I'm still not convinced that they are analyzing the data in a way the correctly interprets what is going on with the Anatolians. To be clear, I'm not disputing their genetic data, only the narrative that they've employed to explain it.
The Yamnaya archaeological complex appeared around 3300 bc across the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas, and by 3000 bc it reached its maximal extent, ranging from Hungary in the west to Kazakhstan in the east. To localize Yamnaya origins among the preceding Eneolithic people, we assembled ancient DNA from 435 individuals, demonstrating three genetic clines.
A Caucasus–lower Volga (CLV) cline suffused with Caucasus hunter-gatherer ancestry extended between a Caucasus Neolithic southern end and a northern end at Berezhnovka along the lower Volga river. Bidirectional gene flow created intermediate populations, such as the north Caucasus Maikop people, and those at Remontnoye on the steppe.
The Volga cline was formed as CLV people mixed with upriver populations of Eastern hunter-gatherer ancestry, creating hypervariable groups, including one at Khvalynsk.
The Dnipro cline was formed when CLV people moved west, mixing with people with Ukraine Neolithic hunter-gatherer ancestry along the Dnipro and Don rivers to establish Serednii Stih groups, from whom Yamnaya ancestors formed around 4000 bc and grew rapidly after 3750–3350 bc.
The CLV people contributed around four-fifths of the ancestry of the Yamnaya and, entering Anatolia, probably from the east, at least one-tenth of the ancestry of Bronze Age central Anatolians, who spoke Hittite. We therefore propose that the final unity of the speakers of ‘proto-Indo-Anatolian’, the language ancestral to both Anatolian and Indo-European people, occurred in CLV people some time between 4400 bc and 4000 bc.
Iosif Lazaridis, et al, "The genetic origin of the Indo-Europeans" Nature (February 5, 2025).
Note that I blogged the pre-print of this paper in April of 2024. I haven't determined yet what, if anything, has changed since the pre-print.
Correct me if I misunderstand the timeline, but given that Hittite is attested after 2000 BCE, this sounds like a proposal that a newly diverged proto-Anatolian evolved isolated from PIE for > 2000 years. I'd like to get a linguist's take on the feasibility of Hittite retaining its IE features over such a great span of time.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the genetic description seems broadly in line with their preceding paper from last year (or was that a preprint of this one?).
You've captured my basic issue. My model of Anatolia sees Neolithic conquered by Hattic peoples from the Caucuses around 4000 BCE, and IE Hittites arriving maybe 2100-2000 BCE, but Anatolian languages experiencing a large substrate influence from the Hattic language.
ReplyDeleteAnd David and the gang are heavy in favor of a counterclockwise movement of IE people around the Black Sea with Hittites entering Antolia from the west. Of course, it's possible that both routes occurred, which gives a whole bunch of free variables to play with. Darn that social custom of burning the dead, couldn't they have been more concerned about their (remote) descendants.
ReplyDelete"Darn that social custom of burning the dead" The litmus test of the cremation of the dead as an indicator of Indo-European culture is itself, however, one of the strong hints of the timing of the arrival in Indo-Europeans in various places that Lazaridis and company don't give nearly enough credit. They also ignore the historical record which simply doesn't provide any support for the presence of Indo-Europeans or proto-Anatolian language speakers in Anatolia much before 2000 BCE.
ReplyDeleteTo Joel's point, I'm pretty sure that deep divergence between Anatolian and all other IE languages is exactly what linguistics propose. Hence only the most basic agricultural terms being shared between Anatolian and the rest of IE.
ReplyDelete"They also ignore the historical record which simply doesn't provide any support for the presence of Indo-Europeans or proto-Anatolian language speakers in Anatolia much before 2000 BCE."
Where were these Anatolian speakers in the intervening 2,000 years though? Clearly they were separated from other IE speakers for a considerable period of time already when Anatolian languages first show up in the historical record.
I'm not sure the lack of records of IE languages in Anatolia before 2,000 BCE is that meaningful either. It's not like there is much of a historical record at all in that time period for most of Anatolia.
I think there's a danger of confusing the arrival of Greek, Phyrigian and other Yamnaya-derived versions of IE to the region with the arrival of Anatolian speakers here. We know the Greeks were established on the Greek mainland by at least 1,400 BCE. The turmoil of around 2,000 BCE seems a plausible timeline for their arrival in both Southern Greece and Anatolia.
"Clearly they were separated from other IE speakers for a considerable period of time already when Anatolian languages first show up in the historical record." Not so clear. Most models of language change profoundly underestimate how much of language change is due to language contact. With respect to agricultural terms, for example, one could look at the parallel in the English language where animal names mostly track the Germanic Old English substrate, but parallel food names from particular animals mostly track the French origins of the elites who could afford to buy and eat meat. Anatolians were an elite superstrate with a much more healthy substrate than what almost all other IE conquerors encountered.
ReplyDelete