# Humanities & Anthropology > History & Civilisations >  The big bubble: Indoeuropean Yamnayans

## berun

I received a suggestion to read Anthony's book "The horse, the wheel and language" as to understand the spread of IE languages from an archaeological point of view. I would like to share my astonishment as how such "theory" could have the general acceptance that receives as it doesn't stand much stronger than per example any Atlantis-Pyramids relation book... (which usualy I prefer to don't take into account).




> The Usatovo culture appeared about 3300–3200 BCE in the steppes around the mouth of the Dniester River, a strategic corridor that reached northwest into southern Poland. The rainfall–farming zone in the Dniester valley had been densely occupied by Cucuteni–Tripolye communities for millennia, but they never established settlements in the steppes. Kurgans had overlooked the Dniester estuary in the steppes since the Suvorovo migration about 4000 BCE; these are assigned to various groups including Mikhailovka I and the Cernavoda I–III cultures. Usatovo represented the rapid evolution of a new level of social and political integration between lowland steppe and upland farming communities. The steppe element used Tripolye material culture but clearly declared its greater prestige, wealth, and military power. The upland farmers who lived on the border itself adopted the steppe custom of inhumation burial in a cemetery, but they did not erect kurgans or take weapons to their graves. This integrated culture appeared in the Dniester valley just after the abandonment of all the Tripolye C1 towns in the South Bug valley on one side and the final Cucuteni B2 towns in southern Romania on the other. The chaos caused by the dissolution of hundreds of Cucuteni–Tripolye farming communities probably convinced the Tripolye townspeople of the middle Dniester valley to accept the status of clients. Explicit patronage defined the Usatovo culture.


mixed culture, being moreover the supposed IE steppe herders a minority




> Tripolye clients of the Usatovo chiefs could have been the agents through which the Usatovo language spread northward into central Europe. After a few generations of clientage, the people of the upper Dniester might have wanted to acquire their own clients. 
> 
> If I had to hazard a guess I would say that this was how the Proto–Indo–European dialects that would ultimately form the root of Pre–Germanic first became established in central Europe: they spread up the Dniester from the Usatovo culture through a nested series of patrons and clients, and eventually were spoken in some of the late TRB communities between the Dniester and the Vistula. These late TRB communities later evolved into early Corded Ware communities, and it was the Corded Ware horizon (see below) that provided the medium through which the Pre–Germanic dialects spread over a wider area.


from a mixed culture it's supposed that their supposed IE language spread over Central Europe by cultural contact only; now we know by ancient DNA that there was a migration which was in the base of the Corded Ware Culture, so the Usatovo theory is simply a flaw, and even more, Yamnayists DON'T PROVIDE archaeological evidences linking the steppes with Central Europe, otherwise they wouldn't need to recall Usatovo... 




> The people whose dialects would separate to become the root speech communities for the northwestern Indo–European language branches (Pre–Germanic, Pre–Baltic, and Pre–Slavic) probably moved initially toward the northwest. That would mean moving through or into Late Tripolye territory if it happened between 3300 and 2600 BCE, the time span of the final, staggering C2 phase of the Tripolye culture, after which all Tripolye traditions disappeared entirely.


so a minoritary mixed culture supposedly speaking IE was traveling though non-IE territory to teach their language to their northerner clients without stablishing there.... wow




> The widely separated pockets of Yamnaya settlement in the lower Danube valley and the Balkans established speakers of late Proto–Indo–European dialects in scattered islands where, if they remained isolated from one another, they could have differentiated over centuries into various Indo–European languages.


A fine but flawed explanation for Greek, Thracian, Illyrian... but no proof at all. 




> The many thousands of Yamnaya kurgans in eastern Hungary suggest a more continuous occupation of the landscape by a larger population of immigrants, one that could have acquired power and prestige partly just through its numerical weight. This regional group could have spawned both pre–Italic and pre–Celtic. Bell Beaker sites of the Csepel type around Budapest, west of the Yamnaya settlement region, are dated about 2800–2600 BCE. They could have been a bridge between Yamnaya on their east and Austria/Southern Germany to their west, through which Yamnaya dialects spread from Hungary into Austria and Bavaria, where they later developed into Proto–Celtic.31 Pre–Italic could have developed among the dialects that remained in Hungary, ultimately spreading into Italy through the Urnfield and Villanovan cultures.


so Celtic and Italic is supposed to have spread from a culture that was not related to Yamnaya... but learnt their language and spread it westwards... OMG!! (no archaeological evidence also). Instead, the area where proto-Celtic developed (the north Alpine arch) was peopled once by CW.




> The Middle Dnieper and Fatyanovo migrations probably established the populations that spoke pre-Baltic dialects in the Upper Volga basin. Pre-Slavic probably developed between the middle Dnieper and upper Dniester among the populations that stayed behind.


