tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post6091042766602192066..comments2024-01-04T04:11:55.717+02:00Comments on Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog: Indo-Europeans galoreDienekeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02082684850093948970noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-84696940482663551052014-07-31T09:32:22.360+03:002014-07-31T09:32:22.360+03:00Fascinating. My own Y-Chromosome came from Anatoli...Fascinating. My own Y-Chromosome came from Anatolia by way of Crete, and a consensus is emerging that the Minoans spoke an Indo-Europan language. Which means we must have spoken one when we arrived.<br /><br />I don't think PIE came from Central Asia at all. I think it's Anatolian.Pneumatikonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05135543740306228320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-9901102815686143642013-04-01T23:18:20.518+03:002013-04-01T23:18:20.518+03:00Based of R1b1 maps, which concentrate in e. turkey...Based of R1b1 maps, which concentrate in e. turkey , w. iran, and the lower caucauses, it is likely that this region is where IE's originated. The argument that it came from the steepes or europe, has long been been diffused. Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11566494589399073241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-10586856564447857712013-03-12T09:31:05.324+02:002013-03-12T09:31:05.324+02:00Aryan DID NOT SPREAD TO THE EAST from Anatolia! Pr...<i>Aryan DID NOT SPREAD TO THE EAST from Anatolia! Proto-Aryan developed in the Caspian steppes.</i><br /><br />I don't see a conflict with that. There is a huge gap in time between pre-PIE or PIE and proto-Iranian (PI), so it is actually easier to account for PI as entering from outside of the steppes. Tocharian made it far East of the Caspian - likewise pre-PI (while diverging from PII) could have moved counter-clockwise around the Caspian with plenty of time left to account for the Uralic loanword timings. Then, only later it moved back south into Iran and Afghanistan etc.eurologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03440019181278830033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-38209300073327323622013-03-11T05:48:35.017+02:002013-03-11T05:48:35.017+02:00Dienekes, remember that Aryan DID NOT SPREAD TO TH...Dienekes, remember that Aryan DID NOT SPREAD TO THE EAST from Anatolia! Proto-Aryan developed in the Caspian steppes. Anatolian hypothesis is very weak compared to the steppe hypothesis:<br />http://www.elisanet.fi/alkupera/Problems_of_phylogenetics.pdf Jaakko Häkkinenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03088022045546791438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-78127345733625960962013-02-28T20:20:59.497+02:002013-02-28T20:20:59.497+02:00Jim
If you define nomadic so strictly, then you wi...Jim<br />If you define nomadic so strictly, then you will find them really rare. It is a continuum.<br />Simple transhumance was what some of our people did just a few hundred years ago, even my Grandmother still had stories about the Summer camp of our village's cattle herders (though probably she just heard them too). IX. century Hungarians were more nomadic, though not fully nomadic if we use a very strict definition. <br />(The point is, I did not mean simple transhumance, when I said they were semi-nomadic.)<br /><br />Slumberyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05139930329199925111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-91476825453957541112013-02-28T19:30:23.102+02:002013-02-28T19:30:23.102+02:00"transhumance is a form of _pastoralism_ &quo..."transhumance is a form of _pastoralism_ "<br /><br />It may formally be called transhumance, but there is a non-pastoral form of something that looks a lot like transhumance. In Califonia proper and the Mojave Desert foragers used to go back and forth over their territoy seasonally as different plant foods came inot season. In th Mojave for instnace people used to go between the desert floor in winter to the mountain meadows in summer. <br /><br />"According to Kazhanov, transhumance is not true nomadism (? so maybe not a form of it either). "<br /><br />Makes sense to me and he damned sure knows more about than I do, whoever he is; you have to draw the definitional lines somewhere.Jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07187836541591828806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-45439172462884400642013-02-28T12:54:29.548+02:002013-02-28T12:54:29.548+02:00"transhumance is a form of _pastoralism_ and ..."transhumance is a form of _pastoralism_ and nomadism is also a form of pastoralism"<br /><br /><br />According to Kazhanov, transhumance is not true nomadism (? so maybe not a form of it either). Robhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07166839601638241857noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-48654857461017853642013-02-28T02:50:35.028+02:002013-02-28T02:50:35.028+02:00transhumance is a form of _pastoralism_ and nomadi...transhumance is a form of _pastoralism_ and nomadism is also a form of pastoralism.Dienekeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02082684850093948970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-22260888952401619782013-02-28T00:19:06.415+02:002013-02-28T00:19:06.415+02:00Right, Slumberry, transhumance is a form of nomadi...Right, Slumberry, transhumance is a form of nomadism. But it has nothing to do with long range migration.Jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07187836541591828806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-27264409074782494032013-02-27T21:39:02.378+02:002013-02-27T21:39:02.378+02:00Jim
