News Article on Wang Paper - PIE is Anatolian again?

[Ygorcs]

??? No link between R1a and IE? When BB moved in, CWC, as a culture, disappeared. Archaeologists seem to unanimously think CW R1a massively moved east to develop the Sintashta Culture. Which in turn ushered in the Andronovo Culture. Which took Indo-Iranian languages to Central Asia first, then South Asia. Those cultures were all predominantly R1a.

It's easy enough to follow the trail. And it's hard to claim Sanskrit was not an IE language.

By the way, discussion is welcome. Calling people names is much less so. We are all clueless amateurs here.

There is also the fact that there are ACTUAL Iranic written documents and lots of Iranic loanwords even as far east as Chinese dialects exactly in the areas that are now Central Asian "Turkestan", and the few indications of Scythian terms (names of people, hydronyms and toponyms and so on) also indicate the Indo-Iranian nature of their languages. Besides, Ossetes, which call themselves Eron or Iron, were historically associated with the Alan migrations, and they also speak Iranic. There is no evidence of Turkic language at all there before the Late Antiquity and in many parts of Central Asia even the early-mid Middle Ages. The sprachbund affinities of Turkic are also with Mongolic and Tungusic, not with Indo-European or other western language families. And there is also the obvious fact that Turkic populations as a whole have virtually nothing in common between themselves except some amount of East Asian ancestry, even if minor. Their Y-DNA makeup is extremely varied. That suggests being Turkic was mainly an ethnic and linguistic shift, with relatively minor admixture, and not a large scale demic replacement.

 

[Pip]

An issue with that is that archaeologists have usually interpreted Suvorovo-Novodanilovka as culturally mostly steppic, not a local development of Balkanic cultures, and have pointed out that its arrival in the archaeological record coincides with widespread destruction and displacement of the local cultures, followed by a gradual fusion. Those evidences suggest that Suvorovo-Novodanilovka came from the steppe and linked it with the Balkanic cultural horizon, not the other way around.

Yes, I do not disagree with that interpretation, apart from the 'gradual fusion' part. Certainly, I don't see evidence of retreating Suvorovo fusing with anyone much. There appears to be traces of remaining Suvorovo in Vucedol, Bell Beaker and Northern Spain, each with different degrees of fusion.

I am also extremely wary of an interpretation of the genetic data that rests on the assumption that this Suvorovo-Novodanilovka people spread from Western Europe BB to Central Asian Sintashta and became that numerous and widespread, not seldom through heavily warlike social ways, without any admixture whatsoever with other people, not even females of the populations already settled where they migrated to, so that even 2000 years later they would still be autosomally almost identical to their ancestors millennia earlier, indicating then total lack of admixture and complete genetic replacement.

There are no assumptions made; I am merely looking at what best-fits the data. (By the way, the best-fit is not from Western Europe BB to Central Asian Sintashta, but from Eastern Ukraine Chalcolithic to both West European Corded Ware and Central Asian Sintashta.)
If the data shows R1a-M417's autosomal DNA is virtually identical after over a thousand years, the most likely explanation is surely persistent endogamy within it, rather than exogamy leading to the DNA changing and then coincidentally changing back to exactly how it was a thousand years beforehand.

By the way, could you post the results of the models and calculations you have used to derive those conclusions? That would be interesting to us all here, especially to understand the evidences better, as well as the proxy populations you have used.

I think I've already mentioned, I've only kept the best-fits, but can easily reconstruct many of the worse fits. For consistency, the proxy populations are all of those shown on the main Genetiker database, which is extensive.

 

[halfalp]

Bingo! It is a mistake to think of these population samples merely as an indication of IE + previous people. The genetic layers blended together untik they formed the present population structure were certainly more varied and numerous, and the population movements did not just involve the bearers of IE to each of those lands. More specifically, an admixture Y receiving a CHG-rich influx and later a minirity steppe influx with heavy CHG admixture too would obviously be shifted towards the Caucasus/Iranian cluster, and only slightly shifted toward the more EHG-rich steppe.

If as i see things, post-paleolithic movements, EEF so Anatolian Farmers were the 1st movement and Steppe IE's the 3rd, that we can clearly link with different prehistoric cultures, what would have been the 2nd movement, the CHG one, what is the real link? and when did it happened? early chalcolithic? roughly at the same time as the steppe expansion? But it doesn't make sense because CHG in Europe should always being with at least Anatolia_Chl, where is the Anatolian ancestry in those CHG peoples? And there is an obvious 2nd CHG expansion because some samples can be Steppe + extra CHG.