Right, such cultures were CW branches sharing also the same R1a clade... but no cultural relation with the steppes is demonstrated again. 




> The Sintashta-Potapovka-Filatovka complex probably is the archaeological manifestation of the Indo-Iranian language group.


A Fatyonovo/Abashevo branch, both CW and Sintashta being R1a, as is usual among carriers of Baltic, Slavic, proto-Germanic, Iranian, Indian... and how Sintashta and Andronovo got their EEF genes other than by CW (Yamnayans were devoid of them)?




> Near Nalchik, in the center of the North Caucasus piedmont, was a cemetery containing 147 graves with contracted skeletons lying on their sides in red ochre—stained pits in groups of two or three under stone cairns. Females lay in a contracted pose on the left side and males on their right.30 A few copper ornaments, beads made of deer and cattle teeth, and polished stone bracelets (like those found in grave 108 at Khvalynsk and at Krivoluchie) accompanied them. One grave yielded a date on human bone of 5000–4800 BCE (possibly too old by a hundred to five hundred years, if the dated sample was contaminated by old carbon in fish). Five graves in the same region at Staronizhesteblievsk were provided with boars-tusk plaques of the DDII Mariupol type, animal-tooth beads, and flint blades that seem at home in the Early Eneolithic.31 An undated cave occupation in the Kuban valley at Kamennomost Cave, level 2, which could be of the same date, has yielded sheep/goat and cattle bones stratified beneath a later level with Maikop-culture materials. Carved stone bracelets and ornamental stones from the Caucasus—black jet, rock crystal, and porphyry—were traded into Khvalynsk and Dnieper-Donets II sites, perhaps from people like those at Nal’chik and Kamennomost Cave 2. The Nalchik-era sites clearly represent a community that had at least a few domesticated cattle and sheep/goats, and was in contact with Khvalynsk. They probably got their domesticated animals from the Dnieper, as the Khvalynsk people did.


so kurgans two thousand years before Yamnaya? is that the Nalchik provided culture and herds to Samara? also the R1b DNA? were Caucasian colonizers? that explains the Nelithic-Iran DNA there?




> Wagons probably appeared in the steppes between about 3500 and 3300 BCE, possibly from the west through Europe, or possibly through the late Maikop-Novosvobodnaya culture, from Mesopotamia. .... Again, contact with people from the late Maikop-Novosvobodnaya culture, such as the makers of the kurgan at Evdik on the lower Volga, might have stimulated the change from late Khvalynsk to early Yamnaya. One of the stimuli introduced from the North Caucasus might have been wagons and wagon-making skills.
> 
> The A1 or Repin style was made earliest in the middle Don–middle Volga region. Repin pottery is stratified beneath Yamnaya pottery at Cherkassky on the middle Don and is dated between 3950 and 3600 BCE at an antelope hunters’ camp on the lower Volga at Kyzyl-Khak. The earliest Repin pottery was somewhat similar in form and decoration to the late Sredni Stog–Konstantinovka types on the lower Don, and it is now thought that contact with the late Maikop-Novosvobodnaya culture on the lower Don at places like Konstantinovka stimulated the emergence and spread of the early Repin culture and, through Repin, early Yamnaya. The metal-tanged daggers and sleeved axes of the early Yamnaya horizon certainly were copied after Maikop-Novosvobodnaya types.


Yamnaya is debt to Caucasian wagons, daggers, kurgans, herds, DNA... 

So we have Caucasian DNA and culture in Yamnaya, but no Yamnaya culture in Corded Ware, but Caucasian DNA in Corded Ware; then the Caucasians might have reached northerner areas.

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## Cato

> Yamnaya is debt to Caucasian wagons, daggers, kurgans, herds, DNA... 
> 
> So we have Caucasian DNA and culture in Yamnaya, but no Yamnaya culture in Corded Ware, but Caucasian DNA in Corded Ware; then the Caucasians might have reached northerner areas.


Gimbutas linked the Globular Amphora culture, from whence Corded ware derived, directly to the Maykop culture

J.P.Mallory - Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture p.339




> It is also at this time that there are major cultural changes in central and northern Europe with the expansion of the Globular Amphora culture over the earlier territory of the TRB culture. Gimbutas argues that this latter culture, which marks a shift to increasing pastoralism and less permanent settlement, derives ultimately from influences from the Maykop and Lower Mikhaylovka cultures of the north Caucasus and Ukraine (hence her use of the term "Maykop culture" for all of these different cultures). The connections between the Globular Amphora and Maykop cultures, she argues, is especially to be seen in ceramic forms and the use of stone in the construction of mortuary chamber.

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## Athiudisc

Rather than picking apart the numerous fallacies and misunderstandings of material as I've done previously, I would like to cut to the chase and simply ask...berun, what is your theory regarding the spread of IE languages/genetics, and what do you base it on?

