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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

#51

Post by AlotOfReading »

idoubtit wrote: post #31
kjkjadksj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well that's certainly one hell of a claim. It's one I feel like I should know about considering I've worked with European researchers on human presence in the arctic in the LGM, but I've never heard of this "consensus". Can you provide some more info?

As an aside, the white sands footprints aren't "proof". They're interesting and highly suggestive, but significant concerns remain about the quality of the dating, let alone transbering crossings in the LGM without implicating things like the sketchy refugia hypothesis. It'll be a few years before all that shakes out and we have anything approaching consensus on the matter.

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

#52

Post by guerrilla »

mantas wrote: post #35
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I'm reading Colin Renfew's (outdated) book on the Anatolian hypothesis.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 societie…

Yes, I and Renfew know that but he still disagreed with her as do many other anthropoligists.

I just read a book by a feminist, Karin Bojs, who concludes basically* what you just said but I don't think she'd appreciate your overheneralized jab at feminists.

* Her thesis is that those societies valued women's work which included pottery and textiles in addition to maternity while the later IE societies were overtly patriarchical. Personally I don't think there's enough evidence for anyone's position on this and I'm fine not knowing for now.

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

#53

Post by Ericson2314 »

lkrubner wrote: post #41
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.

At this point the argument isn't that people stayed in Africa, but that everyone outside of Africa died. At this point the 3 oldest fossils we have that look like homo sapiens are all from Morocco or the Levant or Greece, suggesting homo sapiens first evolved near the Mediterranean. But at some time between 50k and 20k years ago, all humans outside of Africa seemed to have died: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Sapiens,…

Are you saying it is less that homo sapiens out-competed the others than the ice age knocked out everyone?

How does that comport with modern humans still having some admixture from them?

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

#54

Post by CogitoCogito »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #53
lkrubner wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point the argument isn't that people stayed in Africa, but that everyone outside of Africa died. At this point the 3 oldest fossils we have that look like homo sapiens are all from Morocco or the Levant or Greece, suggesting homo sapiens first evolved near the Mediterranean. But at some time between 50k and 20k years ago, all humans outside of Africa seemed to have died: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Sapiens,…

Are you saying it is less that homo sapiens out-competed the others than the ice age knocked out everyone? How does that comport with modern humans still having some admixture from them?

Modern humans having some admixture from them doesn't contradict the idea that the ice age was the bigger problem than direct competition.

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

#55

Post by Ericson2314 »

euroderf wrote: post #46
Sharlin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nice counter-example is Finnish (and other Finno-Ugric languages) – back in the early 1900s it was argued that Finns as an ethnicity must have originated from the Urals because the language seemed to have its roots there. (Notably in the era's racial "science" this had clear racist implications.) But modern genetics have revealed that the origins of the people are quite separate from the origins of the language.

Indeed this is so, but where does one find further information online (or not online) ? Such a case where language and genetics do not align is unusual in the world, but I have read that there are a few cases. Mostly associated with conquest and/or assimilation IIRC.

This is very common. The Romans did not genocide and repopulate everywhere they conquered, for example. A lot of romance language speakers genetically contiguous with Celts and other such things.

And going back further there is evidence of genetic continuity with pre-Indo-European European populations too.

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

#56

Post by cco »

lkrubner wrote: post #41
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.

At this point the argument isn't that people stayed in Africa, but that everyone outside of Africa died. At this point the 3 oldest fossils we have that look like homo sapiens are all from Morocco or the Levant or Greece, suggesting homo sapiens first evolved near the Mediterranean. But at some time between 50k and 20k years ago, all humans outside of Africa seemed to have died: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Sapiens,…

> At this point the 3 oldest fossils we have that look like homo sapiens are all from Morocco or the Levant or Greece, suggesting homo sapiens first evolved near the Mediterranean.

This is fascinating and new to me, can you provide any articles or podcasts that discuss it?

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

#57

Post by skrebbel »

ninja-ninja wrote: post #33

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 di…

Why did that surprise you, as an Armenian speaker?

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

#58

Post by cco »

idoubtit wrote: post #31
kjkjadksj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the early 2000's my anthropology courses at a large US university presented 13kya as basically certain and that maybe up to 27kya but that the evidence was pretty early.

Perhaps there was more pushback in archeology?

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

#59

Post by Archelaos »

canjobear wrote: post #43
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…

The only substantive objection I see there is archeological-linguistic. Words related to chariot technology like “wheel” and “yoke” are cognate across IE languages, so the languages probably split after this technology was invented. But the invention seems to have happened later than 8000 BP.

Can we say something about how often a particular technological adaptation is accompanied by an adoption of the corresponding verbal expression? In other words: If the wheel has been adopted by a neighbouring community, is it not very likely that the word for it will be adopted in a linguistically similar version?

As an aside: I looked for the origine of the English "wheel" and the German "Rad", and they seem to have been different IE roots: kʷe-kʷlh₁-ó-/rót-h₂-o-[1], but the word is nevertheless often given as a example for a common IE origine. So what does scholars make so sure that the original Indo-Europeans already had the wheel? Could these words not have been derived somewhat later independently from IE roots of a somewhat different meaning, or when the area occupied by Indo-Europeans was still small via techno-lingustic transfer?

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indogermanische_Ursprache#cite...

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

#60

Post by throwaway290 »

lkrubner wrote: post #41
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.

At this point the argument isn't that people stayed in Africa, but that everyone outside of Africa died. At this point the 3 oldest fossils we have that look like homo sapiens are all from Morocco or the Levant or Greece, suggesting homo sapiens first evolved near the Mediterranean. But at some time between 50k and 20k years ago, all humans outside of Africa seemed to have died: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Sapiens,…

> It is well known that Sapiens arrived in Spain 40k years ago and that they demonstrated modern behavior: arts, music, advanced hunting tools

Anyone to whom this is complete news? How did they manage this all without wheels?

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