There is that old map and i dont know at all her relevancy, but the labeled " Invasion of the Black and Grey Pottery " near 5'000 BC could be an interesting window for that increase CHG ancestry. It is very possible that an Aegean highly CHG population was there until they expanded in Adriatic and Italy. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Neolithic_expansion.svg/1280px-Neolithic_expansion.svg.png

I think we can clearly eluded that there was a Northern IE migration bringing Italo-Celtic-Germanic-Slavic-Baltic and link with Steppe component and a Southern IE migration bringing Greek, Anatolian, Armenian and Indo-Iranian and link with CHG component/Iran ancestry. That's a very unlikely idea.

 

[Pip]

Let's probably wait of big Suvorovo-Novodanilovka samples before having any conclusions about those cultures.

We might wait for ages, and the results never come. I cannot see where the sudden EHG spikes in 5th milllennium BC Balkans would have come from, if not the Steppic Suvorovo people that we know were there.

Yamnaya was R1b and not R1a, Mariupol was I2a2 and not R1b. Maykop was G and J and not R1b. What if Suvorovo individuals from east balkans turns out to be, let's sayin' G2a2a?

I would expect Suvorovo yDNA to be mixed - and to include at least some G2a2a, some R1a and some R1b, possibly others.

 

[halfalp]

We might wait for ages, and the results never come. I cannot see where the sudden EHG spikes in 5th milllennium BC Balkans would have come from, if not the Steppic Suvorovo people that we know were there.


I would expect Suvorovo yDNA to be mixed - and to include at least some G2a2a, some R1a and some R1b, possibly others.

Well Harvard and MP seems so obsessed to resolve the PIE question, seems pretty sure they gonna try to found proper Suvorovo and Repin samples no?

 

[Pip]

Well Harvard and MP seems so obsessed to resolve the PIE question, seems pretty sure they gonna try to found proper Suvorovo and Repin samples no?

It would probably be instructive, and I just wonder why they haven't already analysed or published the samples that they have.

They published some Suvorovo mtDNA in 2015 (an Anatolian haplotype of K), and I was told in 2017 they were shortly going to publish some Suvorovo yDNA. Since then, silence, and no autosomal analysis either.

The two heavily Steppe-admixed samples in Suvorovo-era Balkans are:
1. Female.
2. Male - yDNA R (no further subclade information published).

Other contemporary samples at the same sites are yDNA R1b-L754 (no further subclade information published) and R1b-V88, so it would be surprising if there were no R1b to be found within Suvorovo.

 

[halfalp]

It would probably be instructive, and I just wonder why they haven't already analysed or published the samples that they have.

They published some Suvorovo mtDNA in 2015 (an Anatolian haplotype of K), and I was told in 2017 they were shortly going to publish some Suvorovo yDNA. Since then, silence, and no autosomal analysis either.

The two heavily Steppe-admixed samples in Suvorovo-era Balkans are:
1. Female.
2. Male - yDNA R (no further subclade information published).

Other contemporary samples at the same sites are yDNA R1b-L754 (no further subclade information published) and R1b-V88, so it would be surprising if there were no R1b to be found within Suvorovo.

I wasn't aware of this at all.

 

[GloomyGonzales]

Could Proto-Indo-European have been a composite language of mixed Steppe and Anatolian origin, in the same way that English is a composite of Germanic and French influences?

Exactly. The so-called IE languages are in fact just a set of circumpontic hybrides. It's all about consicutive mixing of steppe folks R1 (migrants from the Iranian Plateau) and Balkanic folks (local I2 hunter-gathers and G2 farmars from Anatolia).

 

[CrazyDonkey]

One way language can be transmitted without genes is along trading networks, through a pidgin language that simplifies and links two more verbose languages. This might help account for the clear Uralic and Caucasian influences on PIE. The Maycop culture grew rich, presumably from the north-south trade (in furs, amber, flint, obsidian, copper, salt, wool, slaves?).

Who originally settled the Pontic river valleys? What language(s) or genes did they carry? Anatolian/Balkan farmers, Maykop traders, and Iranian herders would have come later.

 

[halfalp]

One way language can be transmitted without genes is along trading networks, through a pidgin language that simplifies and links two more verbose languages. This might help account for the clear Uralic and Caucasian influences on PIE. The Maycop culture grew rich, presumably from the north-south trade (in furs, amber, flint, obsidian, copper, salt, wool, slaves?).

