The Indo-European Homeland from Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives

Anthony, David W.; Ringe, Don

doi:10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124812

Cited by 109 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…47 If this were correct, then one way to detect evidence of it would be the appearance of large amounts of steppe-related ancestry first in the Balkan Peninsula, and then in Anatolia. However, our data show no evidence for this scenario.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The genomic history of southeastern Europe

Mathieson

Alpaslan-Roodenberg

Posth

et al. 2018

Nature

539

518

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Farming was first introduced to Europe in the mid-7th millennium BCE–associated with migrants from Anatolia who settled in the Southeast before spreading throughout Europe. To understand the dynamics of this process, we analyzed genome-wide ancient DNA data from 225 individuals who lived in southeastern Europe and surrounding regions between 12,000 and 500 BCE. We document a West-East cline of ancestry in indigenous hunter-gatherers and–in far-eastern Europe–early stages in the formation of Bronze Age Steppe ancestry. We show that the first farmers of northern and western Europe passed through southeastern Europe with limited hunter-gatherer admixture, but that some groups that remained mixed extensively, without the male-biased hunter-gatherer admixture that prevailed later in the North and West. Southeastern Europe continued to be a nexus between East and West, with intermittent genetic contact with the Steppe up to 2000 years before the migrations that replaced much of northern Europe’s population.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The genomic history of southeastern Europe

Mathieson

Alpaslan-Roodenberg

Posth

et al. 2018

Nature

539

518

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“…Several arguments have been advanced in favor of the steppe hypothesis; a recent review is by Anthony and Ringe (2015). The first argument is from archaeological analysis.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European steppe hypothesis

Chang¹,

Cathcart²,

Hall³

et al. 2015

lan

199

200

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Discussion of Indo-European origins and dispersal focuses on two hypotheses. Qualitative evidence from reconstructed vocabulary and correlations with archaeological data suggest that Indo-European languages originated in the Pontic-Caspian steppe and spread together with cultural innovations associated with pastoralism, beginning c. 6500–5500 bp. An alternative hypothesis, according to which Indo-European languages spread with the diffusion of farming from Anatolia, beginning c. 9500–8000 bp, is supported by statistical phylogenetic and phylogeographic analyses of lexical traits. The time and place of the Indo-European ancestor language therefore remain disputed. Here we present a phylogenetic analysis in which ancestry constraints permit more accurate inference of rates of change, based on observed changes between ancient or medieval languages and their modern descendants, and we show that the result strongly supports the steppe hypothesis. Positing ancestry constraints also reveals that homoplasy is common in lexical traits, contrary to the assumptions of previous work. We show that lexical traits undergo recurrent evolution due to recurring patterns of semantic and morphological change.

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“…Assuming that societies usually have a way to express the concept 'circle', while 'wheel' may be missing, our data suggests that the most straightforward strategy to express a new concept 'wheel' starts from the word for 'circle'. Since this can easily happen independently, as we can again see from our data, these findings might be of importance for on-going debates on the origin of terms for 'wheel', especially in Indo-European (Hock 2017;Anthony & Ringe 2015). Further studies on lexical typology, including studies on independently recurring patterns of semantic shift as well as the frequency of loan transfer, are required before this linguistic data can be reliably used to reconstruct ancestral cultures.…”

Section: Colexifications Of Wheel and Footmentioning

confidence: 53%

CLICS2: An improved database of cross-linguistic colexifications assembling lexical data with the help of cross-linguistic data formats

List

Greenhill

Anderson

et al. 2018

Linguistic Typology

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Abstract:The Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications (CLICS), has established a computer-assisted framework for the interactive representation of crosslinguistic colexification patterns. In its current form, it has proven to be a useful tool for various kinds of investigation into cross-linguistic semantic associations, ranging from studies on semantic change, patterns of conceptualization, and linguistic paleontology. But CLICS has also been criticized for obvious shortcomings, ranging from the underlying dataset, which still contains many errors, up to the limits of cross-linguistic colexification studies in general. Building on recent standardization efforts reflected in the Cross-Linguistic Data Formats initiative (CLDF) and novel approaches for fast, efficient, and reliable data aggregation, we have created a new database for cross-linguistic colexifications, which not only supersedes the original CLICS database in terms of coverage but also offers a much more principled procedure for the creation, curation and aggregation of datasets. The paper presents the new database and discusses its major features.

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The Indo-European Homeland from Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives

Abstract: Archaeological evidence and linguistic evidence converge in support of an origin of Indo-European languages on the Pontic-Caspian steppes around 4,000 years BCE. The evidence is so strong that arguments in support of other hypotheses should be reexamined.

Cited by 109 publications

References 33 publications

The genomic history of southeastern Europe

The genomic history of southeastern Europe

Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European steppe hypothesis

CLICS2: An improved database of cross-linguistic colexifications assembling lexical data with the help of cross-linguistic data formats

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