"Something else I can't articulate" is not an appropriate response, and "red alarms that are always dismissed as frivolous and that I'll never get published because they're demonstrated as false with a bare modicum of effort and education" is not a sound basis.

I'm not trying to be a dick, but this is getting ridiculous. You're behaving as if everyone but you and a couple of fringe bloggers stuck around circa 2006 are just imbeciles, but you never present your own ideas for consideration; you simply attempt to quibble with everyone else and call them stupid ("Atlantean pyramids" and such).

Put up or shut up.

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## berun

@Cato, interesting track to follow... let's check DNA when available also.

@Athiudisc, this week sermon is Matthew 7:6.

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## Athiudisc

Calling me a pig is nice and all, but now you've backed yourself into another corner: is everyone here but you swine?

If not, present your theories. If such is your opinion, why bother posting "I'm smarter than all of you, nyah nyah!" over and over at all?

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## berun

You are thinking that i say stupid or swine. You don't get nothing. I wish to don't waste my time with you. Do you prefer a more direct request to undesrtand me?

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## Athiudisc

Assuming that gobbledygook parses as "no, I still have no actual theory to offer, just an adamant insistence everyone else is somehow wrong," I suppose we're done once more.  :Laughing:

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## berun

Ok, go with your lollipop if it makes you happy... but please don't try to trol posts or waste my time in empty discussions.

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## Athiudisc

A simple presentation of your secret theory, without the constant attempts at mockery of other posters, would make me very happy.

Barring that, mere civility would be acceptable.

I already said we could be done. Move on.

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## bicicleur

Anthony discusses in some detail the archaeological evidence from the steppes, and how it can be interpreted in light of his suggested historical-linguistic framework. But, in a review, Philip L. Kohl suggests that at times Anthony's linguistic model may guide "the archaeological interpretation rather than the reverse."[5][6]
Also Kohl cautions about Anthony's proposal that horseback riding developed very early: in Eneolithic times in the proto-Indo-European homeland. According to Kohl, horseback riding was in fact almost invisible in the Ancient Near Eastern pictorial record until practically the end of the third millennium BCE.[6]
Nevertheless, Kohl endorses the book as a "gifted reconstruction of the archaeological record",

I am not an expert in archeological or linguistic interpretations but I tend to agree with that.
The book was written before any anciant DNA from the steppe was known, neither the time of arrival of haplogroups R1a and R1b in Europe.
The Anatolian hypothesis was widely accepted then.

The book says Yamna people were ousted from the Pontic steppe by Sintashta people.
Anciant DNA of Yamna, Sintashta and Srubnaya has proven that correct.
It also describes different intrusions from the Pontic steppe into the Balkans. There is little doubt that they actually happened.
The arrival and expansions of haplogroups R1a and R1b into Europe happen in exactly within the timeframe mentioned in the book.
The book does not describe in any detail the spread of IE people further into Europe, the author mentions only a few of his conjectures.
But that IE spread into Europe is beyond any doubt.
The author does give more details about the spread of Indo-Iranian people.
The little anciant DNA we have uptill now fits the story.

If you have a more valid theory you can back up with facts, let me know.

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## berun

No, the Anatolian theory was fierly combated by steppists and even i backed the steppist side by then. 

Of course the book explains true changes in culture but if you look at them you will see that such changes are related to R1a / Corded Ware / daughter cultures, being the Abashevo - Sintashta - Andronovo - Iranian the best example... but Yamnayans are not playing nothing here (again), they were a dead end.

Then if the author is getting linguistic suppositions with no real archaeological evidences (Usatovo per example)... well, it's like changing Atlantis for steppes and pyramids for kurgans, I could write a lot of crazy theories, isn't?

I'm not suggesting other dates for IE expansion or other latitudes, but suggesting that all is pointing to the CW. Sorry if i can't give a better alternative, but the unique that I can say is that Yamna is not IE and that Earth is not flat.

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## Angela

@Bicileur,
Yes, I think the analysis of horse domestication, and the role it played in the Indo-European expansions is the weakest part of Anthony's work. 

For the rest, it's not his scholarship that is the issue, it's the oversimplification of his work or sometimes even the outright distortions that are the issue.

That said, I'm actually still keeping an open mind about the "Anatolian" branch. It may have moved into Anatolia the way he describes, but there's almost no archaeological evidence that I can find supporting that. 


@Berun,

I suggest you read Anthony again. Corded Ware adopted all the "IE" innovations from Yamnaya. In addition, I don't know anything more recent that contradicts the fact that Corded Ware is genetically 75% "Yamnaya like." I'd also be wary of all these "Yamnaya is a dead end" statements. We know very little of the western steppe as of yet. 

It might also help you come up with specific examples of where Anthony is wrong and you are right. Until then, this is getting us nowhere.