Who originally settled the Pontic river valleys? What language(s) or genes did they carry? Anatolian/Balkan farmers, Maykop traders, and Iranian herders would have come later.

Yeah but i have hard time to imagine that a trading relationship and loanwords, include Kinship, Natural Features and Basic Adjectives. It would mean that a population A ( related with Anatolian ) completely influenced a population B ( related with Steppe ). All this without Steppe being military subjugate by Maykop and such. That looks like an hypothesis were the " Betters " are seeing by the locals as " what we should be Ourselves ".

Steppe local cultures never show sign of destructions and change like Old Europe and Caucasus after Yamnaya.

 

[CrazyDonkey]

Yeah but i have hard time to imagine that a trading relationship and loanwords, include Kinship, Natural Features and Basic Adjectives. It would mean that a population A ( related with Anatolian ) completely influenced a population B ( related with Steppe ). All this without Steppe being military subjugate by Maykop and such. That looks like an hypothesis were the " Betters " are seeing by the locals as " what we should be Ourselves ".

Steppe local cultures never show sign of destructions and change like Old Europe and Caucasus after Yamnaya.

For linguistic support of evolution of PIE as a pidgin/creole tongue, see: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...lottogenesis&usg=AOvVaw0U7cMBqfJ2oODTANLvIoYy
(starting at 5.1.2)

Nomadism presupposes the existence of sedentary agricultural populations. Nomads and farmers have multiple economic relations with each other. Nomads cannot exist without goods acquired from farmers by purchase, exchange or plunder. Farmers usually buy metal or metalwork or other necessary or esteemed foreign goods from nomads who are often involved in long-distance trade. Surplus products of farmers may be sold or bartered to nomads who either consume or export them. In balance, the nomadic lifestyle presupposes [41] the existence of a sedentary agricultural population, but the inverse is not true. This reflects the socio-historical background of nomadism. According to Mühlmann (1985: 23), nomads are 'sieved out' from the sedentary population: nomadic societies are collecting receivers, reception units for all kind of fugitives, homeless and displaced persons, criminals, adventurers and outlaws. There are historically documented cases of such communities, whichmight almost be labelled 'asylum people', such as the 'Children of Israel' or, nearer to our times, the Cosacks15 and Uskoks.16 For all these unstable groups, Mühlmann proposed the term colluvies gentium, literally 'dregs of tribes'.17

Whenever people without a common language meet at regular intervals, or begin living together, they immediately start to create anew language in order to fulfill their most urgent communicational needs. The main strategy used is mutual simplification: Participants start to drop all linguistic signs felt as redundant, or less important, first of his or her own language, than of such rudiments of the other's language as he or she is able to grasp. This is obviously a gradual process governed by trial and error. The psycholinguistic details are not yet sufficiently investigated, but it is an indisputable fact that the process works, and new means of mutual understanding and communication in fact come into being in a very short time22 by dint of necessity. This first stage of a new language is called a Pidgin. Its lexicon is rather restricted, morphophonemics are very simple, syntax is confined to a few straightforward types.23

Pidgins have two possibilities, namely either to vanish in favour of the language of a dominating group, or to develop into the mother-tongue of future generations. In the second case, the emerging new language is called a Creole language.24 It is characterized by a strong tendency to develop complex morphophonemic structures quite rapidly, again under the pressure of the need to communicate in all life situations of the society which has no other common language. After about three generations, a fully grown grammatical system may exist, with every chance of persisting into the future.25

Sherratt (1999), with his reflections on a `secondary products revolution'26 as an economic basis for cultural expansion processes offers a fresh perspective, also for Indo-European Cultural Studies.27...Sherratt postulates a social dynamics based on new trading ways or new (luxury) goods to trade. Such dynamics could have provided a catalyst for the emergence of a PIE community, and a material base for its expansion — if only, and this indeed should be stressed, one could find reasonable items. As far as I know, no such new trade goods could be yet defined either by archeologists, nor by historical linguists. While possibilities abound, it remains for actual discoveries to pinpoint them. Such a trading context, once defined, might well offer the socioeconomic basis for the development of a pidgin-creole glottogenesis. If such a trade language could be shown to reflect the reconstructions made for PIE, we would con[45]clude that PIE arose during the period of trade motivated by the 'Secondary ProductsRevolution‘.

