Different researchers than Gray and Atkinson, similar age estimates (their inferred trees do, however, differ). The supplement is available online (pdf).
Our main analysis gives a 95% highest posterior probability density interval of 7110-9750 years Before the Present, in line with the so-called Anatolian hypothesis for the expansion of the Indo-European languages....The reconstruction of known ages presented in Section 4.3 further validatesour ability to predict time depths. After several analyses of two data sets (Chapter 5), all our results agree with the Anatolian hypothesis that the spread of the Indo-European family started around 8000 BP. None of our analyses agree with the Kurgan theory that the spread started between 6000 and 6500BP.
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C (Applied Statistics)
Volume 60, Issue 1, pages 71–92, January 2011
Missing data in a stochastic Dollo model for binary trait data, and its application to the dating of Proto-Indo-European
Robin J. Ryder, Geoff K. Nicholls
Summary. Nicholls and Gray have described a phylogenetic model for trait data. They used their model to estimate branching times on Indo-European language trees from lexical data. Alekseyenko and co-workers extended the model and gave applications in genetics. We extend the inference to handle data missing at random. When trait data are gathered, traits are thinned in a way that depends on both the trait and the missing data content. Nicholls and Gray treated missing records as absent traits. Hittite has 12% missing trait records. Its age is poorly predicted in their cross-validation. Our prediction is consistent with the historical record. Nicholls and Gray dropped seven languages with too much missing data. We fit all 24 languages in the lexical data of Ringe and co-workers. To model spatiotemporal rate heterogeneity we add a catastrophe process to the model. When a language passes through a catastrophe, many traits change at the same time. We fit the full model in a Bayesian setting, via Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling. We validate our fit by using Bayes factors to test known age constraints. We reject three of 30 historically attested constraints. Our main result is a unimodal posterior distribution for the age of Proto-Indo-European centred at 8400 years before Present with 95% highest posterior density interval equal to 7100–9800 years before Present.
Link
"their inferred trees do, however, differ".
ReplyDeleteConsiderably.
Very interesting PhD thesis. A couple of comments:
ReplyDelete* I find many of the constraining dates very young, again - but that doesn't seem to have too much of an impact on the trees.
* Seems like Germanic, Italic, and Celtic split at roughly the same time, which seems reasonable.
* In many of the trees, the Balkan and Anatolian languages form a combined subset.
One cannot make a clear argument for an Anatolian origin of IE from the results presented - it is just inferred because of the origin of agriculture, there. I want to point out again that a northern Balkan origin of IE is equally (if not more) consistent with the results:
- Albanian often splits off the earliest
- Indo-Iranian does not split off Anatolian
- In many trees, the Anatolian languages split off "too late" - after agriculture was already present in the Balkans for 500 to 1,000 years, indicating that they are secondary, not primary.
- Armenian, always grouping with Greek, is an example of a successful back migration to Anatolia. This makes it plausible that the other IE languages arrived there similarly - just earlier.
"their inferred trees do, however, differ".
ReplyDeleteConsiderably.
I think such stark differences between analysis results are to be expected in such speculative and obscure issues like language prehistory.
I am back. As you can see, my display name is again written with an uppercase initial letter as in the early days of my commenting career on this blog (how it turned into lowercase is a mystery to me, I guess it was an accident). BTW, my return to uppercase has nothing to do with German Dziebel's suggestion of it as I was already planning it well before his suggestion.
eurologist, the position of Albanian is shaky and they admit as much. I wouldn't base any reconstructions on it. We don't even know where Albanian was spoken a thousand years ago, let alone in deep prehistory.
ReplyDeleteOne cannot make a clear argument for an Anatolian origin of IE from the results presented - it is just inferred because of the origin of agriculture, there. I want to point out again that a northern Balkan origin of IE is equally (if not more) consistent with the results:
Again, the northern Balkans are expected to have possessed a lot of haplogroup I, which we simply don't see in most of the IE world (= all the Asian part). Also, 8,400 years BP the Northern Balkans were in the Mesolithic, and IE is clearly a post-Mesolithic language family.
Linguistic geographers have long recognized the importance of distinguishing between traits are really not there and those that happen to be unrecorded.
ReplyDelete"the position of Albanian is shaky and they admit as much. I wouldn't base any reconstructions on it."
ReplyDeleteI agree: Albanian is an oddball with lots of borrowings, substratum effects and phonetic irregularities. It does have a three-way stop series, though, which is a reconstructed PIE phonological condition. But again this could be a secondary development. This study didn't confirm the most basal position of Anatolian. Tocharian holds its ground as a plausible proxy for the earliest stages of PIE. I agree with eurologist on everything but Albanian and northern Balkans.
"my return to uppercase has nothing to do with German Dziebel's suggestion of it as I was already planning it well before his suggestion."
Onur, good to see you back at Dienekes's as a new - now uppercase - person. Just don't quintuple post and you'll keep your uppercase status.
"I want to point out again that a northern Balkan origin of IE is equally (if not more) consistent with the results:"
ReplyDeleteA very big difficulity is the complete absence of north and south european input amongst old indo-european speakers (anatolians+armenians+indo-iranians)no model can be viable if it omits that indo-hittite is connected with the west asian component and thus should be asian in origin.
Anyone seen these articles about new evidence for Indo-European languages starting in india. How else do you explain Munda and Dravidian loan words in North Europeans languages.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scribd.com/doc/44092576/Origin-of-Indo-European-languages-and-farming-Evidence-from-Human-Animal-and-plant-DNAs-and-from-linguistics
http://www.scribd.com/doc/49330919/Origin-of-Austro-Asiatic-speakers-of-India
Again, the northern Balkans are expected to have possessed a lot of haplogroup I, which we simply don't see in most of the IE world (= all the Asian part). Also, 8,400 years BP the Northern Balkans were in the Mesolithic, and IE is clearly a post-Mesolithic language family.