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## berun

I have read the book recently and even I have taken notes... so please provide if possible the pages where such info is given because I have taken notes from almost all cultures characterized, so you may have a better memory? For the genetical relation Yamna / CW, other than dates or populations implied are problematic (appearing in the same century or being steppe people a bunch to change all Central Europe), with the aracheological and genetic data in hand there are other options left more reliable as CW > Yamna, or X > Yamna and X > CW (same effects on autosomal). I don't provide examples where i'm right because i'm not proposing any theory but i work with an hypothesis, for Anthonys' wrong examples I have provided in the first post some examples on how without any archaeological / real proof is trying to force the origin of IE languages from the steppe, and that is what is getting us nowhere.

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## Angela

The genetics information is obviously not in Anthony. 

It is clear from the recent genetics papers that the "Caucasus" like admixture entered from the south and spread northward from there. It goes from steppe to forest steppe.

That's the same direction in which the technology moves, or from the "Old Europe" settlements to their west. If you didn't get that then you didn't understand what you were reading. 

Corded Ware came later to a lot of the "Indo-European" advancements. Their first settlements don't even have much copper at all, and no Bronze until much,much later.

*You're* the one challenging Anthony. Prove where he's wrong with papers, facts, something, or give it up.

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## berun

Another empty discussion. I need to proof now that Santa is not real? I need to provide also papers demonstrating that Egyptian pyramids and Mayan pyramids aren't related by Atlantis survivors? And whatelse? If you can't see or try to check that Anthony is not providing proofs for the Steppe theory what I can't do better? 

You also don't provide even the pages requested. What a way to treat science.

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## berun

For genes, after the Caucasian flux (when it take place?), they are going from north to south/steppe, evident in Sintashta and Poltavka:

"In any case, it's clear enough that Poltavka outlier was the result of mixture between Yamnaya-related western steppe pastoralists and the descendants of Middle Neolithic Europeans with a high ratio of WHG ancestry. Where this admixture actually took place and which archaeological cultures were involved will have to be resolved with further sampling of ancient remains from Central and Eastern Europe."

So are CW yamnayans or Yamna received CW genes...? But as everybody sticks with the steppe everybody gives an automatic answer, no further thinking is necessary, let's do science and hocus pocus together.

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## Tomenable

IMO Corded Ware was probably not derived directly from Yamnaya, but rather they are both of them were descended from a common earlier ancestral population, which is why they shared in 75% similar autosomal DNA. Here is the chronological sequence of major cultural horizons in the Steppe:

- Khvalynsk (ca. 5200-4200 BC)
- Sredni Stog (ca. 4200-3300 BC)
- Yamnaya A (ca. 3300-2900 BC)
- Yamnaya B (ca. 2900-2600 BC)

Corded Ware culture appeared at least around 3200 BC (the oldest branch of CW was probably the Middle Dnieper culture) so it is almost as old as Yamnaya and therefore it is probably descended from Late Sredni Stog (as is Yamnaya - but from another part of Sredni Stog horizon), not directly from Yamnaya. Also the Anatolian branch of Indo-European languages is not descended from Yamnaya, because Proto-Anatolian is associated with Cernavodă culture, which emerged around 4000 BC - so it had to be descended from Sredni Stog (as Yamnaya had not yet existed). Therefore Yamnaya cannot be considered a PIE culture because PIE languages started to differentiate long before Yamnaya emerged (with Proto-Anatolian speakers splitting away from the rest of PIE-speakers first, around 4000 BC). Yamnaya could be IE-speakers, but not PIE - rather just one of several IE branches existing at that time.

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## Tomenable

*Angela,*

Copper working, bronze working, etc. (in general advancements in metallurgy) were *NOT* Proto-Indo-European inventions.

The oldest evidence of copper-working in the world is from the Vinča culture, which emerged around 5700 BC in the Balkans in what is now Serbia. The oldest copper-made item found so far is a copper axe dated to 5500 BC, found near Prokuplje in Serbia. It was made by people of the Vinča culture, but nobody associates that culture with Indo-Europeans. From the Balkans, the knowledge of metallurgy spread both to the Middle East (where the oldest evidence of metal-working is ca. 500-800 years younger than in the Balkans), to the Caucasus, and to the Pontic-Caspian Steppe.

Another Balkan-based culture with advanced early bronze metallurgy was the Varna culture, which emerged ca. 4400 BC.

====================

The world's oldest evidence of the Copper Age is from this archaeological site near Prokuplje:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plo%C4%8Dnik_(archaeological_site)




> In 2008, a copper axe was found at Pločnik that when dated pushed back the start of the Copper Age by 500 years.


By 500 years, to year 5500 BC. The second oldest evidence of the Copper Age is also from Serbia, dated to 5000 BC:




> site of Belovode on the Rudnik mountain in Serbia contains the world's oldest securely dated evidence of copper smelting at high temperature, from 5,000 BCE.

