DNA STUDY SHEDS LIGHT ON 'MISSING LINK' IN BIRTH OF INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

[elleng]

Research suggests family of languages now spoken from Europe to India originated between the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia. But identity of first Indo-Europeans remains a mystery.

Where Indo-European languages actually originated has long been a mystery. It still is, but now new research has narrowed down the options, and indicates that the original speakers were likely a people living somewhere between the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia.

The research, based on sequencing hundreds of genomes of people who lived in west Asia and southeastern Europe over the last 11,000 years, brings new information about the birth and spread of Indo-European languages, a vast family of tongues that includes everything from Latin and English to Farsi and Sanskrit. But it leaves shrouded in mystery the exact identity of the speakers of the ancestor tongue of most languages that are still used today from Europe to India.

The study published Thursday in Science reports on genetic data extracted from the teeth and bones of more than 700 individuals who lived thousands of years ago across Greece, the Balkans, Anatolia and the Caucasus. The work was led by Prof. David Reich a geneticist at Harvard University, and Prof. Ron Pinhasi, an anthropologist at the University of Vienna – two of the world’s most noted experts on ancient DNA.

Previous work by linguists, as well as Reich and other geneticists, has already elucidated much about the story of Indo-European languages. For centuries experts have been noting strange similarities between apparently unrelated tongues. Just think of the word “brother” in English, which is “frater” in Latin and “brather” in Sanskrit.

Since the 19th century, linguists have suspected that proto-Indo-European, the language from which eventually all the branches of the family developed, was originally spread by nomads who migrated from the steppes north of the Black Sea.

The so-called “steppe hypothesis” has received a massive boost from advanced genetic research that allows us to sequence the DNA of current and past populations and reveal their ancestry.'>>>

https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/dna-study-sheds-light-on-missing-link-in-birth-of-indo-european-languages?

[FirstLight]

1. really fascinating! I am an amateur student of proto-lnguage

Like symbols and petroglyphs used by early indigenous peoples. I am fascinated by the similarities across the north and south american continents, as well as europe.

It's like a collective concept that happend simultaneously across different tribes...

thank you for sharing!

[elleng]

2. OH GOLLY, had I only KNOWN about anthropology 'a few years ago!'

SO MUCH to learn!

[FirstLight]

3. truly amazing... and look how fast we went from these years of living in harmony

with nature, to manipulating it, to killing our own habitat

I used to want to be an archaeologis as a kid, not like Indiana Jones but a real live digger for stuff!

[Warpy]

6. Climate change seems to have been the main cause of that

Agriculture developed independently in several parts of the world as the plants that sustained people on their seasonal hunting and gathering migrations likely ceased to exist.

Farming and herding weren't exclusively exported from the Middle East but many food crops and animal breeds were. Once farming was fairly universal, greed, overpopulation and warfare soon followed.

I love reading about archaeology and anthropology, but I'm not sure I'd have enjoyed doing either one.

[wnylib]

7. You can volunteer for a dig.

The US Park Service often cooperates with archaeologists and volunteers who work under supervision of an archaeology team. You can contact the US Park Service to ask about projects coming up.

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/archeology/volunteering.htm

Or, you can contact a university that has an archaeology department. If they have a project in your area or within a distance that you are willing to travel, you might get a chance to volunteer with them.

I tried this once. A university near me was doing a local project to give their students some field work experience. So I volunteered.

[FirstLight]

9. too cool!

thanks for the link

[wnylib]

10. At the site where I volunteered,

I met a mother and daughter who had volunteered at several other sites, via the US Park Service. One of the sites they had worked as volunteers was Cahokia.

[multigraincracker]

4. My minor in college and my first love.

Lacked the writing skills to advance. But I sure did learn a lot about life. Very kind teachers for us that struggle.

Took the class The Anthropology of Language. A lot of data to run for answers. I'd guess AI will speed it up a great deal.

Learned to keep emotions out of observations, and judgement.

[multigraincracker]

5. The local State University here, Central Michigan allows

us ove 65 to audit courses for free. Check around.

[wnylib]

8. Some of the people who spoke Indo-European languages

in ancient times are mentioned in the Bible, e g. the Hittites and Hurrians of Anatolia (Turkey).