All Iberian men were wiped out by Yamna men 4,500 years ago

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

We've gone off the subject of the Yamna wipe-out of the Iberians a bit, which looks as if could only have been R1b-DF27 moving in from the North. Perhaps Basque speaking?

Yeah, this thread is mainly about the origin of Western IE now, but that's fine.

 

[CrazyDonkey]

Here is an option - During Chalcolithic (3300bc - 1900bc) the region of south Portugal was thriving with a Oak tree forests and huge settlements held by agriculture, high pastoral life and game hunting. By bronze age all had disappear (as did places like Porto Torrão and Perdigoes). by end Iron age, when strabo passed there he stated that the Celts had entered portugal through that region (alentejo) and that it was a barren region where agriculture was extremely difficult. So climate change must have been a factor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4.2_kiloyear_event

The 4.2-kiloyear BP aridification event was one of the most severe climatic events of the Holocene period.^[1] It defines the beginning of the current Meghalayan age in the Holocene epoch. Starting in about 2200 BC, it probably lasted the entire 22nd century BC. It has been hypothesised to have caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt as well as the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, and the Liangzhu culture in the lower Yangtze River area.^[2][3] The drought may also have initiated the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation, with some of its population moving southeastward to follow the movement of their desired habitat,^[4] as well as the migration of Indo-European speaking people into India.^[5]

On the Iberian Peninsula, the construction of motillas-type settlements in the period after 2200 BC is believed to be the consequence of the severe aridification that affected this area.
According to Moreno et al., who reported the first palaeohydrogeological interdisciplinary research in La Mancha, Spain,

Recent studies show that the "motilla" sites from the Bronze Age in La Mancha may be the most ancient system of groundwater collection in the Iberian Peninsula. ... These were built during the Climatic Event 4.2 ka cal BP in a time of environmental stress due to a period of severe, prolonged drought.^[22]
​

The authors' analysis verified a relationship between the geological substrate and the spatial distribution of the motillas.

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

The motillas were constructed in the period of c. 2200 BCE–1200 BCE.^[1] Their use started at the time of the 4.2 kiloyear event. They were needed as a consequence of severe aridification that affected this wide geographical area. They were also used as a control center of agricultural resources. They were no longer used after the end of the Argarian civilization.

Recently, archaeologists have suggested that these structures are mainly connected with water management, and agricultural production:

"Motilla del Azuer contains the oldest well known from the Iberian Peninsula and the archaeologists suspect that the walled enclosures were therefore used to protect and manage the livelihood of the people living in the settlement: To secure the well’s water, to store and process cereals on a large scale, to occasionally keep the livestock, and to produce pottery and other domestic artefacts."^[2]
​

Analysis by Moreno et al. (2014) verified a relationship between the geological substrate and the spatial distribution of the “motillas”^[1] who reported the first paleohydrogeological interdisciplinary research in La Mancha. According to the authors:

"Recent studies show that the “motilla” sites from the Bronze Age in La Mancha may be the most ancient system of groundwater collection in the Iberian Peninsula. ... These were built during the Climatic Event 4.2 ka cal BP, in a time of environmental stress due to a period of severe, prolonged drought."^[1]
​

​

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

Just to make this thread EVEN MORE off-topic, I've now come to the conclusion (just an opinion, I can elucidate later), that there was an Indo-European presence pre-Sumer (who I see as Dravidian - the obvious clue for me being that "Ur" in proto-Dravidian means village), and linguists (though this is definitely not close to being accepted yet) refer to the language these guys spoke as Euphratic.

Euphratic is one candidate for the language spoken by the Ubaid people (called the proto-Euphratean language), before the Sumerians took over. The Sumerians literally described themselves as foreigners, so it's reasonable to assume that they were invaders, but there is linguistic evidence too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Euphratean_language

Here is an interesting thread, I'd recommend reading at least the first few pages:

https://historum.com/threads/a-language-related-to-english-was-spoken-in-mesopotamia.45325/

And just for good measure, here is a Swastika from the Samarra culture, the predicted likely Urheimat of this particular language:

This isn't an isolated case, there's loads of pottery with roughly that shape (some repeats):

Clearly not a coincidence, don't you even dare try to claim so aha.

This is seemingly evidence for the South Caucasian homeland theory that most of the big guys now believe. Look into that thread for the linguistic evidence the OP put forward - that, the swastikas, R1b phylogeny and the spread of copper metallurgy are the main factors convincing me in this.