IX-X. century Hungarians were cattle herders ...Jim<br /><br />IX-X. century Hungarians were cattle herders and they were pretty much considered to be something like semi-nomads. <br /><br />On the other topic I completely agree with you. People do not need to be nomads or to have horses to migrate long distances.Slumberyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05139930329199925111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-72932623370446677612013-02-27T20:03:15.667+02:002013-02-27T20:03:15.667+02:00Eurologist,
There may be some transhumance in the...Eurologist,<br /><br />There may be some transhumance in the Sudan, don't know, but I have never heard of any in Kenya and Tanzania. And that could still be wrong too.<br /><br />Texas - you are probably referring to the cattle drives. For one thing, those drives were not about raising the acttle, not really a lifestyle, but simply taking them to market. Typically the ranchers who raised the cattle were not the people who drove them. So it was pretty much divorced from the pastoralism of the ranch. <br /><br />And the other thing is that cattle pastoralism, both in Europe and Africa, revolves around dairying. Texas cattle were only for beef, and in the early years, pretty stringy, low-quality beef from half-wild Texas longhorn cattle. Considering that these cattle ranged free foorm any human supervision or care for periods of months, the term pastroalism itself almost doesn't really apply.Jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07187836541591828806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-25401805055860303962013-02-27T18:23:26.380+02:002013-02-27T18:23:26.380+02:00"The identification of the people who lived i..."The identification of the people who lived in the Tarim basin 2000 BCE with the historical Tocharians of 2+ ky later is pure conjecture."<br /><br />The identification of the people who lived in the Tarim basin of 2000 BCE with those ca. 600 CE when the Uygurs overwhelmed them in a manner resulting in ethnocide (i.e. demise of their culture without necessarily involving genocidal killing) is supported by multiple factors:<br /><br />1. Continuity in ancient DNA from varied time periods in Tarim mummies.<br />2. Continuity in physical anthropology in preserved remains.<br />3. Discontinuity in physical anthropology between the late Tarim basin peoples and the neighboring Indo-Iranians.<br />4. Continuity in the Tarim basin material culture.<br />5. The lack of evidence of more than one round of admixture of the current population genetics of the admixed East Eurasian-West Eurasian population of the region today.<br />6. The lack of linguistic affinity between the Tocharian languages at the time that they were first committed to writing and the Indo-Iranian languages of neighboring peoples like the Sythians.<br /><br />The continuity hypothesis is supported by considerably more than mere conjecture, even if it isn't established beyond any reasonable doubt.andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08172964121659914379noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-71379993796930537722013-02-27T14:31:54.110+02:002013-02-27T14:31:54.110+02:00all current models are incorrect. Maybe something ...all current models are incorrect. Maybe something is in the pipeline which will solve the outstanding issues . . . Robhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07166839601638241857noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-52337811702598328532013-02-27T12:57:44.128+02:002013-02-27T12:57:44.128+02:00I can't think of one other instance where catt...<i>I can't think of one other instance where cattle-based pastoralism is nomadic.</i><br /><br />Jim,<br /><br />Africa, perhaps? Or early Texans? At least, they drove their cattle to far-away train stations at (hopefully) minimal loss.<br /><br />Half a century ago, when I was younger, older people would still try to bring kids to order by exclaiming: "Ich schick' Dich in die Wallachei! - " roughly translated as "I'll send you to Valachia."<br /><br />The connotation being, a region that sold out to Rome but did not benefit even in a couple of millennia, or a troubled region not too far from our door-steps, but one I could actually manage to send you to. eurologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03440019181278830033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-27639677707118665902013-02-27T09:41:23.869+02:002013-02-27T09:41:23.869+02:00It is similar to speaking of Slavs or Vlachs in th...