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## berun

If accepting that the origin source for CW and Yamna would be the Sredni Stog, how could be done that an steppic population of let say 100000 would replace some 5000000 inhabitants in Central Europe as to provide the aDNA that CW displays? I can't figure out mass killings of such level. I have not ancient historical records about a similar butchering. Even the Eurasian diseases were not able to erase the Quechuan and Aymaran population of South America. 

Even so it would be good to have some archaeological facts about this possible origin.

To me it would make more sense if pionner Caucasian migrants (maybe like the American trappers in the Pacific NW) settled somewhere in the forest-steppe or forest among PIE EHG and mixed half/half, increasing population enough there as to populate thereafter Central Europe and overwhelming the native people.

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## Kristiina

Globular Amphora Culture ca. 3400–2800 BC looks very much Indo-European. Their culture corresponds to the IE vocabulary which Robert Beekes has reconstructed in his book "Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An introduction". Such words include many agricultural words and in particular words for cow, ox, bull, yoke and a verb for pulling a wagon.

Kuznetsov and Khokhlov write in "ETHNOCULTURAL RELATIONS OF THE STEPPE HABITANTS OF EASTERN EUROPE IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE" that "The initial period of the Bronze Age is represented by Yamna cultural and historic community. Comparison of radiocarbon dates of the two main areas of this community, the western (territory of Ukraine) and the eastern (the Volga River and Ural regions), confirms the hypothesis about the eastern origin of Yamna culture. The western area of Yamna cultural and historic community covers the period from 3000 to 2300 BC, while the eastern one covers the period from 3500 to 2900 BC. The eastern origin and the further expansion to the west of the bearers of Yamnaya culture is also confirmed by the data on funeral customs and inventory."
Yamnaya Samara yDNA is mainly R1b-Z2103 and one R1b-L23. R1b-Z2103 is not typical for IE speakers but is distributed mostly in modern Turkic speakers and Caucasians.

R1bL23xL51.PNG

Globular Amphora Culture starts in Kujawy Region Poland 3400 BC (with only a difference of 100 years to Yamnaya samara), and c. 2900 BC it transforms into Corded Ware "in a number of "centers" which subsequently formed their own local networks" (Wikipedia.) It is not possible that Yamnaya people turned into Globular Amphora people as they are contemporaneous and the distance between them is 2650 km. 

Tomenable, what is your linguistic evidence for Khvalynsk Culture to be IE? 

If Globular amphorae is the western branch of IE, what branch was spoken in Yamnaya Samara? The earliest split is between Hittite, Tocharian and the rest, but the Hittite kingdom was not close to Samara. As for Tocharian which was spoken in Northwest China, Tocharian inscriptions date only to 600-800 AD. Moreover, we know that Bronze Age yDNA in Xiaohe, Xinjiang is R1a1 and not the Yamnaya y line.

The highest proportion of Yamnaya ancestry is found in Uralic speaking Udmurts and Mordovians, Turkic-speaking Bashkirs and Tatars and IE-speaking Russians and Lithuanians. Therefore, one cannot claim that Yamnaya ancestry must be of IE origin. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1448840466

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## berun

Also the CW culture must be IE, but nobody has found clear proofs about an origin in the steppes:




> Considerable controversy exists over the origins of the
> Corded Ware culture and its associations with other cultural
> groups. The distribution of the Neolithic TRB culture
> coincides considerably with the later range of Corded Ware
> sites and the physical type of Corded Ware burials tends to
> reflect that of earlier populations of the same region. There is
> little doubt that, at least in some regions, the earlier TRB
> culture should be associated with the origins of the Corded
> Ware horizon, e.g., in the Netherlands a Corded Ware house
> ...


from the Encyclopaedia of IE Culture. 

Looking at ADMIXTURE, the TRB samples are displaying a 10% of "steppe" aDNA, but this is shocking as it predates Yamnaya. For the area of the TRB culture i would guess that their genetic origins are WHG, SHG, EHG but above all EEF as ADMIXTURE points, but the "Yamnaya" aDNA might have another history.

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## Angela

We've gone over the relationship between Corded Ware and Yamnaya numerous times.

This is a whole thread dedicated to it. Perhaps newer posters could read it; a lot of their confusion could be cleared up.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...ght=Metallurgy
For anyone who wants to read about the source of the various elements in the Indo-European "package", Le Brok started a thread about it.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...ght=Metallurgy
@Tomenable,
As to metallurgy, this is probably the tenth time we've discussed it. It's by no means clear that it began in the Balkans. I've pointed out again and again that there is no consensus about that, and the pendulum swings back and forth from the Balkans to the Middle East. 

