Category Archives: Tocharian

Is Old High German Close to Old Persian?

I am going to republish this older piece that has been called into question. Supposedly this language is totally made up. However, that is almost certainly not true, although I am looking into it at the moment. A Croatian professor even wrote a 27,500 word dictionary of this language. I am enclosing here 97 different references that discuss this language in the hopes that this puts an end to the Gan-Veyan controversy once and for all.

Beatrix writes:

Robert,Is it true that 1,000 yrs ago a German & a Persian spoke basically the same language?

No, it is not  true at all that Old German and Old Persian were the same language 1,000 years ago.

However there are some Croatian dialects such as Archaic Islander Čakavian spoken on the islands off the coast of Croatia that are quite similar to Persian or Iranic. They are actually closer to Kurdish and Zazaki though. They are actually completely separate languages, as the lexical similarity with Croatian is only 4%! There is a theory that the pre-Slavic Croatians may have come originally from Persia, and there may be something to that.

These ancient tongues are the remains of the pre-Slavic languages spoken in this area before the Slavs came. The language that these tongues are closest to is called Liburnian. The Liburnians inhabited that region thousands of years ago. Liburnian is an ancient Indo-European language.

I did a study on one of those old languages, an Archaic Islander Čakavian tongue called Gan-Veyãn. I obtained a short dictionary of Gan-Veyãn and went through half of it from M-Z looking on my guesses as where the roots seemed to have originated. The results were remarkable and are listed in order with the language with the most roots first and the language with fewest roots last.

  • Indic
  • Persian
  • Avestan
  • Hittite
  • Akkadian
  • Basque
  • Tocharian
  • Sumerian
  • Lithuanian
  • Aramaic
  • Hurrian
  • Etruscan
  • Gothic
  • Russian
  • Ukrainian
  • Celtic
  • Kurdish
  • Armenian
  • Latin
  • Arabic
  • Mittani
  • Apian
  • German
  • Geez

I will go down the list now and describe these languages.

Indic means all of the Indo European or IE languages related to Hindi.

Persian is well known.

Avestan is best described as Old Persian.

Hittite is an ancient IE tongue formerly spoken in Turkey.

Akkadian is a language isolate formerly spoken in Iraq by the people of that name who had a kingdom there.

Basque is the well known language isolate and pre-IE language spoken in northeastern Spain. Although it formally has no relatives, I would say it is related to NE Caucasian languages like Chechen. In fact the placename Iberia has deep connections to the land of Georgia.

Tocharian is an ancient IE languages formerly spoken by Caucasian people who lived in what is now Xinjiang in far western China where the Uyghurs now live.

Sumerian is an ancient tongue, a language isolate formerly spoken in the Sumerian Kingdom in Iraq.

Lithuanian is interesting because for some reason it is one of the most archaic living IE languages.

Aramaic of course is the language of Jesus spoken in the Levant, Mesopotamia, Iran and Turkey. It is still spoken by Assyrian Christians in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey to this day.

Hurrian is an ancient IE language like Hittite formerly spoken in Turkey.

Etruscan is an ancient language isolate formerly spoken in Italy.

Gothic is the ancient Germanic language of the Visigoths who lived not only in Germany but also in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.

Russian and Ukrainian are well known. This ancient language may have roots close to these two Slavic languages because in a way Russian and Ukrainian are ancient Slavic languages being heavily based on Old Church Slavonic, a liturgical language that originated in northeastern Greece with roots close to Old Slavic or even Proto-Slavic.

Kurdish is the well known Iranic language of the Kurds.

Armenian is a living language, but it is rather ancient and archaic as IE languages go.

Latin is well known and these islands were part of the Roman Empire for a while.

Arabic is well known and quite a few languages along the European coast of the Mediterranean Sea have some Arabic in them.

Mittani is a language isolate formerly spoken around northern Iraq and Iran that nevertheless seems to have some relationship with Indo-Iranian languages.

Apian is an ancient IE language formerly spoken in Italy.

German is well known. How German words got into this language is a head scratcher but Croatia itself is quite close to Germany as a former part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which had German as an official language.

Geez is the ancient language of the Ethiopian and Egyptian Coptic Christians which was thought to be long dead. However a family in Cairo was recently discovered who spoke Geez at home.

