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Monday, January 19, 2015

Ancient DNA points to the Eurasian steppe as a proximate source for Indo-European migrations into Europe


This is yet another teaser for the upcoming Corded Ware/Yamnaya paper from the Reich lab. Sadly, it doesn't mention Y-chromosome haplogroups, so perhaps the authors are going to tackle this issue later. However, check out what they say about the German and Spanish farmers being of the same stock, and the resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry in Western Europe after the early Neolithic. Fascinating stuff.

Ancient DNA points to the Eurasian steppe as a proximate source for Indo-European migrations into Europe

David Reich and Nick Patterson

Abstract: We generated genome-wide data from 65 Europeans who lived between 8,000-3,000 years ago by enriching ancient DNA libraries for a target set of about 390,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms. This strategy decreases the sequencing required to obtain genome-wide data from ancient DNA samples by around 1000-fold, allowing us to study an order of magnitude more individuals than previous studies and to obtain new insights about the past. We show that in western Europe, the farmers of both Germany and Spain >7,000 years ago were descended from a common ancestral stock. These farmers did not replace the earlier hunter-gatherers, but continued to mix with them, leading to a resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry in both Germany and Spain ~1,000-2,000 years later. In eastern Europe, the hunter-gatherers of Russia >7,000 years ago were distinct from those of the west, having an increased affinity to a ~24,000 year old individual from Siberia, but this affinity was reduced by ~5,000 years ago in the Yamnaya steppe pastoralists because of admixture with a population of Near Eastern ancestry. Western and Eastern Europe collided ~4,500 years ago with the appearance of the Corded Ware people in Central Europe, who derived at least two thirds of their ancestry from an eastern population closely related to the Yamnaya. The evidence for mass migration into Europe thousands of years after the arrival of agriculture, in combination with linguistic and archaeological data, makes a compelling case for the steppe as a proximate source for the spread of Indo-European languages into Europe.

Source: INA Kolloquium Ws 2014/15


Update 11/02/2015: Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe (Haak et al. 2015 preprint) .

453 comments:

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Maju said...

"Last time i checked you FAILED to impress us"...

I believe others were quite impressed (Giaccomo seems a serious open minded guy). It's just you (and some other less relevant fanatics). And, as things are, nothing sort of a miracle by Shiva Himself will open your mind it seems to me. That's your problem, and possibly Shiva's problem (poor guy, being God must be so hard) but I hope you don't make it mine or David's.

Maju said...

"Did Russians suffer an invasion of WHG after the Bronze age so they lost ANE and NE admixture????"

Yes, sort of. The Russian and previously the Slavic identity arises in the Corded Ware area (its eastern frontier), not in the Yamna area. It's plausible to expect populations in South Russia and much of Ukraine to be in line with Yamna up to at least the Scythian period but at some point the Slavs took over and significantly altered the genetic and linguistic landscape, mostly with the Russians vs Tatars wars and related genocides (all of which is very recent but had a major impact in many areas, no doubt).

Nirjhar007 said...

@Maju
''I believe others were quite impressed (Giaccomo seems a serious open minded guy). It's just you (and some other less relevant fanatics). And, as things are, nothing sort of a miracle by Shiva Himself will open your mind it seems to me. That's your problem, and possibly Shiva's problem (poor guy, being God must be so hard) but I hope you don't make it mine or David's.''
Here where it went wrong for you Maju I NEVER SAID THAT PIE ORIGINATED IN INDIA!! BUT West Asia-Iran.
Anyway The Kurgan Theory Works while for Europe but Not in Case of Asia But if we look at N Iran-West Asia as PIE home it both works for Asia and Europe! as Giacomo Showed.

Maju said...

The Kurgan model works well in Asia, just that research is somewhat less advanced in terms archaeological and genetic. But for all I know it works better than well. You just keep beating the same old dead horse and you would not admit the truth if it was an elephant in front of your face because you're intently blind to it.

Linguistically: Asian branches are parallel to European ones, neither older nor nor younger nor make a distinct continent vs continent structure of any sort. The relations with Uralic at various stages emphasize the steppe scenario as well.

Archaeologically we can track every single branch of IE from the Kurgan urheimat as I explain in my "Indoeuropeans for kids" page. You insist in segregating Cemetery H from Andronovo with all kind of convoluted argumentations but reality is that it makes good sense, as it makes good sense that Iranians arrived at a later phase from the steppe (Scythian-like pepoples). It makes good sense that Anatolian derives from Kura-Araxes and this one from Maikop and it makes good sense to argue that Armenians are the product of proto-historical Phrygian colonization on Urartean substrate.