To refresh everyone's recollection, this is a thread on "David Anthony on Metallurgy", which also contains cites for other papers.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...ght=Metallurgy

Bottom line, he believes that it either developed first in the Near East and then spread to the Balkans, or it developed simultaneously in both places. 

As I said, other papers are also discussed. I don't think anything has contradicted this:

"This researcher believes that it was furnace smelting, which was developed in the southern Levant, which was the driver for the real developments in metallurgy. The article isn't long, and I think it's pretty persuasive. He claims there are no developmental steps from melting to full blown furnace smelting at other copper working sites. The technology seems to appear as a complete package. He also has interesting things to say about the fact that these craftsmen, as is still the case in tribal Africa, had great status as shamans of a sort, bringing new substances into existence through what would have looked like "magic".

Oh, and I remember you have an interest in the rather intrusive looking metal working sites in Spain. There's a bit in here about them, as well.
http://www.ajaonline.org/sites/defau...Amzallag_0.pdf"

"As for bronze metallurgy, what Anthony says about Bronze and the Pontic Caspian Steppe in his book is not precisely the way it has been presented by other people. (I have found that parts of the book are available for free at the following link: http://books.google.com/books?id=0FD...steppe&f=false)

In the google book, Anthony says that the first bronze in Europe can be dated to 3700-3500 B.C. in the northern Caucasus in the form of arsenical bronze. What he doesn't say is that apparently it first appeared in Asia Minor in 4200 BC., so the flow of technology would most probably have been south to north. 
See: Hami Ozbal, Ancient Anatolian Metallurgy
http://www.transanatolie.com/english...lurg-Ozbal.pdf
(Off-topic, but can the derivation of his name be from "Baal"? How cool if that's true!)"

At any rate, Bronze on the steppe is very late, as is explained in the paper.

Regardless, it's invention has nothing to do with the Indo-Europeans, so I don't see the point of posting in this thread that it was first invented in the Balkans even if that were true. If you want to post more about the invention of metallurgy perhaps it makes sense to post on that metallurgy thread.

@Berun,
We know the genetics of the Yamnaya and a lot of other early Indo-Europeans. We no longer have to speculate. Please use the search engine to find the relevant threads.

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## Alan

> IMO Corded Ware was probably not derived directly from Yamnaya, but rather they are both of them were descended from a common earlier ancestral population, which is why they shared in 75% similar autosomal DNA. Here is the chronological sequence of major cultural horizons in the Steppe:
> 
> - Khvalynsk (ca. 5200-4200 BC)
> - Sredni Stog (ca. 4200-3300 BC)
> - Yamnaya A (ca. 3300-2900 BC)
> - Yamnaya B (ca. 2900-2600 BC)
> 
> Corded Ware culture appeared at least around 3200 BC (the oldest branch of CW was probably the Middle Dnieper culture) so it is almost as old as Yamnaya and therefore it is probably descended from Late Sredni Stog (as is Yamnaya - but from another part of Sredni Stog horizon), not directly from Yamnaya. Also the Anatolian branch of Indo-European languages is not descended from Yamnaya, because Proto-Anatolian is associated with Cernavodă culture, which emerged around 4000 BC - so it had to be descended from Sredni Stog (as Yamnaya had not yet existed). Therefore Yamnaya cannot be considered a PIE culture because PIE languages started to differentiate long before Yamnaya emerged (with Proto-Anatolian speakers splitting away from the rest of PIE-speakers first, around 4000 BC). Yamnaya could be IE-speakers, but not PIE - rather just one of several IE branches existing at that time.


 Thats what I have been saying for some time. We are dealing here raher with a network of Indo European cultures than one PIE "Yamnaya one". However I believe Kura_Araxes or even Maykop make more sense for the origin of Hitittes, because their appearance fits with the collapse of these cultures.

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## bicicleur

> "As for bronze metallurgy, what Anthony says about Bronze and the Pontic Caspian Steppe in his book is not precisely the way it has been presented by other people. (I have found that parts of the book are available for free at the following link: http://books.google.com/books?id=0FD...steppe&f=false)
> 
> In the google book, Anthony says that the first bronze in Europe can be dated to 3700-3500 B.C. in the northern Caucasus in the form of arsenical bronze. What he doesn't say is that apparently it first appeared in Asia Minor in 4200 BC., so the flow of technology would most probably have been south to north. 
> See: Hami Ozbal, Ancient Anatolian Metallurgy
> http://www.transanatolie.com/english...lurg-Ozbal.pdf
> (Off-topic, but can the derivation of his name be from "Baal"? How cool if that's true!)"
> 
> At any rate, Bronze on the steppe is very late, as is explained in the paper.
> 
> ...