ReplyDeleteDienekes,
Well, there is some European I in Anatolia. You also have the huge difference between R1a and R1b localization across IE languages, and J and E dominance in Anatolia - apparently it is rather the norm that the spread of IE often did not have a large impact on y-DNA. Further, I would expect the south of the Balkans (and perhaps the northeast) to have retained mostly Anatolian DNA from the first settlers - so any back-migrations from there would have mostly been Anatolian in make-up, anyway.
As to the date, Starčevo-Kőrös fits it almost too perfectly.
A very big difficulity is the complete absence of north and south european input amongst old indo-european speakers (anatolians+armenians+indo-iranians)no model can be viable if it omits that indo-hittite is connected with the west asian component and thus should be asian in origin.
I don't a see that as a problem, at all. Anatolian IE obviously split off quite early, way before much of what distinguishes European IE from the rest. Also, I think the Kurgan hypothesis remains viable for Indo-Iranic, and as such was in steady contact with West Asia.
@ Ashraf : "A very big difficulity is the complete absence of north and south european input amongst old indo-european speakers (anatolians+armenians+indo-iranians)no model can be viable if it omits that indo-hittite is connected with the west asian component and thus should be asian in origin. "
ReplyDelete1/ I don't believe language adoption requires massive population movements (as proven by several historical examples).
2/ There is not a complete absence of south and north European components neither in south Asia (at least in its and north and west part) nor in Anatolia (and anyway archeology seems to indicate movements from Europe both from the west and the north-east (in the latter, kurgans appearing a bit before 3,000 BCE could be a sign of it anyway)). And besides, concerning the Armenians, it's still possible to claim that the slaughter of their population in the early 20th c. could have basically eliminated the possible little remaining lingering tracks of 4,000 yrs extraneous input in its population.
3/ The antiquity of Armenian and Indo-iranian is not widely accepted.
4/ Tocharian is apparently much older than at least Armenian and Indo-iranian and IMO I's more logical to associate them with R1a1a europoid pastoralist populations of south Siberia coming from the west in ~3,500 BCE, especially because of the early split of Tocharian (probably roughly within the PIE stage).
Plus, I don't think it's very logical to associate Indo-iranian with J2 farmers. It doesn't feat well with bronze age Indo-iranian-speaking steppic cultures (and cultural elements of ancient Indo-iranian culture that are probably found first in the steppes and near the Urals (e.g. Sintashta)), PROTO-indo-iranian loanwords in Finno-ugric languages (and a lack of J2 close to the Finno-ugric populations), the lack of Indo-iranian agricultural vocabulary (borrowings from other local south Asian languages) and lack of Urban vocabulary (If the split is older it can explain the lack of urban vocabulary but it clearly seems more recent than early neolithic to me, anyway), etc...
Also, I don't think there were beavers in Anatolia during neolithic or later, and the word is ubiquitous in IE language all over the map, a bit like the horse one. It's also kind of weird that a typical IE word designating a metal (copper?) is not present in west Asia, neither in IE languages nor in the other language families (latin aes, sanskrit ayas, gothic aiz, etc...)
@bmdriver : I almost stopped to read when they said that J2 appeared in India (and BTW alleging that there were no extraneous input in India is pretty clearly wrong. Good luck proving U5a1 or even HV were born in India, for instance).
Many assertions are not credible at all (in all domains : genetics, linguistics (the guy is actually putting english "candy" in his linguistic evidences of the out of India theory while the way it arrived in the English language is pretty clear and known), and archeological (I just learnt in there that agriculture appeared in India)). It's mere nationalistic propaganda to me.
@ Eurologist : what is your take on Tocharian? How did this language arrive there and when, in your opinion?
Oops. Concerning the Armenians, I forgot we were talking of "autosomal profile"...
ReplyDeleteAnyway Armenians DO have a little bit of the "north European" component * and we don't know where ancient Armenian appeared and when, so it relativized their importance in the general picture.
* http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_UOHFTxL-bOA/TNWtHCiSC_I/AAAAAAAAAJw/D_Cl7EOeNyI/s1600/ADMIXTURE10.png
Anyway Armenians DO have a little bit of the "north European" component * and we don't know where ancient Armenian appeared and when, so it relativized their importance in the general picture.
ReplyDeleteThat's all due to 3 or so outliers in the Behar et al. (2010) data. You can find an Armenian population portrait somewhere in the other blog.
"I don't a see that as a problem, at all. Anatolian IE obviously split off quite early, way before much of what distinguishes European IE from the rest. Also, I think the Kurgan hypothesis remains viable for Indo-Iranic, and as such was in steady contact with West Asia."
ReplyDelete"There is not a complete absence of south and north European components neither in south Asia (at least in its and north and west part) nor in Anatolia (and anyway archeology seems to indicate movements from Europe both from the west and the north-east (in the latter, kurgans appearing a bit before 3,000 BCE could be a sign of it anyway)). And besides, concerning the Armenians, it's still possible to claim that the slaughter of their population in the early 20th c. could have basically eliminated the possible little remaining lingering tracks of 4,000 yrs extraneous input in its population."
Tocharian is apparently much older than at least Armenian and Indo-iranian and IMO I's more logical to associate them with R1a1a europoid pastoralist populations of south Siberia coming from the west in ~3,500 BCE, especially because of the early split of Tocharian (probably roughly within the PIE stage)."
