Heyd, Mallory, and Prescott were right about Bell Beakers

Sometimes it is fun to read certain “old” papers. I have recently re-read some important papers that predicted what we are seeing now in aDNA analysis with surprising accuracy:

– Harrison & Heyd (2007): “We predict that future stable isotope and ancientDNA analyses of Beaker skeletal material will support our view that immigration played an important role in the Europe-wide Bell Beaker phenomenon”. – Duh, obvious, right? Wrong. Read the whole paper. It was already becoming a classic in the study of the Bell Beaker culture before the latest research on Bell Beaker aDNA, and it will be … Read the rest “Heyd, Mallory, and Prescott were right about Bell Beakers”

Indo-European Demic Diffusion – The expansion of Proto-Indo-Europeans potentially explained as the expansion of R1b subclades

I published an essay (or “dissertation”) some weeks ago, about what seems to me one of the most likely models of expansion of Indo-European-speaking peoples, based on Y-DNA haplogroups. Recently J.P. Mallory had proposed* (although he was not the first) that North-West Indo-European (the ancestor of Italo-Celtic and Germanic, and Balto-Slavic**) expanded with the Bell Beaker culture, a hypothesis that is supported by the most recent radiocarbon data (and subsequent proposal of an eastern origin of the pre-Bell Beaker culture, linked to the Yamna expansion, by Volker and Heyd). As I outline in the paper, ancient DNA samples and … Read the rest “Indo-European Demic Diffusion – The expansion of Proto-Indo-Europeans potentially explained as the expansion of R1b subclades”

New Edition of “A Grammar of Modern Indo-European” Published

A new full-revised version of Dnghu‘s main book, A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, Third Edition, has been published.

Details on the revision are found at the Indo-European Linguistics blog.

Information on this major release and all subsequent changes will be published at Dnghu’s site on Indo-European Language Grammar. Files containing Proto-Indo-European vocabulary will be found at the Proto-Indo-European lexicon‘s site.

If you like the files, please recommend them to your friends in your social networks!

The official site where all newest version’s files and formats published should be found will be from now on indo-european.info… Read the rest “New Edition of “A Grammar of Modern Indo-European” Published”

Königsberg (AKA Kaliningrad) under international law: Russian, German, Polish, Lithuanian, or simply Prussian?

The progress of the ‘star wars’ (AKA missile shield) affair, which Russia seemed willing to aggravate by talking about plans to station missiles in Kaliningrad, without any concerns whatsoever for the welfare of Kaliningraders and Europeans, should make the European Union reexamine its current policy under the Kaliningrad Strategy, of collaborating with Russia by facilitating the transit of goods and persons and helping its socio-economic development.

Instead of just hearing what Russians have to claim before the international community, the EU should ask the international community by which right keeps the Russian Federation hold on Königsberg territory… Read the rest “Königsberg (AKA Kaliningrad) under international law: Russian, German, Polish, Lithuanian, or simply Prussian?”

From Adamic or the language of the Garden of Eden until the Tower of Babel: the confusion of tongues and the earliest dialects attested

No, I didn’t have a revelation today. I am just offering a little support exactly to what Dawkins and his Brights dislike, to show them extreme action causes extreme (re)actions. I’d like to play their radical game, too, offering some help in linguistics to those who have only naïve theories on the language of Eden.

These are the statements about the Adamic language and the Tower of Babel as Abrahamic texts, beliefs and traditions show:

Adamic was the language spoken by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Adamic is typically identified with either the

… Read the rest

Paleoglot by Glen Gordon, about his Proto-Indo-European and “Proto-Aegean” (or “Proto-Tyrrhenian”) linguistic concepts: The conspiracy of “dogmatic relativism” in Language Hat too

It is well known that Google is used by many when they are too lazy to type in “.com”. That’s the only reason I made a search this morning for “dnghu”, because I am usually more interested in knowing if Google searches with keywords like “Indo-European“, “Indogermanisch”, etc. or “European language”, “languages European Union”, etc. are giving results including dnghu.org. I don’t think a lot of people would look for “dnghu” in Google without knowing there is a dnghu.org site…

And have you noticed that, using Google that way, you may sometimes end up in funny websites that … Read the rest “Paleoglot by Glen Gordon, about his Proto-Indo-European and “Proto-Aegean” (or “Proto-Tyrrhenian”) linguistic concepts: The conspiracy of “dogmatic relativism” in Language Hat too”

A simple FAQ about the “advantages” of Esperanto and other conlang religions: “easy”, “neutral” and “number of speakers”

This is, as requested by a reader of the Association’s website, a concise FAQ about Esperanto’s supposed advantages:

Note: Information and questions are being added to the FAQ thanks to the comments made by visitors.

1. Esperanto has an existing community of speakers, it is used in daily life, it has native speakers…

Sorry, I don’t know any native speaker of Esperanto, that has Esperanto as mother tongue – Only this Wikipedia article and the Ethnologue “estimations” without references apart from the UEA website. In fact, the only people that are said to be “native Esperanto speakers” … Read the rest “A simple FAQ about the “advantages” of Esperanto and other conlang religions: “easy”, “neutral” and “number of speakers””

How many words do we use in daily speech? A new study from the Royal Spanish Academy on language acquisition

According to the members of the Royal Spanish Academy (the Real Academia Española), humanities have experienced a decrease in importance for younger generations, English is becoming predominant, language in general is poorer in the Media and in all public speeches, classical languages disappear, people play less attention to reading, and computer terms are invading everything.

All involved in the research agree that language cannot be confined to any artificial limits, that it is mutable, it evolves and changes. However, they warn: it can also get sick and degrade. The mean Spaniard uses generally no more than 1000 words, … Read the rest “How many words do we use in daily speech? A new study from the Royal Spanish Academy on language acquisition”

Five lines of ancient script on a shard of pottery could be the longest proto-Canaanite text ever found, archaeologists say

According to the BBC News ‘Oldest Hebrew script’ is found:

The shard was found by a teenage volunteer during a dig about 20km (12 miles) south-west of Jerusalem. Experts at Hebrew University said dating showed it was written 3,000 years ago – about 1,000 years earlier than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Other scientists cautioned that further study was needed to understand it.

Preliminary investigations since the shard was found in July have deciphered some words, including judge, slave and king. The characters are written in Proto-Canaanite, a precursor of the Hebrew alphabet.

I found it interesting because of … Read the rest “Five lines of ancient script on a shard of pottery could be the longest proto-Canaanite text ever found, archaeologists say”