I don't remember exactly what I read, but in my mind I've allways remembered that the catlle in the Pontic Steppe came from the Balkans, not Transcaucasia, and that Maykop was the consequence of the Uruk expansion, the demand for copper and other metals in Mesopotamia. I allways understood this as the Maykop being a small group of people coming from the south attracted by the Caucasus ores.
However Maykop people didn't expand, the R1b-M269 and R1b-M73 IE people who were on the steppe allready befroe Maykop did expand. And later they were replaced by R1a Sintashta from the forest-steppe.
That leaves the question, where did the Maykop people go after demand from Mesopotamia dropped? Did they just dissapear? IMO there could be a link with the Indus civilisation.

----------


## berun

@Angela, after reading the posts you refered my "confusion" is the same or even worsened, sorry to don't see the bright Yamnaya / Steppe religion so pure. Even worse as I have recanted more after reading the paper "Corded Ware in the Central and Southern Balkans: A Consequence of Cultural Interaction or an Indication of Ethnic Change?", as now under the CW label could be included Iranic, Indic, Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Celtic, Illyrian, Greek, Thracian, and Armenian... it seems that by now only is left Tocharian and Anatolian. 

I'm waiting yet the evidence about "Corded Ware adopted all the "IE" innovations from Yamnaya.", what a book or a paper? nothing? and even the post you have refered about such package is not giving evidences... what about horses? the first ones in Botai N. Kazakhstan (the other evidence in BB...), what about kurgans? the first ones in Azerbadjan... what about wagons? the first ones in Mesopotamia... chariots? it was Sintashta (from Abasehvo, from Fatyonovo, from CW)... etc etc And how is that CW got such pack from Yamna if both cultures popped up almost at the same time?




> We know the genetics of the Yamnaya and a lot of other early Indo-Europeans. We no longer have to speculate




Fine, I can't speculate as everything is known but you can speculate about the R1b of western Yamnayans?:




> I'd also be wary of all these "Yamnaya is a dead end" statements. We know very little of the western steppe as of yet.




You try to stop my complains and alerts very kindly, but it's a kind of censorship, as when you try that i apply autocensorphip:




> It might also help you come up with specific examples of where Anthony is wrong and you are right. Until then, this is getting us nowhere.


Realy do you think that science is like boxing or wining a prize? very human attitude but when someone is not having a correct methodology (in fact is more an essay) I don't need to recall that 6+2 aren't 10. But ok, if yamnayists love more old known tales instead than science is up to them, better to don't waste time.

----------


## MOESAN

> If accepting that the origin source for CW and Yamna would be the Sredni Stog, how could be done that an steppic population of let say 100000 would replace some 5000000 inhabitants in Central Europe as to provide the aDNA that CW displays? I can't figure out mass killings of such level. I have not ancient historical records about a similar butchering. Even the Eurasian diseases were not able to erase the Quechuan and Aymaran population of South America. 
> 
> Even so it would be good to have some archaeological facts about this possible origin.
> 
> To me it would make more sense if pionner Caucasian migrants (maybe like the American trappers in the Pacific NW) settled somewhere in the forest-steppe or forest among PIE EHG and mixed half/half, increasing population enough there as to populate thereafter Central Europe and overwhelming the native people.


I have yet to weight your reasoning. As a first reaction concerning demography, why Caucasian migrants at first sight inadapted to Steppes life could do as better than "steppes natives" and increased dramatically the population size? Or you think all the Steppes typical economic elements went there only when Caucasians arrived, making it easier to live on Steppes and creating an overwhelming baby boom?
Have we serious basis to evaluate the Steppes populations of the time preceding the arrival of new Caucasians (because surely there had been a beginning of mixing before the metals ages)? Nomadic pops leave less traces than sedentar ones. Except for elite buryings, what traces have we of Mongols tents of the past? Mongols have been numerous at some stage of History, but are the archeologic traces we have of them of the same level?
Finally, you reverse the famous question of mating: it's no more the Steppic males who "rapted" southern females but southern males who "rapted" Steppes females? (I know the term "rapt" is a bit simplistic, let's call it an "unbalanced osmosis")

----------


## berun

For demographics for the steppe area to me it's not realy important who mated who or when arrived southerners, the case is that in the best case a pure herding economy will never reach the demographic levels as a farmer economy. By memory i think the difference is 1:10, so even with the best profit of the steppe's resources its population will be allways lower than farmers in a similar farming area.

----------


## bicicleur

> For demographics for the steppe area to me it's not realy important who mated who or when arrived southerners, the case is that in the best case a pure herding economy will never reach the demographic levels as a farmer economy. By memory i think the difference is 1:10, so even with the best profit of the steppe's resources its population will be allways lower than farmers in a similar farming area.


neolithic societies are very vulnerable, especially to climate changes, but also to intruders
the nomads were not pure herders, they were traders too and they picked the best from every culture (only a flying bird can catch something)
furthermore, afanasievo and yamnaya profited to the maximum from a new invention : the wheel
without the wheel the yamnaya lifestyle wouldn't have been possible

----------


## berun

Of course famers can suffer big climatic upheavals delivering hunger and deads, but such deads place a new "equilibrium" with the ecosystem, and once the climatotogy backs to normal the farmer societies can increase numbers very quickly.

