Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

hms.harvard.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 188 posts

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#121

Post by biorach »

never_inline wrote: post #106
biorach wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> popular science and journalism has not done any favours by framing the IE studies as "The Aryans brought the Vedas with them from Europe", I don't believe any reputable journalist or popular science publication has pushed that view in recent decades. Please post links if you have them

How do you define "reputable"? People don't only read reputable media. If you take left leaning publications in English, I bet you can still find some subtle variation of this written by average journalist with only pop-sci level understanding of the topic. The current gen of journalists and teachers have learned from previous gen of books and media, which obviously oversimplified this and also had various political…

So.. No links eh?

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#122

Post by wqaatwt »

kragen wrote: post #71
macleginn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the recent palaeo-DNA data suggest a horribly massive process of genetic replacement of the local population by the new arrivals. This process is of course very uneven -- e.g., the population of Ireland seems to have mostly shifted to a new IE language -- but in some cases the change was drastic. Moreover, in some parts of Europe this seems to have happened several times, with first agriculturalists replacing loc…

The Rig Veda is only 3000–3500 years old, contrary to folk traditions holding it to be much older. The Yamnaya culture is 5300 years old and only lasted 700 years. When the oldest parts of the Rig Veda were composed (and they are, incidentally, about the proper way to praise the gods, not about historical events) the Yamnaya culture had died about 1100 years ago. Those 1100 years included a lot of warfare, mostly nom…

> events in early 10th century France

Were there such events?

> How much effort do

Not a lot. Since they don’t need to because of writing. As far as we can tell non-literate societies put in massively more effort into preserving oral traditions.

Of course it’s debatable but there is some evidence that oral knowledge can be preserved for thousands of years.

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#123

Post by wqaatwt »

kragen wrote: post #108
philwelch wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s not so much that the Rigveda by itself gives us a direct insight into Proto-Indo-European culture, but rather that if we compare it to Western texts it can help us reconstruct elements of a shared ancestral culture, or at least a shared ancestral language (from which we can perhaps infer something about culture).

Certainly. But what I was commenting on was the claim that, because "there are basically no migration stories in _any_ indo-european mythological cycles or oral traditions," we can conclude, "migration or invasion (...) was a gradual process that wouldn't have been particularly noticeable in any one life time." I don't think that conclusion is justified.

> we can conclude, "migration or invasion (...) was a gradual process that wouldn't have been particularly noticeable in any one life time.

Recent genetic research points to the complete opposite (at least to some extent). It might have taken just a generation or two for some individuals to get from the steppe to e.g. Britain.

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#124

Post by wqaatwt »

kragen wrote: post #117
FlyingSnake wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah ok. I agree with you. The prevalence of Steppe Ancestry in all modern day Indians should be enough to conclude that some form of migration happened. All this politically tinged talk about supposed purity of DNA is utter nonsense.

Do we know it's steppe ancestry because of DNA comparisons with Kurgan grave DNA, or from some other evidence? To me it seems a priori difficult to know where a gene hails from originally.

If in earlier periods a specific haplogroup is concentrated in specific relatively small area but after a couple of centuries it can be found across the entire continent that seems like a good indicator.

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#125

Post by FlyingSnake »

kragen wrote: post #117
FlyingSnake wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah ok. I agree with you. The prevalence of Steppe Ancestry in all modern day Indians should be enough to conclude that some form of migration happened. All this politically tinged talk about supposed purity of DNA is utter nonsense.

Do we know it's steppe ancestry because of DNA comparisons with Kurgan grave DNA, or from some other evidence? To me it seems a priori difficult to know where a gene hails from originally.

That’s a great question but I don’t know how this gene flow worked. I’m not an expert in genetics but genetic research shows that one component of Indian DNA matches with Steppe Pastorals.

Here’s an article that goes deeper into this:

https://eruditus.substack.com/p/sons-of-the-indus-the-indian...

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#126

Post by wqaatwt »

kragen wrote: post #115
teleforce wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are no Indo-European inscriptions from this time period nor would there be any until several millennia after this time That's a very negative presumptions. How about the oldest attestation of Indo-European language or the long extinct language Hittite who once lived in Bronze age Anatolian Steppe? The language is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 17th to the 13th centuries BCE. Hittite people…

That is about 2500 years after the period we're discussing, and in a region conventionally considered to be on a different continent. It isn't a mere presumption that the Kurgan culture didn't have writing; archaeologists have been looking for it diligently for more than a century and have found extensive collections of well-preserved grave goods, but no writing. Writing was invented about 1000 years later in Sumeria…

There is some evidence of at least proto-writing existing in the “Old” European societies that the Indo-Europeans replaced prior to 3500 BC. Of course no indication that it was preserved or further developed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin%C4%8Da_symbols

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#127

Post by valarauko »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #34
flir wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe there's some stuff around burial practices that parallels some steppe practices. Something about horses and mound construction, I think? Here we go: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/chariot-racers... - make of that what you will.

While I don’t mind if they’re related, the evidence is rather thin. Interestingly, chariots and royal burials were also found in Sinauli, India which provide an interesting alternative to this theory. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/...

Its heavily contested if these were chariots. If anything, I would suggest that the consensus scholarly opinion is that these were ox drawn carts, not chariots.

- no horse remains or equestrian objects have been found, anywhere in India for this time period

- solid wooden wheels (shown in the reconstruction) are too heavy for horses to draw, for which spoked wheels were developed in the Steppe

- the shape of the yoke that would be tied to the animals is straight, the way ox carts have, like Harrapan ox carts. By contrast, yokes for horses are curved, to match the animal's posture.

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#128

Post by empath75 »

singularity2001 wrote: post #112
empath75 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's one good reason to believe that they wrote it down (mostly) unaltered and continued transmitting it (mostly) unaltered, which is that they continued copying it and reciting it well past the point where they even understood what many of the words meant any more, and they developed a lot of techniques to recite it and memorize it based purely on phonemes and developed ideas about how the sounds themselves carri…

So someone wrote down chants in the 19th century and realized that similar chants were written down almost 2000 years earlier?

The Rig Veda was written down thousands of years ago.

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#129

Post by empath75 »

wqaatwt wrote: post #123
kragen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly. But what I was commenting on was the claim that, because "there are basically no migration stories in _any_ indo-european mythological cycles or oral traditions," we can conclude, "migration or invasion (...) was a gradual process that wouldn't have been particularly noticeable in any one life time." I don't think that conclusion is justified.

> we can conclude, "migration or invasion (...) was a gradual process that wouldn't have been particularly noticeable in any one life time. Recent genetic research points to the complete opposite (at least to some extent). It might have taken just a generation or two for some individuals to get from the steppe to e.g. Britain.

I don't think that's different from what I said. Surely there was a lot of migration. I think the evidence is that wasn't a big bang migration, but rather a series of smaller, disconnected migrations.

Re: Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

#130

Post by wqaatwt »

empath75 wrote: post #129
wqaatwt wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we can conclude, "migration or invasion (...) was a gradual process that wouldn't have been particularly noticeable in any one life time. Recent genetic research points to the complete opposite (at least to some extent). It might have taken just a generation or two for some individuals to get from the steppe to e.g. Britain.

I don't think that's different from what I said. Surely there was a lot of migration. I think the evidence is that wasn't a big bang migration, but rather a series of smaller, disconnected migrations.

Well I specifically disagreed with “wouldn't have been particularly noticeable in any one life time”. So it would seem it’s quite different from what you said. If you happen to live in the Pontic Steppe for most of your life yet your e.g. grandchildren are born in Britain that’s quite noticeable.
Post reply on HN