In terms of population migration, I still stand by my claims - M269 spreads from the Balkans to West Asia, L23 mutation acquired there; L23 spreads from West Asia to Iberia (L51) and continues in West Asia (Z2103); L51 spreads to Central Europe and Z2103 spreads to the Steppe.

 

[Ygorcs]

It seems the explosion of Y DNA I1 roughly dates to the arrival of the Corded Ware folk in Scandinavia.

That leads me to two hypotheses - either, the arrival of the CWC brought some technology that allowed the existing I1 population to rapidly multiply, or climate change brought that change about. Perhaps the CWC in Central Europe was mostly I1 but the elites were mostly R1a - but I don�t know if Corded Ware society was stratified or not.

I think that sounds a bit far-fetched. A much more simple explanation would be that I1 was simply acculturated into the CWC culture, became attached to some successful clans and expanded together with the CWC material culture in some regions, but not in others (much like I2 was originally WHG, but it expanded a lot in the Middle-Late Neolithic probably as a EEF lineage, only slightly more enriched with WHG). I doubt I1 people were culturally distinct (for a long period) natives who multiplied rapidly after cultural diffusion of CWC-derived technologies, the CWC area inhabited by Northern Europeans in the past as today has too much steppe ancestry, and substantial genetic replacement certainly happened during the CWC period. Maybe I1 was the main lineage of the people who spoke the significant non-IE Germanic substrate, which indicates that these non-IE people must have not been a weak and culturally marginalized minority, but a people who, even if ultimately defeated, had some prestige and really influenced the social ways of the newcomers.

 

[Ygorcs]

Latin isn't exactly good for comparison because of the Roman and Ecclesial superstrates that had a significant influence on even non-Latin languages. Look at Germanic: East - West split, the West Germanic - Norse split, English colonoziation are all accurately predicted by a computer model. That's amazing imho.

I don't believe in the Indo-Slavonic & Italo-Celtic phyla however. They are outdated to my knowledge.

It's actually very easy to distinguish the natural development from Latin in the lexicon of Romance languages. The core vocabulary was not influenced by Church/College Latin superstrates at all. There are many doublets in Romance languages superposing the "real" Latin-derived word and the much later reborrowing from Latin, e.g. cheio vs. pleno in Portuguese. However, if anything the existence of that superstrate for so long only prevented the Romance languages from diverging even faster, so that one could even speculate if their initial splitting date was even earlier than most often assumed (I don't, but this would make much more sense than the dates assumed in that phylogenetic tree at least).

 

[Ygorcs]

That's assuming that Germanic originated where it's spoken nowadays. I see no reason to think so. In fact I believe it is rather unlikely: if Underhill's data is to believed, the major Scandinavia specific haplogroup R1a-Z284 is confined to Scandinavia more or less, suggesting that there were no significant expansions coming from Scandinavia.

But I did not refer specifically to Scandinavia alone, but to Northern Europe where Germanic is or was historically spoken. I do not think Pre-Proto-Germanic necessarily arose in Scandinavia, but I doubt very much it could've been born outside Northern Europe, where after the CWC period the samples show a huge amount of BA Steppe-derived ancestry, suggestive of very profound genetic, demographic and cultural replacement (as opposed to massive assimilation), definitely not the kind of Indo-Europeanization that happened in Greece, India or even, less so, parts of Iberia and South Italy.

 

[Ygorcs]

Just to make this thread EVEN MORE off-topic, I've now come to the conclusion (just an opinion, I can elucidate later), that there was an Indo-European presence pre-Sumer (who I see as Dravidian - the obvious clue for me being that "Ur" in proto-Dravidian means village), and linguists (though this is definitely not close to being accepted yet) refer to the language these guys spoke as Euphratic.

Euphratic is one candidate for the language spoken by the Ubaid people (called the proto-Euphratean language), before the Sumerians took over. The Sumerians literally described themselves as foreigners, so it's reasonable to assume that they were invaders, but there is linguistic evidence too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Euphratean_language

Here is an interesting thread, I'd recommend reading at least the first few pages:

https://historum.com/threads/a-language-related-to-english-was-spoken-in-mesopotamia.45325/

And just for good measure, here is a Swastika from the Samarra culture, the predicted likely Urheimat of this particular language:

This isn't an isolated case, there's loads of pottery with roughly that shape (some repeats):

Clearly not a coincidence, don't you even dare try to claim so aha.