But you will play obstructionism, picking this or that pseudo-objection, then changing to something else, only to go back to the previous argument later... never really settling anything and never really allowing facts to open your mind to at the very least possibilities. Because you have FAITH and faith is enemy of TRUTH. Death to faith!

Unknown said...

I've spoken with Patterson, again. It certainly was him. It looks like we will wait a few more weeks for more info.

Nirjhar007 said...

@Maju
''The Kurgan model works well in Asia, just that research is somewhat less advanced in terms archaeological and genetic. But for all I know it works better than well. You just keep beating the same old dead horse and you would not admit the truth if it was an elephant in front of your face because you're intently blind to it.''
Kurgan model in Asia= Conan The Barbarian Story.
That is exactly how credible it is Maju.
''Linguistically: Asian branches are parallel to European ones, neither older nor nor younger nor make a distinct continent vs continent structure of any sort. The relations with Uralic at various stages emphasize the steppe scenario as well. ''
Linguistics eh? then let me tell you Basal PIE features like of Voiced Aspirates and Laryngeals themselves makes a compelling case of PIE origin to be in Asia and PIE also has relations with Semetic morphology basically such relations are vague as it goes to the Eurasiatic period.
''You insist in segregating Cemetery H from Andronovo with all kind of convoluted argumentations but reality is that it makes good sense, as it makes good sense that Iranians arrived at a later phase from the steppe (Scythian-like pepoples)''
Read JM Kenoyers work on Cemetery H in which he shows that just not it had Biological affinities with SSC but the cultural tradition was ALSO unbroken! and yes some Iranians arrived due to the Effect of 4.2 kilo year event but that didn't effect much at all and yes they came from Afghan Area not Andronovo!! if you read this monumental study by Giacomo you will get the Large and Intriguing picture of SSC and the Aryan Culture-
http://www.academia.edu/7683313/The_Chronology_of_Puranic_Kings_and_Rigvedic_Rishis_in_Comparison_with_the_Phases_of_the_Sindhu_Sarasvati_Civilization
Consider that as a privileged info.
''''But you will play obstructionism, picking this or that pseudo-objection, then changing to something else, only to go back to the previous argument later... never really settling anything and never really allowing facts to open your mind to at the very least possibilities. Because you have FAITH and faith is enemy of TRUTH. Death to faith!''
I just advocate of what i see Maju and i always verify the bases of every statement scientifically...

Maju said...

Cemetery H shows a lot of innovations related to both the steppes and the later evolution towards historical Vedic Hinduism (horse sacrifice, cremation), as well as unprecedented levels of violence. A bit like Cucuteni, IVC seems to have been rather peaceful and at least somewhat egalitarian, but this is totally upset with Cemetery H. Cemetery H is of course transitional and still belongs in that sense to IVC but it's clearly a situation similar to Sredny-Stog II: things are changing and rapidly so.

"i always verify the bases of every statement scientifically"...

Really: what is in excess in this triplet: scarf-glove-hand? Answer: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150122114428.htm (interesting read, worry not: analytic thinking is trainable but also the opposite).

Chad said...

Krefter,
More Neolithic mtDNA.

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2015/01/ancient-mtdna-from-collective-burials.html

Nirjhar007 said...

@Maju
I am reading your Reference but please also read the research paper i gave:)

Anonymous said...

@Nirjhar007 PIE not orginated in india or iran and there is no discussion about that anymore. Only some deluded hindutva indians can not accept that indo-aryans came from the eurasian steppe and colonized india. The domiance of r1a among brahmins,northwestern indians and southern central asians actually proves that and dravidians or low caste indians have much less r1a. I dont understand why this is so hard to accept for most indians. Even most parts of europe were colonized and invaded by kurgan people, who left quite much genetic traces in south asia in for of r1a and ANE.

Nirjhar007 said...

Please for the last time read the references i gave!!! then you guys will find the REASON why i'm suggesting what i'm suggesting....

Davidski said...

Please continue the discussion here...

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/yamnaya-genomes-are-5050-mix-of-eastern.html

Maju said...