<i>It is similar to speaking of Slavs or Vlachs in the Balkans during antiquity just because there are Slavs and Vlachs who live there at present.</i><br /><br />As Onur alluded to, the name "Vlach" is of Germanic origin and originally designated peoples who had "sold out" to the Romans, but soon (in <i>that</i> form, rather than the related "Welsh") came to mean specifically the inhabitants of southern Romania and nearby Romanian-speaking populations - i.e., since antiquity.<br /><br />Given linguistic (and cultural) continuation, there surely is also a lot of genetic continuation.eurologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03440019181278830033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-1648507064573588462013-02-27T00:35:49.851+02:002013-02-27T00:35:49.851+02:00It is similar to speaking of Slavs or Vlachs in th...<i>It is similar to speaking of Slavs or Vlachs in the Balkans during antiquity just because there are Slavs and Vlachs who live there at present.</i><br /><br />Vlach is originally an exonym used to designate the Romance-speaking populations of the Balkans and the adjacent regions to the north. Those who are called Vlachs by foreigners have used words derived from the word Romanus to designate themselves ever since the Antiquity. They are ethno-linguistically remnants of the Ancient Roman Empire and are in no way post-Antiquity peoples in the Balkans and the adjacent regions to the north. Onur Dincerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05041378853428912894noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-32721370725412286722013-02-26T20:23:28.038+02:002013-02-26T20:23:28.038+02:00while the Tocharians appears in the Tarim basin ca...<i>while the Tocharians appears in the Tarim basin ca. 2000 BCE</i><br /><br />The identification of the people who lived in the Tarim basin 2000 BCE with the historical Tocharians of 2+ ky later is pure conjecture.<br /><br />It is similar to speaking of Slavs or Vlachs in the Balkans during antiquity just because there are Slavs and Vlachs who live there at present.Dienekeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02082684850093948970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-90028921720595770832013-02-26T20:09:25.605+02:002013-02-26T20:09:25.605+02:00I re-phrase it: "There was no such thing as n... I re-phrase it: "There was no such thing as nomadic pastoralism until Iron Age and Scythians".<br /><br />I wonder about this. It's probably true. Certinaly horse and charot warfare is older than the Iron Age, and the IE speakers pretty much invented that. But everything from points to cattle-based pastoralism and maybe horse pastoralism with them, and I can't think of one other instance where cattle-based pastoralism is nomadic. I don't know what that is, or why it would be.Jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07187836541591828806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-63321869389579162562013-02-26T19:22:37.030+02:002013-02-26T19:22:37.030+02:00"A bigger problem, to my mind, is the date An..."A bigger problem, to my mind, is the date Anthony is claiming for a Tocharian--Early-PIE split. 3300 BCE."<br /><br />The case for this kind of date is laid out by J.P. Mallory in his book on the Tarim mummies. In a nutshell, while the Tocharians appears in the Tarim basin ca. 2000 BCE (and are genetically and in terms of physical anthropology similar to peoples of the European Steppe rather than East Eurasian), their material culture suggests that this last leg of their migration was from an archaelogical culture to the north of the Tarim basin which they show strong continuity with, and that culture had a continuous presence there until ca. 3000 BCE to 3300 BCE. Hence, the long migration from Europe would have had to have taken place around 3300 BCE to 3500 BCE. This is one of the most solid constraints on the minimum age of PIE. But, since Tocharian had no substrate to assimilate because it was moving into basically virgin territory and was a fairly modest sized population isolated from other linguistic communities for a long time, we would expect it to be the most conservative of the Indo-European languages relative to PIE much like Icelandic, in similar circumstances, is the most conservative of the Germanic language relative to Old Norse.<br /><br />Computational linguistic methods make conservative languages with low rates of linguistic change like Tocharian look relatively young compared to their real age and make languages that would have been under great pressure due to substrate influence, areal linguistic pressures and rapid societal change like the Anatolian populations look older than they really are by these methods.andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08172964121659914379noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-48590634200736345112013-02-26T12:21:53.272+02:002013-02-26T12:21:53.272+02:00Va_Highlander said...