" Also, I don't think there were beavers in Anatolia during neolithic or later, and the word is ubiquitous in IE language all over the map, a bit like the horse one. It's also kind of weird that a typical IE word designating a metal (copper?) is not present in west Asia, neither in IE languages nor in the other language families (latin aes, sanskrit ayas, gothic aiz, etc...)"
I am speaking of the Behar study, the tiny north european amongst anatolians and iranians is most likely a legacy of migration of caucasian muslims
I dont think that by the split of IE north and south europeans were still not formed.
Statistically speaking the slaughter of armenians could not result on the complete wiping of a shared component.
R1a1a is Indian in origin and did not came from Europe the same is for R1b in Anatolia wich is asian too not european.
As for the beaver+copper etc..issues they are all dealt with and explained in "indo-europeans and indo-european languages" book+sumerian&semitic&egyptian&kartvelian loanwords in IE (with total absence of loanwords from pre IE languages of Europe such as cammun, raetian, etruscan, lemnian, iberian, aquitanian, vasconian...) and kartvelian/afrasan/IE genetical link does favor asian homeland.
If you look at Behar graphes you would see that amongst south indians there is only west asian as caucasoid component.
west asian component lacking sardinians+east iberians+vasconians/aquitanians are or were non IE speaking wich is a strong clue.
>>"Indo-Iranian does not split off Anatolian.
ReplyDelete- In many trees, the Anatolian languages split off "too late" -"<<
My impression is that all these language trees for IE languages do not use Kurdish languages for any dating or splitting. Gray and Atkinson did not use it, because their data are based on Isidore Dyen's list of words (1997).
The list can be seen here:
http://www.wordgumbo.com/ie/cmp/iedata.txt
If Kurdish languages/dialects (Sorani, Kurmanji, Zaza) would have been included I am pretty sure that Iranian languages would split off much earlier.
Example: "AND","ANIMAL", "BIG","BLOW","SKULL/HEAD","HERE","HUSBAND","TO KNOW","OTHER"
Persian: "VE","HEYVAN","BOZORG","VAZIDAN","SAR","INJA","SHOWHAR","DANESTAN","DIGAR"
Kurdish: "U","GIYANEWER","MEZIN","BEH HENAN","KALLE/SER","ERE","MERD","SANIN","DITIR/ITIR"
Hindi: "AU","JANVER","MAHA","BEHNA","SIR","YEHA","PETI","JANNA","DUSRA"
Greek: "KAI","DZOON","MEGALOS","FUSO","KEFALI","EDO","ANTRAS","GNORIDZO/KSERO","ALLOS"
LATIN: "U","ANIMALUS","MAGNUS","BUCINO","CAPUT","HIC","MARITUS","COGNOSCERE/SAPIENS","ALTER"
Persian: "VE","HEYVAN","BOZORG","VAZIDAN","SAR","INJA","SHOWHAR","DANESTAN","DIGAR"
ReplyDeleteKurdish: "U","GIYANEWER","MEZIN","BEH HENAN","KALLE/SER","ERE","MERD","SANIN","DITIR/ITIR"
Some corrections:
"Ve" is an Arabic loanword to Persian; its Persian equivalent is "u", thus the same with the Kurdish equivalent, and "u" is still used widely in Persian along with "ve". "Heyvan" too is an Arabic loanword to Persian; its Persian equivalent is "janvar", which is still used in Persian and very similar to its Kurdish equivalent "giyanewer". As in Kurdish, "kalle" is used in Persian along with "sar" (in Kurdish, "ser").
LATIN:
ReplyDelete"U"
"U"?! There is no "u" in Latin. Its Latin equivalent is "et".
@ Eurologist : what is your take on Tocharian? How did this language arrive there and when, in your opinion?
ReplyDeletewagg,
It seems to me that the Pontic-Caspian steppe was occupied by IE speakers from at least ~4,000BC. As is often the case with migrations and expansions, the people on the fringe (here: east) may not be most closely relate to those found later in the center, but rather from the other extreme (here: the west) - either because they migrated there first, or because they needed to traverse populated areas before they could settle. It makes sense to associate proto-Iranian with the later Andronovo culture, or at least its southern portion.
In my view, IE arrived to the Ukraine and Southern Russia early on from the northwest (starting ~5,500-5,000BC from the eastern branch of LBK, attested by the adoption of LBK style houses), following the rivers down to the Black and Caspian seas. I see the Samara culture related to this, and later Sredny Stog. Some people adapted to a life away from the river valleys in the steppes, and when the climate was opportune (moister), were able to spread far to the east (Afanasevo; 3500—2500 BC). Others went south and mixed with local people, there (origin of early Iranian/Avestan).
The Tocharians (by their appearance) are clearly not related to the more southern people along the Back Sea shores and into the Caucasus, but went pretty much straight east, or perhaps following the Amu Darya / Syr Darya river systems. Satem then would be a Pontic steppe innovation just slightly later, so the Tocharians missed out on that as well as any Balto-Slavic innovations. As to the vocabulary, it looks to me at least as close to proto-Germanic as to proto-Slavic, if not closer (for example, mälk for "to milk": German: melk(en); ko/keu for cow: old German: Kou/Koe, etc.).
Also note that the earliest attestation of Iranian, both from grammar and vocabulary, are a much purer IE, IMO clearly signaling its derivation from the north (i.e., initially not influenced by Caucasian or Semitic).
