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

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

#131

Post by singularity2001 »

kragen wrote: post #113
singularity2001 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, all of the texts we're talking about here have been passed down in written form for 2000–3000 years, if we ignore the Scandinavian ones. It was only the first 1000–1500 years of the preservation of the Rig Veda that were exclusively oral.

am I living in a bubble in which Wikipedia gives me different articles? According to my Internet the oldest surviving fragment is from 1040CE from Nepal.

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

#132

Post by [deleted] »

philwelch wrote: post #79
fvvybfbfbyg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? What about the Hittites? There is a slight gap between 1700 BC and 4500 BC.

Prior to the discovery of the Hittite language, linguists had compared the various Indo-European languages they knew of and did much of the work of reconstructing the Proto-Indo-European language based on comparative linguistics. This work was highly conjectural, but it provided something akin to a falsifiable theory that could be tested by the discovery of another written Indo-European language. Such a language was…

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by adrian_b »

wqaatwt wrote: post #126
kragen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It should be noted that there is a very great difference between "proto-writing" and writing.

It is likely that various kinds of "proto-writing" have been independently invented in a lot of places, but very few of them have evolved into writing systems.

"Proto-writing" is just a set of graphic symbols that are used to designate various things. Such a set of symbols can be used e.g. to write an inventory, to tag things to show ownership or purpose, to show on a map what can be found in certain places, and so on.

"Proto-writing" cannot be used to write human speech. All systems of "proto-writing" that have evolved into writing systems have done that by reinterpreting a part of the graphic symbols, or sometimes even all of them, to no longer be the names of some things, but to have a phonetic meaning, i.e. to represent some sounds of human speech (syllables in almost all cases), allowing thus the writing of the more abstract components of the speech, like various grammatical markers.

Therefore for a system of "proto-writing", it does not make sense to ask which is the language that has been written with it, because there exists no such language.

The only kind of information that can be known about a system of proto-writing is which is the thing denoted by each symbol. Even when the meanings of all symbols are known, that does not offer any information about the language used by those who have invented and used that system of proto-writing.

For now, there is no evidence that the Indus script was a writing system, because only very short strings of symbols have been preserved. It could have been a writing system, because by that time other writing systems already existed not far away, which could have inspired them, or it could have been just a proto-writing system, which would give no clue about the language of its users.

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

#134

Post by elureleahcim »

singularity2001 wrote: post #131
kragen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, all of the texts we're talking about here have been passed down in written form for 2000–3000 years, if we ignore the Scandinavian ones. It was only the first 1000–1500 years of the preservation of the Rig Veda that were exclusively oral.

am I living in a bubble in which Wikipedia gives me different articles? According to my Internet the oldest surviving fragment is from 1040CE from Nepal.

The oldest written copy may be from 1040, but this is a written copy of a written copy of a written copy of ... etc, going back another millennia or so, before we get to the oral tradition.

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

#135

Post by never_inline »

biorach wrote: post #121
never_inline wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sir, I am not going to keep links whenever I see this rhetoric in some online news site or local newspaper.

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

#136

Post by incompatible »

Shorel wrote: post #88
incompatible wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets a bit silly when you start using archaeology to prop up modern political doctrines. Humans left Africa over 100k years ago, and groups have been moving around ever since. Whether a group moved from the Caucasus to South Asia or vice versa, around 5k years ago, shouldn't really matter. Perhaps they had moved in the opposite direction 10k years ago. Obviously, we all have human ancestors who were living 5k, 10k…

> Whether a group moved from the Caucasus to South Asia or vice versa, around 5k years ago, shouldn't really matter. It's not that it "matters" in a political or nationalistic sense. That's an error in interpretation of the motivation for this kind of work. It is important because the more we know about how we got where we are, the better. Science is useful, if it is not immediately obvious, then future generations w…

The research is fine. I'm referring to the likes of Hindutva trying to establish that the Aryans were "indigenous" to India and subsequently migrated elsewhere, thus proving that Hindus alone are indigenous to India. The out-of-india theory referred to above.

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

#137

Post by kragen »

elureleahcim wrote: post #134
singularity2001 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

am I living in a bubble in which Wikipedia gives me different articles? According to my Internet the oldest surviving fragment is from 1040CE from Nepal.

The oldest written copy may be from 1040, but this is a written copy of a written copy of a written copy of ... etc, going back another millennia or so, before we get to the oral tradition.

Correct, thank you. Palm-leaf manuscripts typically last about 200 years. WP does claim that some experts believe the Rig Veda was not written down until quite late:

> It is unclear as to when the Rigveda was first written down. The oldest surviving manuscripts have been discovered in Nepal and date to c. 1040 CE.[3][78] According to Witzel, the Paippalada Samhita tradition points to written manuscripts c. 800–1000 CE.[79] The Upanishads were likely in the written form earlier, about mid-1st millennium CE (Gupta Empire period).[33][80] Attempts to write the Vedas may have been made "towards the end of the 1st millennium BCE". The early attempts may have been unsuccessful given the Smriti rules that forbade the writing down the Vedas, states Witzel.[33] The oral tradition continued as a means of transmission until modern times.[81]

As I understand it, the Tipitaka, Panini, Patanjali, etc., were also first written down around the end of the first millennium BCE or the beginning of the first millennium CE, as writing was adopted relatively late in India.

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

#138

Post by kragen »

wqaatwt wrote: post #124
kragen wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's why I was asking if this conclusion is based on grave DNA data. How else do you know where haplogroups were in earlier periods, other than by already knowing the information about historical migrations and population replacements that we're trying to derive in the first place?

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

#139

Post by kragen »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #125
kragen wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Thank you, this is fantastic!

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

#140

Post by kragen »

adrian_b wrote: post #133
wqaatwt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It should be noted that there is a very great difference between "proto-writing" and writing. It is likely that various kinds of "proto-writing" have been independently invented in a lot of places, but very few of them have evolved into writing systems. "Proto-writing" is just a set of graphic symbols that are used to designate various things. Such a set of symbols can be used e.g. to write an inventory, to tag thing…

Yeah, I was thinking about mentioning the Indus script here. Lately I've been thinking about brand logotypes, hallmarks, chops, and cattle brands as potential exemplars of proto-writing (though of course in our culture they are heavily influenced by writing); maybe the Indus valley script was used to mark pots as being made by a particular potter, for example? Or dedicate a temple to a particular god?
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