[HN Gopher] Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-Eur...
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Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language
family
Author : jimmytucson
Score : 76 points
Date : 2025-02-07 03:30 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hms.harvard.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (hms.harvard.edu)
| The-Old-Hacker wrote:
| https://periscope.corsfix.com/?https://www.nytimes.com/2025/...
| neonate wrote:
| That's a good article. It's here too: https://archive.ph/eJoqA.
| triyambakam wrote:
| Can someone smarter than me explain how it's even possible to use
| DNA to identify the origin of a language, given that e.g. if this
| were tried with a language like German (or maybe any Western
| European language) the puzzle would look very confusing and is
| not DNA based.
| sampton wrote:
| Writings on artifacts and burial practices associated with DNA
| fragments found at the burial sites.
| DC-3 wrote:
| This study is about prehistoric Steppe peoples, there are no
| Indo-European inscriptions from this time period nor would
| there be any until several millennia after this time.
| teleforce wrote:
| > there are no Indo-European inscriptions from this time
| period nor would there be any until several millennia after
| this time
|
| That's a very negative presumptions.
|
| How about the oldest attestation of Indo-European language
| or the long extinct language Hittite who once lived in
| Bronze age Anatolian Steppe? The language is attested in
| cuneiform, in records dating from the 17th to the 13th
| centuries BCE.
|
| Hittite people created an empire centred on Hattusa, and
| also around northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia [1].
|
| [1] Hittite language:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittite_language
| fvvybfbfbyg wrote:
| So? What about the Hittites? There is a slight gap
| between 1700 BC and 4500 BC.
| macleginn wrote:
| The story with the Indo-Europeans is basically as follows:
|
| 1. By intersecting ancient word sets of ancient Indo-European
| languages using comparative phonetics we can try and
| reconstruct the words of the proto-IE language, both their
| approximate sounds and approximate meanings. This gives us some
| information about the society. E.g., the PIE language very
| likely had a word for wheel, which puts the common PIE
| community in the period after the wheel was invented. Other
| words can help us guess what landscape the PIE people lived in,
| and it has been generally assumed for almost a century now that
| it strongly resembles Southeastern Europe, essentially the
| Ukrainian steppe. Two alternative hypotheses (modern-day Turkey
| and the area to the north, in modern-day Poland/Ukraine) had
| different drawbacks. We can also look at the locations of the
| earliest historically attested IE groups (Europe, Middle East,
| Punjab, Anatolia) and try and guess where they all may have had
| come from, given the time frame.
|
| 2. By looking at the descriptions of the earliest IE societies
| (first of all the society of Rig-Veda), we can try and guess
| what way of life these people had. We can then look at all the
| archaeological cultures in the roughly appropriate area from
| the roughly appropriate time frame and see which of those have
| features of interest (in the IE case, warrior-like culture with
| social stratification, etc.).
|
| 3. We know that IE migrated a lot and provided a lot of genetic
| material to modern populations in Europe and some other
| regions. Since quite recently, by looking at palaeo-DNA data
| from the remains of the people who belonged to these cultures,
| we can try and check who of them made the biggest contribution
| to contemporary populations.
|
| All these sources of data are rather imprecise, but if you
| combine them all together and see a clear pattern, this looks
| rather convincing.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| > the society of Rig-Veda
|
| I fail to understand how the Rigvedic society can be
| connected to this DNA research. Rigveda never mentions
| anything beyond the Punjab/Swat/Haryana region in any of the
| hymns. The flora and fauna mentioned in it is also exclusive
| to this region. Lastly there is no mention of an ancient
| homeland both in Rigveda and Avesta.
| flir wrote:
| I believe there's some stuff around burial practices that
| parallels some steppe practices. Something about horses and
| mound construction, I think?
|
| Here we go: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-
| earth/chariot-racers... - make of that what you will.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| While I don't mind if they're related, the evidence is
| rather thin. Interestingly, chariots and royal burials
| were also found in Sinauli, India which provide an
| interesting alternative to this theory.
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/artic
| le/...
| suddenlybananas wrote:
| Do you believe in out-of-india theory for IE or are you
| just sceptical about the use of the Rig Veda
| specifically.
| empath75 wrote:
| I think this comment is based on some confusion about how
| languages spread. Languages spread along with people, but
| while a local language may be replaced, the people are not
| generally replaced with the language. There may have been
| some genetic mixture, there may have been a time where they
| were conquered by them for a time, but there's no sense in
| which the people who wrote those works _were_ Yamnayan, any
| more than the Germans are. They wouldn't have a story about
| having a far away homeland because they wouldn't have had a
| far away homeland, and nobody would have remembered any
| previous language because that language had been replaced
| thousands of years before, and well before anybody started
| writing anything down. They gradually picked up the
| language of either invaders or their trading partners, just
| as has happened many other times in history.