@Chad: very interesting. My keywords from the abstract: "later Neolithic" (i.e. early Chalcolithic, probably Michelsberg or related) "collective burials" (i.e. dolmens or similar, not anymore LBK individualist burials surely), "H" and "HV0" (possibly V but anyhow all HV0 is interesting in the same sense).

With due caution (because I don't know yet the details, being PPV) I'd dare say that it could well support my theory of extra H arrival in Megalithic rather than Bell Beaker chronology.

Maju said...

@Silkur: "The domiance of r1a among brahmins,northwestern indians and southern central asians actually proves"...

... nothing. R1a could perfectly have arrived to South Asia BEFORE the Kurgan expansion (in the Neolithic and with an "Iran" origin indeed) and be at least largely unrelated to Indoeuropeanization (and rather to earlier Dravidianization). We must understand that genetics and language do not always go related or, when they go, it's not always a simple relationship.

Anonymous said...


@Maju "... nothing. R1a could perfectly have arrived to South Asia BEFORE the Kurgan expansion (in the Neolithic and with an "Iran" origin indeed) and be at least largely unrelated to Indoeuropeanization (and rather to earlier Dravidianization). We must understand that genetics and language do not always go related or, when they go, it's not always a simple relationship. "

r1a was also found among early indo-iranians in central asia(andronovo) and asian r1a is a sister clade of european r1a. It is not very old and correlates with indo-iranians there or people who mixed much with them. Brahmins and other high caste indians of indo-aryan origin have the most of it in india and dravidians and low caste indians much less. So r1a didnt correlates with dravidians or non-indoeuropean south asians. Asian r1a-z93 among central and south asians is predominately the result of the expansion of indo-iranians from the steppe but i dont know if there exist other older subclades of r1a which could predate r1a-z93 and the indo-iranian and indoeuropean expansion

Maju said...

Brahui are Dravidians and are genetictally indinstinct from their IE neighbors: the Baloch. Also if you read carefully Underhill 2014, you notice that there's no evidence of significant R1a flow from Central Asia to South Asia but, if anything, the opposite.

I do think that IE arrived to India with Kurgans in the Bronze Age but I do not see any evidence relating it with R1a. R1a in South Asia seems mostly Neolithic (like J2 and probably much of the extension of L), being eventually co-opted by the IE language and identity. IE invaders didn't need to make any major genetic impact, really.

Re. aDNA, there's a sampling bias issue in that that makes your argument worthless. Now, if you can sample IVC remains and find them lacking R1a, I'll begin thinking you may be right, but otherwise it's just a blank on our knowledge.

Anonymous said...

"Brahui are Dravidians and are genetictally indinstinct from their IE neighbors: the Baloch. Also if you read carefully Underhill 2014, you notice that there's no evidence of significant R1a flow from Central Asia to South Asia but, if anything, the opposite.

I do think that IE arrived to India with Kurgans in the Bronze Age but I do not see any evidence relating it with R1a. R1a in South Asia seems mostly Neolithic (like J2 and probably much of the extension of L), being eventually co-opted by the IE language and identity. IE invaders didn't need to make any major genetic impact, really.

Re. aDNA, there's a sampling bias issue in that that makes your argument worthless. Now, if you can sample IVC remains and find them lacking R1a, I'll begin thinking you may be right, but otherwise it's just a blank on our knowledge. "
brahui are recent immigrants to balutchistan and have only 10% dravidian words in their language.Also they lack any old iranian and avestan loanwords so they have no long presence in balutchistan. They are heavily mixed with baluchs(they also speake baluchi ) and indeed they are genetically very close to their indo-iranian neighbours but the same is true for turkmens and uzbeks who mixed much with indo-iranians and are in many cases undistinguishable from iranic tajiks. Brahui have also much less r1a than pashtuns and brahmins. R1a-z94 is not old enough to predate indoeuropeans and is a sister clade of european r1a so the presence of it in south and central asia can only be a result of indo-iranian migrations. There were many different waves of indo-iranian migrations to central asia and south asia (indo-aryans,old iranians, scythians,...). They were highly patriachal people who took local women but tried to preserve their patrilineal lineage and in pre-historial times this regions were less densely populated so such kind of migrations could have a greater impact. Other subclades of r1a like r1a-z83 are almost non-existing in south and central asia and because of that they can not be associated with the indo-iranian migrations.

Maju said...

No. Genetically speaking Brahui are Baloch by another name (or rather vice versa). They are not immigrants in any way.

