Does genetics prove Iran/Armenia is the original land of Indo-Europeans?

Yep, and this is the reason that a linguist or anthropologist (I can't remember who) proposed making Armenian an international Lingua Franca or language of the UN. This is also a crux of the Armenian Theory. I think that the only sound (besides clicks and things like that) that doesn't exist in Armenian, as far as I know, is th (as in the). I think there used to be a w sound (as in way) but this disappeared in almost all modern dialects. F didn't originally exist in Armenian but it does now.

I don't think that labiovelars exist in Armenian, in fact Armenians, like Persians, pronounce Luri/Kurdish kʷ as ku, gʷ as gu, xʷ as xu, ... just a Lur can say xʷuar "sister" correctly!
 
I don't think that labiovelars exist in Armenian, in fact Armenians, like Persians, pronounce Luri/Kurdish kʷ as ku, gʷ as gu, xʷ as xu, ... just a Lur can say xʷuar "sister" correctly!

I'm not sure. It may have died out: https://oldeuropean.org/ie/Two_series_of_velars.

But Luri is an Iranian language, which suggests that either a) it's a unique development in Luri or b) that it died out in other languages but is retained in Luri.
 
I'm not sure. It may have died out: https://oldeuropean.org/ie/Two_series_of_velars.

But Luri is an Iranian language, which suggests that either a) it's a unique development in Luri or b) that it died out in other languages but is retained in Luri.

Phonology doesn't relate to languages, labiovelars exist in some Arabic dialects in the Khuzestan province of Iran but they didn't exist in Semitic phonology too, the Luri word for "cow" is almost the same as proto-IE gʷow, of course it doesn't mean that they have preserved the original IE word but proto-Iranian gaw has been changed to this word. Luri is actually a Persian dialect by changing velars to labiovelars and a>o.
 
Phonology doesn't relate to languages, labiovelars exist in some Arabic dialects in the Khuzestan province of Iran but they didn't exist in Semitic phonology too, the Luri word for "cow" is almost the same as proto-IE gʷow, of course it doesn't mean that they have preserved the original IE word but proto-Iranian gaw has been changed to this word. Luri is actually a Persian dialect by changing velars to labiovelars and a>o.

That's interesting! I didn't know that about labiovelars in some Arabic.

I initially wasn't talking about labiovelars though.

Why do you think labiovelars are so popular in certain regions of Iran?
 
Cyrus, this is an interesting article/blogpost. You may have seen this before. Regardless, it makes the case for an Indo-European origin in the Zagros and is suggestive of a Greek-like substratum or superstratum in Sumerian.

http://new-indology.blogspot.com/2015/05/sumerian-and-indo-european-surprising.html

So perhaps Indo-European really did originate in the greater Zagros region (as the genetics suggests...but we label it as PPIE) and some dialects of Indo-European didn't originate in the Steppes (Anatolian? Greco-(Aryan)-Armenian? Gutian? Something else like Whittaker's Euphratic?) What's interesting is (as you aptly pointed out) Zagros and some of the other mountain chains in the region seem to have names that come from a Greek-like language. Also, what else is interesting is apparent Sumerian loanwords in Armenian (which are generally recognized but usually explained as having reached Armenian through Akkadian). The thing with the Sumerian-Armenian words though is that there isn't much deviation between the words in both languages (at least as far as some words go), so I wonder if they were direct loans (Sumerian>Armenian or Greco-Armenian>Sumerian) as opposed to having an intermediary (Sumerian>Akkadian>Armenian). Agar="field" in Sumerian. Agarak="field" in Armenian. The Akkadian word is ugāru. Semitic u can become Armenian a, so obviously it is possible that agarak reached Armenian through Akkadian, but the similarity between the Armenian word and the Sumerian word is striking, to me at least. By the way, the Greek version is agros. Confusingly, the Greek word is etymologized as being a native IE word as opposed to being a Sumerian>Akkadian loanword like the Armenian word is, so something weird is going on here.

Alternately, there could have been some contact with the Greeks/Armenians (if they were on the Russian Black Sea coast or in Georgia or Daghestan at the time) and Sumerians along trade routes or something...maybe they met halfway in Turkey because I don't know if there is any documentation of Sumerians as far north as Russia (but then again, there isn't documentation of Armenians/Greeks in Iraq or Turkey during the Sumerian-era either).