|
| Edited to add: there are basically no migration stories in
| _any_ indo-european mythological cycles or oral traditions.
| That's not evidence that there wasn't spread through,
| migration or invasion, but it does indicate that it was a
| gradual process that wouldn't have been particularly
| noticeable in any one life time.
| danans wrote:
| It's not about the origin of a single language.
|
| It's about the origin of a population whose widely dispersed
| descendants often speak a language whose primary features
| descend from the language spoken by the original population
| (albeit changed via thousands of years of drift and borrowing
| from other languages).
|
| That doesn't mean that a) all features of the descendant
| language come from the origin language or b) all speakers of
| the descendant language have ancestry from the original
| population.
| yubblegum wrote:
| I love how they studiously avoid mentioning Iran in all these
| studies. There is a gap there between "Greece, Armenia, India and
| China". Hmm. Is this like the disappearing Persian Gulf syndrome?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Iran is mentioned in the paper several times. If you look at
| their data though, samples are heavily concentrated in black
| sea countries. Syria, Iraq, and Iran don't have many samples
| and those they do have cluster along the Caucasus cline on the
| PCA.
| yubblegum wrote:
| I read and grep'd the article.
| dehugger wrote:
| The article focuses heavily on the Yamnaya people and
| identifies them as the progenitors responsible for the initial
| Indo-European spread.
|
| Are you suggesting: A) the Yamnaya lived in present-day Iran
| and that this information was purposely left out B) the studies
| findings about the Yamnaya are incorrect C) the study should
| have mentioned Iran despite it not actually being historically
| relevant to the Yamnaya people D) something else entirely?
| teleforce wrote:
| Related HN posts [1], [2].
|
| Fun facts, the most common words of Indo-European Family are
| surprisingly very similar across Sanskrit (S) <--> English (E)
| <--> German (G) [3].
|
| Pitara (S) <--> Father (E) <--> Vater (G)
|
| Matara (S) <--> Mother (E) <--> Mutter (G)
|
| Bhratara (S) <--> Brother (E) <--> Bruder (G)
|
| Duhitar (S) <--> Daughter (E) <--> Tochter (G)
|
| [1] New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages
| (147 comments):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36930321
|
| [2] Ancient genomes provide final word in Indo-European
| linguistic origins (16 comments):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42515584
|
| [3] Turandot and the Deep Indo-European Roots of "Daughter" (15
| comments):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29450507
| anon291 wrote:
| Lots of verbs too.
|
| For example, 'to be' - French 'etre' (circumflex over the e
| indicates old 's' after the e), Marathi 'asane' (pronounced
| esnay)
|
| 'to go', German gehen, Marathi jana (when conjugated the j
| becomes hard)
|
| 'to give', french 'donner', Hindi 'danaa' (pronounced
| similarly)
|
| 'to mix', french 'melanger', Hind 'melaanaa'
|
| Other non-obvious ones:
|
| Vedas and Wisdom / Wit. Alternatively, Latin video (to see)
|
| Dyaus-pitar and Jupiter, Zeus-pater
|
| 'that' in English is 'que' (that/what) in french and 'kya' (for
| what) or 'ki' (for that) in Hindi (pronounced similarly to
| French 'que').
|
| English burden or 'to bear' and Hindi bhar (burden)
|
| English 'ignite', Latin 'ignis' and Indic 'agni' (fire)
|
| 'Raja' and 'regal' or 'royal'
|
| 'Dental' and Hindi 'dant' (tooth)
|
| Greek 'polis' and Indic 'pore' / 'pur' / 'puram' (the 'r' is
| pronounced like a soft l)
| yorwba wrote:
| French _etre_ is from PIE _h1esti_
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-
| Eur... which also gave rise to Marathi aathi ( _athi_ ).
| Marathi asnne ( _asne_ ) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A
| 4%85%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%A3%E... appears unrelated. (But might be
| cognate to English _at home_?)
|
| Not all similarities between mondern languages are inherited,
| coincidences do happen.
| richardfontana wrote:
| > Dyaus-pitar and Jupiter, Zeus-pater
|
| This one is slightly more interesting than a mere cognate as
| it is believed that the Proto-Indo-European speakers
| worshipped a sky god with the reconstructed name *Dyeus
| ph2ter ("sky-father") which is the ancestor of these (also
| Tyr and the like on the Germanic side). See:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*Dy%C4%93us "*Dyeus is
| considered by scholars the most securely reconstructed deity
| of the Indo-European pantheon, as identical formulas
| referring to him can be found among the subsequent Indo-
| European languages and myths of the Vedic Indo-Aryans,
| Latins, Greeks, Phrygians, Messapians, Thracians, Illyrians,
| Albanians and Hittites."