In the other dialect group the same root, in reduplicated form, means 'beaver' : Av. bawra-, bawri-, Lith. bebruslblbras, OPruss. bebrus, Russ. bober, OHG bibar (Ger. Biber), OE beofor (Engl. beaver), OIcel. bjorr, Lat. fiber, OBret. beuer 'fiber', 'castor'47 (Toporov 1975-:L203-5).In summary, derivatives of *wot'or- 'water' mean 'otter', and reduplicated derivatives of the color term mean 'beaver' , only in a sharply limited dialect group which includes the later European dialects (Baltic, Slavic, Germanic,Italic, Celtic) and Avestan. This is apparently an innovation, one having to do with the particular ecological environment inhabited by speakers of these dialects. It is notable that the Indo-Iranian languages are split by this isogloss:Sanskrit shows the more archaic situation, while Avestan displays the innovation.
ReplyDelete2/copper
For Proto-Indo-European we can reconstruct a number of metal names,which in itself shows that the ancient Indo-Europeans were familiar with certain metals and their use in the household and for making weapons. PIE *Haye/os-:Skt. ayal}, gen. ayasal} 'metal; iron; iron implement; sword, knife ' , Avest. ayah-,gen. aya1)ho 'metal; iron', Lat. aes, gen. aeris 'copper, bronze; copper or bronze article' , Goth. aiz 'metal coin' > 'money ' , OHG er 'ore ' , OIce!. eir 'ore; copper' . Derivatives in *-no- : Avest. aya1)haena- 'metallic; iron (adj.)', Lat.aenus 'copper, bronze' (adj.), OE reren, OHG erfn 'of bronze'. The variety of meanings attested in the historical reflexes of *Haye/os- -' copper' , 'bronze' , even ' iron' - makes it impossible to choose between ' copper' and 'bronze ' as proto-meaning on purely linguistic grounds. But copper is typologically prior to bronze, which is an alloy of copper with tin or a substitute for tin;20 this speaks in favor of an original meaning 'copper' for the ProtoIndo-European word. With the appearance of bronze, known in Southwest and Southeast Asia from the fourth millennium on (Forbes 1 955- 1 964:IX; Wertime 1 973b:876), the word for copper could have been transferred to bronze, just as later, in the Iron Age (which begins in the late second or early first millennium B.C. in western Asia and India), the same word was transferred to iron in the Sanskrit descriptive term krtuiyasa- 'iron' < kr!la- + ayas-, lit. 'black metal' (see Thieme 1 964:594).21 The shift from 'copper' to 'bronze ' could have begun 20. The earliest specimens of copper come from the Middle East, beginning with Gatal HiiyUk (seventh to sixth millennia B.C.): Neuninger, Pittioni, and Siegl 1964. Interesting in this connection are Mesopotamian ritual texts praising the fire (Sum. gibil) which mixes copper (Sum. urudu, Akkad. era) and tin (Sum. an.nag, Akkad. Annaku There is no Proto-Indo-European word for 'iron'. The words for 'iron' are not cognate and arise only in the separate daughter dialects, which in itself is evidence for the appearance of iron after the Proto-Indo-European breakup. The fIrst specimens of iron date to the third millennium B.C. (Wertime 1973a:674, 676, 682; 1 973b:875, 882). The spread of iron as a smelted metal comes after the twelfth century B.C. (see Coghlan 1956), which agrees with the date of formation of the historical Indo-European dialects and possibly of dialect groupings. The words for 'iron' that arise in these dialects show connections with languages of the Mediterranean and the Near East Lat. ferrum 'iron', Gk. bfrre (Hesychius) may be related to Akkad. parzillu 'iron', Aram. parzel, Hebr. barzel, Ugar. brl1 (brf21, see Aistleitner 1963:60) 'iron', Svan bere'Z 'iron' : see
Furnee 1 972:232, 25 1 , 252.
3/horse and chariot
ReplyDeleteThe earliest evidence for wheeled wagons and chariots comes from the Near East (Childe 195 1 , 1 954; Piggott 1968, 1969, 1974). It dates back to the fourth millennium B .C. and consists of pictograms from archaic strata at Uruk (Mesopotamia) depicting dwellings on wheels, evidently four-wheeled sleeping wagons. Later, from the beginning of the third millennium, the same region (Kish, Susa, Khafaje) yields drawings and figurines of wheels and wheeled wagons. Finds in southern Turkmenia (Anau) are connected to these ancient images.
By the middle of the third millennium, the number of finds increases in Mesopotamia and also at Mari on the middle Euphrates. In the second half of the third millennium, the distribution of wagons expands significantly: they are found to the east at Mohenjo-Daro, in the Caucasus (Bedeni in Georgia; Maikop and Elista in the North Caucasus), in the northern Black Sea region, and on the Danube in Hungary (Kalic 1976). This is the approximate date of the northeasternmost find of a horse-drawn wagon - a one-piece wheel from such a wagon - in the Ural area (Gerasimovka, to the east of the Volga: Merpert 1 974:94, 1 15). At about the turn of the third and second millennia we find chariots in Crete,in western Europe (Hesse), and much farther to the north on the Volga, in the vicinity of Kazan. Chariots from Trialeti (Kuftin 1 94 1 , Dzaparidze 1969) and Austria date to the first half of the second millennium; chariots from Laen (Lake Sevan, in Armenia) date back to the middle of the second millennium (Piotrovskij 1959 : 1 53; see also Littauer and Crouwel 1977). By the end of the
second millennium B.C. chariots had reached northern Italy, and drawings of them are attested in southern Siberia and in fortune-telling oracles in China of the Shang period (see Childe 1954) The conclusion that lightweight horse-drawn military carriages expanded from a center in Southwest Asia constitutes strong support for the claim that the horse was first domesticated and used for transport in some part of Southwest Asia; the subsequent wide expansion of the horse accompanies that of the military chariot. As recent investigations have emphasized, the rise of the lightweight chariot drawn by horses (rather than the oxen previously used) was an innovation that increased the speed of locomotion at least by a factor of ten
mr Onur
I think an important of the Greek speaking anatolians stem from armenians and luwians..adopting the greek lingua franca, gamkrelidze and ivanov locate the proto greek homeland in eastern black sea thanks to kartvelian&semitic&proto greek mutual loanwords please see the 3 papers below about pontic greek coseness to ancient greek+kartvelian/semitic loanwords+armenogrekoaryan group within IE
http://anthrocivitas.net/forum/showthread.php?p=138148
http://anthrocivitas.net/forum/showthread.php?p=142357
http://anthrocivitas.net/forum/showthread.php?p=142424
I dont think that by the split of IE north and south europeans were still not formed.
