Paul Heggarty: Beating the retreat from the Steppe hypothesis

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Moja

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Beating the retreat from the Steppe hypothesis

This is a commentary on the ancient DNA paper: 'The genetic origin of the Indo-Europeans', i.e. Lazaridis et al. (2025), published in Nature on 5th February 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08531-5 Although presented as if supporting
www.academia.edu

This is a commentary on the ancient DNA paper: 'The genetic origin of the Indo-Europeans', i.e. Lazaridis et al. (2025), published in Nature on 5th February 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08531-5 Although presented as if supporting the Steppe hypothesis of Indo-European origins, this new paper’s basic result is actually a retreat from it, notwithstanding some smoke and mirrors. This still does not obscure where the whole language family originated: not on the Steppe, as this paper itself reconfirms. As Lazaridis et al. (2022) themselves already acknowledged three year's ago, the family’s ultimate origins lie where many have long argued: in “the highlands of West Asia, the ancestral region”.
 

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After his 2023 paper, in which Heggarty tried to make us believe that Renfrew was right (you have to be really bad faith to try to make people believe that Neolithic farming = spreading Indo-European languages), I personally stopped believing anything Paul Heggarty writes.

Lazaridis replied to Heggarty on X.
 
There is really not a big difference between what Lazaridis and Heggarty say, both of them talk about the CHG ancestry of Proto-Indo-Europeans, in this new article Lazaridis has just tried to say the original land of Indo-Europeans was not too far from the Steppe, in fact he wanted to gain the support of Kurganists like David Anthony, but as Paul Heggarty said, this is actually a clear retreat from the Steppe hypothesis.
 
IMO, left-wing politics influence on science. Archaeogenetics should be seeked outside political compass.
 
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Hawk said:
IMO, left-wing politics influence on science. Archaeogenetics should be seeked outside political compass.
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What logical link between a south vs north Caucasus > IE origin and left or right wing??? I'm "leftist" and I rather think that a South Caucasus origin of IE languages increase too much the number of languages cradles in this relatively small mountainous region...
 
MOESAN said:
What logical link between a south vs north Caucasus > IE origin and left or right wing??? I'm "leftist" and I rather think that a South Caucasus origin of IE languages increase too much the number of languages cradles in this relatively small mountainous region...
Click to expand...

I read somewhere either from Haggerty or someone else associating Steppe theory with sort of Nazism or extremism which i don't agree with btw because it had nothing to do with them. Well, there were instances but now we know the original Yamnaya which had quite some EHG/ANA weren't your blonde haired blue eyed Aryans depicted in some circles.

I still think a Steppe origin diffusion is inevitable. We are just running in circles. One clear indication is the linguistic relationship of Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic and how Y-DNA R1a is the common thing in Y-DNA which unites them.
 
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Hawk said:
I read somewhere either from Haggerty or someone else associating Steppe theory with sort of Nazism or extremism which i don't agree with btw because it had nothing to do with them. Well, there were instances but now we know the original Yamnaya which had quite some EHG/ANA weren't your blonde haired blue eyed Aryans depicted in some circles.

I still think a Steppe origin diffusion is inevitable. We are just running in circles. One clear indication is the linguistic relationship of Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic and how Y-DNA R1a is the common thing in Y-DNA which unites them.
Click to expand...
I have don't put too much worth into all these extreme statements about Nazism, Nordicism or Levantism or what else! People who speak like that when we are just in front of historical problems to resolve quietly with the greater objectivity possible are brainless. I know people like that exist but let's not give too much an ear to them. People may challenge one another about this kind of questions without to put ther emotions and phantasms in it.
 
MOESAN said:
I have don't put too much worth into all these extreme statements about Nazism, Nordicism or Levantism or what else! People who speak like that when we are just in front of historical problems to resolve quietly with the greater objectivity possible are brainless. I know people like that exist but let's not give too much an ear to them. People may challenge one another about this kind of questions without to put ther emotions and phantasms in it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, i agree. Otherwise, we need a robust verdict, meaning which unanimous decision where the ultimate location of PIE is. There should be no space for wild assumptions anymore. I assume with following years since aDNA tests are getting cheaper we will have even more robust dataset.
 