This is seemingly evidence for the South Caucasian homeland theory that most of the big guys now believe. Look into that thread for the linguistic evidence the OP put forward - that, the swastikas, R1b phylogeny and the spread of copper metallurgy are the main factors convincing me in this.

In terms of population migration, I still stand by my claims - M269 spreads from the Balkans to West Asia, L23 mutation acquired there; L23 spreads from West Asia to Iberia (L51) and continues in West Asia (Z2103); L51 spreads to Central Europe and Z2103 spreads to the Steppe.

Some of the problems of this hypothesis is that virtually only , and the nickname "banana languages" (due to a frequent repetition of syllables in multisyllabic words) given by some of the proponents of Proto-Euphratean language in Pre-Sumerian Sumer makes no sense in Proto-Indo-European unless the language had changed profoundly by the time of Indo-Hittite/Early PIE. It sounds nothing like the usual structure of PIE words. Also, basically AFAIK Gordon Whittaker is the only professional linking that Proto-Euphratean language to Indo-European. There's also the "cultural" problem that it is possible, but certainly more unlikely than not that an advanced farmer and proto-urban society would give birth to a pastoral (with incipient agriculture), semi-nomadic and fully rural society. Genetically my main quibble with this is that Ubaid was centered mainly in South Iraq and much later expanded to North Mesopotamia possibly assimilating Halaf people. I find it extremely implausible that these people would be almost entirely CHG or maybe ANF-like, with no large chunks of Levant_Neolithic and Iran_Neolithic, which should then be clearly seen in larger proportions in the Steppe Early IE and later L51 BA/IA people in Western/Central Europe.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

I think that sounds a bit far-fetched. A much more simple explanation would be that I1 was simply acculturated into the CWC culture, became attached to some successful clans and expanded together with the CWC material culture in some regions, but not in others (much like I2 was originally WHG, but it expanded a lot in the Middle-Late Neolithic probably as a EEF lineage, only slightly more enriched with WHG). I doubt I1 people were culturally distinct (for a long period) natives who multiplied rapidly after cultural diffusion of CWC-derived technologies, the CWC area inhabited by Northern Europeans in the past as today has too much steppe ancestry, and substantial genetic replacement certainly happened during the CWC period. Maybe I1 was the main lineage of the people who spoke the significant non-IE Germanic substrate, which indicates that these non-IE people must have not been a weak and culturally marginalized minority, but a people who, even if ultimately defeated, had some prestige and really influenced the social ways of the newcomers.

Yeah that's a nice explanation I suppose, but it doesn't match up with the fact that I1 struggled and only exploded when CW arrived. If they weren't weak, there's no reason why they would have struggled until CWC arrived, as shown by the phylogeny. It could potentially be that I1 arrived with Ertebolle much earlier (which iirc we don't have Y DNA samples of), and when Funnelbeaker took over the hunter-gatherers simply lived separately (and so I1 was not found with the Funnelbeaker samples). I1 is a mystery, though. It is, also, by far the best example of a distribution of a haplogroup that can be linked to distribution of a phenotype (the Classic Nordid), so I'm not sure what to make of that. In Northern Europe and Scandinavia in particular, it fits basically perfectly.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

Some of the problems of this hypothesis is that virtually only , and the nickname "banana languages" (due to a frequent repetition of syllables in multisyllabic words) given by some of the proponents of Proto-Euphratean language in Pre-Sumerian Sumer makes no sense in Proto-Indo-European unless the language had changed profoundly by the time of Indo-Hittite/Early PIE. It sounds nothing like the usual structure of PIE words. Also, basically AFAIK Gordon Whittaker is the only professional linking that Proto-Euphratean language to Indo-European. There's also the "cultural" problem that it is possible, but certainly more unlikely than not that an advanced farmer and proto-urban society would give birth to a pastoral (with incipient agriculture), semi-nomadic and fully rural society. Genetically my main quibble with this is that Ubaid was centered mainly in South Iraq and much later expanded to North Mesopotamia possibly assimilating Halaf people. I find it extremely implausible that these people would be almost entirely CHG or maybe ANF-like, with no large chunks of Levant_Neolithic and Iran_Neolithic, which should then be clearly seen in larger proportions in the Steppe Early IE and later L51 BA/IA people in Western/Central Europe.