ReplyDeleteI think on the contrary they very probably were.
R1a1a is Indian in origin and did not came from Europe the same is for R1b in Anatolia wich is asian too not european.
R1b yes, R1b1b2 OTOH, it's not completely clear. The ancestral clades' location blur the general picture :
R1b1b2 subclades
Originally R1a1a was probably south Asian but we also know that there were Europoid R1a1a (coming from the Pontic steppes) at the end of neolithic.
So we pretty much know that saying R1a1a was only south Asian by chalcolithic is pure bullshit. Diffcult to contest such obvious evidences.
I'm not convinced by the youngest estimation for haplogroup datation yet.
Not only there are some data that hint that the molecular clock could be even slower than the mainstream hypothesis (example here (there are others)) but IIRC the magdalenian skulls are roughly similar to modern European skulls.
That with other data makes me still favor an "old age" for haplogroup datation.
"As for the beaver+copper etc..issues they are all dealt with and explained in "indo-europeans and indo-european languages" book+sumerian&semitic&egyptian&kartvelian loanwords in IE (with total absence of loanwords from pre IE languages of Europe such as cammun, raetian, etruscan, lemnian, iberian, aquitanian, vasconian...) and kartvelian/afrasan/IE genetical link does favor asian homeland."
There is not necessarily an absence of loanwords (and besides, it's not really sure that raetian/etruscan is autochthonous and european. there are some indications that it could have arrived from Anatolia (genetic tests on humans and cattle, IIRC + some cultural elements (besides what seems rather clearly borrowed from the Greeks))) :
For instance there are a few words that could possibly be remotely related to PIE (and that don't seem imported by "recent" languages (like Gaulish or Latin), examples : Basque hartz (bear) - hittite hartkas anc. greek arktos, gaulish artos, lithuanian irštva, latin ursus, etc...; basque edan (to drink) - latin edo (I eat), lithuanian edu (I eat), russian eda (food), or just "eat" in english (maybe from the concept "to swallow"?) ; Basque adur (saliva (idea of liquid), the mythological fluid of the universe, also the name of rivers - IE hittite watar, english water, anc. greek hydor, umbrian utur, etc... (basque ur ("water") could also be related I guess, after all watar becomes war/wär in Tocharian languages)).
And a few others could hypothetically also be ancient loanwords.
In Etruscan, a few words (not directly borrowed from Latin) could also look vaguely close to IE (i.e. remotely related (ancient borrowing?)) but I don't know much about it.
As for the the Afrasian/Kartvelian link I refer to what have already be replied to you in other threads (mostly : aside of a few clear cases, the certainty to have such a loanword, or the direction of the borrrowing, is not that clear).
(another post is following)
How do you explain the following extracts from that article?...
ReplyDeleteThat India has a separate but independent agriculture and domestication of animal that in west Asia. The zebu, the goat, the chicken, the pig, the cow, barley, rice, are all separate and independent centers of domestication. African Zebu have Indian lineages.Whats more striking is the pattern of mice and rats along with human migration, out of india.
j2 Within India, its presence is more in the Dravidian population than the north Indian population. Its branch J2b has an age of about 14,000 years back in India.
Recent archaeological findings from Ganga Valley, we have the oldest Pottery Neolithic site of the world, have started in India about 13,000 ybp to 14,000 ybp. Migration of Indian male lineage J2b from northern Ganga Valley to West Asia (13,800 years back) coincides with that.Mice reached the Eastern Mediterranean basin in about 10,000 ybp.The route map of mice migration as mapped by the geneticists is exactly the same as that of human migration.
On the basis of a large study (Sahoo et al , 2006, p. 845), “The perennial concept of people, language, and agriculture arriving to India together through the northwest corridor does not hold up to close scrutiny. Recent claims for a linkage of haplogroups J2, L, R1a, and R2 with a contemporaneous origin for the majority of the Indian castes’ paternal lineages from outside the subcontinent are rejected.They found that R2, H and F* are Indian in origin, and it is from India that they have migrated to Central Asia.
J2 (M172) lineage has been studied in India in detail. Its frequency is 19% in Dravidian speaking castes, only 11% in Aryan speaking castes.Among the tribes, its frequency is 11%.Hence its arrival through northwest Indian corridor into India is ruled out.
Sengupta and colleagues (2006) found that age of J2b (M12), which is a branch of J2, is about 17,600 years to 10,000 years (mean age 13,800 years) in India. On the other hand the same figures for Europe for J2 were only 8,700 years and 4,300 years (mean 6,500 years).
That means age of J2b, a descendant of J2, in West Asia and Europe is further less than 6500years. The date of J2b expansion in India is thus much before the supposed date of onset of farming into India.