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Filed under Afroasiatic, Arabic, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Balto-Slavic-Germanic, Basque, German, Germanic, Indic, Indo-European, Indo-Hittite, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Irano-Armenian, Indo-Irano-Armeno-Hellenic, Isolates, Italo-Celtic-Tocharian, Language Families, Linguistics, Russian, Semitic, Slavic, Tocharian

A Little Asian in All of Us

Repost from the old site.

Well not quite, but you get the picture.

I am going to write a post about Asian genes in non-Asians. Mostly or fully-Asian groups obviously occupy most of Asia. Even if we subtract Australoids from Asians, many Melanesians have some Asian in them, especially those in the east end of Indonesia> and along the coast of New Guinea. In this case, the Asian is Austronesian from Taiwan.

Papuans and Aborigines have little to no Asian mix. Polynesians are a highly controversial people who have usually been thought of as being 50% Melanesian and 50% Austronesian from Taiwan. However, there is a new paper out suggesting that they are a mostly-Austronesian people.

Micronesians are said to be the same. Previously, they were thought to be Polynesians mixed with Melanesians. Polynesia is thought to have been populated from Eastern Indonesia. Micronesia is thought to have been populated from around Fiji. Fijians are Melanesians with considerable Polynesian genes.

Obviously, mainland Asia is all Asian. Siberians are mostly Asian. The Yakut, for instance, are mostly Asian, but they do have 6% Caucasian in them.

A beautiful Yakut woman from the Sakha Republic competing for the Miss Russia 2007 contest. That’s basically the Yakut Republic. She should have only 6% Caucasian genes, but it seems like she has more than that.

 

The Caucasian comes from a group called the Sakas who conquered Siberia 1,500 years ago. The Mongolians are 86% Asian and 14% Caucasian.

A beautiful Buryat woman competing in the Miss Russia 2007 contest. Buryats are said to be quite close to Mongolians genetically, so she probably has about 14% Caucasian genes. Note the classic high Mongolian cheekbones. Korean women have this same feature, and they are recent immigrants from Mongolia in the past 4-5,000 years.

 

The Hui are in interesting group inside China, south of Mongolia, who are 93% Asian and 7% Caucasian. The Han have no Caucasian in them.

Going west of Burma, we run into trouble. In NE India, the people are mostly Asian. Going north to Nepal, you get an odd mix of all sorts of people, some mostly Asian but others more of an East Indian type.

A very interesting, yet unclassifiable, type in Nepal. Clearly there is an Asian component to this phenotype. There are some phenotypes that look something like this in SE Asia, especially hill tribes in Burma and Thailand. Come to think of it, doesn’t she look a bit like the Naga below?

Nagas of Northeast India. They cluster genetically with Tibetans. Some think that they are the leftovers of the original people of the region.

The mother of this Nepalese family looks pretty Caucasian, but I have a hard time classifying that phenotype. Something resembling that phenotype can be seen in some of the Kalash. There is also some of a North Indian-Punjabi component. The two daughters clearly have a strong Asian element, thought it does not much resemble other Asian types. The girl on the right looks a bit like a Filipina.

A very Asian type in, believe it or not, Nepal. Yes. This phenotype looks very Chinese and could be related to Tibetans. Nepalese are very difficult to classify genetically due to the divergence of types. Further, the peopling of Nepal is very poorly understood.

North Indians, possibly Punjabis. Many Punjabis look something like this. They have 10% Asian genes and it is often apparent, especially in the eyes.

 

Punjabis have about 10% Asian genes. You can sometimes see it in their eyes.

These beautiful young women are from Ladakh, on the border of China and India. As you can see, the Indians here are heavily Asian. The girl on the right looks very Korean. The other two are very difficult to classify, but the girl on the right left could almost be Mediterranean – Italian or Iberian, other than the eyes. Genetically probably close to Tibetans.

 

Heading into Pakistan, some Pakistanis appear somewhat Asian. The Kalash, whom we discussed in a previous post, often appear somewhat Asian.

A very interesting Kalash woman. The Kalash are so divergent that they form one of two splits in the Caucasian Race – Kalash and non-Kalash. No one quite knows much about them, but they seem to have come from the Caucasus. Their genes are radically divergent. Either they have experienced tremendous genetic drift or they are some of the most ancient Caucasians of all.

