5 ms·

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.

mojuba 3y ago
DNA analysis allows to follow migrations and with it the migrations of languages.
- Sharlin 3y ago
  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.
mytailorisrich 3y ago
It helps to map migrations and thus spread of languages.
- bradrn 3y ago
  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…)
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > or Ancient Egyptian as Arabic spread By that period in history, you'd usually call it Coptic, not (the much older) Ancient Egyptian.
    - bradrn 3y ago
      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.)
  - guerrilla 3y ago
    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.
johnmyleswhite 3y 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-languages#about-book https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520228733/genes-peoples-and...
- bradrn 3y ago
  But, on the other hand, ‘While in most populations genetic and linguistic relations match, mismatches occur regularly as a result of language shift’: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2122084119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2122084119
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  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 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. But the language and the people are not in general the same; people may voluntarily adopt a foreign language without moving (compare India and English) and they may fail to bring their language with them when they move. They cannot avoid bringing their DNA with them, but it will die out when they do, which their language may not.
  - retrac 3y ago
    > 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.
mdp2021 3y 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.
Archelaos 3y 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.
guerrilla 3y 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

mojuba 3y ago

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

Sharlin 3y ago
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.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

It helps to map migrations and thus spread of languages.

bradrn 3y ago
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…)
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > or Ancient Egyptian as Arabic spread By that period in history, you'd usually call it Coptic, not (the much older) Ancient Egyptian.
  - bradrn 3y ago
    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.)
- guerrilla 3y ago
  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.

johnmyleswhite 3y 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-languages#about-book https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520228733/genes-peoples-and...

bradrn 3y ago
But, on the other hand, ‘While in most populations genetic and linguistic relations match, mismatches occur regularly as a result of language shift’: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2122084119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2122084119
thaumasiotes 3y ago
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 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. But the language and the people are not in general the same; people may voluntarily adopt a foreign language without moving (compare India and English) and they may fail to bring their language with them when they move. They cannot avoid bringing their DNA with them, but it will die out when they do, which their language may not.
- retrac 3y ago
  > 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.

mdp2021 3y 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.

Archelaos 3y 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.

guerrilla 3y 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