MOESAN said:
What logical link between a south vs north Caucasus > IE origin and left or right wing??? I'm "leftist" and I rather think that a South Caucasus origin of IE languages increase too much the number of languages cradles in this relatively small mountainous region...
Click to expand...
The problem is that there are some racists who always ignore the huge country of Iran!

heggarty-jpg.17732


As Dr. Heggarty said why they don't consider Iran in the region where they say Proto-Indo-Europeans lived?! Dr. Benedetti said almost the same thing to Lazaridis in Twitter.
 
www.nytimes.com

Ancient DNA Points to Origins of Indo-European Language

A new study claims to have identified the first speakers of Indo-European language, which gave rise to English, Sanskrit and hundreds of others.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

"Paul Heggarty, a linguist at Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, said that the DNA analysis in the study was valuable, but he rejected the new hypothesis about the first Indo-European speakers originating in Russia as “smoke and mirrors.”

In 2023, Dr. Heggarty and his colleagues published a study arguing that the first Indo-Europeans were early farmers who lived over 8,000 years ago in the northern Fertile Crescent, in today’s Middle East.

Dr. Heggarty suggested that the CLV people actually belonged to a bigger network of hunter-gatherers that stretched from southern Russia into northern Iran. Some of them could have discovered farming in the northern Fertile Crescent, and then developed the Indo-European language, which would align with his findings.

These early farmers could have given rise to Hittite speakers thousands of years later in Anatolia, he said, and later given rise to the Yamnaya. The Yamnaya brought Indo-European languages to northern and Central Europe, Dr. Heggarty argued, but they were only one part of a bigger, older expansion."
 
I agree with Heggarty argument, Proto-Indo-European population was related to Ancient Iranians around the Caspian Sea and Northern Iran that also arrived in Central Asia (BMAC) and Northern India, as we can observe in the Rakhigarhi genome.
 

The South Caucasus from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Neolithic: Intersection of the genetic and archaeological data​


Highlights​

  • •
    Genetics and archaeology prove the originality of Caucasus_UP peoples before the LGM.
  • •
    Genetic models do not distinguish between the Iran_N and CHG genomes.
  • •
    Archaeology shows that the westward expansion of Iran_N/CHG is due solely to Iran_N.
  • •
    Neolithic farmers mixed with (and did not replace) the Caucasian hunter-gatherers.

For the Early Holocene (ca. 11.7–8.2 ka cal BP or 9700-6200 cal BCE), the CHG genome, which still characterises the populations of the South Caucasus, is difficult to distinguish in modelling from that of the Zagros (Iran_N). However, archaeological data suggest that the spread of the Iran_N/CHG gene pool from Iran to Upper Mesopotamia and Central Anatolia was due to populations from the northwest Zagros, and not to those from the South Caucasus, who had only occasional contacts with the Fertile Crescent.
 
Hawk said:
I read somewhere either from Haggerty or someone else associating Steppe theory with sort of Nazism or extremism which i don't agree with btw because it had nothing to do with them. Well, there were instances but now we know the original Yamnaya which had quite some EHG/ANA weren't your blonde haired blue eyed Aryans depicted in some circles.

I still think a Steppe origin diffusion is inevitable. We are just running in circles. One clear indication is the linguistic relationship of Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic and how Y-DNA R1a is the common thing in Y-DNA which unites them.
Click to expand...

Did Haggerty really made that statement? This is a very political statement which is not surprising. Academia has been taken over by fraudsters who pursue any agenda expected from them for the sake of their own careers. This virus permeates all of academia, not just archeogenetics. The absolute majority of all publications on this topic is pure garbage, whether it pertains to the question of the IE urheimat or something else. It's all about printing out papers for grants and jobs. Who cares about scientific truth and integrity? Sabine Hossenfelder has made a video recently addressing just that problem in physics:

Basically, academia has been taken over by scammers and this particular field is a textbook example. I consider people like David Reich or Johannes Krause as nothing but dishonest hacks. The good news is, at least in the US, is that the Trump administration is purging academia from bullshit by cutting the funding. Unfortunately, a lot of good and honest scientists, working on real issues, are going to get under the wheel as well. The problem, however, cannot be solved by cutting off funding or replacing people. The root of the problem is systemic as people are forced to publish or perish, in other words there's an inflation of publications just for the sake of being published in order to secure funding and justify a staff and bureaucracy. One cannot practice science like this and expect results. Fortunately the era of the Haggertys and Krauses will come to an end.