The colluvies gentium was a nomadic group consisting of persons 'sieved out', for various reasons, from surrounding cultures, living at the borders28 of permanently cultivated areas. Its members most probably came from more than only one such sedentary agricultural community, and perhaps also from other nomadic groups.

The assumption that the ethnic kernel of Proto-Indo-European was formed by a kind of colluvies gentium implies the creation of a new language for the new community. No other theory is better suited to provide a model for this process than Pidgin-Creole linguistics. At present, this is the only acceptable linguistic model capable of showing how a completely new language may emerge out of a plausible social situation.

Ethnogenesis and glottogenesis are but two aspects of one complex process, the development of an in-group-consciousness differentiating one‘s own group from (an)other, probably rival group or groups. This collective self-consciousness arises in conflict situations when it is important to know about every other person's relationship to oneself. One might say, modifying the anthropologist Ernst Haeckel's famous dictum, that `ethnogenesis is the recapitulation of idiogenesis'. There is no 'self' without an 'other'; no political unity (in the widest sense) is possible without a common enemy, no religious unity without competing cults, no linguistic unity without the notion of foreign speech. In brief, no social unit can exist without a counterpart conceived as being different.

The model of the Proto-Indo-European speech community as a colluvies, as a new type of society with a new type of language, living a nomadic life outside established sedentary civilizations, provides a plausible explanation for the enormous dynamism of the Indo-Europeanlanguage family. A colluvies is formed by persons who are unconventional, mobile, creative, audacious, perhaps bold, daring or even simply criminal, but at any rate strong enough to take the risk of a new beginning. The emergence of a new stable common language is proof of the success of the new community and inspires its members to develop far-reaching ideas. Every dynamic community is based on a common ideology. The earliest very advanced sedentary civilizations of Antiquity, both the Sumerian and the Egyptian, show rather static structures with deep hierarchies. Nomadic societies, on the contrary, are rather egalitarian or at least have only flat hierarchies, and are often quite dynamic.

A relatively free, and relatively egalitarian society must provide for those who are too young, too bold, or too adventurous to comply easily with the common rules of social life. Proto-Indo-European society most probably had one or more institutions to cope with exuberant elements. In later historical sources, similar groups are variously described as `Jungmannschaft', `war-bands', `fiana', or the like.31....Such satellite roving groups probably became, under propitious conditions, driving powers of Indo-European expansion.

Anyway, food for thought at least. A focal nexus for the development of a pidgin/creole language could have been the area around the Dnieper Rapids.

 

[Pip]

For linguistic support of evolution of PIE as a pidgin/creole tongue, see: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...lottogenesis&usg=AOvVaw0U7cMBqfJ2oODTANLvIoYy
(starting at 5.1.2)



















Anyway, food for thought at least. A focal nexus for the development of a pidgin/creole language could have been the area around the Dnieper Rapids.

Yes, very much food for thought. Much of this appears credible to me.

I wouldn't see either one of the Steppe nomadic and Anatolian sedentary people as the other's 'betters'. I see that when some groups of them traded/collaborated, they diversified and became more likely to survive and reproduce.

I think it probably more likely that it was the wandering Steppe people who adopted PIE as a pidgin version of the related Anatolian languages spoken in the areas into which they first roamed. Their language might have comprised the basic structures of the Anatolian languages, but with lots of additional Steppe-derived vocabulary and inflexions.

The Dnieper Rapids looks too WHG to me. I would suggest the South Eastern Pontic as a more likely focal point.

 

[CrazyDonkey]

The left (west) bank of the Dnieper Rapids was the high water mark of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture, while the Khvalynsk-Yamnaya culture was on the east bank. Uralic foragers were to the north, Maykop/Caucasian traders to the south. It was a rich fishery (salmon). Whoever controlled the Dnieper Rapids, controlled north-south and east-west trade - I suspect that was Khvalynsk-Yamnaya tribes, with the creole/trading language becoming instituted as a lingua franca.

 

[Ygorcs]

If as i see things, post-paleolithic movements, EEF so Anatolian Farmers were the 1st movement and Steppe IE's the 3rd, that we can clearly link with different prehistoric cultures, what would have been the 2nd movement, the CHG one, what is the real link? and when did it happened? early chalcolithic? roughly at the same time as the steppe expansion? But it doesn't make sense because CHG in Europe should always being with at least Anatolia_Chl, where is the Anatolian ancestry in those CHG peoples? And there is an obvious 2nd CHG expansion because some samples can be Steppe + extra CHG.

