[267] The indigenous people were Danubian farmers, and the invading people of the 3rd millennium BCE were Kurgan warrior-herders from the Ukrainian and Russian steppes. Indian scientists were intensely interested in the Roopkund mystery. Genetic analysis of human remains found in the Himalayas has raised baffling questions about who these people were and why they were there. The Indo-Aryan migrations involved a number of tribes, who may have infiltrated northern India in series of "waves" of migration. [26][1], According to the widely accepted Kurgan hypothesis or Steppe theory, the Indo-European language and culture spread in several stages from the Proto-Indo-European Urheimat in the Eurasian Pontic steppes into Western Europe, Central and South Asia, through folk migrations and so-called elite recruitment. note the absence of "large amounts" of steppe-ancestry in the Balkan peninsula and Anatolia, which may indicate that archaic PIE originated in the Caucasus or Iran, but also state that "it remains possible that Indo-European languages were spread through southeastern Europe into Anatolia without large-scale population movement or admixture. 4000 and 3000 BCE, Neolithic populations in western Europe declined, probably due to the plague and other viral hemorrhagic fevers. Nomadic horse riders likely opened a steppe bridge between Europe and Asia, but recent genetic data raise more questions. The scientific analysis swiftly discounted most of the prevailing theories. DNA analysis showed that all the victims appeared to have a genetic makeup typical of South Asian origin. The earliest and midrange specimens' mitochondrial DNA (which is inherited from the mother) was almost entirely local. And theres absolutely no reason to be up there if they werent on the pilgrimage. The idea of a group of eighteenth-century Greeks on a Hindu pilgrimage seemed far-fetched. The origins of Italo-Celtic, Germanic and Balto-Slavic have often been associated with the spread of the Corded Ware horizon and the Bell Beakers, but the specifics remain unsolved. Scholars estimate that PIE may have been spoken as a single language (before divergence began) around 3500 BCE, though estimates by different authorities can vary by more than a millennium. Then, according to the legend, she sent down a blizzard of hail and a whirlwind, which swept all the pilgrims on the Path of Death into the lake. The bearers of these cultures were nomadic pastoralists, who, according to the model, by the early 3rd millennium expanded throughout the PonticCaspian steppe and into Eastern Europe. There are fewer cultural barriers to handling human biological materials than in many parts of the world, and Indian scientists have eagerly pursued research into the peopling of the subcontinent. Childe assumed that large-scale migrations would have been associated with the prehistoric . [51][52] Small groups can change a larger cultural area,[53][1] and elite male dominance by small groups may have led to a language shift in northern India. [50][note 2], Indo-European languages probably spread through language shifts. In the case of the Illyrian elements a Romance intermediary is inevitable as long as Illyrian was probably extinct in the 2nd century A.D.". This page was last edited on 13 April 2023, at 06:30. The lands of the Anatolian peoples were successively invaded by a number of peoples and empires at high frequency: the Phrygians, Bithynians, the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks, the Galatian Celts, Romans and the Oghuz Turks. To the east, it reaches into the Minusinsk depression, with some sites as far west as the southern Ural Mountains,[323] overlapping with the area of the earlier Afanasevo culture. The following suggestions have been made from 2015 to 2019: Soviet and post-Soviet Russian archaeologists have proposed an East Caspian influence, via the eastern Caspian areas, on the formation of the Don-Volga cultures. Similarly, "sell" and "wash" were borrowed in Proto-Ugric. They brought with them a language that is the root of many of those spoken todayincluding English, Spanish, Hindi, Russian and Persian. The Medes, Parthians and Persians begin to appear on the western Iranian plateau from c.800 BCE, after which they remained under Assyrian rule for several centuries, as it was with the rest of the peoples in the Near East. Martirosyan, Hrach (2017). The Kurgan model is the most widely accepted scenario of Indo-European origins. [75][1], The Pontic steppe is a large area of grasslands in far Eastern Europe, located north of the Black Sea, Caucasus Mountains and Caspian Sea and including parts of eastern Ukraine, southern Russia and northwest Kazakhstan. Slavic groups also ventured as far as Scandinavia, constituting elements amongst the Vikings;[255][note 26] whilst at the other geographic extreme, Slavic mercenaries fighting for the Byzantines and Arabs settled Asia Minor and even as far as Syria. Elizebeth Friedman: Became the world's most famous codebreaker. The lake, about a hundred and thirty feet across and ten feet deep, is an emerald jewel nestled in a bowl of rock and ice. In 2005, Sax was featured in a National Geographic documentary about the