The very early proto-Caucasians may have looked something like this – they had heavy Asian admixture. This mixing of Black and Asian was taking place in the Caucasus region.

More Kalash. There are some very interesting types in this fascinating group. Both the woman and her daughter look Asian, the daughter more so. The woman seems to have an East Indian component.

 

Some Pashtuns look a little Asian, but many others just look pure Caucasian.

When we head north from this area, we start running into some heavy Asian-Caucasian mixes. This is the zone where these two great major races have seriously mixed. Heading East to Western China, we find the Uighurs, a group that is 61% Asian and 39% White. This Muslim group is heavily repressed by China and some have taken up arms against the state. I do support this secessionist movement.

Uighurs. A most interesting group of people from West China. This area has clearly seen a tremendous amount of Caucasian-Asian mixing for a long time now. It is in this region that burial tombs have been unearthed that revealed Caucasian mummies, some with red hair.

Of course, this drove White nationalist insane people even more insane. China was an ancient White homeland! Except the “Whites” were probably some Iranian or Caucasus types that these idiots have excised from their precious White race. At any rate, a few Caucasian bodies here and there does not a homeland make. There were and are plenty of Asians running around this region too. Truth is that Iranian types from the steppes have been invading this region for ages.

Tocharian, perhaps one of the earliest forms of Indo-European, may have been spoken on these windy steppes 8,000 years ago. The Uighurs are 61% Asian and 39% Caucasian. Their movement for liberation has been heavily repressed by the Chinese. Some have been radicalized and have moved down into Afghanistan and the Pakistan tribal areas to work with the local Taliban, but in general, Islam in this region is quite moderate and reasonable.

It’s questionable whether or not China even has much of a claim to this land. The girl on the right has a very interesting phenotype. She looks quite Caucasian, but that Caucasian look is actually specific to the Caucasus. I look at her and think “Dagestani”. White-Chinese hapas in the US often look something like this also.

 

Heading West, Uzbeks in Uzbekistan are clearly a very mixed race people – they are 59% Asian and 41% Caucasian.

An Uzbek man with a turban. A syncretic form of Islam was popular here, but due to religious repression, some Uzbeks have turned to radical Islam. The group is called the IMU. They were defeated in Uzbekistan and the remnants moved to Afghanistan to link up with the Taliban. After the Taliban were defeated, many moved into the tribal areas where many IMU fighters married local women. They form a significant component of the Pakistani Taliban who are fighting in the tribal areas right now.

A young Uzbek man. This man looks very Caucasian, other than the slight Asian eyes. The outfit would not be out of place in Afghanistan.

An Uzbek woman. As you can see, at 41%, the Caucasian element is very high in Uzbeks. The phenotype is difficult to place, but the Caucasian element could resemble a Greek, a Georgian or possibly an Iranian.

 

Heading further West, the Kazakhs are strangely even more Asian: they are 70% Asian and 30% Caucasian.

Heading back towards China, we come to the Altai, a region where Mongolia, China and Russia all come together. This is thought to be the region from which the Amerindians came from. These people are best categorized as Northern Turkics and they all speak a Turkic language.

Some people here are very mixed (figures here): The Shor are 51% Caucasian and 49% Asian, the Altai themselves are 53% Asian and 47% Caucasian, the Khakass are 72% Asian and 28% Caucasian, the Sojots are 81% Asian and 19% Caucasian and the famous throat-singers, the Tuvans, are 89% Asian and 11% Caucasian.

These people are best thought of as members of a subrace known as the Uralic Race, even though they speak Turkic tongues. The Uralics generally speak languages related to Finnish.

Anthropologically, the Uralics are mysterious. We do not really know much about them or where they came from, but they are the subject of endless speculation, especially by Finnish researchers, who are fascinated by the question. For instance, the proto-Uralics were said to be neither Asians nor Caucasians. Ok, fine, so what were they?

Moving into Europe, we continue to encounter Asian genes. The Turks have a very large component of Asian genes, such that it is difficult to characterize them as Asian or Caucasian. I put them into Caucasian more on appearance than on anything else.

A Turkish Cypriot woman who seems to have a bit of an Asian phenotype. She also looks somewhat Slavic. Slavic phenotypes are very common in Turkey but most Turks do not wish to admit it due to age-old hostility between the Muslim Ottomans and the Christian Slavic regions around it.

