David Reich Southern Arc Paper Abstract

Yes, e.g.:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittite_laws

They were less cruel and inhumane in their punishments, as well as more concerned about the individual, more generally speaking. This is something I have read multiple times in various secondary sources on the Hittites.



Their strength was also their weakness, because their rulers were not as much god-given as those of the local Oriental empires, and their structure was more federal and aristocratic, in comparison. This resulted in more inner tumult and conflicts, a weaker cohesion. Basically the quotations your brought up just proved that.



The Greeks had a unique free and logical spirit, a specific approach to art and life, which was no longer bound by as much superstition and religious restriction. I highly doubt the Minoans were the same, but its very unfortunate we don't know more about them and their writings (Linear A) being still not really fully deciphered.


It's always a good idea, given that every Tom, Dick, and Harry can "edit" Wiki articles, to go read the citation for any statement of fact. The citation about the their law code merely lists some of their provisions. It makes no comparison to the Code of Hammurabi. That was the OPINION of the unknown writer of that Wiki article.

It would seem logical to me that the original, much more harsh collection "might" be closer to the laws which the Hittites might have brought with them. In time, and having to rule over groups with differing rules, those different viewpoints might have been ameliorated. Or, since they were illiterate initially, they may just have adopted local laws in the beginning, and changed them over time. Of course, this is all conjecture. None of us has a crystal ball.

What we do know, however, is that there were differences within the Near East in terms of their laws.

According to some authors the Sumerian system was the most humane and treated women better, with the Assyrians on the other end of the scale.
https://www.google.com/books/editio...1&dq=Hittite+Law&pg=PA178&printsec=frontcover


What is also true is that we are fortunate to have different versions chronologically of the Laws of the Hittites, which we do not have for the Code of Hammurabi, so we do not know if and how it may have changed over time.

At any rate, I don't see what this has to do with the Indo-Europeans, as the use of payment to a victim, which seems to have been part of proto-Indo-European society, was also a feature in the Near East.
 
Not even sure what I just read in the last two pages of the thread.

Like, cant tell if you people disagree with each other since on both camps more or less the same facts are being reaffirmed.

The fact of the matter is there is a reason from Ireland to Northern India, Indo European languages are spoken. Few places in between, ie Anatolia, where that is not the case, the why and how still has something to do with the steppe.

These are just the facts. Otherwise David Reich, Lazardis, Patterson, Anthony etc would not waste their time paper after paper, year after year, trying to narrow down the IE homeland. I have an idea what the replies to this will be, "but eastern Anatolia", to which a simple steppe as a secondary homeland and vector of expansion should be an obvious reply.
In fact it feels of all the academics I mentioned, contrary to what some blogs were arguing against for years, Anthony might have been right on the money. More so I am interested in seeing if these IA(Indo-Anatolian) languages have anything to do with CHG waves in Anatolia, cause in that case CHG as not only a female mediated phenomena into the steppe would be vindicated. And could explain a lot as far as Y DNA discrepancies go.

PS: I feel bad for Silesian, he keeps being asked for sources, provides, then when he asks in kind gets gaslighted, lol.

Perhaps I've missed some posts in this unending thread.

All I've seen in his threads has been that Indo-Europeans eventually used iron. I didn't want to be disrespectful and say, "so what", but that's actually the appropriate response.

They didn't invent it; they were poor metallurgists; they were good at copying.

If what people want to know is the history of metallurgy, with which everyone should by now be familiar, btw, just use the search engine putting in metallurgy, We have a couple of dedicated threads.

Do we have to reinvent the wheel, pun intended, at this late stage of the game?

People who have spent a long time here know the answers. Newer members will have to catch up.
 
Perhaps I've missed some posts in this unending thread.

All I've seen in his threads has been that Indo-Europeans eventually used iron. I didn't want to be disrespectful and say, "so what", but that's actually the appropriate response.

They didn't invent it; they were poor metallurgists; they were good at copying.

If what people want to know is the history of metallurgy, with which everyone should by now be familiar, btw, just use the search engine putting in metallurgy, We have a couple of dedicated threads.

Do we have to reinvent the wheel, pun intended, at this late stage of the game?

People who have spent a long time here know the answers. Newer members will have to catch up.

The discussion you are trying to start is too post-modern for me. Poor copycat metallurgists, thoughts and prayers :(
 
Can't wait for the end of the month, when the paper finally comes out. Apart from the CHG waves into Anatolia, I am really interested around the cradle of civilization, for which we have no samples right now, namely Mesopotamia, Uruk etc... Fascinating people that have been studied for centuries, but for whom DNA is lacking.