lake. The Kurgan theory centres on possible archaeological evidence for an expansion into Europe and the Near East by Kurgan horsemen beginning in the sixth millennium BP7,8. Her view, known as the Kurgan hypothesisnamed for the distinctive burial mounds that spread west across Europeis now the most widely accepted theory about Indo-European linguistic origins. Some recent DNA-research has led to renewed suggestions, most notably by David Reich, of a Caucasian homeland for archaic or 'proto-proto-Indo-European', from where archaic PIE speaking people migrated into Anatolia, where the Anatolian languages developed, while at the steppes archaic PIE developed into early and late PIE. "[207][note 20], Volker Heyd has cautioned to be careful with drawing too strong conclusions from those genetic similarities between Corded Ware and Yamna, noting the small number of samples; the late dates of the Esperstadt graves, which could also have undergone Bell Beaker admixture; the presence of Yamna-ancestry in western Europe before the Danube-expansion; and the risks of extrapolating "the results from a handful of individual burials to whole ethnically interpreted populations. [181] Danish archaeologist Kristian Kristiansen said he is "increasingly convinced there must have been a kind of genocide. [278] The territory the Illyrians inhabited came to be known as Illyria to Greek and Roman authors, who identified a territory that corresponds to the Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro, part of Serbia and most of Albania, between the Adriatic Sea in the west, the Drava river in the north, the Morava river in the east and the mouth of the Aoos river in the south. [173] While Anthony (2007) situates the development of pre-Germanic dialects east of the Carpathians, arguing for a migration up the Dniestr,[174] Anthony (2017) relates the origins of the Corded Ware to the early third century Yamna-migrations into the Danube-valley, stating that "[t]he migration stream that created these intrusive cemeteries now can be seen to have continued from eastern Hungary across the Carpathians into southern Poland, where the earliest material traits of the Corded ware horizon appeared. When the snow and ice melted that summer, many more were visible through the clear water, lying on the bottom. One is that they came with Phrygians from the west, or with the Mitanni from the east, and took over from the non-Indo-European speaking Urartians, who were previously dominant in this area. [131] According to Anthony, if it separated from Proto-Indo-European, it likely did so between 4500 and 3500 BCE. In 2015 a series of studies sequenced the DNA of human bones and other remains from many parts of Europe and Asia. The Anatolian languages have also spurred a major re-evaluation of theories concerning the development of various shared Indo-European language features and the extent to which these features were present in PIE itself. Nanda Devi cursed the kingdom, unleashing drought and disaster, and infesting the milk and rice with maggots. Some archaeologists would extend the time depth of PIE to the middle Neolithic (5500 to 4500 BCE) or even the early Neolithic (7500 to 5500 BCE), and suggest alternative Proto-Indo-European original homelands. Kurgan hypothesis Contents 1 History 1.1 Predecessors 1.2 Overview 2 Kurgan culture 2.1 Cultural horizon 2.2 Stages of culture and expansion 2.3 Timeline 2.4 Further expansion during the Bronze Age 3 Revisions 3.1 Invasion versus diffusion scenarios (1980s onward) 3.2 Alignment with Anatolian hypothesis (2000s) But he contends that his new results also show the migration was on a smaller scale than previously speculated; the more recent specimens apparently only made it as far as central Europe before returning, even though the language eventually spread as far as the British Isles. It was the densely populated area of the Pontic-Caspian steppes at the time, and had been inhabited by various hunter-gatherer populations since the end of the Ice Age. [web 17] The Nordic Bronze Age developed from the absorption of the hunter-gatherer Pitted Ware culture (c.3500-2300 BCE) into the agricultural Battle Axe culture (c.2800-2300 BCE),[221][222] which in turn developed from the superimposition of the Corded Ware culture (c.3100-2350 BCE) upon the Funnelbeaker culture (c.4300-2800 BCE) on the North European Plain, adjacent to the north of the Bell Beaker culture (c.28002300 BCE). (2015) Anthony, together with Lazaridis, Haak, Patterson, and Reich, notes that the mass migration of Yamnaya people to northern Europe shows that "the languages could have been introduced simply by strength of numbers: via major migration in which both sexes participated. [163] While the Yuezhi were pressuring the Xiongnu from the west, the Donghu were doing the same from the east. He went on to write a doctoral thesis about the local traditions surrounding Nanda Devi. [note 28][web 29], Since 2004, an informal workgroup of scholars who support the Paleolithic Continuity hypothesis has been held online. Almost 3billion native speakers use Indo-European languages,[web 5] making them by far the largest recognised language family. [28] According to