"I suspect you'll b... Va_Highlander said...<br />"I suspect you'll be hard pressed to find Scythians/Sakas as such 5,000 years ago. The Scythians were an Iron-Age phenomenon, not Chalcolithic."<br /><br />That's my point, actually. I re-phrase it: "There was no such thing as nomadic pastoralism until Iron Age and Scythians".<br /><br />I can't imagine Don-Dnieper pig-breeders being Nomads.Valikhanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13866507134402028463noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-11611427148980037882013-02-26T01:33:37.225+02:002013-02-26T01:33:37.225+02:00"3300 BCE is centuries before significant nom..."3300 BCE is centuries before significant nomadic pastoralism appeared on the Eurasian steppe"<br /><br />That's actually the point. There was no-one to stop them.Greyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13398462488549380796noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-67177410082331023122013-02-26T01:32:11.852+02:002013-02-26T01:32:11.852+02:00Va
"You are still perversely imagining farmer...Va<br />"You are still perversely imagining farmers and nomadic pastoralists on the Eurasian steppe 5,300 years ago, despite having no empirical evidence supporting such a claim."<br /><br />Nope.<br /><br />When the first farmers expanded out in various directions from the original start point sooner or later a group of them would have hit the steppe at a point in time before the steppe was heavily populated.<br /><br />1) At that moment in time the steppe would have been an open road.<br /><br />2) They wouldn't have known how far away a good spot to settle was.<br /><br />I'm talking about a Volkwanderung - nothing to do with nomadic pastoralism and how long would a migration to the Tocharian region have taken in those circumstances, 3-5 years?<br /><br />It's just an idea but i think it's a plausible way of getting non-nomadic Tocharians across the steppe.Greyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13398462488549380796noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-46751018926941873162013-02-25T20:10:22.411+02:002013-02-25T20:10:22.411+02:003300 BCE is centuries before significant nomadic p... 3300 BCE is centuries before significant nomadic pastoralism appeared on the Eurasian steppe. If they weren't nomadic, why did the forbears of the Afanasevo culture migrate, on foot no less, some thousands of kilometers to the east? "<br /><br />Va_Highlander, it worked for the Apacheans - the Navajo and Apeaches. They got all the way form Alberta to New Mexico and Arizona wihtout horses. Nomadism doesn't have to be pastoral. <br /><br />"Over thousands of kilometers? Are you serious?"<br /><br />Well, yeah. "Thousands of kilometers" is not some impossible distance.Jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07187836541591828806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-19753842684737750792013-02-25T18:18:10.292+02:002013-02-25T18:18:10.292+02:00@Valikhan: "Even more. Because the first ever...@Valikhan: <i>"Even more. Because the first ever NOMADIC pastoralists where Scythians/Sakas."</i><br /><br />I suspect you'll be hard pressed to find Scythians/Sakas as such 5,000 years ago. The Scythians were an Iron-Age phenomenon, not Chalcolithic. Nomadic pastoralism developed gradually during the Bronze Age between the Don and Volga and the Irtysh and Yenisei rivers. It seems unlikely that it was just one, specific group of people.<br /><br />@Grey: <i>"Yes. There is no difference between that and Polynesians getting on a boat and picking a random direction to sail in."</i><br /><br />There are very significant and obvious differences. The Polynesians actually had a means of transport, were already a seafaring people, and, if their population was growing on limited land, had a plausible motive for migration. Since these are precisely the points at issue, it is extremely difficult to see your analogy as even remotely appropriate.<br /><br /><i>"I'm talking about a group of farmers and sheep herders who set out onto the steppe looking for a good spot to settle but don't find one until they hit the other end."</i><br /><br />Actually, no, with all due respect you're talking about fantasies in your head. You have already admitted that you cannot point to a sheep-herding culture expanding eastward in the fourth millennium BCE. You are still perversely imagining farmers and nomadic pastoralists on the Eurasian steppe 5,300 years ago, despite having no empirical evidence supporting such a claim. And you have yet to acknowledge that there were actual farmers and sheep herders already living in western Central Asia at the time.Va_Highlanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04671547664669092756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-78417167966277170332013-02-25T10:13:37.331+02:002013-02-25T10:13:37.331+02:00Davidski said-
''I think only a massive st...Davidski said-<br />''I think only a massive study on the SNP structure within R1a will finally show us what we all want to see.<br /><br />Things are looking great at the moment, with all the subclades fitting a post-Neolithic expansion of R1a1a from Europe to the east and southeast. But of course we need a formal paper to show this.''<br />We just need the aDNA of you know which Harappan site to clear everything.Nirjhar007https://www.blogger.com/profile/12880827026479135118noreply@blogger.com