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Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family
- The-Old-Hacker 2y agohttps://periscope.corsfix.com/?https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/science/indo-european-language-ancient-human-dna.html https://periscope.corsfix.com/?https://www.nytimes.com/2025/...
- neonate 2y agoThat's a good article. It's here too: https://archive.ph/eJoqA https://archive.ph/eJoqA.
- triyambakam 2y agoCan someone smarter than me explain how it's even possible to use DNA to identify the origin of a language, given that e.g. if this were tried with a language like German (or maybe any Western European language) the puzzle would look very confusing and is not DNA based.
- sampton 2y agoWritings on artifacts and burial practices associated with DNA fragments found at the burial sites.
- DC-3 2y agoThis study is about prehistoric Steppe peoples, there are no Indo-European inscriptions from this time period nor would there be any until several millennia after this time.
- teleforce 2y ago> 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 created an empire centred on Hattusa, and also around northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia [1]. [1] Hittite language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittite_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittite_language
- fvvybfbfbyg 2y agoSo? What about the Hittites? There is a slight gap between 1700 BC and 4500 BC.
- philwelch 2y agoPrior 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 Hittite, and the Hittite language fits the model of Indo-European languages that had been constructed prior to its discovery.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- canjobear 2y agoThe Proto-Indo-European language is usually dated to something like 6000 years ago, well before any writing.
- kragen 2y agoThat 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, probably in Egypt, and possibly in South America, but not in the Lower Volga homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. (The North American and Chinese inventions of writing seem to have been independent, but were another 2000 years later still.) The Hittites adopted the Sumerian form of writing; they did not bring a writing system with them from the Volga. Neither did other Indo-European groups have writing, which is why Hittite is, as you say, the oldest attested Indo-European language.
- macleginn 2y agoThe story with the Indo-Europeans is basically as follows: 1. By intersecting ancient word sets of ancient Indo-European languages using comparative phonetics we can try and reconstruct the words of the proto-IE language, both their approximate sounds and approximate meanings. This gives us some information about the society. E.g., the PIE language very likely had a word for wheel, which puts the common PIE community in the period after the wheel was invented. Other words can help us guess what landscape the PIE people lived in, and it has been generally assumed for almost a century now that it strongly resembles Southeastern Europe, essentially the Ukrainian steppe. Two alternative hypotheses (modern-day Turkey and the area to the north, in modern-day Poland/Ukraine) had different drawbacks. We can also look at the locations of the earliest historically attested IE groups (Europe, Middle East, Punjab, Anatolia) and try and guess where they all may have had come from, given the time frame. 2. By looking at the descriptions of the earliest IE societies (first of all the society of Rig-Veda), we can try and guess what way of life these people had. We can then look at all the archaeological cultures in the roughly appropriate area from the roughly appropriate time frame and see which of those have features of interest (in the IE case, warrior-like culture with social stratification, etc.). 3. We know that IE migrated a lot and provided a lot of genetic material to modern populations in Europe and some other regions. Since quite recently, by looking at palaeo-DNA data from the remains of the people who belonged to these cultures, we can try and check who of them made the biggest contribution to contemporary populations. All these sources of data are rather imprecise, but if you combine them all together and see a clear pattern, this looks rather convincing.
- FlyingSnake 2y ago> the society of Rig-Veda I fail to understand how the Rigvedic society can be connected to this DNA research. Rigveda never mentions anything beyond the Punjab/Swat/Haryana region in any of the hymns. The flora and fauna mentioned in it is also exclusive to this region. Lastly there is no mention of an ancient homeland both in Rigveda and Avesta.
- flir 2y agoI 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-of-the-steppes https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/chariot-racers... - make of that what you will.
- danans 2y agoIt's not about the origin of a single language. It's about the origin of a population whose widely dispersed descendants often speak a language whose primary features descend from the language spoken by the original population (albeit changed via thousands of years of drift and borrowing from other languages). That doesn't mean that a) all features of the descendant language come from the origin language or b) all speakers of the descendant language have ancestry from the original population.