It's true that Brahui only retains some c. 15% of Dravidian vocabulary (but 100% grammar) but almost the same can be said re. English and Germanic: that kind of vocabulary loss just happens in the right conditions.

"R1a-z94 is not old enough to predate indoeuropeans and is a sister clade of european r1a"...

Per Underhill it's old enough and, while indeed parallel to European R1a, the IE expansion in (much of) Europe is quite older than the one happening in South Asia (some 2000 years older).

Unknown said...

That H1and H3 was in Eastern Germany before the megalithic culture began.

Chad said...

Sorry, not before it began, but I really don't see a connection with Baalberg and Salzmunde.

Anonymous said...

@Maju No. Genetically speaking Brahui are Baloch by another name (or rather vice versa). They are not immigrants in any way.

It's true that Brahui only retains some c. 15% of Dravidian vocabulary (but 100% grammar) but almost the same can be said re. English and Germanic: that kind of vocabulary loss just happens in the right conditions.

"R1a-z94 is not old enough to predate indoeuropeans and is a sister clade of european r1a"...

Per Underhill it's old enough and, while indeed parallel to European R1a, the IE expansion in (much of) Europe is quite older than the one happening in South Asia (some 2000 years older). "



the brahui are indeed almost identical to baluch but this does not mean that they are not recent immigrants or are turkmens also not recent immigrants because they are genetically almost identical to iranic people around them?

"Probably the Brahuis had reached the highlands of Kalat by the 6th/12th century or a bit earlier, spreading north and south from there (and much later into Afghanistan and Persia), having assimilated many other nomadic tribal groups on their way and having shed others."
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/brahui

R1a-z93 was also found among bronze age sampples in mongolia and some of them carried markers for light hair and light eyes. R1a-z93 does not correlates with dravidian speaking people and there are zero evidence for the spread of dravidian languages into central asia. There are even no dravidian hydronyms and toponyms in north india and scholars like witzel think that dravidians had no important presence in north india before indo-aryans. There seem to be some evidences for an austro-asiatic substrate in north india but not for a dravidian. So dravidians could not brought r1a to north india and certainly not to central asia.

Chad said...

H1 in Rossen 4600BCE
in Schoningen 4100BCE
in Baalberg 3900BCE

Those pre-date any megalith structure that I know of, in the area. I think that 3500BCE is the general date given for appearance in Northern Germany.

Maju said...

Why Baalberge or Salzmünde? Most of the locations mentioned in the abstract are not in East Germany but in the North Hesse/South Niedersachsen area (except one that is in Holstein). That area around the Wesser river clearly falls into Michelsberg first and its offshoot Wartberg later.

Also Baalberge and successors are Kurgan, not having "collective burials" as further West. The only connection between those two areas back then was that both adopted the funnelbeaker pottery style (imported from Denmark) but that's not enough to make them the same thing at all.

The interesting "neo-aboriginal" process here is Michelsberg culture and in the wider picture the Megalithic phenomenon, to which it belongs.

Maju said...

It's not that H was not present earlier, but that it was present at much lower frequencies (than at least BB sites and also modern populations) and that Kurgan intrusions do not seem to bring it (rather have less H than Danubians, not more). So, unless you argue for positive selection or something like that, something must have brought it. And that something probably came from the Atlantic areas of the West and North.

Incidentally Megalithism (unlike BB or Kurgans) did have a massive demographic influence in all those areas of NW Europe: http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/2014/02/neolithic-and-chalcolithic-demographics.html

Chad said...

Baalberg is not Kurgan. Sorry, but there is apparently no ANE in Germany prior to the Chalcolithic. They said that Central and Northern European farmers were the same, like Gok2. Also, that German and Spanish farmers were similar.

There is actually a lot of H in the Pontic Kurgans.

Chad said...

Baalberg is part of the re-emergence of local WHG types across Europe. You will see the difference from Rossen to Baalberg, when the paper comes out.

Unknown said...

Single burials with ocher isn't a recent thing or a steppe thing. The man dubbed the "Red Lady of Paviland", is a UP Brit.

Maju said...

"or are turkmens also not recent immigrants because they are genetically almost identical to iranic people around them? "

If that's true (I don't know enough about Turkmen genetics), then they are not immigrants but Turkified Iranians (which in turn are probably Iranized something else). Just speaking Turkic does not make them immigrants: the ancestry of Anatolian Turks or Azeris is definitely not Turkic. These are good examples in fact on how a whole large and densely populated region can change language and ethnic identity without major immigration. Others can be all those "Arab" countries, whose actual Arab ancestry is trivial, etc.