Expect a lot of j2;)
 
I did some research and dug deeper into why the Anatolian hypothesis gained so much ground lately. What I found were several very critical articles about the methods of the proponents of the Anatolian theory. My recommendation is, just read, let it sink in, and do what you want with the information. The blog I found is called GeoCurrents. GeoCurrentsis a map-illustrated forum dedicated to global geography, especially as it relates to current events. This website seeks to provide historical background, regional analysis, and political and intellectual context for issues in the news, both major and minor, as long as they have a clear geographic expression. Cultural geography, particularly as expressed in matters of language and religion, is also emphasized. The author made a critical assessment of the reasons why the Anatolian hypothesis is now being favored in academia. I'll post here some of the articles. In my opinion, they're worth reading.


As Wade’s title indicates, the Science article,written by Remco Bouckaert and eight others (most notably Quentin D.Atkinson), seeks to overturn the thesis that the Indo-European (I-E)family originated north of the Black and Caspian seas. It insteadlocates the I-E heartland in what is now Turkey, supporting the“Anatolian” thesis advanced a generation ago by archeologist Colin Renfrew. The Science team bases its claims on mathematical grounds, using techniques derivedfrom evolutionary biology and epidemiology to draw linguistic familytrees and model the geographical spread of language groups. Accordingto Wade, the authors claim that their study does nothing less than“solve” a “long-standing problem in archaeology: the origin ofthe Indo-European family of languages.” (Strictly speaking,however, the problem is not an archaeological one, as excavations bythemselves tell us nothing about the languages of non-literate peoples; it is rather a linguistic problem with major bearing onprehistory more generally.)
As GeoCurrents is deeply interested in the intersection of language, geography, andhistory, the two articles immediately grabbed our attention. Ourinitial response was one of profound skepticism, as it hardly seemed likely that a single mathematical study could “solve” one of the most carefully examined conundrums of the distant human past. Recent work in both linguistics and archeology, moreover, has tended against the Anatolian hypothesis, placing Indo-European origins in the steppe and parkland zone of what is now Ukraine, southwest Russia, and environs. The massive literature on the subject was exhaustively weighed as recently as 2007 by David W. Anthony in his magisterial study, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from theEurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World.Could such a brief article as that of Bouckaert etal. really overturn Anthony’s profound syntheses so easily?



The more we examined the articles in question, the more our reservations deepened. In the Science piece, the painstaking work of generations of historical linguists who haverigorously examined Indo-European origins and expansion is shrugged off as if it were of no account, even though the study itself restsentirely on the taken-for-granted work of linguists in establishing relations among languages based on words of common descent (cognates). In Wade’s NewYork Times article, contending accounts and lines of evidence are mentioned, but in acasual and slipshod manner. More problematic are the graphics offeredby Bouckaert and company. The linguistic family trees generated by their model are clearly wrong, as we shall see in forthcoming posts.And on the website thataccompanies the article, an animated map (“movie,” according toits creators) of Indo-European expansion is so error-riddled as to beamusing, and the conventional map on the same site is almost as bad. Mathematically intricate though it may be, the model employed by theauthors nonetheless churns out demonstrably false information.
Failing the most basic tests of verification, the Bouckaert article typifies the kind of undue reductionism that sometimes gives scientific excursions into human history and behavior a bad name, based on the belief that a few key concepts linked to clever techniques can allow one to side-step complexity, promising mathematically elegantshort-cuts to knowledge. While purporting to offer a trulyscientific* approach, Bouckaert etal. actually forward an example of scientism, or the inappropriate and overweening application of specificscientific techniques to problems that lie beyond their own purview.