- yubblegum 2y agoI love how they studiously avoid mentioning Iran in all these studies. There is a gap there between "Greece, Armenia, India and China". Hmm. Is this like the disappearing Persian Gulf syndrome?
- AlotOfReading 2y agoIran is mentioned in the paper several times. If you look at their data though, samples are heavily concentrated in black sea countries. Syria, Iraq, and Iran don't have many samples and those they do have cluster along the Caucasus cline on the PCA.
- yubblegum 2y agoI read and grep'd the article.
- dehugger 2y agoThe article focuses heavily on the Yamnaya people and identifies them as the progenitors responsible for the initial Indo-European spread. Are you suggesting: A) the Yamnaya lived in present-day Iran and that this information was purposely left out B) the studies findings about the Yamnaya are incorrect C) the study should have mentioned Iran despite it not actually being historically relevant to the Yamnaya people D) something else entirely?
- teleforce 2y agoRelated HN posts [1], [2]. Fun facts, the most common words of Indo-European Family are surprisingly very similar across Sanskrit (S) <--> English (E) <--> German (G) [3]. Pitara (S) <--> Father (E) <--> Vater (G) Matara (S) <--> Mother (E) <--> Mutter (G) Bhratara (S) <--> Brother (E) <--> Bruder (G) Duhitar (S) <--> Daughter (E) <--> Tochter (G) [1] New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages (147 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36930321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36930321 [2] Ancient genomes provide final word in Indo-European linguistic origins (16 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42515584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42515584 [3] Turandot and the Deep Indo-European Roots of “Daughter” (15 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29450507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29450507
- anon291 2y agoLots of verbs too. For example, 'to be' - French 'etre' (circumflex over the e indicates old 's' after the e), Marathi 'asane' (pronounced esnay) 'to go', German gehen, Marathi jana (when conjugated the j becomes hard) 'to give', french 'donner', Hindi 'danaa' (pronounced similarly) 'to mix', french 'melanger', Hind 'melaanaa' Other non-obvious ones: Vedas and Wisdom / Wit. Alternatively, Latin video (to see) Dyaus-pitar and Jupiter, Zeus-pater 'that' in English is 'que' (that/what) in french and 'kya' (for what) or 'ki' (for that) in Hindi (pronounced similarly to French 'que'). English burden or 'to bear' and Hindi bhar (burden) English 'ignite', Latin 'ignis' and Indic 'agni' (fire) 'Raja' and 'regal' or 'royal' 'Dental' and Hindi 'dant' (tooth) Greek 'polis' and Indic 'pore' / 'pur' / 'puram' (the 'r' is pronounced like a soft l)
- yorwba 2y agoFrench être is from PIE h₁ésti https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h%E2%82%81%C3%A9sti https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur... which also gave rise to Marathi आथि (āthi). Marathi असणे (asṇe) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%87#Marathi https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%A3%E... appears unrelated. (But might be cognate to English at home?) Not all similarities between mondern languages are inherited, coincidences do happen.
- stult 2y ago> It finds evidence that the culture may have taken root somewhere near the present-day small town of Mykhailivka in the southern part of Ukraine. As anyone following the war in Ukraine closely has long since realized, village names alone are not very useful for identifying where something is in Ukraine. There are just too many places with the same names. e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykhailivka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykhailivka
- dsign 2y agoOnly 6500 years? That's incredibly recent for such an influential language. For comparison, Sargon of Akkad died only 4000 years ago, and there are written records from him. True, he didn't speak Indo-European, but Afroasiatic/Akkadian, and that was the language on those cuneiform tablets the researchers used for reference. On a tangent, with the advent of AI and the final decades of our species, we should make more clay tablets to leave lying around...
