Tag: Proto-Indo-European

Prehistoric loan relations: Foreign elements in the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary

ancient-indo-european-world-fantasy

An interesting ongoing web project, Prehistoric loan relations, on potential loans of Proto-Indo-European words, from Uralic-Yukaghir, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern influence.

Based on a Ph.D. thesis by Bjørn (2017) Foreign elements in the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary (PDF).

From the website (emphasis mine):

This page allows historical linguists to compare and scrutinize proposed prehistoric lexical borrowings from the perspective of Proto-Indo-European. The first entries are all (135 in total) extracted from my master’s thesis “Foreign elements in the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary” (Bjørn 2017). Comments are encouraged at the bottom of each entry. New entries will be added, also on request.

Take this

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Stone Age plague accompanying migrants from the steppe, probably Yamna, Balkan EBA, and Bell Beaker, not Corded Ware

copper-age-late-bell-beaker

In the latest revisions of the Indo-European demic diffusion model, using the results from the article Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago, by Rasmussen et al., Cell (2015), I stated (more or less indirectly) that the high east-west mobility of the Corded Ware migrants across related cultures might have been responsible for the spread of this disease, which seems to have been originally expanded from Central Eurasia.

New results appeared recently in the article The Stone Age Plague and Its Persistence in Eurasia, by Valtueña et al., Current Biology (2017), which … Read the rest “Stone Age plague accompanying migrants from the steppe, probably Yamna, Balkan EBA, and Bell Beaker, not Corded Ware”

The renewed ‘Kurgan model’ of Kristian Kristiansen and the Danish school: “The Indo-European Corded Ware Theory”

Allentoft Corded Ware

A popular science article on Indo-European migrations has appeared at Science News, entitled How Asian nomadic herders built new Bronze Age cultures, signed by Bruce Bower. While the article is well-balanced and introduces new readers to the current status quo of the controversy on Indo-European migrations – including the opposing theories led by Kristiansen/Anthony vs. Heyd – , it reverberates yet again the conclusions of the 2015 Nature articles on the subject, especially with its featured image.

I have argued many times why the recent ‘Yamnaya -Corded Ware -Bell Beaker’ migration model is wrong, mainly within my … Read the rest “The renewed ‘Kurgan model’ of Kristian Kristiansen and the Danish school: “The Indo-European Corded Ware Theory””

Correlation does not mean causation: the damage of the ‘Yamnaya ancestral component’, and the ‘Future American’ hypothesis

america-languages-lowlandic

Human ancestry can only help solve anthropological questions by using all anthropological disciplines involved. I have said that many times in this blog.

Correlation does not mean causation

Really, it does not.

You might think the tenet ‘correlation does not mean causation‘ must be evident at this point in Statistics, and it must also be for all those using statistical methods in their research. But it is sadly not so. A lot of researchers just look for correlation, and derive conclusions – without even an initial sound hypothesis to be contrasted… You can judge for yourself, e.g. … Read the rest “Correlation does not mean causation: the damage of the ‘Yamnaya ancestral component’, and the ‘Future American’ hypothesis”

Schleicher’s Fable in Proto-Indo-European – pitch and stress accent

bell-beaker-village-nwie

Also included in our monograph North-West Indo-European (first draft) is a tentative reconstruction of Schleicher’s fable in North-West Indo-European, and just for illustration of the reconstructed sounds (including pitch and stress accent), a recording has been included.

The recording is available as audio (see above) or video (see below) with captions and multiple subtitles. The captions in North-West Indo-European show acute accents over accented vowels, while stressed syllables are underlined:

I think such a recording was necessary for comparison with the most commonly reconstructed pronunciation, as taught usually in courses. And I am not referring to those professors … Read the rest “Schleicher’s Fable in Proto-Indo-European – pitch and stress accent”

Our monograph on North-West Indo-European (first draft) is out

I wrote yesterday about the recently updated Indo-European demic diffusion model.

Fernando López-Menchero and I have published our first draft on the North-West Indo-European proto-language. Our contribution concerns mainly phonetics, and namely two of its most controversial aspects: a common process of laryngeal loss and two series of velars for PIE.

There is also an updated linguistic model for the Corded Ware substrate hypothesis, which seeks to explain certain similarities between Germanic and Balto-Slavic, and between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian, and potential isoglosses between the three.

Available links:

… Read the rest “Our monograph on North-West Indo-European (first draft) is out”

Indo-European demic diffusion model, 3rd Ed. – Revised October 2017

pca-yamna-corded-ware

I have just uploaded a new working draft of the third version of the Indo-European demic diffusion model.

In this new version I have added more information published recently, I have updated the maps – especially the one on Palaeolithic migrations -, I have added information on Sredni Stog and its potential role in developing the Corded Ware culture and most likely language, and I have corrected certain parts that have become obsolete, especially after the latest version (19 Sept. 2017) of Mathieson et al. (2017).

It can be read or downloaded at:

… Read the rest “Indo-European demic diffusion model, 3rd Ed. – Revised October 2017”

Marija Gimbutas and the expansion of the “Kurgan people” based on tumulus-building cultures

kurgan-expansion

An interesting article that I keep stumbling upon, The tumulus in European prehistory: covering the body, housing the soul, by Anthony Harding (2011):

Finally, in Kurgan IV she saw “continuous waves of expansion or raids[that] touched all of northern Europe, the Aegean area, and the east Mediterranean areas possibly as far south as Egypt”. This was the period of the Catacomb Graves, but also the Early Bronze Age rock-cut tombs of the Mediterranean, Vučedol, Bell Beakers in Hungary, the Single Grave culture of the Nordic region. The Kurgan Culture reached Ireland, she remarked in a paper of 1978 “as

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C.C. Uhlenbeck on the Proto-Indo-European homeland in the 19th century

yamna-expansion-europe

Michiel de Vaan, from the University of Lausanne, has recently uploaded three of his papers published in recent years in the JIES on the works of Dutch linguist C.C. Uhlenbeck:

1. The Early C. C. Uhlenbeck on Indo-European, JIES 44/1-2, 2016, p. 73-80

Christianus Cornelius Uhlenbeck (1866–1951) was one of the leading Dutch linguists between the 1880s and the 1940s. He made his mark on a number of disciplines in descriptive and comparative linguistics, such as Basque, the indigenous languages of North America, Old Germanic and Sanskrit. In 2008, a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Netherlandic

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