One can only speculate as to why the authors proved incapable of notingthe failure of their model to mirror reality. Did they neglect to look at their own maps, trusting that the underlying equations were so powerful that they would automatically deliver? Could their faith in their model trump their concern for empirical evidence? Or could it be that their knowledge of linguistic geography is so scanty that they do not grasp the distribution of the Russian language, much less that of Scythian? If so, they are not operating at an acceptable undergraduate level of geo-historical knowledge. Alternatively, the authors might be aware that their model generates nonsense, but prefer to pretend otherwise, hoping to buffalo the broader scholarly community. They seem, after all, to conceal their approach as much aspossible, couching their “findings” in jargon-ridden prose that proves a challenge not just for lay readers but also for specialists in neighboring subfields. (Translations of such passages as “Contourson the map represent the 95% highest posterior density distribution for the range of Indo-European” will be forthcoming.)
Regardless of whether the authors are intentionally trying to mislead the public or have simply succeeded in fooling themselves, their work approaches scientific malpractice. Science ultimately demands empirical verification, and here the project fails miserably. If generating scads of false information does not falsify the model, what possibly could? Non-falsifiable claims are, of course, non-scientific claims. The end result is a grotesquely rationalistic and hence ultimatelyirrational approach to the human past. As such, examining the claimsmade by the Science team becomes an example of what my colleagues Robert Proctor and Londa Schiebinger have aptly deemed “agnotology,” or “the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly thepublication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data.”

As the critique we offer is harsh and encompassing,
GeoCurrents will devote a number of posts to examining in detail the claims made and techniques employed by Bouckaert, Atkinson, and their colleagues. But before delving into the nitty-gritty, a few words are in order aboutwhat ultimately lies at stake. We are exercised about the Science article not merely because of our passion for the seemingly esoteric issue of Indo-European origins, but also because we fear for the future of historical linguistics—and history more generally. The Bouckaert study, coupled with the mass-media celebration of the misinformation that it presents, constitutes an assault on a field that hasg enerated an extraordinary body of rigorously derived information about the human past. Such an attack occurs at an unfortunate moment, as historical linguistics is already in crisis. Linguistics departments have been cutting positions in historical inquiry for some time, creating an environment in which even the best young scholars in the field are often unable to obtain academic positions.



On the same day, Nicholas Wade, noted NewYork Times science reporter, wrote a half-page spread in the news section ofthe Times on the Science report,entitled “FamilyTree of Languages Has Roots in Anatolia, Biologists Say.Over the next few days, the story was picked up—and often twisted in theprocess—by assorted journalists. Within a few days, headlines appeared as preposterous as “English Language Originated inTurkey.”


https://www.geocurrents.info/cultur...ade-and-the-assault-on-historical-linguistics
 
PS: I feel bad for Silesian, he keeps being asked for sources, provides, then when he asks in kind gets gaslighted, lol.

I was hoping to generate a debate with ydna samples-- comparing Near East or Balkan to Yamnaya craftsmanship and dates in split mold metallurgy, and or bronze arsenic versus tin.
Since the Hittites used iron, I was hoping to find out if they had traded for their iron with other Near Eastern cultures that specialized in iron smelting. No examples were given. Since Yamnaya copied metallurgy I was hoping to find out from where they had acquired iron, again no examples were given.
 
The discussion you are trying to start is too post-modern for me. Poor copycat metallurgists, thoughts and prayers :(

Using words you don't understand has nothing to do with the fact that the steppe people DID NOT invent metallurgy. Metallurgy was first practiced in the Near East and the Balkans. Whether the farmers in the Balkans developed it independently or learned of the idea from farming communities in the Near East is up for debate.

That applies to both copper and bronze.

These are verifiable facts, many of them known for decades, but not emphasized, because they were not supportive of the preferred narrative. It's also true that as more artifacts and the remains of forges are found, the history of metallurgy must be re-written to some extent. Should those new discoveries be ignored?
https://www.academia.edu/29656381/History_of_Metallurgy

Iron was first smelted in Anatolia, perhaps by the Hittites, but it is also a fact that the first smelted iron artifact was found in a Hattic tomb. Imo, the people who had developed bronze, had experience with the furnaces necessary for smelting, would have been the first to develop iron or ferrous metallurgy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrous_metallurgy

Also, I'm not trying to start anything. I've been saying the same things about metallurgy for the last 12 years. Not my problem if you didn't read my content.
 