| danans wrote:
| > Pitara (S) <--> Father (E) <--> Vater (G)
|
| > Matara (S) <--> Mother (E) <--> Mutter (G)
|
| > Bhratara (S) <--> Brother (E) <--> Bruder (G)
|
| > Duhitar (S) <--> Daughter (E) <--> Tochter (G
|
| Since you seem to be quoting the Sanskrit words in their root
| forms, (to which the case-lacking English and German
| equivalents most closely correspond) your spellings are
| incorrect. The correct forms are:
|
| pitr
|
| matr
|
| bhratr
|
| duhitr
|
| No thematic 'a' on the end.
|
| You might be confusing it with the nominative plural case
| forms:
|
| pitarah
|
| matarah
|
| bhratarah
|
| duhitarah
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| My dad has literally just published a book (in Russian) with
| about 850 words with near identical sound and meanings in
| Russian and other Slavonic languages. :)
|
| https://borissoff.wordpress.com/2025/02/06/russian-sanskrit-...
|
| For my part I built the web based editing tool, DB and LaTeX
| generation system that he used to assemble this massive
| undertaking over the years. :)
|
| https://borissoff.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/first-public-pres...
|
| It was interesting hearing him talk about how you can see
| pieces of the original proto language preserved in the
| different languages. E.g. Russian has 6 cases, Sanskrit has
| some of these but also others and the original language had
| something like 12 (I don't have any particular knowledge on the
| subject so might be misremembering).
|
| For me it was interesting that the original language seemed to
| be more complex than the modern descendants, like there is a
| general trend towards simplification with time. In my mind then
| there is the question as to where the original complex language
| came from and why would a culture that we would consider more
| primitive that ours would need and come up with one.
| Hemospectrum wrote:
| The complexity of natural human languages comes in different
| forms, but as a general rule, whenever you see something
| that's built into another language and "missing" from your
| own, you can express it by using more words. For example, PIE
| had a lot of noun cases that aren't in English, but you don't
| _need_ the instrumental case to precisely express its
| purpose. You can say something like "by means of a
| forklift."
|
| Some studies actually suggest that literacy systematically
| pressures languages to use longer, more complex sentences,
| thus disincentivizing complex inflection rules.
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| I get that part - I speak both English and Russian and the
| latter is more concise and nuanced due to the more complex
| grammar.
|
| It's just interesting that the apparent trend is from
| complexity to simplification, like what I observed with
| English as grammar is not taught so much here in England
| anymore. It could well be (and likely is) an illusion
| stemming from my shallow knowledge of the subject of
| linguistics.
| trhway wrote:
| >built into another language and "missing" from your own,
| you can express it by using more words. ... "by means of a
| forklift."
|
| and that "more words" combination may be much simpler to
| handle in communication in some contexts than say something
| like <word root><suffix 1><suffix2> with <suffix>-es being
| "juschij" and the likes (my past comment on that
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40244902 )
| fuzztester wrote:
| >Pitara (S) <--> Father (E) <--> Vater (G)
|
| >Matara (S) <--> Mother (E) <--> Mutter (G)
|
| Also some roots of the smaller natural numbers, like (E): one,
| two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, etc.
|
| (G) eins, zwei, drei, ...
|
| (S) eka, dvi, tri, ...
|
| See the "Table" here:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari_numerals
|
| Although it is about numerals, there are words in a few
| languages, on the right side.
|
| And Sanskrit is the ancestor of many Indian language, such as
| the regional languages of most of the northern (e.g. Punjabi,
| Haryanvi, Himachali, Hindi and its dialects), central (e.g.
| Hindi), eastern (e.g. Bengali, Odiya) and western (e.g.
| Gujarati, Marwadi) Indian states. To a rough approximation,
| only the languages of the 4 (now 5, with Telangana added)
| southern states, and of the 6 / 7 north-eastern states (Assam,
| Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, etc.) and maybe a few aboriginals'
| / forest tribals' languages, like Bhil, Gond, etc., don't
| descend from Sanskrit.
| Hemospectrum wrote:
| Similarities like these, especially with Latin in the mix, were
| the clue that originally put early linguists on the scent of
| the IE language family several centuries ago. Since then,
| extensive research has been done into how exactly these
| languages developed from their common ancestors. Some modern
| dictionaries, like Wiktionary, contain entire family trees
| comparing the divergent development of these cognates and many,
| many others.
| stult wrote:
| > It finds evidence that the culture may have taken root
| somewhere near the present-day small town of Mykhailivka in the
| southern part of Ukraine.