END OF PART1
Ashraf, Anatolian Greeks are geographically between Balkan Greeks and Armenians, so they should also be genetically somewhere between Balkan Greeks and Armenians. The Dodecad Greeks (who are presumably mostly or totally Balkan Greeks) have a significant amount of North European component, and Anatolian Greeks should be somewhere between Balkan Greeks and Armenians in their amount of North European component, just like Turks, who are also geographically between Balkan Greeks and Armenians. Besides, it seems to me that Anatolian Greeks are predominantly descended from Anatolian IE speakers and Phrygians, and it is fairly clear from history and geography that they are much less descended from Armenians than they are descended from Anatolian IE speakers and Phrygians.
ReplyDeleteThanks for clarifications
ReplyDeleteFor technical reasons the first part of the 2 older comments were not posted here them (in 2 parts)
For example chaldiran with an elevation of 1986 m scored as low as -46 by 1990 even if it's as southern as 37°N wich is the same latitude as sevilla in spain and catania in italy
I and R1b could not be linked with IE disperal they are rather vasco-etrusco-raeto-pelasgo markers
by the time of IE expansion only advancing of farmers peacefully colonizing empty lands (after retreat of ice sheets in europe and after epidemies in south asia) can explain the IE expansion and impossibly a bunch of steppe riders that afford to IE'ize the very well populated anatolia, europe and india=>such claim is also not correct as proven by genetics and the absence of north and south european input in anatolia iran and india (north european for anatolia-iran&south european+north european in india and south indian aryans, not taking into the north european input in anatolia that was the result of balkanian and caucasian muslim refugees)
mr daro, IE cognates often dont match with same reflexes and the phonetic gap could be very great as well
ReplyDeletemr bmdriver
afaik there is no presence of typical Indian mt-DNA in europe
mr wagg for the beaver
Lexemes which in some dialects (Iranian, Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, Latin,Celtic) refer to specific animals, the otter (Lutra vulgaris) and beaver (Castor /iber L.), in other dialects (Hittite, Greek, Armenian, Indo-Aryan) mean 'water animal' in general and often have ritual and/or cultic significance. These ritually significant water animals are named descriptively, as ' water dogs' or with derivatives from *wot'or- ' water' . A Hittite rendition of a Hurrian myth about a water monster Hedammu relates how it devoured ' stream dogs ', ID-as UR.ZIRijI.A (the same passage contains the analogously constructed IKU -as KU 6ijl.A ' field fish ' , apparently ' lizards The reference is evidently to a small water-dwelling mammal,
which is compared to a dog. In Greek, a derivative of the Indo-European word for ' water' refers to a water monster: hUdros ' Hydra' with the later attested feminine hUdrii 'water snake' . In Sanskrit a derivative of the same root, udra - , means 'water animal' ; it is clearly a substantivized adjective meaning 'pertaining to water' (cf. Vedic an-udra- 'waterless ').
Reference specifically to otters (Lutra vulgaris) is attested in Waigali wacak'ok ' otter' Avest. udra-, Oss. wyrd, urdre,448 Volume Two, Chapter Two Russ. vydra, Lith. iidra, OPruss. udro, OHG ottar, Oleel. otr, i.e. in the IranianBalto-Slavic-Germanic dialect area. It is evidently a semantic innovation of this
dialect group, shared by Iranian but not Indic. It is interesting that there is also a word specifically meaning 'beaver' (Castor fiber) in the same set of dialects plus Italic and Celtic, while the group of dialects that lack 'otter' also lack 'beaver'.
The Common Indo-European word for 'beaver' , *bhibher - *bhebher, preserves an original meaning 'brown' or ' shiny' in some of the dialects which lack it in the meaning 'beaver' . The word is attested in the Rigveda in the sense ' redbrown' (of horses, cows, gods, plants), Ved. babhru-; in Mitannian Aryan bapru-nnu is a horse color the nonreduplicated
cognate is a horse color term in Slavic: Pol. brony 'bay' , OCzech brony 'white ' , ORuss. bronyi 'white ' . In later Sanskrit the term refers to a specific animal, the ichneumon (Herpestes ichneumon, a long-tailed species of mongoose that kills otters and mice). In Greek the non-reduplicated cognate means ' toad ' , which is consistent with the meaning of Old Prussian brunse 'roach; small fish' , Lith. dial. brunse
In the other dialect group the same root, in reduplicated form, means 'beaver' : Av. bawra-, bawri-, Lith. bebruslblbras, OPruss. bebrus, Russ. bober,OHG bibar (Ger. Biber), OE beofor (Engl. beaver), OIcel. bjorr, Lat. fiber,
OBret. beuer 'fiber', 'castor'47
Somehow, two of my posts didn't show up. I repost them.
ReplyDelete@ Ashraf :
"I am speaking of the Behar study, the tiny north european amongst anatolians and iranians is most likely a legacy of migration of caucasian muslims"
You don't know that. Given the numbers of studies that hint to some quite visible caucasoid input (some clearly typically in an "european" component. The Pashtuns always seem to score high in this component, which seems logical), I think differently than you. Here are a few :
This one I already provided
This one from G. Chaubey et al, 2010
And that one too seems to go in the same direction (the picture is self-explanatory)
Also I'll add this Indian study : http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123246659/abstract
which claims that "(...) suggest a genetic proximity among the selected populations. The results also indicate a major genetic contribution from Eurasia to North Indian upper castes, apart from the common genetic unity of Indian populations. ".