 

Heading north into Russia, it has long been known that Russians are part Asian. One can often note an Asiatic component in Russians. I had a Russian girlfriend once named Natasha who lived in the Bay Area. She had some slight Asiatic phenotypical traits.

A beautiful Russian woman. Unless I am hallucinating, I think I see some Asian eyes on her. She may also have the sparse and straighter body hair that some Russian women have. This is a classic Russian Slavic phenotype.

 

In the part of Russia called Novgorod Oblast, the Russians are 3% Asian and 7% Finn. The Oblast is in the western part of Russia near Latvia, Estonia, St Petersburg and Leningrad. Heading into Europe now, we are surprised to find that Czechs are 3% Asian.

Although Yugoslavians are Slavs just like Czechs, I am not aware of the amount of Asian genes in them, if any. Some say that Yugoslavs, especially Serbs, look very Mediterranean, but I am not so sure. I am not sure which part of Yugoslavia these young women are from, but they are wearing traditional costumes.

What amazed me was how similar these women looked in phenotype. Granted, they’ve all curled up their hair the same way and they are wearing the same costumes, but if you look closely at the first five women from the left, tell me I’m hallucinating when I see a common phenotype in their facial appearance. Anyone else see it?

That the Hungarians are part-Asian has long been noted. I am not sure about the exact numbers though.

Hungarians dressed in traditional costumes. Their Asian component is not large, but may be on the order of 7% or so. The Asian element comes from the Magyars, the original Hungarian tribe that was formed in the Caucasian-Asian melting pot or the Ural Mountains 3,000 years ago.

 

Both the Finns and Estonians are thought to have Asian genes and the Lapps surely do, but I believe they only have 7% Asian genes.

It often doesn’t take much Asian genes to affect the phenotype. One of the first things you notice is a sparseness of body hair and tendency of body hair to be more straight than kinky. Also, even at low gene levels, you often start seeing a bit of an epicathal fold in the eyes.

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The Proto-Indo-Europeans and Their Early Descendants: Proto-Languages and Homelands

The Indo-European languages include most of the languages of Europe, Iran and Northern India. For instance, English, Gaelic, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Romanian, Bulgarian, Russian, Greek, Albanian, Armenian and Kurdish are some of the better-known IE languages of Europe and the Near East.

In Iran, the major language, Farsi, is IE, as is the major language Pashto in Afghanistan. In India and Pakistan, the huge languages Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi are all IE.

They go back to a proto-language called Proto Indo-European, or PIE. In that the languages are all related, the truth is that the peoples are all related to for the greatest part. So Northern Indians, Pashtuns, Iranians, Kurds and Armenians are all closely related to Europeans since they all sprung in part from a common source, in the famous words of Sir William Jones, who discovered the IE languages in the late 1700’s.

Going back 6,500 years, we can reconstruct Proto-Indo-European quite well. One of the best resources is Julius Pokorny‘s Proto-Indo-European Etymological Dictionary (or Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch).

Originally written in German, this incredible 2,500 page masterwork has been translated largely, but not completely, into English. One of my favorite pastimes is wading through this monster. I have a downloadable copy on the blog here (huge file).

The homeland of the Indo-Europeans is the subject of much debate, but the modern consensus centers around putting the homeland at 6500 years before present (YBP) around Southern Russia. I have narrowed it to southern Russia, southeastern Ukraine and southwestern Kazakhstan north of the Caucasus. This is more or less the region in between the Black and Caspian Seas.

An arid region called the Kuma-Manych Depression is in the middle of this region and seems to be a major center of PIE culture. I could not find a map of the Depression, but it separates the North Caucasus from the Russian Plain.

There were also settlements in southeastern Ukraine near the Sea of Azov, about 50 miles north of the Caspian Sea in southwestern Kazakhstan and up around the Lower Volga Region near Samara. A good word for this general region is the Pontic-Caspian Steppe.

The homeland of the Proto Indo Europeans, as of 6,500 YBP. I looked around for good maps of the PIE homeland but I could not find any, so I drew my own. Copyright Oakhurst Technology 2009.

The homeland of the Proto Indo-Europeans, as of 6,500 YBP. I looked around for good maps of the PIE homeland but I could not find any, so I drew my own. Copyright Oakhurst Technology 2009.