Here's a scholarly research paper on this same subject:

http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~asahala/asahala_sumerian_and_pie.pdf
 
From the Finnish academic article ("Sumero-Indo-European Language Contacts" by Aleksi Sahala) that I linked:

...in order to explain the distribution one is tempted to assume that either (1) Sumerian or its earlier language stage was once spoken in the proximity of the PIE urheimat located in the Pontiac-Caspian Steppe, or (2) that the common vocabulary was not directly transmitted from Sumerian to PIE (or vice versa), but was borrowed through unknown prehistoric languages spoken between the PIE and Sumerian homelands (and perhaps partly even originated from them). I would personally consider the latter a more credible option as we know next to nothing about the Sumerian homelands before their migration into the Southern Mesopotamia. Despite Kramer's (1963) Transcaucasian hypothesis, i.e. a Sumerian migration into Mesopotamia from the north, ultimately from the Caucasian or Transcaucasian region is acknowledged as the most plausible option (see Ziskind 1972), the actual hard evidence for it is extremely difficult to find. Kramer based his hypothesis mostly into Sumerian chronicles, cultural features and their expertise in metal working5. The hypothesis also loosely supported by later genetic studies on the Iraqi people, which point to their close relationship with Kurds, Caspian Iranians and ultimately the Svani Georgians of The South Caucasus (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994: p. 242), but as the genetic relationship between the modern Iraqi people and the Sumerians are uncertain, this cannot be taken as a hard evidence.

Alas, also from the linguistic point of view evidence for "Caucasian" origin is practically nonexistent. Sumerian and Kartvelian certainly share some typological features including ergativity and heavy verbal prefixation, but yet both can be explained as a late development in Sumerian. Common vocabulary is minimal and consists only of few uncertain similar lexical items (see Klimov 1998
6), which despite of their phonological and semantic similarities are problematic as the Kartvelian cannot be reconstructed beyond the Georgian-Zan level (ca. 2600 BC).

If the Sumerians came from the Caucasus region originally, this would tie their mythical homeland, Aratta to Ararat nicely, which was a theory that was once more popular but seems to have fallen out of favor recently.
 
Maybe Whittaker's Euphratic is PPIE or Proto-Anatolian? Or maybe Euphratic was one of the first IE to leave the Steppes, established themselves in the northern Mesopotamia, and subsequently gave rise to Gutians and/or Tocharians and/or Armenians/Greeks (and Indo-Iranians)? Or maybe they have no living descendants but influenced subsequent Indo-European languages that arrived in the region? Alternatively, they could have been Kura-Araxes, I think, but I like the idea of Kura-Araxes being proto-Hurro-Urartian.

Kura-Araxes Culture spread from the eastern Mediterranean to central Iran, and disappeared some 800 years after the first Sumerian cuneiform records. They must have been recorded by the Sumerians and Semites, which is the reason why I think that they were Hurro-Urartian or Indo-European--because the KA were clearly culturally and geographically influential. They weren't some little tribal group living in the hinterlands somewhere. They were a big culture that spread over a vast, and important, track of land. We know that the Hurrians were in Syria and that Hurrian-types were potentially in Iran as well, so I think this supports KA=PHU rather than KA=IE.

If the Sumerians had an IE substratum or superstratum, unless this occurred well before Sumer (i.e. centuries or millennia), these IE people must have been recorded by the Sumerians too, which is a big reason why I think it's possible that the Gutians were IE (maybe the Euphratians were proto-Gutian or something). Unless these IE forbearers lived long before the Sumerians, in which case the Sumerians recorded these Indo-European peoples as part of their origin mythology/legends--like Aratta.

https://www.academia.edu/1869616/The_Case_for_Euphratic

https://www.academia.edu/3592967/Euphratic_-_A_phonological_sketch
 
That's interesting! I didn't know that about labiovelars in some Arabic.

I initially wasn't talking about labiovelars though.

Why do you think labiovelars are so popular in certain regions of Iran?

When we see different IE languages in different lands, the main reason is that there are different phonologies in these lands, for example Georgian is a Caucasian language but the same aspirated stops of Armenian exist in this language, as I said the same ones existed in proto-Greek too, so it is very possible that they originally lived in the same land of Armenians and Georgians.
Labiovelars existed in proto-IE and just some Centum languages, like Latin and Hittite, but not Irish and Tocharian. The original land of these languages should be somewhere that these sounds exist in their phonology, this land can can't be clearly in modern Ukraine.
 
When we see different IE languages in different lands, the main reason is that there are different phonologies in these lands, for example Georgian is a Caucasian language but the same aspirated stops of Armenian exist in this language, as I said the same ones existed in proto-Greek too, so it is very possible that they originally lived in the same land of Armenians and Georgians.
L
abiovelars existed in proto-IE and just some Centum languages, like Latin and Hittite, but not Irish and Tocharian. The original land of these languages should be somewhere that these sounds exist in their phonology, this land can can't be clearly in modern Ukraine.