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The earliest known smelted iron might be from the steppe:

“One unappreciated aspect of Early Bronze Age and Middle Bronze Age steppe metallurgy was its experimentation with iron. … A Catacomb-period grave at Gerasimovka on the Donets (western Russia/Ukraine), probably dated around 2500 BCE, contained a knife with a handle made of arsenical bronze and a blade made of iron. The iron did not contain magnetite or nickel, as would be expected in meteoric iron, so it is thought to have been forged. Iron objects were rare, but they were part of the experiments conducted by steppe metalsmiths during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, long before iron began to be used in Hittite Anatolia or the Near East”

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language : David W. Anthony
p.336
 
1.) In Lazio and Abruzzo look at the ratio of J2a and R1b. R1b decreases while J2a increases in comparisons with Latins and Etruscans who were overwhelmingly R1b.
Abruzzo(3)(2)(0)(1)538922611630107
3%2%0%1%4.5%35.5%8.5%21%5.5%10.5%5.5%3%0%
Latium(33)(6)(6)(4)811243727631807386
8.5%1.5%1.5%1%2%29%11%18.5%2%16.5%4.5%0%2%

2.) Central Italians are significantly more southern shifted compared to Latins, Etruscans and the upcoming and Samnite samples.
3.) Historical data and archaeological show the overcrowded cities of Italy being populated with people from East Mediterranean like in Rome and Pompeii.

J2a was already found in calcolithic Italy, you might want to check this study: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00535-2 (supplementaries)
 
The earliest known smelted iron might be from the steppe:

“One unappreciated aspect of Early Bronze Age and Middle Bronze Age steppe metallurgy was its experimentation with iron. … A Catacomb-period grave at Gerasimovka on the Donets (western Russia/Ukraine), probably dated around 2500 BCE, contained a knife with a handle made of arsenical bronze and a blade made of iron. The iron did not contain magnetite or nickel, as would be expected in meteoric iron, so it is thought to have been forged. Iron objects were rare, but they were part of the experiments conducted by steppe metalsmiths during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, long before iron began to be used in Hittite Anatolia or the Near East”

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language : David W. Anthony
p.336

How do you know that Steppe metalsmiths were not from Anatolia or somewhere else south of the Caucasus. Look at the modern link between Bedouin pastoralists and Solubba/Sleyb ironsmiths and tinkers. Pastoralists are not trained for anything (nothing to do with basic intelligence) but animal rearing and warfare. They rely on others for manufactures.

Maybe these iron items were merely imports from somewhere south of the Caucasus.
 
The earliest known smelted iron might be from the steppe:

“One unappreciated aspect of Early Bronze Age and Middle Bronze Age steppe metallurgy was its experimentation with iron. … A Catacomb-period grave at Gerasimovka on the Donets (western Russia/Ukraine), probably dated around 2500 BCE, contained a knife with a handle made of arsenical bronze and a blade made of iron. The iron did not contain magnetite or nickel, as would be expected in meteoric iron, so it is thought to have been forged. Iron objects were rare, but they were part of the experiments conducted by steppe metalsmiths during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, long before iron began to be used in Hittite Anatolia or the Near East”

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language : David W. Anthony
p.336


If you read the article upthread you will see that finding metal objects is not proof of the practice of metallurgy. What you need is evidence of forges or other paraphernalia. Is there any documentation for that?

Not that it matters. Once bronze metallurgy became well known, and with the impetus that trade with the tin markets was compromised, experimentation took place in many areas, the Near East, the Aegean, and the Balkans, as the article above points out.

Doesn't change the well known history of metallurgy. Doesn't change the fact that if you go and read about the grave contents of, for example, the Corded Ware people, it is clear that they were not metallurgists carrying bronze weapons.
 
J2 was found as early as Neolithic central Italy actually, according to the Antonio et al. 2019 paper.

That is actually one of the things I got wrong. I predicted J2a would appear in Europe in the Bronze Age, but Le Brok insisted it was probably there in the Neolithic, and he was right.
 
I did some research and dug deeper into why the Anatolian hypothesis gained so much ground lately. What I found were several very critical articles about the methods of the proponents of the Anatolian theory. My recommendation is, just read, let it sink in, and do what you want with the information. The blog I found is called GeoCurrents. GeoCurrentsis a map-illustrated forum dedicated to global geography, especially as it relates to current events. This website seeks to provide historical background, regional analysis, and political and intellectual context for issues in the news, both major and minor, as long as they have a clear geographic expression. Cultural geography, particularly as expressed in matters of language and religion, is also emphasized. The author made a critical assessment of the reasons why the Anatolian hypothesis is now being favored in academia. I'll post here some of the articles. In my opinion, they're worth reading.


It's not really the "Anatolian hypothesis". That one stated that IEs all went to Europe through Anatolia.

This is simply stating that IEs originated in the Middle East, with 1 early branch going to Anatolia and the rest moving through the steppes.
 
Let's pretend I agree with you that this was the case with all of the Greek city states.