From there, it’s not really known how or when the Proto-Indo-Europeans spread out, but they show up in Europe some time later. A good map of their migrations or conquests is here.

The PIE people had several advantages over their neighbors. They were already into the Bronze Age for one, and not only that, but there were horses running around Southern Russia. The PIE had managed to domesticate the horse. That’s quite an advantage, but the PIE people did one better.

They even invented a wheel. Then they logically put the two together and made horse-drawn chariots. With these chariots, the PIE people apparently conquered much of Europe and later parts of Southwest Asia and South Asia.

The people in Europe at this time were pre-PIE folks. We know little about their culture, but the master of PIE culture, the celebrated professor Marija Gimbutas (A woman!) calls it “Old Europe.” Old Europe is very little known or understood. A probable surviving language from Old Europe is Basque. Another, long extinct, is Etruscan.

The very early people of the British Isles, whose descendants are now known as the Black Irish, populated the Isles between 9000-11000 YBP. They had dark hair, dark eyes and very pale skin. Genetically, they seem to resemble the Basques and may have come on boats from Spain.

The Basques themselves and related peoples may have come from the Caucasus long, long ago. Although Basque is said to have no living relatives, I believe it is related to Caucasian languages like Chechen and Ingush. Throughout Europe one finds folks called Black this and Black that.

I had a girlfriend who called herself a Black Swede and later on, a girlfriend named Linda of Polish heritage. Both had very dark, curly hair, dark eyes and very pale skin. As a guess, these types of Europeans may be the remains of Old Europe.

Gimbutas is also the founder of the Kurgan Hypothesis, which is currently the best PIE theory out there. Gimbutas (photo) sort of lost it towards the end when she got into “Goddess worship” and whatnot, but it’s clear that this Lithuanian archeologist was one of the great scholars of our time.

Some time after 6500 YBP, PIE began to break up, but no one knows quite how this occurred. At any rate, by 4200 YBP, a split had occurred in PIE and a separate language had broken off, Indo-Iranian. There are maps out there of the Indo-Iranian homeland, but I don’t like them all that much so I made my own. My best guess was to place it in the far north of Kazakhstan and just over the border into Russia.

From there, after 3500 YBP, the Indo-Aryans moved out and migrated into Afghanistan, Pakistan, North India and Iran. Many people in these regions today speak Indo-Iranian languages descended from these people. These folks are thought to be the source of the famous Aryan Invasion of India at around this time.

A map of the Indo-Iranian Homeland in far northern Kazakhstan around 3,500 YBP. This is where the Iranians, Afghans, North Indians and many Pakistanis came from. Copyright Oakhurst Technology 2009.

A map of the Indo-Iranian Homeland in far northern Kazakhstan around 3500 YBP. This is where the Iranians, Afghans, North Indians and many Pakistanis came from. Copyright Oakhurst Technology 2009.

As I noted, the process whereby these languages split off, other than the Indo-Aryan split, is little known. However, assuming this tree diagram is correct, maybe it can shed some light on the matter.

A very interesting tree diagram of the IE language family.

A very interesting tree diagram of the IE language family. Click to enlarge.

Unfortunately, this chart is hard to read, so I will try to decipher it. The first thing to note is the Anatolian split in the tree, apparently the first split. There are problems with the date for PIE. A glottochronological study recently gave a date of about 8500 YBP for PIE, considerably earlier than the usual date of around 6500 YBP.

Promoters of something called the Anatolian Hypothesis have used this to suggest than an earlier language called Proto-Indo-Hittite was spoken in Anatolia 8500 years ago.

The Anatolian languages split off, and the PIE speakers moved to the Pontic Steppe. The movement of Proto-Indo-Hittite speakers out of Anatolia to the Pontic Steppe to form the PIE people may be related to the Black Sea Deluge Theory which has recently been proven correct.

The Black Sea expanded dramatically according to this theory as, around 7600 YBP, a waterfall 200 times the size of Niagara Falls (!) poured through the Bosporus Straits, transforming the pre-Black Sea freshwater lake into the present-day brackish (part-salt water, part-fresh water) Black Sea. Soon after this event, PIE culture appears in the Pontic Steppe.

This is a very controversial proposal called the Indo-Hittite Theory, but I have long supported it. The late Joseph Greenberg, one of the greatest historical linguists that ever lived, also supported it.