Linguistics is far from my strong point, but those words in that thread sounded awfully similar to have been coincidence. I'll post them below for others' convenience:

Proto-Indo-European: senom (acc) = old
Sumerian: sun = old

Proto-Indo-European: meluo = meal, flour
Sumerian: milla = type of flour

Proto-Indo-European: hner = man, heor, power, charisma
Sumerian: ner ~ nir = trust, authority, hero, prince

Proto-Indo-European: leuh = wash
Sumerian: luh = wash, cleanse

Proto-Indo-European: sieuh = sew
Sumerian: sah ~ suh = thread

Proto-Indo-European: hemehm = water bucket, jar, pot
Sumerian: amam = beer jar

Proto-Indo-European: hensehm = strap handle of a vessel
Sumerian: anzam = Late Uruk strap handled vessels

Proto-Indo-European: sehiteh = pain, illness
Sumerian: sadah = illness

Proto-Indo-European: dolhom = pain
Sumerian: dulum = missery

Proto-Indo-European: dlukus = sweet
Sumerian: dugu = sweet, good

Proto-Indo-European: gen- = offspring
Sumerian: genna = baby

Proto-Indo-European: hegro = pasture, field, arable land
Sumerian: agar ~ ugur = arable land, meadow

Proto-Indo-European: gwous = bovine
Sumerian: gu = bull, ox

Proto-Indo-European: gher = hedgehog or small pig
Sumerian: kir ~ gir = little pig

Proto-Indo-European: ghostis = stranger, guest
Sumerian: kas = stranger, guest

English: queen
Sumerian: nin
Proto-Indo-European: gwnon

English: woman
Sumerian: gan
Proto-Indo-European: Gwen-
Gothic: qino

English: garlic
Sumerian: hadim
Proto-Indo-European: hodent = smell
Armenian: hotim
Proto-Greek: hodma

English: great
Sumerian: maha
Proto-Indo-European: majH-
Greek: megas
Sanskrit: mah-

English: ewe
Sumerian: uwi
Proto-Indo-European: howis
Latin: ovis

In terms of the cultural issue - that's no problem. Ubaid was multicultural: "...this culture saw for the first time a clear tripartite social division between intensive subsistence peasant farmers, with crops and animals coming from the north, tent-dwelling nomadic pastoralists dependent upon their herds, and hunter-fisher folk of the Arabian littoral, living in reed huts." The pastoralists would be the IE candidates, of course. Whatever the case, I find it hugely unlikely that the farmers, pastoralists and fishermen would all be of the same ethnic origin. If I had to play the haplogroup game, I'd put the farmers as G2a, the pastoralists as R1b, and the hunter-fishermen as J1.

As for Ubaid being South Mesopotamian in origin and later expanding up the Euphrates and Tigris - that's true, but only necessarily culturally. I don't think that means a group went from Lower to Upper Mesopotamia. It seems like that's the consensus too (that the Halaf-Ubaid transition was a cultural change rather than that of a migration). Moreover, some presumably Russian linguists (Dyakonov and Ardzinba - I'm just quoting Wikipedia without understanding) placed the proto-Euphratean language, that of the Ubaid culture, as originally belonging to that of the Samarra culture, which is further up Mesopotamia, and closer to the likely original Halafian source of these guys. Tomenable, who is basically where I steal half of my ideas and all my good ones, came up with a great thread about pastoral and metallurgical elites amongst farmers, but I can't seem to find it atm.

But I really don't think more evidence is needed than those swastikas. Later, clearly non-IE groups did adopt the symbol and spread it independently, however this is really early on, and basically requires a West Asian cultural diffusion of this symbol from a West Asian IE source (if those swastikas aren't in actuality evidence of IE folk but just some other group that picked up the symbol, they surely picked it up in West Asia, so IE guys must have been there, which is basically as good as saying the swastika is evidence of IE guys).

There is some genetic evidence based on inference, obviously very bad evidence, but still enough imo - if we look at the map of Z2103 (below), there is a pretty huge presence in roughly modern-day Iraq which can't really be explained by Indo-Iranians (who surely would have been overwhelmingly R1a-Z93) and also can't be explained by the Hittites/other Anatolians (who never expanded this far). This matches up with the fact that most early branches of Z2103 are more West Asian than anything else (mainly Caucasian - if you check on yfull, almost all of those Russians are Caucasian btw), and some exclusively so.

