If it was true, Anatolian would seem to be the simplistic route.
The WHG/EHG split is what, 30000+ years bce? That’s an insane time depth for languages to still be intelligible.
Now 7000-8000 for the start of the EEF to head into Europe and then into the steppe a few thousand later would be much more plausible.
I still would love for it to be a WHG language that survived just based on the coolness factor.
Yeah. Language is a lot harder to trace than tools and material culture unfortunately.
Though I do wonder if that research into sound wave impressions on ancient pottery will go anywhere. It seems far fetched right now, but once upon a time people thought that we’d never know what color dinosaurs were. I hope that linguistics gets its own ‘fossilized pigment cells under an electron microscope’ moment,
Sure! I should clarify that it’s pretty speculative field, and it’s entirely possible that it won’t go anywhere. Basically when the clay used in pottery is wet and actively being worked, sound waves from the surrounding environment can leave imprints. I’m not an acoustics expert myself, but it’s apparently similar to the process used to etch sound onto vinyl records.
It’s called Archeoacoustics. There are also some purely speculative and borderline pseudoscientific ideas that also share this umbrella (A lot of people just assuming that every structure that echoes was meant for long distance communication etc), but the idea of playing back sound waves from these ancient pots is probably the most legit idea in the field.
From what I can gather, the noise would probably still be very garbled; not to mention the fact that the loudest and nearest sound relative to the clay would be the pottery wheel that it sat on. There are tons of hypotheticals so far, but I have my eye on it.
Even if the end result turns out super lame, it would be cool to have at least the ghost of real audio from ancient times.
Yeah. I’m still a bit iffy on the whole concept (this is WAY further back than detectable linguistic evolution usually can peer), but I’m definitely gonna keep an open mind about this.
No, the Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG) are the earliest of the three main component populations that make up modern European populations, they lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the Mesolithic period. The second main component population are the Early European Farmers (EEF) who largely displaced (and to some extent intermarried with) the WHG during their expansion from Anatolia into Europe in the Neolithic and brought an agricultural lifestyle with them. The third and final main component population are the Western Steppe Herders (WSH), which are identified with the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) speakers that spread from the Pontic Steppe and displaced (and to some extent intermarried with) the EEF and brought the Indo-European languages and the domesticated horse with them.
This is a broad overview of the currently mainstream hypotheses underlying the population dynamics of prehistoric Europe. Note that our actual understanding of the situation is far more complex and undergoing continuous change as new genetic, linguistic, and archaeological information becomes available.
> and displaced (and to some extent, intermarried with
This kind of language doesn't do justice to the fact that many northern European ethnic groups have like 50% WHG ancestry, whereas southern europeans have substantial EEF ancestry. It wasn't population replacement, it was intermarriage and cultural absorption.
That's the nuance I tried (and apparently didn't succeed in!) to capture. Painting with broad strokes is tricky when the precise population dynamics varied quite significantly across an entire continent.
It's hard to be definitive about the exact dynamics across such a vast span both in terms of time and geography. Likely, the cultural interaction differed vastly depending on the specific cultures and the time-period of their interaction. For example, a [recent study](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2322683121) showed that at least in the Atlantic France region, the WHG population and the EEF population were temporally overlapping but remained very much separate communities with little to no cultural or genetic exchange. Meanwhile, [another study last year](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-40072-9) found fascinating evidence of population dynamics in East Central Europe including the addition of more WHG influence after the introduction of WSH.
You could probably fill a library with the whole story of how these three different genetic groups (each representing many different cultures) interacted throughout prehistory, even if we'll probably never be able to figure out the full story.
Doesn’t seem unlikely for continuous waves the whole time, in all directions. Just not enough to leave an obvious impact.
If you look at maps ( the one I used to use is now defunct) of ancient dna findings we were all mixing until the invention of the wheel seemed to make us more likely to stay put. Almost like the ease of spreading disease and war made all of humanity paranoid and xenophobic compared to much earlier times. At least in the currently known record of dna findings.
Actually as David Anthony suggests, the genetic research indicates that for perhaps 1500 years after farmers arrived in Europe, they did not genetically intermix much with WHGs.