This theory holds that Indo-European has two branches, Indo-European proper and the Hittite branch. The Hittite branch is related to the other branch only in a binary fashion. There is good evidence for this.

The Anatolian languages, all of which are now extinct, are very strange and seem distant from the rest. The appear archaic and have retained many forms which seem to not be present on the rest of IE. My guess is these are archaic forms.

Anatolian lacks grammatical gender – masculine:feminine, an IE innovation spread through the family. Instead, it has an archaic noun class system called animate:inanimate. This is reminiscent of ancient Niger-Congo languages in Africa. In addition, the Anatolian vowel system is reduced (fewer vowels) and the case system is simpler.

Many basic IE vocabulary terms are simply missing in Anatolian. All of this debris tends to add up to the hypothesis of an ancient branch of the language family.

Tocharian is visible on the diagram as Italo-Celtic-Tocharian. This branch is extremely strange, since Tocharian was spoken way over in Asia near East Turkestan and Kyrgyzstan, and Celtic and Italic are spoken in the heart of Europe. This is the area where the mummies with blond hair and blue eyes have been found. Tocharian may have split as early as 6000 YBP.

The Tocharian language is also very ancient and strange and is only distantly related to the rest of IE. If anything, it seems to look somewhat like Anatolian.

A very ancient branch of IE also split off around this time. Known as Balkan or Paleo-Balkan, it may also have split off 6000 YBP. There were two major branches, Thracian and Illyro-Venetic. Thracian is extinct, and all that remains of Illyro-Venetic is Albanian, a very ancient IE tongue that is only distantly related to the rest of IE. Proto-Illyrian and Thracian split around 4200 YBP.

Here is a map of the Illyrian tribes before the Roman conquest. It is from this milieu that the Albanians emerged. The Albanian language is quite strange within IE and seems to have very ancient roots dating back to Proto-Paleo-Balkan from 6000 YBP.

Another very early split you can see in the chart is something called Indo-Irano-Armeno-Hellenic. The Armeno-Hellenic branch probably split off 6000 YBP. The fact that Armenians and Greeks today still possibly retain a PIE appearance is also suggested by this early split. Only the Greek languages and Armenian remain of this family, as most of the family is extinct.

Proto-Hellenic may have split off around 5000 YBP, and Proto-Armenian may have split around 4500 YBP. The proto-Hellenics seem to have been related to the Indo-Iranians. This may be why a number of North Indians look like Greeks, Turks or Armenians.

Armenian and Hellenic are also strange IE branches that are only distantly related to the rest of IE.

The Italo-Celtic branch broke off as early as 5000 YBP. Proto-Celtic split about 2800 YBP; the homeland is in Northern Austria. The Hallstatt Culture is associated with them. The Proto-Italics are dated to around 3500 YBP in Italy. Before that, the Italo-Celtic Homeland is thought to have been in southern and central Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

The fact that Italics (Italians and related languages) and Celts share common roots shows how insane and stupid Nordicism is, as Nordicists say that Italians south of the Po are ‘non-Whites.’ It turns out that those greasy dagos and those blond and blue guys in dresses blowing pipes in the Highlands are the same folks after all, as they share common genetic roots in Austria 3500 YBP.

Proto-Germanic also dates far back, with pre-Proto-Germanic possibly being spoken 3800 YBP in northern Germany, Denmark and Southern Scandinavia ( map). The homeland of the pre-proto-Germanics is in Southern Sweden and Jutland. They may have settled this area as early as 5000 YBP. These speakers may have been speaking something called Balto-Slavo-Germanic, a group you can see on the tree above.

Proto-Germanic proper probably dates from the Jasdorf Culture. The homeland of the proto-Germanics was in northern Germany, around Schleswig-Holstein south into the Lower Elbe region in what is now Saxony-Anhalt and the Hanover area.

It also extended along the Baltic coast of Germany to about the Polish border, down into Brandenburg and Mecklenburg. The original center of the homeland was in Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony.

Balto-Slavic is also a very ancient branch of IE. Lithuanian is an ancient IE language that is very conservative and has retained many ancient IE reflexes that have been lost in the rest of IE. Proto-Balto-Slavic probably split around 4000 YBP. Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic split apart about 3400 YBP. Map of the Balto-Slavic homeland. This homeland encompassed Western Ukraine, Belarus and Eastern Poland.

