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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

#11

Post by bradrn »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #10
bradrn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a saying I’ve seen: ‘genes don’t speak languages’. Languages can easily spread between population groupings, and conversely a single population can move from one language to another — and both processes happen with considerable regularity. (Consider what happened to Gaulish as Latin spread, or Hittite as Greek spread, or Ancient Egyptian as Arabic spread, or…)

> or Ancient Egyptian as Arabic spread By that period in history, you'd usually call it Coptic, not (the much older) Ancient Egyptian.

Yeah, I know. I presume more readers here would be familiar with the name ‘Ancient Egyptian’ than with ‘Coptic’.

(And really, as it evolved so dramatically over 3000 years, ‘Ancient Egyptian’ can’t easily be called a single language to start with. I tend to think of Coptic as simply the latest stage of Ancient Egyptian.)

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

#12

Post by mdp2021 »

briffid wrote: post #3
jmclnx wrote: post #2

Seems a third theory, the other 2 existing theories are in the article >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

I don't get it. DNA is about people, Indo-European is about language. DNA tells nothing about what language those people spoke thousands of years ago.

The direct answer, you have been given: we suppose leads between migration and cultural propagation.

It should also be noted marginally that haplogroups are, for similar reasons, a recent focus in history.

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

#13

Post by Archelaos »

briffid wrote: post #3
jmclnx wrote: post #2

Seems a third theory, the other 2 existing theories are in the article >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

I don't get it. DNA is about people, Indo-European is about language. DNA tells nothing about what language those people spoke thousands of years ago.

The idea is that the historical migration patterns inferred from DNA match the branching of Indo-European languages of their new linguistic model, which therefore should be considered superior to earlier models.

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

#14

Post by retrac »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #9
johnmyleswhite wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People migrate -- they always bring their DNA with them and their language. No? The connections between these have been studied for a long time -- for example, this popular book was published 20 years ago: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520228733/genes-peoples-and...

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…

> I assume the argument here is that if you see a huge linguistic expansion and a huge demographic expansion occurring at the same time, you can reasonably conclude that they are the same phenomenon and the expanding language is spoken by the expanding people.

That's a lot to assume, though. One possible counterexample is contemporary North America. The English-speaking population spread across the continent in a linked process, the same phenomenon, but the majority contribution genetically, is not from England. There are communities in North America where almost no one is of English ancestry, yet they are English-speaking.

The same sort of social/demographic upheavals and changes that can create large language spread, are also the same kind that can create homogenization towards a single language despite people speaking many languages.

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

#16

Post by Sharlin »

johnmyleswhite wrote: post #6
briffid wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. DNA is about people, Indo-European is about language. DNA tells nothing about what language those people spoke thousands of years ago.

People migrate -- they always bring their DNA with them and their language. No? The connections between these have been studied for a long time -- for example, this popular book was published 20 years ago: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520228733/genes-peoples-and...

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.

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

#17

Post by Sharlin »

mojuba wrote: post #4
briffid wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. DNA is about people, Indo-European is about language. DNA tells nothing about what language those people spoke thousands of years ago.

DNA analysis allows to follow migrations and with it the migrations of languages.

Except that DNA and languages are only loosely coupled, and wrong conclusions have historically been drawn due to assumptions they're more tightly correlated than they actually are.

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

#18

Post by guerrilla »

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 did?

Anyway, the thing about this new research is that it'll depend on whether people accept this methodology or not. It's not clear to me that people will form a consensus on that any time soon because historically methodology is a central part of why people disagree about this in the first place. In fact, as another commenter below mentions, this methodology assumes an identification of genes and language-speakers which has been explicitly and heavily criticized in this area before and I think the consensus is that that is invalid.

* It doesn't surprise me. The positive arguments in this book are very weak.

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

#19

Post by guerrilla »

briffid wrote: post #3
jmclnx wrote: post #2

Seems a third theory, the other 2 existing theories are in the article >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

I don't get it. DNA is about people, Indo-European is about language. DNA tells nothing about what language those people spoke thousands of years ago.

You're very right to point this out. It's one of Colin Renfew's* main attacks on other hypotheses. As I mentioned in my other comment, it's not automatically given that people will form a consensus that this methodology is acceptable as variations of methodology have been the main source of controversy on this issue in the past.

* originator of the Anatolian hypothesis

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

#20

Post by guerrilla »

bradrn wrote: post #7
mytailorisrich wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It helps to map migrations and thus spread of languages.

There is a saying I’ve seen: ‘genes don’t speak languages’. Languages can easily spread between population groupings, and conversely a single population can move from one language to another — and both processes happen with considerable regularity. (Consider what happened to Gaulish as Latin spread, or Hittite as Greek spread, or Ancient Egyptian as Arabic spread, or…)

Indeed, Renfew gives two models for how this is possible. One is called the wave model where trade and integration causes language propagation and the other is conquest where one group dominates over a neighbor who eventually adopts the dominion's language.
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