Anthony, the Anatolian branch,[29][30] to which the Hittites belong,[31] probably arrived in Anatolia from the Danube valley. [112] According to Anthony, the first cattle herders arrived from the Danube Valley at ca. One particularly innovative dialect separated from the Balto-Slavic dialect continuum and became ancestral to the Proto-Slavic language, from which all Slavic languages descended. Yamnaya culture), the prototypical, This page was last edited on 10 April 2023, at 23:03. Still, some anthropologists, social scientists, and even geneticists are deeply uncomfortable with any research that explores the hereditary differences among populations. Some Critiques of the Feminist/New Age "Goddess" Claims Thanks for reading Scientific American. The second-oldest branch language group, Tocharian, was spoken in the Tarim Basin (now western China), after splitting from early PIE spoken on the eastern Pontic steppe. All the bones studied so far have been picked up haphazardly, a flawed way of sampling that often skews results. Completing the pilgrimage in this way is a sign that the goddess favors you and wants you to survive. New evidence supports Anatolia hypothesis for origins of English The majority of the Yuezhi however migrated west to the Ili Valley, where they displaced the Sakas (Scythians). Could Roopkund B have come from an unsampled population in India descended from Greeks or a related group? "[30] According to Piazza and Cavalli-Sforza (2006), the Yamna-culture may have been derived from Middle Eastern Neolithic farmers who migrated to the Pontic steppe and developed pastoral nomadism. Their current distribution spreads across the Iranian plateau, and stretches from the Caucasus in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south, and from the Indus River in the east to eastern Turkey in the west a region that is sometimes called the "Iranian cultural continent", or Greater Iran by some scholars, and represents the extent of the Iranian languages and significant influence of the Iranian peoples, through the geopolitical reach of the Iranian empire.[352]. [330] Several Mitanni rulers, such as Shattiwaza, had names which could be interpreted as Indo-Aryan. [web 25] The horse, which the Kassites worshipped, first came into use in Babylonia at this time. The enclave established in southern Brittany was linked closely to the riverine and landward route, via the Loire, and across the Gtinais valley to the Seine valley, and thence to the lower Rhine. Meanwhile, the teams geographic analysis laid to rest the idea of traders lost in the mountains, establishing that no trade route between India and Tibet had ever existed in the area. Also included are prehistorian Marcel Otte (Universit de Lige) and anthropologist Henry Harpending (University of Utah). [54][55][56], It is thought that when Indo-Europeans expanded into Europe from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, they encountered existing populations that spoke dissimilar, unrelated languages. Noting that nothing of value was found on the bodies, he speculated that the travellers were killed by Thuggees, a cult of robbers and murderers whose fearsome reputation in British India gave us the word thug. Thuggees were said to attach themselves to travellers or groups of pilgrims, gaining their trust and then robbing and murdering them on a remote stretch of road. Brixhe, Cl. But that's [unlikely to have been] the case, he says. [190] Although closely related to the Tripolye culture, it is contemporary with the Yamnaya culture, and resembles it in significant ways. Archeologists have tended to explain this development as the result of cultural diffusion: people adopted innovations in pottery, metalworking, and weaponry from their geographic neighbors, along with new burial customs and religious beliefs. [40], The Indo-European eastward expansion in the 2nd millennium BCE had a significant influence on Chinese culture,[148] introducing the chariot,[web 12] horse burials,[web 13][149] the domesticated horse,[148][150] iron technology,[148][web 14] and wheeled vehicles,[151][152][153][154] fighting styles, head-and-hoof rituals, art motifs and myths. [71] Steppe herders, archaic Proto-Indo-European speakers, spread into the lower Danube valley about 42004000 BCE, either causing or taking advantage of the collapse of Old Europe. [web 23] The Dacians and Getae were always considered as Thracians by the ancients (Dio Cassius, Trogus Pompeius, Appian, Strabo and Pliny the Elder), and were both said to speak the same Thracian language. [131], Damgaard et al. [64] These new members were further incorporated by matrimonial alliances. [5], Recent genetics studies have demonstrated that populations bearing specific Y-DNA haplogroups and a distinct genetic signature expanded into Europe and South Asia from the Pontic-Caspian steppe during the third and second millennia BC. BCE), then part of the central European Urnfield culture system (1300-750 BCE). Fiedel contends that the mitochondrial DNA lineages and the Y-chromosomal DNA lineages of the Roopkund B group are rare or absent in the population of the Greek islands, but are relatively common in Armenians and other peoples