Proto-Slavic, dating from 3400 YBP, seems to have its homeland in Northern and Western Ukraine and in Southern Belarus.

The proto-Baltic homeland dating from the same time frame is about the southern border region of Belarus around the Pinsk Marshes.

The rest of the splits, of Slavic, Italic, Celtic, Indian, Iranian and Germanic into their branches, are pretty well-documented, and all occur within the past 1500-3000 years.

Let us move to some interesting dilemmas about the Indo-Europeans. One is the distribution of R1a associated with the Indo-Europeans.

The map of the R1a lineage showing high concentrations in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

The map of the R1a lineage showing high concentrations in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

The highest levels of this haplogroup are found in Eastern Europe in a narrow band from the Black Sea in the Ukraine through Poland to the Baltic Sea and in Northern India and areas to the northwest around the Hindu Kush and the Pamirs, but that does not mean that these two groups are particularly closely related. Northern Indians are most closely related to Iranians and relatively distantly to Eastern Europeans.

The truth is that this haplogroup is only a signature of a split from around the Aryan-Greco homeland in the Pontic Steppe region discussed above. This left high levels of R1a in Eastern Europe and in north India. High levels in North India are not particularly notable but exist only due to a founder effect. Actually, the highest levels are not found in North India but in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and north Afghanistan.

The high levels found in North India have led some to assume incorrectly that the homeland of the R1a people was in that area, but this is not the case.

A map of R1b DNA distribution. The homeland of the R1b line is the Maykop Culture, shown in the shaded pink region between the Caspian and Black Seas.

A map of R1b DNA distribution. The homeland of the R1b line is the Maykop Culture, shown in the shaded pink region between the Caspian and Black Seas.

R1b levels are highest in Spain and the Western British Isles. The launching point for the R1b seems to have been the Maykop Culture of 5500 YBP. From there, they spread all over Europe.

The Maykop Culture was an early PIE split that existed between the Taman Peninsula just east of the Crimea east to the Dagestan border in the area that includes part of Southern Russia east of the Crimea, Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia and Chechnya in the Caucasus.

The center of the culture was around Maykop in Adygea (Circassia). The region is now inhabited by peoples of the Caucasus and is heavily Muslim.

An explanation:

The Proto-Indo-Europeans belonged both R1a and R1b. Their homeland was in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, in what is known as the Kurgan culture (7000-2200 BCE).

The presence of R1b in modern times between the Black Sea and the Caucasus hints at the Maykop culture (3500-2500 BCE) as their most plausible homeland, while the Eurasian steppes to the north were R1a territory. […]

A comparison with the Indo-Iranian invasion of South Asia shows that 40% of the male lineages of northern India are R1a, but only 20% of the female lineages could be of Indo-European origin (H, J, K, T, U).

The impact of the Indo-Europeans was more severe in Europe because European society 4,000 years ago was less developed in terms of agriculture, technology (no bronze weapons) and population density than that of the Indus Valley civilization.

This is particularly true of the native Western European cultures where farming arrived much later than in the Balkans or central Europe. Greece was the most advanced of European societies and was the least affected in terms of haplogroup replacement.

Native European Y-DNA haplogroups (I1, I2a, I2b) also survived better in regions that were more difficult to reach or less hospitable, like Scandinavia, Brittany, Sardinia or the Dinaric Alps[…]

The eastern branch of the R1a steppe people was the Andronovo culture (2300-1000 BCE), around modern Kazakhstan, which correspond to the Indo-Iranian branch of languages. Their migration to the south have resulted in high R1a frequencies in southern Central Asia, Iran and the Indian subcontinent.

The highest frequency of R1a (about 65%) is reached in a cluster around Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan. In India, 15 to 45% of the population is R1a, depending on the region and caste. Over 70% of the Brahmins (highest caste in Hinduism) belong to R1a1, due to a founder effect.

References

Pokorny, Julius. 1959, 2007. Proto-Indo-European Etymological Dictionary. A Revised Edition of Julius Pokorny’s Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Published on the Internet: Indo-European Language Revival Association.

This research takes a lot of time, and I do not get paid anything for it. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a a contribution to support more of this valuable research.

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