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New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages

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Re: New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages

#31

Post by idoubtit »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #27
Roark66 wrote: post #25

I find it fascinating modern humans are thought to have evolved 300k years ago, but we haven't got any idea what happened before last ice age. I find it hard to believe people would just "stay in Africa" prior to last ice age (120k years ago and before) when the moment climate allowed it (~10k years ago) they spread out all over the planet.

That narrative is changing. Scientists are starting to think the peopling of the americas happened a lot earlier than we previously to believed. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg7586

What is funny is that there's been a consensus for many years in Europe that Hominids arrived in America at least 30,000 years ago. There were several artefacts that made the hypothesis very plausible. But most North American scientist were vigorously opposed to it, until this recent proof that's harder to deny.

By the way, this is unrelated to the GP post which was about hominids walking out of Africa, more than 1M years before entering America.

Re: New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages

#32

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

Roark66 wrote: post #25

I find it fascinating modern humans are thought to have evolved 300k years ago, but we haven't got any idea what happened before last ice age. I find it hard to believe people would just "stay in Africa" prior to last ice age (120k years ago and before) when the moment climate allowed it (~10k years ago) they spread out all over the planet.

We know a bit more than that

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first_human_settleme...

Re: New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages

#33

Post by ninja-ninja »

As an Armenian speaker i was pretty surprised at this part

> Recent ancient DNA data suggest that the Anatolian branch of Indo-European did not emerge from the Steppe, but from further south, in or near the northern arc of the Fertile Crescent — as the earliest source of the Indo-European family. Our language family tree topology, and our lineage split dates, point to other early branches that may also have spread directly from there, not through the Steppe.”

Re: New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages

#34

Post by ledgerdev »

Roark66 wrote: post #25

I find it fascinating modern humans are thought to have evolved 300k years ago, but we haven't got any idea what happened before last ice age. I find it hard to believe people would just "stay in Africa" prior to last ice age (120k years ago and before) when the moment climate allowed it (~10k years ago) they spread out all over the planet.

You should check out Randal Carlson on Joe Rogan, and this is a very interesting video on the topic.

https://youtu.be/3qXuAzzVOTQ

Re: New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages

#35

Post by mantas »

guerrilla wrote: post #18

I'm reading Colin Renfew's (outdated) book on the Anatolian hypothesis. From what I understood, Renfew had already conceded that he was wrong* and that Maria Gimbutas was right about Steppe hypothesis (but not the matriarchal character of the pre-Indo-European cultures.) So it surprises me to see that anyone would still be taking Anatolian hypothesis seriously. Did Renfew have follows that did not give it up when he…

Regarding „matriarchal character“, what Marija Gumbutienė wrote and how postmodernist society nowadays is (mis)interpreting her writing is very different. It wasn't „matriarchal“ as in ruled-by-women. Instead, those societies were glorifying maternity (and women) through and through.

Which is funny when modern feminists try to glorify Gimbutienė and those societies. While doing exactly opposite to what those societies were doing.

Re: New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages

#36

Post by mrangle »

guerrilla wrote: post #18

I'm reading Colin Renfew's (outdated) book on the Anatolian hypothesis. From what I understood, Renfew had already conceded that he was wrong* and that Maria Gimbutas was right about Steppe hypothesis (but not the matriarchal character of the pre-Indo-European cultures.) So it surprises me to see that anyone would still be taking Anatolian hypothesis seriously. Did Renfew have follows that did not give it up when he…

The key to clickbait articles is not to provide one click access to methodology, if any at all.

Re: New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages

#37

Post by thaumasiotes »

sdiq wrote: post #26
thaumasiotes wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can change their language. Hungary and Turkey speak the languages of conquerors who have left very little genetic trace. (France is in a similar position!) Many Ethiopians speak a Semitic language (Amharic) for reasons unknown to us. Yiddish is a Germanic language spoken by a non-Germanic people. The Chinese of Thailand often cannot speak any Chinese (they speak Thai). I assume the argument here is that if you…

>Many Ethiopians speak a Semitic language (Amharic) for reasons unknown to us. Amharic isn't the only Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia. We have other Semitic languages spoken both in Ethiopia and Eritrea. It is just the Red Sea that divides these two countries from the other Semitic speaking countries. Yemen, across the sea has other Semitic languages other than Arabic. Also, just like Indo-European is a large gro…

The fact remains that you would not expect to see black Africans speaking any Afroasiatic language without some kind of significant cultural shock. The reason those languages are in Ethiopia ( / Nigeria / etc. ) today is not that Ethiopia is populated by the descendants of an originally afroasiatic group. Something must have happened.

Re: New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages

#38

Post by thaumasiotes »

bradrn wrote: post #28
alephnerd wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is correct, but because this is HN, I'm going to be ridiculously pedantic and correct 2 statements in your example. > The Chinese of Thailand often cannot speak any Chinese (they speak Thai) That was because of forced assimilation in the 1930s-50s by their proto-Fascist dictator. > Yiddish is a Germanic language spoken by a non-Germanic people Because there was plenty of intermarriage and the community was…

I think that is their point. Languages often spread by processes unrelated to genetics.

In the case of Thailand, the same political forces pressured the Chinese into intermarrying with the Thai, so genetics do come into play. But a clean victory was won over language; that didn't happen with genetics.

Re: New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages

#39

Post by tgv »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #29
bigbillheck wrote: post #23

Language Log had a post on this https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=59908 and their commentariat seems unimpressed. Linguist Andrew Garrett had some tweets about that: https://twitter.com/ndyjroo/status/1684636445854875648 and, for traditionalists, was quoted in an article: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-indo-european... The paper hasn't made it to sci-hub yet (at least not the one I checked) but…

Haven't read the articles or papers yet, but I am really skeptical of the kind of statistical inferences talked about in the article -- "we were able to prove Romance from Latin using our model, so using the same model we got #..." ; it seems to me this kind of thing assumes they can project a model of language mutation built from data out of the iron age back to neolithic, which is... a really giant assumption. I'd…

That's been my problem with this approach too. It's an arbitrary model, fitted onto very limited data that doesn't generalize, under the very assumption that they all derive from a common root. I'm totally willing to accept that the language and DNA models can be thought of as complementing each other, but any conclusion stronger than "perhaps (almost) all European languages have a common origin" remains speculative. And that's not a very interesting conclusion.

Re: New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages

#40

Post by canjobear »

alephnerd wrote: post #24
thaumasiotes wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can change their language. Hungary and Turkey speak the languages of conquerors who have left very little genetic trace. (France is in a similar position!) Many Ethiopians speak a Semitic language (Amharic) for reasons unknown to us. Yiddish is a Germanic language spoken by a non-Germanic people. The Chinese of Thailand often cannot speak any Chinese (they speak Thai). I assume the argument here is that if you…

Your point is correct, but because this is HN, I'm going to be ridiculously pedantic and correct 2 statements in your example. > The Chinese of Thailand often cannot speak any Chinese (they speak Thai) That was because of forced assimilation in the 1930s-50s by their proto-Fascist dictator. > Yiddish is a Germanic language spoken by a non-Germanic people Because there was plenty of intermarriage and the community was…

These seem like explanations, not corrections?
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