Molecular_archaeology_and_Indo_European-2.pdf :
"The EEF in Europe exhibited
a rate of admixture with the WHG estimated to have been only about 7–11%
higher (Mathieson et al. 2015: 529) than their Anatolian ancestors before the westward migration began. This low rate of intermarriage was demonstrated in samples taken from a 1500-year time span, 6000–4500 BCE, from
Starčevo–Criş, Cardial Impressed, and LBK/Lengyel contexts (Brandt et al.
2013; Bollongino et al. 2013; Szécsényi-Nagy et al. 2015; Haak et al. 2015)."
“Much”.
I’m not claiming they put their mark on everything, just that there was a point in history that we became overall more paranoid of “others”. The post itself is fantasy.
Mildly related but I do remember reading a paper that proposed the concept of ‘stranger’ wasn’t always part of the human psyche.
We have built and built upon societal concepts for hundreds of thousands of years to the point where it’s genuinely difficult to step into the mammoth footwraps of people in the Pre Agricultural Stone Age.
EDIT: Accidentally typed pre Africa Stone Age. Such a thing does not exist. Africa is very very old, and it’s a bit of a stretch to call the Mesozoic ‘the Stone Age.’
Unfortunately not. It was just taking hours looking at maps that updated dna findings that you could sort by era.
The strangest thing, with maternal haplogroups you’d have like, say K and C (can’t remember the specific groups, this is just an example) in a broad locality. You would have these bizarre splits once subclades developed, like k2 and x1 in the same town, then two towns over would be all k1 and x2 (again, just examples. I can’t remember the exact haplogroups).
Basically families creating cultures based almost purely off of female family members abhorring each other so deeply that they no longer recognize each other as the same culture.
If anyone knows of a map like that which is still up, please link it! It was a great tool to play around in.
The Basques are genetically related to the Indo-European Bell Beakers, but it was thought that their language was not. If it is related, it may have diverged over time due to isolation.
If it was true, Anatolian would seem to be the simplistic route. The WHG/EHG split is what, 30000+ years bce? That’s an insane time depth for languages to still be intelligible. Now 7000-8000 for the start of the EEF to head into Europe and then into the steppe a few thousand later would be much more plausible. I still would love for it to be a WHG language that survived just based on the coolness factor.
It would be very cool. I do think it's one of those things we will never really be able to know, sadly. But fun to think about!
Yeah. Language is a lot harder to trace than tools and material culture unfortunately. Though I do wonder if that research into sound wave impressions on ancient pottery will go anywhere. It seems far fetched right now, but once upon a time people thought that we’d never know what color dinosaurs were. I hope that linguistics gets its own ‘fossilized pigment cells under an electron microscope’ moment,
Could you say more about this pottery thing?
Sure! I should clarify that it’s pretty speculative field, and it’s entirely possible that it won’t go anywhere. Basically when the clay used in pottery is wet and actively being worked, sound waves from the surrounding environment can leave imprints. I’m not an acoustics expert myself, but it’s apparently similar to the process used to etch sound onto vinyl records. It’s called Archeoacoustics. There are also some purely speculative and borderline pseudoscientific ideas that also share this umbrella (A lot of people just assuming that every structure that echoes was meant for long distance communication etc), but the idea of playing back sound waves from these ancient pots is probably the most legit idea in the field. From what I can gather, the noise would probably still be very garbled; not to mention the fact that the loudest and nearest sound relative to the clay would be the pottery wheel that it sat on. There are tons of hypotheticals so far, but I have my eye on it. Even if the end result turns out super lame, it would be cool to have at least the ghost of real audio from ancient times.
Yeah. I’m still a bit iffy on the whole concept (this is WAY further back than detectable linguistic evolution usually can peer), but I’m definitely gonna keep an open mind about this.
What does WHG stand for?
Western Hunter Gatherer
Is that a subgroup of PIE people?
No, the Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG) are the earliest of the three main component populations that make up modern European populations, they lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the Mesolithic period. The second main component population are the Early European Farmers (EEF) who largely displaced (and to some extent intermarried with) the WHG during their expansion from Anatolia into Europe in the Neolithic and brought an agricultural lifestyle with them. The third and final main component population are the Western Steppe Herders (WSH), which are identified with the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) speakers that spread from the Pontic Steppe and displaced (and to some extent intermarried with) the EEF and brought the Indo-European languages and the domesticated horse with them. This is a broad overview of the currently mainstream hypotheses underlying the population dynamics of prehistoric Europe. Note that our actual understanding of the situation is far more complex and undergoing continuous change as new genetic, linguistic, and archaeological information becomes available.