- teleforce 2y agoThe oldest attestation of Indo-European language is now the long extinct language Hittite who used to live in Bronze Age Anatolian Steppe. The language is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 17th to the 13th centuries BCE. Hittite people created an empire centred on Hattusa, and also around northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. > On a tangent, with the advent of AI and the final decades of our species, we should make more clay tablets to leave lying around The irony is that even with AI we have yet to decode Indus script perhaps due to the lack of the equivalent of Rosetta Stone [1]. I think there's a Nobel prize waiting for those who can decipher the Indus script with AI or not [2]. [1] Rosetta Stone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone [2] Indus script: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script
- empath75 2y agoI believe the article is saying that the Hittite branch split off early from the rest of the tree, and the Yamnaya are the ones that spread it around the world -- the Hittite branch ended up being a dead end.
- Tor3 2y agoThe main point of the article was that the Hittite spoke an IE language (evidence from their cuneiform writing), but their DNA doesn't have any Yamnaya ancestry. So, two conflicting points. What the article describes is that they have found an ancient population which they call "the Caucasus Lower Volga people", and their DNA is present in the Yamnaya AND the Hittites, as I understand it. So the hypothesis is that these people spoke an early proto-IE language, and some of them migrated to where the Hittites originated, and others moved west and intermixed with a small region in what is today the southern part of Ukraine, and in a few villages of a few thousand people a whole new economy was developed and this is what eventually spread out as the "steppe migration", bringing proto-IE with them. So, the base of the article is that they found a population which appears to be ancestral to both the Yamnaya and the Hittites, and that the latter split off before that population became the Yamnaya by migrating elsewhere and merge with people there. What's missing is definite proof that the "Caucasus Lower Volga" people actually spoke proto-proto-IE, but if they didn't then things look even more complex. If they did it would match the current linguistic and DNA evidence pretty well.
- Tuth5rjrjit 2y ago[flagged]
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoDoes this mention Avestan at all?
- Archelaos 2y agoI recently came across this presentation of Kristian Kristiansen, University of Gothenburg: "Towards a New European prehistory: genes, archaeology and language" (2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxTVSwt-jsU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxTVSwt-jsU [video], which I enjoyed very much. Prof. Kristiansen is a leading researcher in this area.
- falaki 2y agoI haven't read the papers in detail, but can someone explain how genetics can be used to trace spread of languages? For context, you don't need population movements for a language to spread (it is similar to religion). See this article for a logical explanation: https://medium.com/incerto/a-few-things-we-dont-quite-get-about-the-levant-da6ff702974f https://medium.com/incerto/a-few-things-we-dont-quite-get-ab...
- adastra22 2y agoYou can’t. But if population A and population B share a ancestor X years ago, and they also speak languages that appear to have drifted apart by X many years, the inference that their ancestor spoke a common proto-language is the simplest explanation.
- eddiewithzato 2y agoWell you can and in fact they have narrowed down the language to a haplogroup even. R1b in the case of greek for example
- eddiewithzato 2y ago[flagged]
- ants_everywhere 2y ago[flagged]
- cool_dude85 2y agoAn excellent book I strongly recommend about PIE is The Horse, The Wheel, and Language.
- evolextra 2y ago[dead]
- EfficientDude 2y ago[flagged]
- JohnGrun 2y agoThis book is a very very deep dive into this subject. It may be a bit out of date. Published in 2007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horse,_the_Wheel,_and_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horse,_the_Wheel,_and_Lang...
- jyscao 2y ago> This led to a demographic explosion, so that in a few hundred years Yamnaya descendants numbered many tens of thousands and were spread from Hungary to eastern China. Don’t they mean western China here?
- snovymgodym 2y agoyeah definitely. Probably in reference to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocharians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocharians
- merillecuz56 2y ago[dead]
- rossdavidh 2y agoDavid Reich, one of the principal authors of the study in question, wrote a book a few years back titled "Who We Are and How We Got Here", which I quite liked (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2605841954 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2605841954). It predates some of this research, obviously, but it does have a chapter on the Indo-European origin question, along with chapters on a lot of other interesting paleo-DNA research.
- adolph 2y agoHe was on the Dwarkesh podcast last August to provide some lay person friendly synopsis and updates to “Who We Are.” Worth listening to even if you have read the book (in my mind at least). Warning, link has an auto play when I opened it (but don’t let that minor obnoxiousness dissuade you from listening). https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/david-reich https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/david-reich
- singularity2001 2y agowhat happened to the southern Arc paper which found that the Yamaya were 'just' an early branch?