 

[halfalp]

Linguistics is far from my strong point, but those words in that thread sounded awfully similar to have been coincidence. I'll post them below for others' convenience:

Proto-Indo-European: senom (acc) = old
Sumerian: sun = old

Proto-Indo-European: meluo = meal, flour
Sumerian: milla = type of flour

Proto-Indo-European: hner = man, heor, power, charisma
Sumerian: ner ~ nir = trust, authority, hero, prince

Proto-Indo-European: leuh = wash
Sumerian: luh = wash, cleanse

Proto-Indo-European: sieuh = sew
Sumerian: sah ~ suh = thread

Proto-Indo-European: hemehm = water bucket, jar, pot
Sumerian: amam = beer jar

Proto-Indo-European: hensehm = strap handle of a vessel
Sumerian: anzam = Late Uruk strap handled vessels

Proto-Indo-European: sehiteh = pain, illness
Sumerian: sadah = illness

Proto-Indo-European: dolhom = pain
Sumerian: dulum = missery

Proto-Indo-European: dlukus = sweet
Sumerian: dugu = sweet, good

Proto-Indo-European: gen- = offspring
Sumerian: genna = baby

Proto-Indo-European: hegro = pasture, field, arable land
Sumerian: agar ~ ugur = arable land, meadow

Proto-Indo-European: gwous = bovine
Sumerian: gu = bull, ox

Proto-Indo-European: gher = hedgehog or small pig
Sumerian: kir ~ gir = little pig

Proto-Indo-European: ghostis = stranger, guest
Sumerian: kas = stranger, guest

English: queen
Sumerian: nin
Proto-Indo-European: gwnon

English: woman
Sumerian: gan
Proto-Indo-European: Gwen-
Gothic: qino

English: garlic
Sumerian: hadim
Proto-Indo-European: hodent = smell
Armenian: hotim
Proto-Greek: hodma

English: great
Sumerian: maha
Proto-Indo-European: majH-
Greek: megas
Sanskrit: mah-

English: ewe
Sumerian: uwi
Proto-Indo-European: howis
Latin: ovis

In terms of the cultural issue - that's no problem. Ubaid was multicultural: "...this culture saw for the first time a clear tripartite social division between intensive subsistence peasant farmers, with crops and animals coming from the north, tent-dwelling nomadic pastoralists dependent upon their herds, and hunter-fisher folk of the Arabian littoral, living in reed huts." The pastoralists would be the IE candidates, of course. Whatever the case, I find it hugely unlikely that the farmers, pastoralists and fishermen would all be of the same ethnic origin.

As for Ubaid being South Mesopotamian in origin and later expanding up the Euphrates and Tigris - that's true, but only necessarily culturally. I don't think that means a group went from Lower to Upper Mesopotamia. It seems like that's the consensus too (that the Halaf-Ubaid transition was a cultural change rather than that of a migration). Moreover, some presumably Russian linguists (Dyakonov and Ardzinba - I'm just quoting Wikipedia without understanding) placed the proto-Euphratean language, that of the Ubaid culture, as originally belonging to that of the Samarra culture, which is further up Mesopotamia, and closer to the likely original Halafian source of these guys. Tomenable, who is basically where I steal half of my ideas and all my good ones, came up with a great thread about pastoral and metallurgical elites amongst farmers, but I can't seem to find it atm.

But I really don't think more evidence is needed than those swastikas. Later, clearly non-IE groups did adopt the symbol and spread it independently, however this is really early on, and basically requires a West Asian cultural diffusion of this symbol from a West Asian IE source (if those swastikas aren't in actuality evidence of IE folk but just some other group that picked up the symbol, they surely picked it up in West Asia, so IE guys must have been there, which is basically as good as saying the swastika is evidence of IE guys).

There is some genetic evidence based on inference, obviously very bad evidence, but still enough imo - if we look at the map of Z2103 (below), there is a pretty huge presence in roughly modern-day Iraq which can't really be explained by Indo-Iranians (who surely would have been overwhelmingly R1a-Z93) and also can't be explained by the Hittites/other Anatolians (who never expanded this far). This matches up with the fact that most early branches of Z2103 are more West Asian than anything else (mainly Caucasian - if you check on yfull, almost all of those Russians are Caucasian btw), and some exclusively so.

I think those vocabulary relationship are clearly missleading on the relationship between those people. Steppe people could have borrowed a lot of words from, let's sayin Maikop, wich were related with Kura-Araxes, wich was probably an ancestor to some Sumerians. Semitic, Sumerian, Uralian languages could have indirectly influence IE or the opposite for Uralian, without any genetic impact or deep linguistic relationship. The Ainu word for " Water " is *Waata if i recall, doesn't it sound very familiar?