Problem is anthropology and archaeology factor. The skull types in circle B were 4 types of armenoid, dinaric, alpine and pamir type according to greek scholar, but they are all close to cromagnon type by Dr. Brace. This kind of skull appeared in west asia at bronze age. As far as I know, a variety of M269 now exist from east turkey to armenia where lots of people have convex nose. The convex nose also has nothing to do with EEF and mediterranean type people. The late mesolithic people of east europe to bronze people of altai had that nose. Moreover the burial type of the circle B is supine type, which means they were from east.
 
Problem is anthropology and archaeology factor. The skull types in circle B were 4 types of armenoid, dinaric, alpine and pamir type according to greek scholar, but they are all close to cromagnon type by Dr. Brace. This kind of skull appeared in west asia at bronze age. As far as I know, a variety of M269 now exist from east turkey to armenia where lots of people have convex nose. The convex nose also has nothing to do with EEF and mediterranean type people. The late mesolithic people of east europe to bronze people of altai had that nose. Moreover the burial type of the circle B is supine type, which means they were from east.

Sorry, but how does this contradict what Cyrus was saying? The Caucasus is east of Crete and the Mesolithic is well before the time period in question. Additionally, the Maykop peoples had Siberian/Eastern Eurasian ancestry, so isn't it possible that some of those genes arrived in Steppe or South Caucasus peoples (as Maykop rested in between them)? It could also be from earlier migrations, well before Makop, Yamnaya, etc.
 
Riffing off my last comment, it's been established that a) both the Minoans and Mycenaeans descended from Neolithic farmers from Anatolia and also groups from the South Caucasus (Armenia, Iran) and b) that the Mycenaeans shared (or at least traded) ceramic-types with people from Armenia (they found identical grave goods in Trialeti-Vanadzor burials and Mycenaean burials--they would have been roughly contemporaneous with one another temporally).

Additionally, there is a) speculation that the Ahhiyawans of the Hittite annals (who were located on the Turkish Aegean coast) were the Achaeans of Homer and b) that the Alaca burials of central Turkey were Indo-European, but not Anatolian, which really leaves them either being 1) Greek 2) Armenian or 3) some other group like Phrygian. If the Greeks originally came from the NE Turkish Black Sea coast or the Georgian Black Sea coast and then they moved westward, Alaca could have been a Greek burial that they constructed as they migrated toward the Aegean.
 
I believe Anatolian is actually a proto-Greek language on a Hurrian substrate, the fact is that voiced stops (b, d, g) and aspirated stops didn't exist in Hurrian phonology, so it seems to be possible that a language almost the same as proto-Greek was changed to Anatolian.
 
I believe Anatolian is actually a proto-Greek language on a Hurrian substrate, the fact is that voiced stops (b, d, g) and aspirated stops didn't exist in Hurrian phonology, so it seems to be possible that a language almost the same as proto-Greek was changed to Anatolian.

I think that's an interesting idea, but I'm not so sure about it. I do think Armenian, and possibly Greek too, were in contact with the Hittites, as well as the Hurrians (not only the Urartians, but Hurrians-proper), and quite likely Hattians.

I think the Hattian gods may have been Indo-European, or they contributed to an early, unsplit IE culture (maybe Greco-Armeno-Aryan or an Anatolian-Greco-Armeno-Aryan group). Arinna clearly has the IE "ar-" sun prefix, which is present in Armenian, Anatolian, and Indo-Iranian languages. Estan (Hittite: Istanu), the sun god, reminds me of Armenian Astuas. Taru is of course related to bulls (this connection is well established). There are a few others ones I suspect as being Indo-European as well. We could suggest that these were loans from Hattian>Anatolian>Armenian but it doesn't explain how the Indo-Iranians got these roots unless the Indo-Iranian homeland is in Asia Minor and not Central Asia. All of these are thought to be PIE roots, which would suggest that, either the PIEs were in contact with the Hattians, or later IE peoples introduced these to the Hattians. Either way, it means that IEs were in Hatti by the end of the third millennium BCE.

Hurrian Ulikummi is probably from Armenian Uelik, which would be Geghik in modern Armenian. The Hittite version is Illuyanka. I'd think the Hurrian was from Anatolian, but the -ik is an Armenian suffix (ummi is a Hurrian suffix, but the meaning is unknown, as far as I know).

What are your thoughts on all this? Can we create a potential model to explain this?
 
I think that's an interesting idea, but I'm not so sure about it. I do think Armenian, and possibly Greek too, were in contact with the Hittites, as well as the Hurrians (not only the Urartians, but Hurrians-proper), and quite likely Hattians.