No one suggests that the Yamnaya were the mirror image of present-day Europeans. But this ridiculous attempt to discredit the Steppe origins of PIEs is ideological in nature. Don't call it leftist. It's just pseudo-science.

As for Balto-Slavic, it is closer to proto-Germanic than Indo-Iranian. The satem connection is not of a phylogenetic nature nor do haplogroups equal a close linguistic relationship. Greek is closer to Indo-Iranian than Balto-Slavic. Closer still is Armenian, yet Greek is centum and Armenian satem. Albanian is a satem language but you're not going to argue that it is closely related to Balto-Slavic. By the way, there are two Germanic clades of R1a: Z284 and L664. That alone is not proof of a close relationship between Germanic and Balto-Slavic or Indo-Iranian.
 
Moja said:
The fact is that whole story of Yamnaya culture and Aryan migration from the Steppe has been created by European colonizers and White supremacists:

hindupost.in

How European colonizers and White supremacists perpetuated the Aryan invasion myth

In fact the Aryan invasion myth is taught as fact in institutions to this day. Any challenge is denounced as being racist, Hindu nationalism, right wing
hindupost.in hindupost.in
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you are mixing everything here and mixing too opposite scientific credo to opposite political credo; someones mix them, not all the scientists community.
The true "European colonizers" (they are not alone, they have challenging neighbours) supported the 'Indo-Germanic' theory, not the 'Steppic theory'. Do keep on with your sometimes accurate remarks on the DNA matter and do leave the anathems throwing sport. Some of your posts deserve better stuff.
No offense.
 
MOESAN said:
you are mixing everything here and mixing too opposite scientific credo to opposite political credo; someones mix them, not all the scientists community.
The true "European colonizers" (they are not alone, they have challenging neighbours) supported the 'Indo-Germanic' theory, not the 'Steppic theory'. Do keep on with your sometimes accurate remarks on the DNA matter and do leave the anathems throwing sport. Some of your posts deserve better stuff.
No offense.
Click to expand...

What is the difference between 'Indo-Germanic' theory and 'Steppic theory'?! Or what is difference between what European colonizers/White supremacists say and what those who support the Steppe hypothesis say? The first one says the tall, white, blond master race of Aryans came from Northern Europe and the second one plays with words and says Proto-Indo-Iranian migration started via Corded Ware in the Northern Europe, both of them actually believe the same thing.
 
Moja said:
The fact is that whole story of Yamnaya culture and Aryan migration from the Steppe has been created by European colonizers and White supremacists:

hindupost.in

How European colonizers and White supremacists perpetuated the Aryan invasion myth

In fact the Aryan invasion myth is taught as fact in institutions to this day. Any challenge is denounced as being racist, Hindu nationalism, right wing
hindupost.in hindupost.in
Click to expand...
you are mixing everything here and mixing too opposite scientific credo to opposite political credo; someones mix them, not all the scientists community.
The true "European colonizers" (they are not alone, they have challenging neighbours) supported the 'Indo-Germanic' theory, not the 'Steppic theory'. Do keep on with your sometimes accurate remarks on the DNA matter and do leave the anathems throwing sport. Some of your posts deserve better stuff.
No offense.
Moja said:
What is the difference between 'Indo-Germanic' theory and 'Steppic theory'?! Or what is difference between what European colonizers/White supremacists say and what those who support the Steppe hypothesis say? The first one says the tall, white, blond master race of Aryans came from Northern Europe and the second one plays with words and says Proto-Indo-Iranian migration started via Corded Ware in the Northern Europe, both of them actually believe the same thing.
Click to expand...
Have you some inferiority complex or are you kind of a masochist who likes to see in others theories or posts or ... what gives pain to you?
 
