How Indo-European Languages Spread Across Asia
May 12, 2018 5:04:44 GMT
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Post by Lone Wanderer on May 12, 2018 5:04:44 GMT
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New research shows how Indo-European languages spread across Asia
A new study has discovered that horses were first domesticated by descendants of hunter-gatherer groups in Kazakhstan who left little direct trace in the ancestry of modern populations. The research sheds new light on the long-standing 'steppe theory' on the origin and movement of Indo-European languages made possible by the domestication of the horse.
"The successful spread of the Indo-European languages across Eurasia has puzzled researchers for a century. It was thought that speakers of this language family played a key role in the domestication of the horse, and that this, in combination with the development of wheeled vehicles, allowed them to spread across Eurasia from the Yamnaya culture."
However, as this study shows, domesticated horses were used by the Botai people already 5,500 years ago, and much further East in Central Asia, completely independent of the Yamnaya pastoralists. A further twist to the story is that the descendants of these Botai were later pushed out from the central steppe by migrations coming from the west. Their horses were replaced too, indicating that horses were domesticated separately in other regions as well.
No link between Botai and Yamnaya cultures
The study does not find a genetic link between the people associated with the Yamnaya and Botai archaeological cultures, which is critical to understanding the eastward movement of the Yamnaya. Apparently, their eastward expansion bypassed the Botai completely, moving 3000 kilometres across the steppe to the Altai Mountains in Central and East Asia.
Professor Alan Outram from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Exeter and one of the paper's authors, states:
"We now know that the people who first domesticated the horse in Central Asia were the descendants of ice age hunters, who went on to become the earliest pastoralists in the region. Despite their local innovations, these peoples were overrun and replaced by European steppe pastoralists in the middle and later Bronze Age, and their horses were replaced too."
Languages spread through exchanges between several cultures
Gojko Barjamovic, Senior Lecturer on Assyriology at Harvard University, explains:
"In Anatolia, and parts of Central Asia, which held densely settled complex urban societies, the history of language spread and genetic ancestry is better described in terms of contact and absorption than by simply a movement of population."
He adds:
"The Indo-European languages are usually said to emerge in Anatolia in the 2nd millennium BCE. However, we use evidence from the palatial archives of the ancient city of Ebla in Syria to argue that Indo-European was already spoken in modern-day Turkey in the 25th century BCE. This means that the speakers of these language must have arrived there prior to any Yamnaya expansions."
The study also shows that the spread of the Indo-Iranian languages to South Asia, with Hindi, Urdu and Persian as major modern offshoots, cannot result from the Yamnaya expansions. Rather, the Indo-Iranian languages spread with a later push of pastoralist groups from the South Ural Mountains during the Middle to Late Bronze Age.
Prior to entering South Asia, these groups, thought to have spoken an Indo-Iranian language, were impacted by groups with an ancestry typical of more western Eurasian populations. This suggests that the Indo-Iranian speakers did not split off from the Yamnaya population directly, but were more closely related to the Indo-European speakers that lived in Eastern Europe.
New research shows how Indo-European languages spread across Asia
A new study has discovered that horses were first domesticated by descendants of hunter-gatherer groups in Kazakhstan who left little direct trace in the ancestry of modern populations. The research sheds new light on the long-standing 'steppe theory' on the origin and movement of Indo-European languages made possible by the domestication of the horse.
"The successful spread of the Indo-European languages across Eurasia has puzzled researchers for a century. It was thought that speakers of this language family played a key role in the domestication of the horse, and that this, in combination with the development of wheeled vehicles, allowed them to spread across Eurasia from the Yamnaya culture."
However, as this study shows, domesticated horses were used by the Botai people already 5,500 years ago, and much further East in Central Asia, completely independent of the Yamnaya pastoralists. A further twist to the story is that the descendants of these Botai were later pushed out from the central steppe by migrations coming from the west. Their horses were replaced too, indicating that horses were domesticated separately in other regions as well.
No link between Botai and Yamnaya cultures
The study does not find a genetic link between the people associated with the Yamnaya and Botai archaeological cultures, which is critical to understanding the eastward movement of the Yamnaya. Apparently, their eastward expansion bypassed the Botai completely, moving 3000 kilometres across the steppe to the Altai Mountains in Central and East Asia.
Professor Alan Outram from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Exeter and one of the paper's authors, states:
"We now know that the people who first domesticated the horse in Central Asia were the descendants of ice age hunters, who went on to become the earliest pastoralists in the region. Despite their local innovations, these peoples were overrun and replaced by European steppe pastoralists in the middle and later Bronze Age, and their horses were replaced too."
Languages spread through exchanges between several cultures
Gojko Barjamovic, Senior Lecturer on Assyriology at Harvard University, explains:
"In Anatolia, and parts of Central Asia, which held densely settled complex urban societies, the history of language spread and genetic ancestry is better described in terms of contact and absorption than by simply a movement of population."
He adds:
"The Indo-European languages are usually said to emerge in Anatolia in the 2nd millennium BCE. However, we use evidence from the palatial archives of the ancient city of Ebla in Syria to argue that Indo-European was already spoken in modern-day Turkey in the 25th century BCE. This means that the speakers of these language must have arrived there prior to any Yamnaya expansions."
The study also shows that the spread of the Indo-Iranian languages to South Asia, with Hindi, Urdu and Persian as major modern offshoots, cannot result from the Yamnaya expansions. Rather, the Indo-Iranian languages spread with a later push of pastoralist groups from the South Ural Mountains during the Middle to Late Bronze Age.
Prior to entering South Asia, these groups, thought to have spoken an Indo-Iranian language, were impacted by groups with an ancestry typical of more western Eurasian populations. This suggests that the Indo-Iranian speakers did not split off from the Yamnaya population directly, but were more closely related to the Indo-European speakers that lived in Eastern Europe.