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

I think those vocabulary relationship are clearly missleading on the relationship between those people. Steppe people could have borrowed a lot of words from, let's sayin Maikop, wich were related with Kura-Araxes, wich was probably an ancestor to some Sumerians. Semitic, Sumerian, Uralian languages could have indirectly influence IE or the opposite for Uralian, without any genetic impact or deep linguistic relationship. The Ainu word for " Water " is *Waata if i recall, doesn't it sound very familiar?

Fair enough, but these are a lot of really important words that sound awfully similar. But I have many other valid points in that post you quoted, anyway.

 

[halfalp]

Fair enough, but these are a lot of really important words that sound awfully similar. But I have many other valid points in that post you quoted, anyway.

Yes they are, but why the Women word is related and not the Men one? Because Southern Women came into Northern Men households? There is an obvious link between Southern and Northern part of Eurasia, East of the Black Sea, meaning both part of the Caucasus range. Sumerian and IE languages dont borrow a lot of similarity a part of related words, wich doesn't mean anything. Japanese language have borrowed a lot to English and Nipponised them. English is considered a Germanic laguage while having 70% of the vocabulary being of Latin origin?

 

[hrvclv]

Some Euphratic and PIE words display similarities. Two options : - populations mixed. - "areal spread"

Proto-Uralic and PIE also show some connections. Ancient common origin or areal spread.

Anyway, this suggests that PIE-speaking people(s) at given points in time came into contact with both Sumer and Siberian tribes.

Everyone seems to be trying to pin PIE-Urheimat down to very specific areas. More likely, PIE-speaking R1 tribes roamed wide expanses of land around the Caspian for centuries (millenia), with hotspots in places maybe. But they were probably mobile hunter-gatherer tribes chasing game wherever it moved across Eurasia. Just like I1 and I2 went about in western Europe.

 

[bicicleur 2]

Some Euphratic and PIE words display similarities. Two options : - population mixed. - "areal spread"

Proto-Uralic and PIE also show some connections. Ancient common origin or areal spread.

Anyway, this suggests that PIE-speaking people(s) at given points in time came into contact with both Sumer and Siberian tribes.

Everyone seems to be trying to pin PIE-Urheimat to very specific areas. More likely, PIE-speaking R1 tribes roamed wide expanses of land around the Caspian for centuries (millenia), with hotspots in places maybe. But they were probably mobile hunter-gatherer tribes chasing game wherever it moved across Eurasia. Just lie I1 and I2 went about in western Europe.

Isn't Euphratic a hypothesized language that in neither Sumerian nor Semitic?
If there are some similarities between IE and Euphratic, could it be through Maykop?

 

[Ygorcs]

Linguistics is far from my strong point, but those words in that thread sounded awfully similar to have been coincidence. I'll post them below for others' convenience:

Proto-Indo-European: senom (acc) = old
Sumerian: sun = old

Proto-Indo-European: meluo = meal, flour
Sumerian: milla = type of flour

Proto-Indo-European: hner = man, heor, power, charisma
Sumerian: ner ~ nir = trust, authority, hero, prince

Proto-Indo-European: leuh = wash
Sumerian: luh = wash, cleanse

Proto-Indo-European: sieuh = sew
Sumerian: sah ~ suh = thread

Proto-Indo-European: hemehm = water bucket, jar, pot
Sumerian: amam = beer jar

Proto-Indo-European: hensehm = strap handle of a vessel
Sumerian: anzam = Late Uruk strap handled vessels

Proto-Indo-European: sehiteh = pain, illness
Sumerian: sadah = illness

Proto-Indo-European: dolhom = pain
Sumerian: dulum = missery

Proto-Indo-European: dlukus = sweet
Sumerian: dugu = sweet, good

Proto-Indo-European: gen- = offspring
Sumerian: genna = baby

Proto-Indo-European: hegro = pasture, field, arable land
Sumerian: agar ~ ugur = arable land, meadow

Proto-Indo-European: gwous = bovine
Sumerian: gu = bull, ox

Proto-Indo-European: gher = hedgehog or small pig
Sumerian: kir ~ gir = little pig