MOESAN said:
Have you some inferiority complex or are you kind of a masochist who likes to see in others theories or posts or ... what gives pain to you?
Click to expand...

It seems you are a pure racist, regardless of the color of our skin, we are all human beings, I am myself tall and white but it certainly doesn't I am superior than others, in the post #14 I mentioned an article in HinduPost about the relation between Aryan (Indo-Iranian) migration in the the Steppe hypothesis and what European colonizers and White supremacists believed, according to this article: "In fact the Aryan invasion myth is taught as fact in institutions to this day. Any challenge is denounced as being racist, Hindu nationalism, right wing Hindutva, fascism and nazism. Ironic because the very idea of Aryan race and invasion is itself racist."

Iosif Lazaridis said about his new article: https://*****/iosif_lazaridis/status/1888318107086929994

"White supremacists often care about "racial purity". The people in the NPR and CLV homelands of PIE and PIA were composed of 2- or 3-way proximal mixtures of ~6 distal sources (BHG-EHG-Anatolian-Mesopotamian-CHG-Central Asian), themselves mixtures of more even earlier sources."

"Phenotypically (another thing white supremacists usually care about), the PIA/PIE overall had brown or dark hair, brown eyes, and an intermediate skin tone, not a very good or obvious match for the physical traits that white supremacists usually care about."

"So the racial purity or phenotypic ideals that white supremacists tie to Proto-Indo-Europeans are empirically wrong. One can oppose their ideas for a variety of political or moral reasons, but inasmuch as they tie them to actual PIE speakers 5-6 thousand years ago: simply wrong."

"There absolutely was an Indo-European homeland and it was absolutely not like anything that white supremacists have usually imagined it to be."

And David Anthony said about this article: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/2/12/indo-european-language-research/

“White supremacists have grabbed onto it and continue to run old Nazi propaganda lines about Indo-European languages,” he said, noting that the word “Aryan” comes from an Indo-European word.
 
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Moja said:
It seems you are a pure racist, regardless of the color of our skin, we are all human beings, I am myself tall and white but it certainly doesn't I am superior than others, in the post #14 I mentioned an article in HinduPost about the relation between Aryan (Indo-Iranian) migration in the the Steppe hypothesis and what European colonizers and White supremacists believed, according to this article: "In fact the Aryan invasion myth is taught as fact in institutions to this day. Any challenge is denounced as being racist, Hindu nationalism, right wing Hindutva, fascism and nazism. Ironic because the very idea of Aryan race and invasion is itself racist."

Iosif Lazaridis said about his new article: https://*****/iosif_lazaridis/status/1888318107086929994

"White supremacists often care about "racial purity". The people in the NPR and CLV homelands of PIE and PIA were composed of 2- or 3-way proximal mixtures of ~6 distal sources (BHG-EHG-Anatolian-Mesopotamian-CHG-Central Asian), themselves mixtures of more even earlier sources."

"Phenotypically (another thing white supremacists usually care about), the PIA/PIE overall had brown or dark hair, brown eyes, and an intermediate skin tone, not a very good or obvious match for the physical traits that white supremacists usually care about."

"So the racial purity or phenotypic ideals that white supremacists tie to Proto-Indo-Europeans are empirically wrong. One can oppose their ideas for a variety of political or moral reasons, but inasmuch as they tie them to actual PIE speakers 5-6 thousand years ago: simply wrong."

"There absolutely was an Indo-European homeland and it was absolutely not like anything that white supremacists have usually imagined it to be."

And David Anthony said about this article: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/2/12/indo-european-language-research/

“White supremacists have grabbed onto it and continue to run old Nazi propaganda lines about Indo-European languages,” he said, noting that the word “Aryan” comes from an Indo-European word.
Click to expand...
Your post is the proof that I was right. Complex? You're making a racist of mine without any basis, and you see in others post only dark things! What question of "purity" have you seen in any of mys posts here and on other threads??? this question is closed for me.
 
BTW I 'm still between two thoughts about the PIE cradle. So I haven't chosen my squad.
 
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