There is that old map and i dont know at all her relevancy, but the labeled " Invasion of the Black and Grey Pottery " near 5'000 BC could be an interesting window for that increase CHG ancestry. It is very possible that an Aegean highly CHG population was there until they expanded in Adriatic and Italy. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Neolithic_expansion.svg/1280px-Neolithic_expansion.svg.png

I think we can clearly eluded that there was a Northern IE migration bringing Italo-Celtic-Germanic-Slavic-Baltic and link with Steppe component and a Southern IE migration bringing Greek, Anatolian, Armenian and Indo-Iranian and link with CHG component/Iran ancestry. That's a very unlikely idea.

1) I think the Pelopponese Neolithic already had CHG/Iranian affinities, didn't it? I faintly remember that, but I'm not sure now. Anyways, I think no sample has indicated any CHG-majority population in Europe before the Chalcolithic, but who knows what awaits us in the (possibly near) future as more ancient DNA is studied. However, I have a doubt: is there any hint that the EEF composition saw a relative rebound of ANF vis a vis WHG after the Late Neolithic, during the Chalcolithic? I just don't know, but I'm trying to find a more plausible explanation for the increase of CHG at least in Southern Europe before the Late Bronze Age. I would be surprised if they were almost entirely CHG, because even the Chalcolithic Caucasus region itself was not fully CHG/Iranian anymore, and I would assume any population to the West of them would be full of ANF too.

2) Yes, that is extremely unlikely, particularly because those two groups do not form a separate two-way branching of PIE, instead Anatolian has a few more affinities to Italo-Celtic, Indo-Iranian has affinities with both Greek and Armenian but also very strongly with Balto-Slavic, and so on. There is little or no linguistic indication that there had been two different dialect continua with a clear-cut and presumably old boundary between them (it probably had to be a sort of "old" divergence in the history of PIE to explain such a big genetic difference between both populations). The evidences instead indicate a real continuum with close contacts between both "northern" and "southern" IE languages, not as if they lived in regions and cultures apart.

 

[Ygorcs]

For linguistic support of evolution of PIE as a pidgin/creole tongue, see: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...lottogenesis&usg=AOvVaw0U7cMBqfJ2oODTANLvIoYy
(starting at 5.1.2)



















Anyway, food for thought at least. A focal nexus for the development of a pidgin/creole language could have been the area around the Dnieper Rapids.

It had to be the most morphologically and syntactically complex and irregular pidgin ever created by humankind. It would be a bit unbelievable that people speaking different language families would resort to such a language, not spoken natively by any of the parts meeting, with countless noun and verb inflections (each of them with lots of noun classes, tenses, moods, etc.), and often complex ways to form declined and derived words (e.g. ablaut). A mixed language? Maybe, but I don't see many reasons to state that as of now. But a pidgin? Really unlikely. The hypothesis may hold some water, I don't know, but it is just a fact that PIE lacks virtually all the usual features we see in known pidgins and pidgin-derived creoles all around the world, involving the contact between several different language families. Virtually all of them end up showing similar features, like strong regularization, morphological and syntactic simplification, syntactic rigidity, tendency to reduce the phonological aspects of the language to "average/ordinary" levels (the idea is to make a "communication troubleshooter" that can be used and understood by people who speak languages with completely different phonology) and so on. PIE would have to be a very, very exceptional kind of pidgin unlike anything we've seen.

 

[halfalp]

1) I think the Pelopponese Neolithic already had CHG/Iranian affinities, didn't it? I faintly remember that, but I'm not sure now. Anyways, I think no sample has indicated any CHG-majority population in Europe before the Chalcolithic, but who knows what awaits us in the (possibly near) future as more ancient DNA is studied. However, I have a doubt: is there any hint that the EEF composition saw a relative rebound of ANF vis a vis WHG after the Late Neolithic, during the Chalcolithic? I just don't know, but I'm trying to find a more plausible explanation for the increase of CHG at least in Southern Europe before the Late Bronze Age. I would be surprised if they were almost entirely CHG, because even the Chalcolithic Caucasus region itself was not fully CHG/Iranian anymore, and I would assume any population to the West of them would be full of ANF too.