"R1a-z93 was also found among bronze age sampples in mongolia and some of them carried markers for light hair and light eyes."

There's many people with European lineages who are typically dubbed Black in America, so what? Half Fins have N1 lineages, just like Buryats, many Europeans, including "super-Aryan" Adolf Hitler, carry African-original E1b patrilineages. That's not a logical way of approaching genetics and admixture: Y-DNA can well be meaningless on how you look.

"R1a-z93 does not correlates with dravidian speaking people"...

Of course not if you think of Tamils, but it does if you think of Brahui.

"there are zero evidence for the spread of dravidian languages into central asia."

We have no idea what Central Asians spoke before Indoeuropeanization. For all I know it could be in some cases something related to Elamo-Dravidian - or not.

"There are even no dravidian hydronyms and toponyms in north india and scholars like witzel think that dravidians had no important presence in north india before indo-aryans."

That's probably arguable. I'm not going to dive into nightmarish exotic linguistic problems affecting to South Asia. It's already bad enough with the many controversies and arrogant claims we have in Europe.

Whatever the case, R1a and the so-called ANI autosomal component surely arrived to South Asia directly from West Asia. The patterns affecting R1a-Z93 evidence it quite unmistakably. What language they spoke is open to speculation but considering the non-immigrant existence of Brahuis, the plausible Elamo-Dravidian theory and the certainty that Indoeuropean only arrived in the Bronze Age and not before, I think there's more than just a good chance that Dravidian expanded with Neolithic and was dominant before IE conquests.

Maju said...

Yes, Chad, Baalberge is not just Kurgan but the very origin of Corded Ware. I'm just too bored of this exhausting discussion to deepen into it but you can easily research that online yourself.

"There is actually a lot of H in the Pontic Kurgans".

Is it? First notice, sorry.

Maju said...

Just checking quickly some online sources:

Yamna: 6/27 = 22% H
Catacombs: 2/10=20% H

That's not "a lot". It's even under Danubian levels. Half of modern levels in most of Europe and a fourth of what is observed in Germany's Bell Beaker and Neolithic Portugal.

Don't waste my time, please.

Anonymous said...

@Maju
"If that's true (I don't know enough about Turkmen genetics), then they are not immigrants but Turkified Iranians (which in turn are probably Iranized something else). Just speaking Turkic does not make them immigrants: the ancestry of Anatolian Turks or Azeris is definitely not Turkic. These are good examples in fact on how a whole large and densely populated region can change language and ethnic identity without major immigration. Others can be all those "Arab" countries, whose actual Arab ancestry is trivial, etc."

The same could be true about brahui, they speak without any doubt a dravidian language but they are maybe genetically very different from the dravidians who brought brahui to balutchistan. Brahui lacks any avestan or pashto loanwords so it is unlikely that brahui is older than the iranic languages there.


"Kurukh (Oraon, on the borders of
Bihar/Orissa/Madhya Pradesh; the settlement in Nepal and Assam is recent) and Malto (on
the bend of the Ganges in S.E. Bihar) are late-comers to Munda territory as many loans from
Munda languages indicate. Brahui in Baluchistan has returned to E. Iran only a few
hundred years ago (Elfenbein 1987); it has no older Iranian loans (from Avestan or Pashto,
just from their symbiotic neighbors, the Baluch)."
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/MT-Substrates.pdf

Dravdian languages left no substrate among any iranic languages. Many iranic languages have a pre-indoeuropean substrate but it is not dravidian or elamitic. So central asia was certainly not dravdian before indo-iranians. ´R1a-z93 is highest among indo-iranians like pashtuns and brahmins who were strictly endogamous and patrilineal so the presence of it among them is indeed a good evidence for an indo-iranian origin of r1a-z93. r1a in asia is much less diverse than in europe and seems to be the result of a massive founder effect. It would be much more diverse if it would be older and of neolithic origin.

Also r1a-z93 is much more common among central asia iranic people than among west asian iranic people( persian,kurds) and in india it correlates with ´high caste indians. So an elamo-dravidian origin is very unlikely and the regions of iran which were the centre of elamites have today the lowest percentages of r1a like indian deavidians have always less r1a than indian indo-aryans.

Chad said...

Maju,
It is 7 of 24 in Catacomb, but not relevant to what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the older group in Bulgaria and Ukraine, which is 5 of 13.

