The Aryan migration debate, the Out of India models, and the modern “indigenous Indo-Aryan” sectarianism

The Proto-Indo-European Urheimat

Not long ago, the Proto-Indo-European language Urheimat problem used to be cyclic in nature: linguistic and archaeological publications appeared supporting a Copper Age migration from the steppe proposed by Marija Gimbutas, or a Neolithic expansion from Anatolia (or Armenia) proposed by Colin Renfrew, and back again.

I have always supported the simpler, more recent Chalcolithic migration of Late Indo-Europeans from the Pontic-Caspian steppe over an older Neolithic expansion from Anatolia with agriculture. The latter model implied a complex cultural diffusion over a greater span of time than is warranted by linguistic guesstimates, understood as the … Read the rest “The Aryan migration debate, the Out of India models, and the modern “indigenous Indo-Aryan” sectarianism”

On the origin of R1a and R1b subclades in Greece

An article published in PLoS ONE, Y-chromosomal analysis of Greek Cypriots reveals a primarily common pre-Ottoman paternal ancestry with Turkish Cypriots, by Alexandros Heraclides and colleagues, insists on the potential origin of R1b and R1a lineages in Greece from Indo-European migrations, albeit with strong regional (and thus most likely temporal) differences. From the article’s discussion:

Although the exact origins and migratory patterns of R1a and R1b are still under rigorous investigation, it seems that they are linked to Bronze Age migrations from the Western Eurasian Steppe and Eastern Europe into Southern (including Greece) and Western Europe[61]. Apparently, such

… Read the rest

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 model, 2nd edition, revised and updated

It has been three months since I published the first paper on the Indo-European demic diffusion model.

In the meantime, important pre-print papers with samples of Bell Beaker and South-Eastern European cultures compel me to add new data in support of the model. I have taken this opportunity to revise the whole text in a new paper, Indo-European demic diffusion model, 2nd edition, and also some of the maps of Indo-European migrations, which are now hosted in this blog.

I have made changes to some of the old blogs I had, like this one, … Read the rest “Indo-European demic diffusion model, 2nd edition, revised and updated”

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”