of the Caucasus. "[97], Damgaard et al. [249] As an alternative to the model of a binary split into Slavic and Baltic, some linguists suggest that Balto-Slavic should be split into three equidistant nodes: Eastern Baltic, Western Baltic and Slavic. According to Ayushi Nayak, who performed the isotopic bone analyses at the Max Planck Institute, Hindu pilgrims sometimes go barefoot and thinly clothed to sacred sites in the Himalayas as a spiritual challenge. Indo-European Origins, Part II: The Nordic, Kurgan, and Anatolian The Thuggees would dump people in water.. [10][11][1][12][13][14] The Sintashta culture grew into the Andronovo culture[10][11][1][12][13][14] (c.1900[15]800 BCE), the two first phases being the Fedorovo Andronovo culture (c.19001400 BCE)[15] and Alakul Andronovo culture (c.18001500 BCE). PIE was the first proposed proto-language to be widely accepted by linguists. [223], By the 3rd century BC, the Pre-Roman Iron Age arose among the Germanic peoples, who were at the time expanding southwards at the expense of the Celts and Illyrians. Archaic PIE for "the last common ancestor of the Anatolian and non-Anatolian IE branches"; Early, core, or Post-Anatolian, PIE for "the last common ancestor of the non-Anatolian PIE languages, including Tocharian"; Late PIE for "the common ancestor of all other IE branches". [123], The Sredny Stog culture (44003300 BCE)[124] appears at the same location as the Dniepr-Donets culture, but shows influences from people who came from the Volga river region. The pilgrimage winds up through the foothills of the Trisul massif, where locals believe that the goddess lives with her husband, Shiva. O.K., now, who ordered the glass half empty, and who ordered the glass half full?, Its not actually that much after taxes.. And they were dumped in water. Having so far sequenced the DNA of more than ten thousand long-dead individuals from all over the globe, the lab is almost halfway through a five-year project to create an atlas of human migration and diversity, allowing us to peer deep into our past. But a recent landslide had exposed a cache of fresh bones and artifacts. Herds needed to be moved frequently to feed them sufficiently, and the use of wagons and horse riding made this possible, leading to "a new, more mobile form of pastoralism". [45], Anthony (2017) relates the origins of the Corded Ware to the Yamnaya migrations into Hungary. [135] At least 383 non-Indo-European words were borrowed from this culture, including the god Indra and the ritual drink Soma.[328]. Cleaning up the hygiene hypothesis | PNAS [263] "[] the main argument in favor of the Anatolian hypothesis (that major language change requires major migration) can now also be applied to the Steppe hypothesis. According to the latest study by Kassian et al. Large ancient-DNA study uncovers population that moved westwards 4,500 years ago", "The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies", "Shared and Unique Components of Human Population Structure and Genome-Wide Signals of Positive Selection in South Asia", "Genetic evidence for recent population mixture in India", "Steppe migrant thugs pacified by Stone Age farming women", "An essay on Saami ethnolinguistic prehistory", Toward a New Outline of the Soviet Central Asian Paleolithic, "The genetic prehistory of the Greater Caucasus", "The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia", "New Radiocarbon Dates and a Review of the Chronology of Prehistoric Populations from the Minusinsk Basin, Southern Siberia, Russia", "Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages of, "Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe", "Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians", "Human mitochondrial DNA lineages in Iron-Age Fennoscandia suggest incipient admixture and eastern introduction of farming-related maternal ancestry", "Yamnaya - Corded Ware - Bell Beakers: How to conceptualise events of 5000 years ago", "Story of most murderous people of all time revealed in ancient DNA", "Celticization from the West: The Contribution of Archaeology", "The Indo-Europeanization of Atlantic Europe", "Languages of the World: Germanic languages", "Language Acquisition in the Romance Speaking World: Peru Departamento de Educacin", "Radiation oncology in Latin speaking countries: A link between Europe and Latin America", "Paradigm Shift? [164] The Pazyryk burials of the Ukok Plateau coincide with the apex of power of the Yuezhi, and the burials have therefore been attributed to them, which means that the Altai region was part of the Yuezhi Empire.[161]. Without written words, language transmission at the time would have depended largely on face-to-face contact, he says, suggesting the PIE speakers swept well across Europe and Asia. [171] Anthony excludes the Globular Amphora culture.[1]. [251][252][253], The Balts or Baltic peoples (Lithuanian: baltai, Latvian: balti) are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group who speak the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, which was originally spoken by tribes living in the area east of the Jutland peninsula in the west and west of Moscow and the Oka and Volga rivers basins in the east.