- Quarrelsome 2y agohas anyone else encountered the Hindu nationalist perspective when discussing this? I've struggled to suggest this is a scientific reality when talking to some otherwise smart people about this and I suspect this is in part to their vulnerability to Hindu nationalist talking points which I assume tend to big up local ancestry instead of an ancestry that connects a lot of different peoples and religions together. Just wondering if other people have experienced the same or have effective arguments to deal with the outright rejection I've previously faced. I like to think of these discoveries as great unifying ancestry many of us share, which I consider a positive thing, So it surprised me when I discovered an outright rejection of the thought.
- _yy01 2y agoBoth nationalist side and the other side (AIT/AMT) take this very emotionally. Recently NCERT books were edited indicating that the Rig-vedic people were a continuation of Harappans. On the other hand, the popular science and journalism has not done any favours by framing the IE studies as "The Aryans brought the Vedas with them from Europe", which is wrong at so many levels. The AMT/AIT was also weaponized by certain political elements in India to proliferate harassment against the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu. So it's kind of understandable why some Indians get defensive about this. But for the most part it's the same blind nationalistic spirit by which boomers claim all science was invented by Indians. Given that most Hindus today won't even know what's there in the Veda which is markedly different from the contemporary Hindu religion, that much attachment to the very small part of ancestry is not required. Sensitive fields like IE studies should be kept to serious circles and not dumbed down to the level layman whose faith in his Gods or respect towards other humans will be changed by suggesting that people moved around and fought a lot 4000 years ago.
- ho2423o4j2334 2y ago> "The Aryans brought the Vedas with them from Europe", That's still the theory, except it's not politically correct to say it out loud. There was an idiot re-tweeted by the VP, who claimed "Buddha was Blonde with Blue-eyes; so was Pāṇinī". You might claim he's an idiot and "AMT is a sophisticated theory you pleb", but it actually is not. As we speak, Indologists like Bronkhorst, Beckwith and many others in EBT are scheming all sorts theories, which give wind to the old-Nazi ideas of "(early) Buddhism" being close to the early "Aryan religion", by claiming that the Shakyamuni was a remnant of original Steppe clans. The way West frames/manipulates History (based on so little evidence) is deeply violent, and has roots in Xtianity and its violence. This is precisely the issue with this racial theory from the backdoor, and anyone with any shred of morality/ethics should stand with India, and for the indegeneity of its culture, civilization and languages.
- adrian_b 2y agoFree preprints of the 2 papers: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.17.589597v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.17.589597v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.17.589600v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.17.589600v1
- dr_dshiv 2y agoI wonder how this lower Volga group interacted with the earliest known civilization (5000-3000 BCE), in modern day Ukraine, the Cucuteni–Trypillia [1].They had cities with between 20-40k people that overlapped with the Yamnaya people’s discussed in the article (3500-2500 BCE). They had agriculture as well as wheels for transportation and pottery. All predating middle eastern civilizations. They also burned down their own cities every 50-100 years. This culture was in constant threat from the nomads of the steppe and they learned to live in large groups as protection. This hypothesis is discussed at the end of a recent publication [2: p219-220]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucuteni%E2%80%93Trypillia_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucuteni%E2%80%93Trypillia_cul... [2] https://pure.tudelft.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/144861667/enigma_of_mind_a_theory_of_evolution_and_conscious_experience.pdf https://pure.tudelft.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/144861667/enig...
- mjfl 2y agohow do archaeologists know they burned down their own cities? One would expect the more neutral statement 'Their cities were burned every 50-100 years".
- acjohnson55 2y agoMy wild guess would be the coexistence of human remains and maybe other non-structural debris with burn layers.
- HexPhantom 2y agoThe detail about kurgan burials being the reason we even have this data is a good reminder of how much of history is just luck. So... what other massive historical movements we've completely missed because the evidence didn't survive.