And no, Baalberg can't be the root of Corded Ware, as it has no ANE. It is a local group, not from the east.

So, please don't waste MY time...

Maju said...

How do you know that Baalberge had no ANE?

Archaeologically it's clearly at the root of Corded Ware via a series of cultures in East Germany and particularly Poland, last of which are Luboń and Globular Amphorae (this one reunifying the two separated Baalberge derived nodes under "Polish" hegemony).

Chad said...

I answered on the other post.

Nirjhar007 said...

FINAL STATEMENT
1.BRAHUI-
They came there from South-Central India and got heavily drifted on the side of Balochis.
'' Brahui migrated to Balochistan from Central India after 1000 AD. The absence of any older Iranian (Avestan) influence in Brahui supports this last hypothesis. The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary is a northwestern Iranian language, Baluchi, Sindhi and southeastern Iranian language, Pashto.''
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahui_people
Just not Brahui for example show such distant isolated presence for example an Indo-Aryan Group named Kholosi has been found in the Zagros Mountains in Iran! and we also have the Gypsies migrating.....
2. ANE +R1a:
Confidently i bet that both R1a and ANE was present in SC Asia from Neolithic period.
End Of Story.

Maju said...

There's nothing in Brahuis relating them to South India other than the language. Nothing!

Genetically speaking you should be able to find some remnant: lineages and even some autosomal remnants. We see NOTHING! Brahuis are just Baloch that didn't become (fully) Indoeuropeanized.

Maju said...

@Postneo:

1. Not horses. The most important single cultural trait is no doubt the individualist (and elitist) burials in mounds (kurgans) but there are exceptions (Ezero for example), so you have to track the whole process with careful attention to continuity and change in each region. There's no simple answer (thousands of years and thousands of miles involved!) but there's quite a bit of consensus among prehistorians for good reasons. Horses are just another trait, one that may have enticed their mobility.

2. Certainly before writing we can't know anything directly about any language. But we can make quite reasonable inferences based on other cultural continuity traits.

3. Genetics is a key piece of evidence and one that is precisely being discussed here - and that it happens to be fully supportive of the Kurgan model, at the very least in Europe.

Nirjhar007 said...

@Maju
''There's nothing in Brahuis relating them to South India other than the language. Nothing!
''
That is enough and they also have borrowings ONLY from middle ages from Balochi,Sindhi,Pashto on the other hand how much they contributed to those languages??? If they were there from archaic times then should have effected the ancient languages as well as the newer languages!!! they also have the South Indian ASI Component but they mixed heavily with Baloch and hence drifted.
So whats the problem? see also the situation of Kholosis in the Zagros does they reflect Zagros was an Indo-Aryan area eh Maju????

Nirjhar007 said...

@Maju
''Not horses. The most important single cultural trait is no doubt the individualist (and elitist) burials in mounds (kurgans) but there are exceptions (Ezero for example), so you have to track the whole process with careful attention to continuity and change in each region. There's no simple answer (thousands of years and thousands of miles involved!) but there's quite a bit of consensus among prehistorians for good reasons. Horses are just another trait, one that may have enticed their mobility. ''
There is no way that advocates the Aryan Invasion as it is just arguing for another argument nothing else.
''2. Certainly before writing we can't know anything directly about any language. But we can make quite reasonable inferences based on other cultural continuity traits. ''
Have read the Research of Giacomo i gave you? i don't think you have.
''3. Genetics is a key piece of evidence and one that is precisely being discussed here - and that it happens to be fully supportive of the Kurgan model, at the very least in Europe.''
Yes Only Europe nothing else....

Maju said...

No, Nirjhar: language is not enough to support the nonsense of Brahuis being "immigrants", that would require of some genetic support (logically, think again please). In fact it says the opposite: that they are a fossil of a time long gone, when Dravidian was spoken so far NW.

Anonymous said...

@ Maju

i dont like to say this but here i must agree with Nirjhar. The brahui are pastoral people, who lack any older iranic loanwords than baluchi , which also just immigrated 1000 years ago to this region. They have no loanwords from avestan which was spoken not far of their modern dwelling places.


Also except of baluch no iranic language like pashto or persian has a dravidian substrate. The brahui are heavily mixed with baluchs and assimilated many other pastoral people on their migrations. Their migration is probably similar to the migration of indian roma, who moved from india to the west.