I think the Hattian gods may have been Indo-European, or they contributed to an early, unsplit IE culture (maybe Greco-Armeno-Aryan or an Anatolian-Greco-Armeno-Aryan group). Arinna clearly has the IE "ar-" sun prefix, which is present in Armenian, Anatolian, and Indo-Iranian languages. Estan (Hittite: Istanu), the sun god, reminds me of Armenian Astuas. Taru is of course related to bulls (this connection is well established). There are a few others ones I suspect as being Indo-European as well. We could suggest that these were loans from Hattian>Anatolian>Armenian but it doesn't explain how the Indo-Iranians got these roots unless the Indo-Iranian homeland is in Asia Minor and not Central Asia. All of these are thought to be PIE roots, which would suggest that, either the PIEs were in contact with the Hattians, or later IE peoples introduced these to the Hattians. Either way, it means that IEs were in Hatti by the end of the third millennium BCE.

Hurrian Ulikummi is probably from Armenian Uelik, which would be Geghik in modern Armenian. The Hittite version is Illuyanka. I'd think the Hurrian was from Anatolian, but the -ik is an Armenian suffix (ummi is a Hurrian suffix, but the meaning is unknown, as far as I know).

What are your thoughts on all this? Can we create a potential model to explain this?

As I said in another thread, Arman (Armenia) is the name of this land in Old Persian and in all possibility it was Alman (l>r in Old Persian), a Gutian tribe in the west of Iran who were mentioned in many Akkadian sources, if Gutians were originally the same proto-Indo-Europeans (however I believe they became Germanic on a Semitic substrate), Almani/Armenian were also a PIE people.
 
As I said in another thread, Arman (Armenia) is the name of this land in Old Persian and in all possibility it was Alman (l>r in Old Persian), a Gutian tribe in the west of Iran who were mentioned in many Akkadian sources, if Gutians were originally the same proto-Indo-Europeans (however I believe they became Germanic on a Semitic substrate), Almani/Armenian were also a PIE people.

Is that Arman the same as the Arman (Armani/Armanum) which Archi suggests was located near modern Samsat, Turkey? If so, that's where the first Indo-European names were attested, according to Damgaard, from Eblaite texts, which were dated to the 25rd century BCE, I believe.

Almani could explain Alemanni. This is actually proposed in this article: https://cogniarchae.com/2016/03/09/armenia-homeland-of-the-germans/
 
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Is that Arman the same as the Arman (Armani/Armanum) with Archi suggests was located near modern Samsat, Turkey? If so, that's where the first Indo-European names were attested, according to Damgaard, from Eblaite texts, which were dated to the 25rd century BCE, I believe.

Almani could explain Alemanni. This is actually proposed in this article: https://cogniarchae.com/2016/03/09/armenia-homeland-of-the-germans/

The article cited specifically cites a website dedicated to alternate history. I would take everything within the article with several large grains of salt.
 
The article cited specifically cites a website dedicated to alternate history. I would take everything within the article with several large grains of salt.

Thanks. Honestly, I didn't notice that. I had just searched "German Almani Arman Alemanni" and that was one of the results. Clearly somebody else had been on a similar train of thought as Cyrus. I'm not saying it's correct though.

I think that there is some compelling evidence for Euphratic IE or an early Armenian/Anatolian/Caucasian Indo-European people(s). I don't necessarily think that they were the Gutians (I think it would have pre-dated the Gutians), but that the Gutians might have descended from them.
 
Is that Arman the same as the Arman (Armani/Armanum) which Archi suggests was located near modern Samsat, Turkey? If so, that's where the first Indo-European names were attested, according to Damgaard, from Eblaite texts, which were dated to the 25rd century BCE, I believe.
Almani could explain Alemanni. This is actually proposed in this article: https://cogniarchae.com/2016/03/09/armenia-homeland-of-the-germans/

You can read about the relation between Armani and Alman here: https://books.google.com/books?id=P...jAhXJUxUIHd5uA6AQ6AEIJDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Alman was in the west of Iran (land of Guti and Suedin) but Armani was in Syria (modern Aleppo), it is clear that Old Persian sources talk about the first one as Arman, not the Syrian city.
 
There seems to be considerable confusion over Armi/Arme/Arman/Armani/Armanum. Some may have been different places from one another. Some may have been the same place. One of them, the one near Ebla, was mentioned in the Damgaard et el paper as being the oldest attested Indo-European geographic name and personal names mentioned in relation to it the oldest attested Indo-European personal names and suggest these names come from an early Anatolian (proto-Hittite) language. Alfonso Archi locates this Armani near Samsat, Turkey.

Part of the confusion is the relationship to Ebla and Ibla, which may or may not have been the same place themselves.
 

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