Deep origins of IE family

 Deep origins of IE family

This question regularly arise in our group, so some remarks are needed.

IE family is a linguistic concept produced by linguists. They had made an internal classification of daughter IE languages and came to the conclusion that the Anatolian branch is the first while all others including the Armenian descend from another branch which has different names. Late PIE, nuclear IE and various other names.

This mean that for the question of deep origins of IE family the origins of Anatolian languages is crucial. Given that Anatolian languages are extinct we can't test them directly. The only way to know their origins is to have large number of ancient DNA from Anatolia. And when I say Anatolia I mean exactly those places where only Anatolians lived. Not the coasts of Aegean sea where early Greek tribes settled and not the so called East Anatolia, east of Euphrates where early Armenic tribes were already present. Also not regions in north Levant where Hurrians and Semites had a strong presence.

If we exclude all this regions we are left with just a dozen ancient DNA from those genuine Bronze Age (3000-1200BC) Anatolians. This number is absolutely insufficient for having definitive conclusions about their origins. Those samples only give a hint what can be expected.

Here are the list of this expectations.

1. Anatolians were from Armenian highland farmers. (Quite likeky)

2. Anatolians were from Steppe Eneolithic in north Caucasus who migrated via Caucasus (Also possible but an important question of steppe Eneolithic ancestry dilution must be addressed)

3. Anatolians were from CLV, Volga or Dnepr clines and moved via Balkans to Anatolia. ( this scenario is unlikely but there is a need to fully ruled out it )

As You can see the key to the Deep origins of IE family is not in Armenia, not in modern Armenian genetics, not in Caucasus or Europe. Especially in north Europe. The key to the answer is in the Bronze Age Anatolia.

Besides genetics there is another "soft" way to support a theory related to deep origins of IE. It's a linguistics. Let's say a genius linguist proves that Indo-Uralic theory is correct. Indo-Uralic theory posits that IE and Uralic languages descend from the same source. If someone proves that they are connected and all others accept it then we will have no any other option to believe that common origins of IE and Uralic was in EHG (Eastern European hunters). But currently no one has provided this "proof" and overall genetic data shows that Uralic family was from Siberia most probably related to Yukaghir people.

In Lazaridis 2024 they speak about the crop raising terminology in IE. They used it an argument for more southern origins. Arguments like contacts with Semites and Sumerians are also important but they can't be decisive because the IE languages were already spoken 6300 years ago in Near East. There is no much reasons to doubt it now. So proving that they had contacts with Sumerians changes nothing and helps in no way to understand their deep origins.

Another absolutely meaningless activity is to attack Yamnaya, to question it's affiliation to late IE languages. This way of acting is irresponsible because the only reason that western academy is interested in Armenian theory since the 2015 is the Yamnaya culture. If You remove Yamnaya from that system then there is no much reason to believe that Armenian highland farmers are related to IE given that they didn't migrated directly to Europe or India. But they migrated a lot to Caucasus where at last three different non-IE linguistic families exist today.

So my advise to some our members try to be patient, not emotional. We can not change the past. We can just learn about it