And among the foreign populations that are the closest to the north indian higher castes in the studied characteristic are the Chuvash (nowadays Turkic but clearly largely autochthonous caucasoid by autosomal estimates and haplogroups), then the Finns and then the Russians, which happens to be populations that lives in - or close to - the proto-indo-iranian location of origin according to several specialists : the Abashevo culture (located in Russia, west of the Urals and north of the Pontic steppes).
It could possibly be a hint that a big chunk of the first R1a1a high cast members of north India had their ancient origins roughly from that region (then mixed with locals through the milleniums). I don't know.
Also we have to consider the fact the specific mutation for lactase persistence typical of Europeans is found in (mostly in the north-west of) south Asia (Even though on the map I've seen (map of Predicted Old World LP phenotype frequencies based on -13,910 C>T allele frequency data), r1b1b2 and r1b1a (V88) also seem to be carrier of this mutation (and in north Africa mostly as a result of the presence of mtDNA hg H, I assume. I also assume that its (low) presence in the north-eastern and northern Asia has something to do with some old "caucasoid" input (clearly visible in some of those populations like the Nenets and even up to the Yakuts))).
@ bmdriver : Whatever. I dislike being in endless comments battle on blogs. The readers will read your links and get their own opinions.
@ Ashraf :
ReplyDelete"If you look at Behar graphes you would see that amongst south indians there is only west asian as caucasoid component."
South Indians? so what? ... Do you mean south Asians? I've seen contradicting data (as posted previously), so...
"west asian component lacking sardinians+east iberians+vasconians/aquitanians are or were non IE speaking wich is a strong clue."
I don't think it's such a big deal.
"In the other dialect group the same root, in reduplicated form, means 'beaver' (...) This is apparently an innovation, one having to do with the particular ecological environment inhabited by speakers of these dialects"
No demonstration.
Everywhere it meant "beaver" except in Indo-iranian. The simplest explanation : it did mean beaver and the indo-iranian are the ones that adapted their vocabulary to their new environment when they went down south on the map.
"With the appearance of bronze, known in Southwest and Southeast Asia from the fourth millennium on"
Out of date : On the Origins of Extractive Metallurgy: New evidence from Europe
Anyway, unless I missed something, my points still stand (but that point is probably not really decisive. but I think it's odd and doesn't support the Indo-iranian J2 farmers theory either, IMO).
"The earliest evidence for wheeled wagons and chariots comes from the Near East (Childe 195 1 , 1 954; Piggott 1968, 1969, 1974)"
AFAIk, it's incorrect both for two-spoke-wheeled chariots (oldest so far are on the steppes, about 2,000 BC) and concerning the wagons (they are 2 different things *), it's not as clear as it seemed at this time (1956-1974). As for the domestication of the horse in south-west Asia, AFAIk the experts don't agree at all with this view (infomations available on the web), that's at least what I've read.
* Wagon/cart doesn't imply horses (more likely oxen and donkeys).
Fast bronze age two-spoke-wheeled battle/prestige chariots on the other hand...
@ eurologist :
"As to the vocabulary, it looks to me at least as close to proto-Germanic as to proto-Slavic, if not closer (for example, mälk for "to milk": German: melk(en); ko/keu for cow: old German: Kou/Koe, etc.)."
Closer to proto-germanic than to proto-slavic ? I don't know.
for instance, Tocharian A täpärk (now) looks a lot like Russian teper', Tocharian wrauña (crow) looks a lot like Russian voron...
I'm not so sure we can associate Tocharian very specifically with particuliar west IE languages, actually.
IMHO, proto-Tocharian could simply be roughly associated with the time of PIE (let's not forget that if the "would-be proto-Tocharian language" arrived in south Siberia around 3,500 BCE, it evolved for 4,000 yrs before the known tocharian languages, as the first written attestations are from about 500 AD IIRC), maybe as a peripheral dialect directly sprung from it though, hence the resemblance with many IE languages such as Hittite but also most of the European IE languages (for instance, we have tocharian B yakwe (horse), rather close to archaic latin which was, I believe, equos (i.e. ekwos), but, for this word, germanic and Slavic are either not related (germanic (even though old English eoh maybe?)) or seem more distant (russian kon').
It's a bit as if Tocharian had similarities with a bit of all the non-indo-iranian languages (in which the similarities are generally less striking apparently, except for some indo-iranian loanwords IIRC (we know that some Indo-iranians migrated in the Tarim : the Khotanese language was a saka language (eastern indo-iranian family))).
mr onur, may I have some objections
ReplyDeleteturks made their way to anatolia as late as 11 th century yet the turkic input is widespread amongst anatolian turks and similarly we can assume balkan+circassian refugees be behind the widespread north european (and similar scenarii for india and iran)
afaik south european component is missing in india
I think hurro-urartean in anatolia was the result of 2 caucasic folks intrusion into anatolia and armenians dont stem from them and indeed north european+south european component in anatolia being widespread could be explained by hattic hurrian then urartean intrusion from the caucasus
north european+south european in Iran could be explained by european scythians+varangians+slavs+georgians+circassians etc...
north europen in india could be also explained by european scythians as well as tocharians
afaik armenians were widespread throughout anatolia in (lowland) regions such as cilicia
we can assume balkan+circassian refugees be behind the widespread north european (and similar scenarii for india and iran)
ReplyDeleteI have already made my objection to this argument, so won't reiterate it.
afaik south european component is missing in india
Largely so, yes. That is why I wrote, "and partially, in India" in my above comment.
