177-195
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41261444?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
 
Well by now it's pretty easy, if PIE came from the Caucasus or South of the Caucasus in the respect of that study, it has to be related either with or both Kura-Araxes and Maikop. Basically the only point they have is that those two culture are mainly CHG and that CHG is found in later Yamnaya. EHG however, the most important autosomal dna of Yamnaya is not found in Bronze Age Anatolia. 1) Male lineage of both Kura-Araxes and Maikop doesn't correspand to anything for Yamnaya or other Eastern European Cultures. 2) The CHG component in Eastern Europe is oldest than Kura-Araxes or Maikop so then semi-irrelevant to explain PIE. 3) Most of Kura-Araxes / Maikp dna in Yamnaya is pretty certainly female mediated.

So, if we really want to assume that Caucasus possibility, we have to assume multiple things. 1) IE languages are not related with ethnic and then autosomal dna until Yamnaya. 2) PIE doesn't actually really exist or has existed in the past. what " Steppe " IE and " Anatolian " IE have in common is too cramped to hypothesized a conceputal PIE talking by a certain population at one point. And more likely IE or PIE for that respect was more a sparse lingua franca coming from multiple linguistic origins. 3) Steppe folks actually learned the language from Caucasus and South Caucasus women and or Caucasus and South Caucasus roamers too sparse to found any respectable y-dna haplogroup linking with them.

My honest point to all this is, Anatolian people are actually very bad for IE hypothesis lol. First, they happened to come in a very multicultural lands before even they exists, with multiple language families and y-dna lineage wich we can difficultly assess any modern languages. Secondly, their elits used cremation as we know and we shall never discover anything on the autosomal dna of Hittites. I mean, even if PIE and Anatolians came from Maikop, they should have some EHG signals as we see in that study, at least a little bit. So we do not have the good samples. I think we might happened in a time were scientists working on the subject gonna assess PIE in the Caucasus without any other reason than being " in between ". Wich actually doesn't make sense because the sample gonna still come explain history at the end of the futur day.
 

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