Proto-Indo-European: ghostis = stranger, guest
Sumerian: kas = stranger, guest

English: queen
Sumerian: nin
Proto-Indo-European: gwnon

English: woman
Sumerian: gan
Proto-Indo-European: Gwen-
Gothic: qino

English: garlic
Sumerian: hadim
Proto-Indo-European: hodent = smell
Armenian: hotim
Proto-Greek: hodma

English: great
Sumerian: maha
Proto-Indo-European: majH-
Greek: megas
Sanskrit: mah-

English: ewe
Sumerian: uwi
Proto-Indo-European: howis
Latin: ovis

I do not think such mass comparisons are very reliable, unless the similar words are first collected and then used as a basis to identify some regular correspondences of sounds in the way that Sumerian would've absorbed the foreign IE words. Similarity is just not enough, there must be some pattern of changes. The case of Sumerian is actually exemplary of this situation much maligned by linguists: many people have - successfully - found several similar words between Sumerian and Turkic, Sumerian and Uralic and Sumerian and Sino-Tibetan - and assumed these languages were once related or at least had strong contacts with each other. Often, but not always, there is something nationalist or ethnocentric behind these hypotheses.

Besides, there is the actual possibility that at least some of these words were brought into both PIE and Sumerian via an intermediary and influential language/culture that lent them these words, as some of the terms are clearly cultural-specific easily transferred through trade and economic influence, they're not basic vocabulary: sheep, garlic, small pig, flour, sew, gwous, hand of a vessel... (keep in mind the steppes were hunter-gatherer land until the Late Neolithic) That intermediary language may have even been the language of the ancestors of PIE (maybe, I don't have a strong opinion in favor of it, but do not discard it either)... but that would've been before Sumerians conquered all of Sumer.

Another problem in my opinion is to use the reconstruction of PIE to identify very similar-sounding cognates in Sumerian like these listed above. I mean, Proto-Euphratic is supposed to be the PRE-Sumerian substrate, the language already spoken in Sumer before the arrival of Sumerian, and Sumerian was spoken in Sumer at least by the early 4th milennium BC (presumably it's the language associated with the Uruk expansion that marked a change from earlier Ubaid). But PIE was probably already spoken in the Pontic-Caspian steppe in the Copper Age, and if Anatolian split from the same PIE that was spoken on the steppes that "northern" (non-Euphratic) PIE could be dated to at least 4000 BC.

Therefore, I could even imagine a kind of para-PIE (a sister language) in Sumer, but would it be exactly the same as PIE? I find that implausible, virtually no linguistic change among communities far away from each other. Of course, that is all not hypothesizing that PIE per se would've started to split into different branches in Mesopotamia itself and in fact it only arrived in the steppes much later by Yamnaya times (unlikely, because the genetic makeup of the steppe population was already very similar, without any major changes, in the Chalcolithic Pontic-Caspian samples even before 4000 BC; not to talk again about the implausible lack of any Levant_Neolithic and Iran_Neolithic admixture in their supposed PIE-speaking descendants in the Pontic-Caspian area, when e.g. Anatolia, even further from the Iranian Plateau and from the Levant, had become very mixed with the other "farmer admixtures" by the Chalcolithic).

This linguist analyzed the proposal of Whittaker and found it to be untenable, and she says sumerologists also rejected it: file: http://www.academia.edu/928075/A_ne...an_and_Indo-European_Euphratic_?auto=download

 

[hrvclv]

Isn't Euphratic a hypothesized language that in neither Sumerian nor Semitic?
If there are some similarities between IE and Euphratic, could it be through Maykop?

Afaik, nobody knows... so everything goes.

 

[markod]

But I did not refer specifically to Scandinavia alone, but to Northern Europe where Germanic is or was historically spoken. I do not think Pre-Proto-Germanic necessarily arose in Scandinavia, but I doubt very much it could've been born outside Northern Europe, where after the CWC period the samples show a huge amount of BA Steppe-derived ancestry, suggestive of very profound genetic, demographic and cultural replacement (as opposed to massive assimilation), definitely not the kind of Indo-Europeanization that happened in Greece, India or even, less so, parts of Iberia and South Italy.

Could be the case, but there's really no evidence for or against it. The archaeological trail in the Bronze Age seems to be Carpathian basin -> Northern Europe. Whether the material culture and the bronze weapons that came from the Carpathians actually brought a new language with them is of course impossible to know. I think it's very likely.