|
| As anyone following the war in Ukraine closely has long since
| realized, village names alone are not very useful for identifying
| where something is in Ukraine. There are just too many places
| with the same names. e.g.,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykhailivka
| dsign wrote:
| Only 6500 years? That's incredibly recent for such an influential
| language. For comparison, Sargon of Akkad died only 4000 years
| ago, and there are written records from him. True, he didn't
| speak Indo-European, but Afroasiatic/Akkadian, and that was the
| language on those cuneiform tablets the researchers used for
| reference.
|
| On a tangent, with the advent of AI and the final decades of our
| species, we should make more clay tablets to leave lying
| around...
| teleforce wrote:
| The oldest attestation of Indo-European language is now the
| long extinct language Hittite who used to live in Bronze Age
| Anatolian Steppe. The language is attested in cuneiform, in
| records dating from the 17th to the 13th centuries BCE.
|
| Hittite people created an empire centred on Hattusa, and also
| around northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.
|
| > On a tangent, with the advent of AI and the final decades of
| our species, we should make more clay tablets to leave lying
| around
|
| The irony is that even with AI we have yet to decode Indus
| script perhaps due to the lack of the equivalent of Rosetta
| Stone [1]. I think there's a Nobel prize waiting for those who
| can decipher the Indus script with AI or not [2].
|
| [1] Rosetta Stone:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone
|
| [2] Indus script:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script
| empath75 wrote:
| I believe the article is saying that the Hittite branch split
| off early from the rest of the tree, and the Yamnaya are the
| ones that spread it around the world -- the Hittite branch
| ended up being a dead end.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| Regarding Indus script: I've recently come across this
| purported attempt by someone who claims they've deciphered
| Indus script. I'm. It not sold on it but it is making some
| waves in Indian circles.
|
| https://indusscript.net/
| fvvybfbfbyg wrote:
| English is what? ~600-800 years old? Most other major Western
| European languages only developed over the past ~2000 years or
| so.
|
| It's not like Porto Indo-European developed out of nothing. It
| was related to other languages that just didn't survive and
| happens to be the most recent (hypothesized) common ancestor of
| all other Indo-European languages)
| psunavy03 wrote:
| > final decades of our species
|
| Oh, come on. This is what we get from social media bubbles and
| breathless irresponsible media reporting.
| hollerith wrote:
| >Oh, come on. This is what we get from social media _bubbles_
| and breathless _irresponsible_ media reporting [emphasis
| mine].
|
| Speaking of bubbles, how sure are you that Silicon Valley and
| HN are not part of a _bubble_ composed of people with an
| emotional attachment to technological progress and people
| with a financial stake in AI?
|
| How sure are you that the AI labs aren't being even more
| _irresponsible_ than the news media?
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't pick the most provocative thing in an
| article or post to complain about in the thread. Find
| something interesting to respond to instead._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| I agree it's a provocation and, worse, a generic tangent, but
| the rest of the comment was pretty good.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I know you have no time, and I don't need a response. I
| have no skin in this exchange either, fwiw. But I just want
| to try to unpack here how this could be either a
| provocation or a noteworthy tangent. Is it that being
| pessimistic about the future is flamebait? Is it perhaps
| sneering? Is there anything to be said about the rest of
| the sentence in question and how its clearly just being a
| little cheeky? Or is that perhaps whats wrong with it?
|
| Just feels perhaps a little out of place this time that the
| gp would be in the wrong at all here. But I'm sure I'm
| missing something obvious.
| dang wrote:
| Generic references to "the advent of AI" are already
| flamebait (ok, proto-flamebait) because the topic is so
| hot, discussed, and divisive. But casually dropping "and
| the final decades of our species" as an assumed fact,
| sort of like the decline of CDs or something, is
| definitely a provocation. It's unsurprising that someone
| got activated and then we were off down a generic
| flamewar tangent.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Does this mention Avestan at all?
| Archelaos wrote:
| I recently came across this presentation of Kristian Kristiansen,
| University of Gothenburg: "Towards a New European prehistory:
| genes, archaeology and language" (2023):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxTVSwt-jsU [video], which I
| enjoyed very much. Prof. Kristiansen is a leading researcher in
| this area.
| falaki wrote:
| I haven't read the papers in detail, but can someone explain how
| genetics can be used to trace spread of languages? For context,
| you don't need population movements for a language to spread (it
| is similar to religion). See this article for a logical
| explanation: https://medium.com/incerto/a-few-things-we-dont-
| quite-get-ab...
| adastra22 wrote:
| You can't. But if population A and population B share a
| ancestor X years ago, and they also speak languages that appear
| to have drifted apart by X many years, the inference that their
| ancestor spoke a common proto-language is the simplest
| explanation.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| An excellent book I strongly recommend about PIE is The Horse,
| The Wheel, and Language.
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