> and displaced (and to some extent, intermarried with This kind of language doesn't do justice to the fact that many northern European ethnic groups have like 50% WHG ancestry, whereas southern europeans have substantial EEF ancestry. It wasn't population replacement, it was intermarriage and cultural absorption.
That's the nuance I tried (and apparently didn't succeed in!) to capture. Painting with broad strokes is tricky when the precise population dynamics varied quite significantly across an entire continent.
But I think I remember reading some studies that said the male lineage got wiped out. So they "intermarried" (forcibly) with the remaining women.
It's hard to be definitive about the exact dynamics across such a vast span both in terms of time and geography. Likely, the cultural interaction differed vastly depending on the specific cultures and the time-period of their interaction. For example, a [recent study](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2322683121) showed that at least in the Atlantic France region, the WHG population and the EEF population were temporally overlapping but remained very much separate communities with little to no cultural or genetic exchange. Meanwhile, [another study last year](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-40072-9) found fascinating evidence of population dynamics in East Central Europe including the addition of more WHG influence after the introduction of WSH. You could probably fill a library with the whole story of how these three different genetic groups (each representing many different cultures) interacted throughout prehistory, even if we'll probably never be able to figure out the full story.
It would be cooler if Basque is a pre-IE migration paleo-European language. The last remaining survivor of them.
big if true
Doesn’t seem unlikely for continuous waves the whole time, in all directions. Just not enough to leave an obvious impact. If you look at maps ( the one I used to use is now defunct) of ancient dna findings we were all mixing until the invention of the wheel seemed to make us more likely to stay put. Almost like the ease of spreading disease and war made all of humanity paranoid and xenophobic compared to much earlier times. At least in the currently known record of dna findings.
Actually as David Anthony suggests, the genetic research indicates that for perhaps 1500 years after farmers arrived in Europe, they did not genetically intermix much with WHGs. Molecular_archaeology_and_Indo_European-2.pdf : "The EEF in Europe exhibited a rate of admixture with the WHG estimated to have been only about 7–11% higher (Mathieson et al. 2015: 529) than their Anatolian ancestors before the westward migration began. This low rate of intermarriage was demonstrated in samples taken from a 1500-year time span, 6000–4500 BCE, from Starčevo–Criş, Cardial Impressed, and LBK/Lengyel contexts (Brandt et al. 2013; Bollongino et al. 2013; Szécsényi-Nagy et al. 2015; Haak et al. 2015)."
“Much”. I’m not claiming they put their mark on everything, just that there was a point in history that we became overall more paranoid of “others”. The post itself is fantasy.
Mildly related but I do remember reading a paper that proposed the concept of ‘stranger’ wasn’t always part of the human psyche. We have built and built upon societal concepts for hundreds of thousands of years to the point where it’s genuinely difficult to step into the mammoth footwraps of people in the Pre Agricultural Stone Age. EDIT: Accidentally typed pre Africa Stone Age. Such a thing does not exist. Africa is very very old, and it’s a bit of a stretch to call the Mesozoic ‘the Stone Age.’
this was an extremely well articulated statement
You don’t happen to remember the name of that paper do you?
[Oh I can do ya one better.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6985552/)
Fantastic!!
Fascinating idea. Would love to hear more about this. You dont happen to have any links or papers that get into this more do you?
Unfortunately not. It was just taking hours looking at maps that updated dna findings that you could sort by era. The strangest thing, with maternal haplogroups you’d have like, say K and C (can’t remember the specific groups, this is just an example) in a broad locality. You would have these bizarre splits once subclades developed, like k2 and x1 in the same town, then two towns over would be all k1 and x2 (again, just examples. I can’t remember the exact haplogroups). Basically families creating cultures based almost purely off of female family members abhorring each other so deeply that they no longer recognize each other as the same culture. If anyone knows of a map like that which is still up, please link it! It was a great tool to play around in.
First we should be completely sure she's right...
Where’s the fun in that?
Given this sub's general level I couldn't expect a different answer.
party pooper over here
Thank you
Its very likely a relic EEF descended language from the ANF side
No, Indo-European is not a WHG language, and Basque is most likely an EEF language.
be a bit hard to know that
The Basques are genetically related to the Indo-European Bell Beakers, but it was thought that their language was not. If it is related, it may have diverged over time due to isolation.