 

[markod]

http://www.academia.edu/928075/A_ne...an_and_Indo-European_Euphratic_?auto=download

That's referring to Whittaker's old paper. This is new:

http://www.academia.edu/3592967/Euphratic_-_A_phonological_sketch

The guys at the languagehat blog and several linguists seem to think it's solid.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

That's referring to Whittaker's old paper. This is new:

http://www.academia.edu/3592967/Euphratic_-_A_phonological_sketch

The guys at the languagehat blog and several linguists seem to think it's solid.

I also think my other points in that post (the one with the Z2103 map) are really solid, don?t know why nobody is mentioning them

 

[Ygorcs]

That's referring to Whittaker's old paper. This is new:

http://www.academia.edu/3592967/Euphratic_-_A_phonological_sketch

The guys at the languagehat blog and several linguists seem to think it's solid.

Besides the arguably ad hoc correspondences between PIE roots made to look similar to the Sumerian, with several irregularities (e.g. in some words final -eh2 disappears, in some others it becomes -ah), which were pointed out in the article I linked above (some of the supposed cognates sound really forced to fit into the Sumerian word), for me it is really difficult to reconcile this hypothesis with the more accepted chronology and geographic/archaeological traces of PIE. I mean: Proto-Anatolian split being dated to ~4000 BC, Early totally undivided PIE is dated to immediately before that date; Sumerians are thought to have been present in Sumer at least in the later mid of the 4th millennium BC, so that leaves around ~500 years between PIE and Euphratic before it was replaced by Sumerian (and that must've been pretty early, because as far as I can see Whittaker's Euphratic is basically undifferentiated PIE, with few changes).

Therefore, we must find an explanation (in genetics and archaeology) that fits an early presence of the very same or virtually identical PIE in both the Pontic-Caspian steppe (definitely associated with the expansion of most of IE branches, Anatolian excepted perhaps) and more than 1500 km to its south in South Mesopotamia/Sumer. Such a linguistic closeness should then indicate a very recent migration to or from the Pontic-Caspian area from or to South Mesopotamia. It must've been a migration bringing a different culture and probably ethnic/genetic makeup roughly between 4500-4000 BC, because after that Euphratean would've been the language of newcomers, not the supposed established language of a proto-urban people who supposedly invented writing (not the Sumerians, as per Whittaker's hypothesis), or PIE in the steppes being spoken by pastoral primitive tribes would've been the very recent arrival coming from a proto-urban farming culture in a totally different environment than the one reflected by reconstructed PIE. For many reasons I just do not see many (archaeological, linguistic, genetic) evidences to back this idea up.

The proportion of R1b-Z2103 is very intriguing, but considering it is found in non-negligible percentages among some Iranic populations its frequency could've exploded more or less recently regionally. I very much doubt a Mesopotamian population by ~4000 BC would not have brought much Levant_Neolithic and Iranian_Neolithic to the Pontic-Caspian steppe, not to mention the apparent organic cultural development without strong ruptures in the western steppe during the Chalcolithic (AFAIK). Maciamo had this to say about "Asian branches" of R1b-Z2103:

[FONT=&quot]Through a founder effect or through political domination, R1a-Z93 lineages would have outnumbered R1b-Z2103 after the expansion to Central and South Asia, although important pockets of Z2103 survived, notably in Bashkorostan, Turkmenistan and Uyghurstan (Chinese Turkestan).[/FONT][FONT=&quot]R1b-Z2103 would have become an Indo-Iranian lineage like R1a-Z93. This is true of two Z2103 subclades in particular: L277.1 and L584. The former is found in Russia to Central Asia then to India and the Middle East, just like the R1a-L657 subclade of Z93. It can be associated with the Andronovo culture and Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex, as well as the Indo-Aryan migrations. R1b-L584 is found especially in Iran, northern Iraq, the South Caucasus and Turkey, and correlates more with the Iranian branch of Indo-Europeans, which includes Persians, Kurds and Scythians.[/FONT]

If Euphratic is true, then we definitely need to find a chronologically very close (in comparison with the Uruk period when Sumerian was demonstrably spoken) connection between the Pontic-Caspian area and Mesopotamia, with the linguistic transfer so recent that the languages would've still been roughly unchanged. I personally would find it a bit easier to believe in a Sumerian-PIE connection not with a substrate language in Sumer itself, but with Sumerian being brought to Sumer from its original homeland much closer and maybe in direct contact with Early PIE or maybe even the parent language of PIE (somewhere in the Caucasus? Or in the Black Sea coast? Who knows).