Unknown said...

The abstract clearly states no ANE in Baalberg, Rossen, Salzmunde, and El Portalon.

Maju said...

@Silkur: Baloch are also recent immigrants? C'mon! How do you explain that their genetics fit perfectly in their geography between Iranians and other Pakistanis then? I mean, seriously: Roma are "recent" immigrants from India to Europe of about 1000 years ago and they are very easy to spot genetically, keeping a lot of links to their ancestral land in spite of admixture. Baloch and Brahui keep no such relation being actually less "Indian" (let alone Southern Indian) than the Roma, so to say.

Maju said...

@Chad: No, the abstract quoted in this entry does not mention any of those cultures, sorry.

Chad said...

Jesus Christ, you're hopeless. Those are the cultures that they tested, Maju. Why don't you brush up on who is included in the paper.

Trust me, you're dead wrong, again.

Chad said...

The abstract is clear... open your eyes. No ANE in Germany before 3000BCE.

Krefter said...

"@Chad: No, the abstract quoted in this entry does not mention any of those cultures, sorry."

If ANE did exist in Germany and or Spain before the bronze age, they would have said something. Reich and his peers have for almost half a year now, been passionately and excitingly preaching that ancient DNA supports an IE-spread of ANE.

The Samar-paper's little brother, which took genomes from roughly the same ages in Hungary, show WHG slowly rose from Neolithic-copper age, and ANE arrived in the bronze age. This is exactly what leaks have said about Germany and Spain(except for ANE).

Anonymous said...

@Maju
baluch speak a northwestern iranic language more closely related to kurdish than to neighbouring eastern iranic pashto and southwestern iranic persian. So they seem to orginate further in north or west of their modern dwelling places.

"The Balōč are generally considered to have arrived in Kermān from the north (e.g., Dames, 1904b, pp. 29-30). The evidence for this assumption depends on two arguments: the classification of Baluchi as a “Northwest Iranian” language and the fact that in Ferdowsī’s Šāh-nāma (composed at the beginning of the 4th/10th century on the basis of earlier works now lost) they are mentioned in conjunction with Gīlān. According to Ferdowsī (see, e.g., Dehḵodā, s.v. Balōč) the Sasanian kings Ardašīr and Ḵosrow I Anōšīravān fought the Balōč and the Balōč fought for several other Sasanian kings. It has also been argued that the Balōč left traces of their language in the oases of the central deserts of the Iranian plateau as they migrated south (Minorsky, 1957; Frye, 1961)"

So they migrated only very late to baluchistan and it is interesting that brahui has only loanwords from this iranic language but not from other older iranic languages like avestan. The baluch settlers were probably just a small elite who assimilated the local population like turks in anatolia.


The roma are still so much indian genetically because they not subjugated or ruled other people, which they could later assimilate. Also they were distrusted by other people and in many cases outcasts so they mixed not so much with foreign people

Maju said...

For Chaos' sake!

The abstract says nothing at all as specific as you guys (oh-so-happily) interpret. Furthermore the data from the PCA Krefter re-leaked clearly shows that the pooled Late Chalcolithic cultures of Germany were very similar to Corded Ware (i.e. they have similar levels of ANE and everything else). IF Baalberge, etc. were sampled (something I do not know and probably you don't know either), they should be under that LNE/EBA label.

AFAIK, we also know nothing about Michelsberg - although it'd be interesting indeed (I'd expect this population to be drifted towards Gok/WHG).

Most likely the samples go as follows:

ENE = LBK (~EEF)
MNE = Rössen (late LBK)
LNE/EBA = Bell Beaker, Kromsdorf, Unetice (i.e. cultures that go after CW)

Why? Well, why not? Mostly I'm thinking on what has been said here and on what has been previously studied in several other papers. I may be wrong, of course, but you can be wrong too.

In any case nothing at all has been explicitly mentioned about Baalberge or other Chalcolithic cultures that existed in Germany before Corded Ware.

Chad said...

Oh, Maju... There's no hope for you. I'll enjoy seeing your retractions when it comes out.

Maju said...

@Skilur: either they migrated from the north or from the south...

Or rather the Baloch language simply retains an older pre-Persian layer of the Iranian languages, as does Kurdish. This layer has been often claimed to be Median but I can't say.

Maju said...

Yeah, Chad, send me a postcard with your reaction as well... ^^

Unknown said...

All I'm gonna say is, the popcorn will be ready!

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