2) Yes, that is extremely unlikely, particularly because those two groups do not form a separate two-way branching of PIE, instead Anatolian has a few more affinities to Italo-Celtic, Indo-Iranian has affinities with both Greek and Armenian but also very strongly with Balto-Slavic, and so on. There is little or no linguistic indication that there had been two different dialect continua with a clear-cut and presumably old boundary between them (it probably had to be a sort of "old" divergence in the history of PIE to explain such a big genetic difference between both populations). The evidences instead indicate a real continuum with close contacts between both "northern" and "southern" IE languages, not as if they lived in regions and cultures apart.

1) Yes when i talked about the early CHG signals, i mainly thought about the Pelopponese_N wich i believe had already CHG. Lepenski Vir, Iron_Gates Mesolithic already have some middle-eastern/caucasus signal with mtdna H13, it's also possible that a CHG-like mesolithic population was stuck in southern balkans and only emerged after neolithic was aquired from them, but this is very speculative.

2) That's one of the things i dont really understand with the recent PIE hypothesis. That PIE and Anatolians were in South Caucasus then expanded in Steppe to create LPIE is one thing i can slightly believe. But saying that Anatolian-Armenian-Greek-Iranian came with CHG into the Indo-Anatolian hypothesis, while the rest was from the Steppe as LPIE ( wich is pretty much what i understand from most of the studies ). Wich all this is only supported by low level of Steppe ancestry and clearly is missleading to the possible interactions or non-interactions between IE speakers and locals.

 

[halfalp]

It had to be the most morphologically and syntactically complex and irregular pidgin ever created by humankind. It would be a bit unbelievable that people speaking different language families would resort to such a language, not spoken natively by any of the parts meeting, with countless noun and verb inflections (each of them with lots of noun classes, tenses, moods, etc.), and often complex ways to form declined and derived words (e.g. ablaut). A mixed language? Maybe, but I don't see many reasons to state that as of now. But a pidgin? Really unlikely. The hypothesis may hold some water, I don't know, but it is just a fact that PIE lacks virtually all the usual features we see in known pidgins and pidgin-derived creoles all around the world, involving the contact between several different language families. Virtually all of them end up showing similar features, like strong regularization, morphological and syntactic simplification, syntactic rigidity, tendency to reduce the phonological aspects of the language to "average/ordinary" levels (the idea is to make a "communication troubleshooter" that can be used and understood by people who speak languages with completely different phonology) and so on. PIE would have to be a very, very exceptional kind of pidgin unlike anything we've seen.

I think PIE is obviously not a Pigdin, it has at least 8 grammatical cases, English wich is a clear Pigdin ( even if not a lot of people recognize it ), with 70% of his vocabulary from Latin Languages and mainly French/Norman, doesn't have much, if any. Compare Old English with Modern English, and you will understand where/how a pigdin tend to go or to evolved. To believe that highly complexe languages like Latin, Greek and Sanskrit came from a Pigdin. Classic circular logic. You take the premise of the Pigdin and you try to found any kind of reasons why it should be the case, wich is very tryhard.

 

[Pip]

I think PIE is obviously not a Pigdin, it has at least 8 grammatical cases, English wich is a clear Pigdin ( even if not a lot of people recognize it ), with 70% of his vocabulary from Latin Languages and mainly French/Norman, doesn't have much, if any. Compare Old English with Modern English, and you will understand where/how a pigdin tend to go or to evolved. To believe that highly complexe languages like Latin, Greek and Sanskrit came from a Pigdin. Classic circular logic. You take the premise of the Pigdin and you try to found any kind of reasons why it should be the case, wich is very tryhard.

Perhaps PIE has elements of Pidgin, without being wholly Pidgin. After all, it appears to have been spoken by a mixed population, some of whom would have spoken the basic parent language, some of whom wouldn't.

As a cosmopolitan city, London English now has elements of Pidgin in it, despite the underlying language retaining its full, more complex structure.

 

[O Neill]

What of the Tengri horse warriors of the 7th to 10th century then ? They swept through an area the size of europe in a few hundred years.
Reaching Eastern Europe. Did they covert Europe and the near east to tengri ? Nope the dumped paganism and all adopted one of the other mainstream religions.
How do you know they didnt do the same thing the first time around dumping there language and religion and mixing in ?
What seems unlikely to your seems obvious to me.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

I swear, if the Russians had aDNA facilities the PIE question would be solved in a matter of weeks. I’m fed up of all this secrecy of results from Harvard and Max Planck even if they claim to be open.