The deviant typological profile of the Tocharian branch of Indo-European may be due to Uralic substrate influence

Abstract

Tocharian agglutinative case inflexion as well as its single series of voiceless stops, the two most striking typological deviations from Proto-Indo-European, can be explained through influence from Uralic. A number of other typological features of Tocharian may likewise be interpreted as due to contact with a Uralic language. The supposed contacts are likely to be associated with the Afanas’evo Culture of South Siberia. This Indo-European culture probably represents an intermediate phase in the movement of speakers of early Tocharian from the Proto-Indo-European homeland in the Eastern European steppe to the Tarim Basin in Northwest China. At the same time, the Proto-Samoyedic homeland must have been in or close to the Afanas’evo area. A close match between the Pre-Proto-Tocharian and Pre-Proto-Samoyedic vowel systems is a strong indication that the Uralic contact language was an early form of Samoyedic.

The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies

“…However, although Afanasievo-related ancestry has been confirmed among Iron Age Dzungarian populations (around 200–400 bc ) 7 , and Tocharian is recorded in Buddhist texts from the Tarim Basin dating to ad 500–1000 (ref. 13 ), little is known about earlier Xinjiang populations and their possible genetic relationships with the Afanasievo or other groups.…”

“…1 and Extended Data Table 1 ). These and related Bronze Age sites are grouped within the Xiaohe archaeological horizon on the basis of their shared material culture 13 , 16 , 20 .…”

“…Within and around the Dzungarian Basin, pastoralist Early Bronze Age (EBA) Afanasievo (3000-2600 bc) and Chemurchek (or Qiemu'erqieke) (2500-1700 bc) 12 sites have been plausibly linked to the Afanasievo herders of the Altai-Sayan region in southern Siberia (3150-2750 bc), who in turn have close genetic ties with the Yamnaya (3500-2500 bc) of the Pontic-Caspian steppe located 3,000 km to the west [13][14][15] . Linguists have hypothesized that the Afanasievo dispersal brought the now extinct Tocharian branch of the Indo-European language family eastwards, separating it from other Indo-European languages by the third or fourth millennium bc (ref.…”

Bronze and Iron Age population movements underlie Xinjiang population history

“…Within this context, archaeological and mitochondrial studies have suggested that the BA inhabitants and cultures of Xinjiang were not derived from any indigenous Neolithic substrate but rather from a mix of West and East Eurasian people ( 5 , 13 , 14 ), whereas BA burial traditions suggest links with both North Eurasian Steppe cultures and the Central Asian BMAC civilization ( 15 ). Linguistically, the presence of the now-extinct Indo-European Tocharian language, attested to in ~5th to 10th century CE texts from the Tarim Basin, also raised questions regarding the origin and extent of Indo-European–speaking people in Xinjiang ( 7 , 15 ). To date, one mitochondrial study of the BA Xiaohe site in the Tarim Basin found evidence of both Steppe- and central Siberian–derived haplogroups and only a later influence from the BMAC ( 13 ), whereas a broader mitochondrial survey indicated that these results may not apply to the region as a whole ( 14 ).…”

“…traversed from the west through the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC), and millet (~4000 B.P.) is presumed to have entered Xinjiang from the east through the Hexi Corridor (3)(4)(5)7). An understanding of the origins of the BA inhabitants of Xinjiang is necessary to follow the changes that these cultural and technological transfers have had on the population structure over the ensuing millennia.…”