You think the elevation of warfare as the supreme good is to be admired? It's to be admired in their culture even when it's completely hypocritical? In this scenario, the culture believes that the fact that it can, through the use of arms, enslave other people makes them superior, and the vanquished inferior.

You don't know where that leads? It leads to things like the Lombard laws creating a permanent underclass. The same thing can be seen in the Anglo-Saxon laws about the Britons. Ultimately it leads to Nazi ideology.

That's an absolutely amoral and disturbing view, imo.

On the other hand, you don't defeat nazism or tyranny by just saying that it's bad. You need to be willing and able to defeat it by force if necessary.

In the Greek context, warlike people are free because they want freedom and are willing and able to fight for it, whereas others are either slaves by nature or liable to be enslaved by anyone. Warlike people are courageous whereas others are cowardly.

-----

Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places:

“with regard to the pusillanimity and cowardice of the inhabitants, the principal reason the Asiatics are more unwarlike and of gentler disposition than the Europeans is, the nature of the seasons, which do not undergo any great changes either to heat or cold, or the like; for there is neither excitement of the understanding nor any strong change of the body whereby the temper might be ruffled and they be roused to inconsiderate emotion and passion, rather than living as they do always in the state. It is changes of all kinds which arouse understanding of mankind, and do not allow them to get into a torpid condition. For these reasons, it appears to me, the Asiatic race is feeble, and further, owing to their laws; for monarchy prevails in the greater part of Asia, and where men are not their own masters nor independent, but are the slaves of others, it is not a matter of consideration with them how they may acquire military discipline, but how they may seem not to be warlike, for the dangers are not equally shared, since they must serve as soldiers, perhaps endure fatigue, and die for their masters, far from their children, their wives, and other friends; and whatever noble and manly actions they may perform lead only to the aggrandizement of their masters, whilst the fruits which they reap are dangers and death; and, in addition to all this, the lands of such persons must be laid waste by the enemy and want of culture. Thus, then, if any one be naturally warlike and courageous, his disposition will be changed by the institutions. As a strong proof of all this, such Greeks or barbarians in Asia as are not under a despotic form of government, but are independent, and enjoy the fruits of their own labors, are of all others the most warlike; for these encounter dangers on their own account, bear the prizes of their own valor, and in like manner endure the punishment of their own cowardice."

- Airs, Waters, Places (part 16)

Aristotle, Politics:

“there is a rule of another kind, which is exercised over freemen and equals by birth – a constitutional rule, which the ruler must learn by obeying, as he would learn the duties of a general of cavalry by being under the orders of a general of cavalry, or the duties of a general of infantry by being under the orders of a general of infantry, and by having had the command of a regiment and of a company. It has been well said that 'he who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.' The two are not the same, but the good citizen ought to be capable of both; he should know how to govern like a freeman, and how to obey like a freeman – these are the virtues of a citizen. … The people who are suited for constitutional freedom are those among whom there naturally exists a warlike multitude able to rule and to obey in turn by a law which gives office to the well-to-do according to their desert.”

- Politics, Book 3

"those who cannot face danger like men are the slaves of any invader."

- Politics, Book 7
 
1.) In Lazio and Abruzzo look at the ratio of J2a and R1b. R1b decreases while J2a increases in comparisons with Latins and Etruscans who were overwhelmingly R1b.
2.) Central Italians are significantly more southern shifted compared to Latins, Etruscans and the upcoming and Samnite samples.
3.) Historical data and archaeological show the overcrowded cities of Italy being populated with people from East Mediterranean like in Rome and Pompeii.

As far as I know we just have a leaked PCA showing samnites, from which they seem quite near to the mycenean cluster. I guess it's more likely that the increased frequency in J2 haplogroup is largely due exactly to proto-greeks (Minoan and Myceneans) and Greeks who colonized Italy, rather than the to the poor slaves wich lived in the over crowded city of the Roman Empire, since the Rome and Balkan papers have already shown how the latter population didn't survive to the collapse of the roman urban civilization.
 
As far as I know we just have a leaked PCA showing samnites, from which they seem quite near to the mycenean cluster. I guess it's more likely that the increased frequency in J2 haplogroup is largely due exactly to proto-greeks (Minoan and Myceneans) and Greeks who colonized Italy, rather than the to the poor slaves wich lived in the over crowded city of the Roman Empire, since the Rome and Balkan papers have already shown how the latter population didn't survive to the collapse of the roman urban civilization.

Yes in Southern Italy a large amount of J2a is of Ancient Greek origin.
 

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