afaik armenians were widespread throughout anatolia in (lowland) regions such as cilicia
The question to be asked is when. Armenian presence in Anatolia proper (territories west of Euphrates) is almost totally limited in territory and time to the Christian and Islamic eras of Anatolia (as a result of migrations from the Armenian Highlands), before that, they almost totally lived in the Armenian Highlands as a relatively isolated mountain population (actually a collection of loosely connected tribes), which largely didn't participate in the high civilization of the Hellenic states and the Roman Empire. Their number in Anatolia proper especially increased in the Islamic Anatolia proper with increasing migrations from the Armenian Highlands to Anatolia proper. Because of their religiously low status in both Byzantine and the Islamic states (including the Ottoman Empire), they must have received extremely low genetic input from groups like Muslims and Greeks even when they were in Anatolia proper, but Greeks and especially Muslims (peaking in the Muslims of the Armenian Highlands) must have received much more genetic input from Armenians compared to that as they were the religiously and politically privileged groups in Byzantine and the Islamic states respectively unlike Armenians.
to ash-raf :
ReplyDelete- "the absence of north and south european input in anatolia iran and india"
Are you kidding? The European input is quite visible even if rather at low level (even in north-west India). Besides, the mutation for lactase persistence typical of Europeans (-13,910 C>T allele) is found in south Asia (and also in Anatolia even if at low level).
- about metallurgy coming from west Asia : here's some food for thoughts : On the Origins of Extractive Metallurgy: New evidence from Europe
- about wagons and chariots : these two things are different. The first two-spoke-wheeled chariot is found on the steppes around 2,000 BC. And even about wagon/carts AFAIK it's not as clear as it seemed in 1956-1974.
- about the horse domestication : AFAIK, most of the specialists exclude west Asia as the source of it.
- About beaver : These words meant beaver everywhere except among indo-iranians so I think it's more logical to think they are the ones that adapted the word to their new environment when they went south.
@ pietrink : AFAIK "beaver" is found in Celtic -> Gaulish : bebros.
Waggg,
ReplyDeleteCloser to proto-germanic than to proto-slavic ? I don't know.
for instance, Tocharian A täpärk (now) looks a lot like Russian teper', Tocharian wrauña (crow) looks a lot like Russian voron...
Yet, the latter still looks close to P.Gmc. *khrabanas (Engl.: raven, German: Rabe).
I'm not so sure we can associate Tocharian very specifically with particuliar west IE languages, actually. ... It's a bit as if Tocharian had similarities with a bit of all the non-indo-iranian languages
I generally agree with you. Surely part of the explanation is Tocharian's old age, but another is the known rule of vocabulary and pronunciation change: the more a word is used, the less it changes. There were no native horses left in central/northern Europe, so the word for horse by necessity must be a rather late "loan" word there (from another, presumably eastern steppe IE). Moreover, horses in central and northern Europe were very expensive to keep and very rare until Roman times, which can explain why you would get a proliferation of related names and words with slightly different meanings, originating from the "guild" of the few specialized horse handlers (e.g., German: Pferd, Hengst, Stute, Wallach, Fohlen, Gaul, Ross, Maehre,...; a religious taboo could also have been in place). It is widely accepted that the Germanic analog *ẖéčos of ekwo simply died out >~2,000 years ago and only survived in obscure contexts, such as ehu-skalk (horse stable-boy or horse servant).
Conversely, words related to milk would have been used tens of times a day - if milk was important in the culture. Apparently, it was more important to Northern Europeans and Tocharians than to Southern Europeans, which makes sense.
@ eurologist :
ReplyDeleteOk. Maybe "horse" wasn't the best example. Let me add some other examples, then :
Toch. luks (illuminate) : latin lux (i.e. luks) meaning "light" (also close to russian luch : ray of light)
Toch. ánt, ánte (fore) : latin ante (in front of, before)
Toch. áñme (soul) : latin anim- (soul)
There's also some vocabulary quite close to some Hittite/anatolian words. A few examples :
Tocharian A kas.t, Tocharian B kest (famine) : Hittite kast-
Tocharian yam, ya, yám (to do) : Hittite aia- (to do)
Tocharian aryu (long) : Luwian ara-
Tocharian pas. (he gave) : Hittite pai- (to give)
Toch. A arki (white) : Hittite harki- (white, light-colored) or even latin ARGEntus (silver), closer to anything germanic or slavic.
For Tocharian twere (door), you do have door/tür/dør but Russian dver' seems again closer, as Tocharian B mit is closer to russian mëd than anything germanic, or Tocharian lap (skull) is also closer to slavic lob (forehead) than anything germanic as well.
I'm not saying you can't find very close words in Germanic, of course ( you also have danish okse / toch. B okso; Toch. (A and B) : (laks and läks) (fish) /Danish laks (salmon)), but I'm not so sure we can directly consider Tocharian languages as closer to specific IE european languages.
I'd rather go with the ancestor of Tocharian language being roughly from the PIE stage.
@ Eurologist :
ReplyDeleteOops. somehow I forgot about "mead" (honey wine, hydromel) and the likes. So Toch. mit (honey) is not a relevant example.
BTW tochar. B. "okso" and danish "okse" mean "ox", I forgot to mention it.
Waggg,
ReplyDeleteDon't forget I started with "As to the vocabulary, it looks to me at least as close to proto-Germanic as to proto-Slavic, if not closer." I just wanted to point out its age, and its origin at least as old as some proto-Germanic/proto-Slavic split. I totally agree with you that there are strange affinities to other IE languages that also simply point to a very early origin.
As to lux - there is the German/Germanic Licht/leuchten (PIE * leuk-"Licht, Helligkeit"). I could point to other Germanic affinities, but let us rest here, since I (I think) am of the same opinion as you are, anyway.