For herders, Mongolia is quite similar in extension and ecosystem to Yamna and even they use horses and wagons, but this is the case:




> During the 1920s, when the traditional economy was still in force, total gross size of herds in Mongolia was only ten per cent below the present; there has been little change in the internal composition of the herds, to judge by the fairly constant ratio of different kinds of stock. Thus, without improvement of the grass cover or water supply, the ecological system tends to continue, even in the face of radical political change.Some of the most favorable ecological conditions for pastoralism are met in the grassy upland steppe of central Mongolia, the Ara Khangai. This is homogeneous pastoralist country, where the population, with few exceptions, is directly or indirectly involved with stock raising. Here the human population density is one of the highest in rural Mongolia, 1.4 per sq. km. The gross herd density is 52 per sq. km.; the ratio of gross herd size to human population is 36:1. These, too, are exceptionally high figures, rare in traditional pastoralism. The mean average population density for Mongolia is 0.5 per sq. km.; the mean gross herd density is 14 per sq. km. (Krader 1955).


So if the Yamnayan steppe was one million square km they would reach some 500000 people. For comparision, the Amhara in Ethyopia, 90% living from traditional farming, have a density of 110 per kilometer, so if we would deliver to the Amharas the same extension of land suitable for their farming they could be 110 milions, but as in 3000 BC there were not vaccines the real population possible would be about a thrid.

With such simple numbers and the advice that Yamnaya autosomals are not realy the source of CW there are enough things as to doubt about the Yamnayans, moreover when no archaeological proof is provided.

----------


## Cato

IMO to solve the question we need neolithic samples from Poland. It would be interesting to see if ANE was already present there before the supposed Yamna expansion.

----------


## berun

It would be perfect to know till where the CHG or Iranian_Neolithic expanded into Europe in the Neolithic or Copper Age, even if I can't say that it couldn't be a Mesolithic expansion from the Caucasian refuge (a J1 man was found in Karelia and it would be good to test his possible ANE DNA). The case is that archeologists dealing with such region have not found such an important migration and the unique thing that it was addmited was a Maykop inflience in weapons and pots here and there. Also I doubt that if Caucasians were spreading northwards they would be happy to settle only the poorest land (steppes), leaving free the forest-steppes and the forests of the north, as if Yankees would have occupied Utah and Nevada but leaving free California.

----------


## bicicleur

according to anciant DNA published till today
mesolithic WHG were I2 with some minorities of I1 and C1a2
mesolithic EHG were R1a with some minorities of J1 and R1b
neolithic Europeans were about 60 % G2a2 and 40 % I2, C1a2, H2, T, I1 ..
the source of these G2a2 have been found very recently : http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...ntral+Anatolia

----------


## berun

From the Encyclopedia of the Indoeuropean culture:




> Within the Kurgan theory, Maykop is used as a
> covering term for not only the Maykop cultural remains of
> the north Caucasus but also the Lower Mikhaylovka and Kemi
> Oba cultures north of the Black Sea. Some archaeologists also
> suggest that the Maykop culture had genetic links with the
> TRB, Globular Amphora and Corded Ware cultures and thus
> represented an extensive cultural region from the Baltic to
> the Caucasus. Such a theory, it must be emphasized, is highly
> speculative and controversial although there is a recognition
> ...


If such genetic links would be real we could close the circle.

----------


## Cato

> From the Encyclopedia of the Indoeuropean culture:
> 
> 
> 
> If such genetic links would be real we could close the circle.


That's my thought too. If TRB from Poland were ANE (perhaps through Swiderian heritage?) then an influx from Maykop (CHG) would produce a "Yamna-like" population.

----------


## A. Papadimitriou

> neolithic societies are very vulnerable, especially to climate changes, but also to intruders
> the nomads were not pure herders, *they were traders too* and they picked the best from every culture (only a flying bird can catch something)
> furthermore, afanasievo and yamnaya profited to the maximum from a new invention : the wheel
> without the wheel the yamnaya lifestyle wouldn't have been possible


Can you write something more about it? Are you talking about the 'Yamnayans' or other groups of nomads?

About_ nomads picking the best from every culture._ It is possible, I guess. There is at least one more way: maritime trade.

----------


## berun

More data pointing "Carpato-Caucasian" relations:

"SHEPSI, THE OLDEST DOLMEN WITH PORT-HOLE SLAB IN THE WESTERN CAUCASUS"




> A Spitsyn (1903) proposed that the origins of the
> ceramics found in 1898 in the megalithic tomb near Tsarskaya/Novosvobodnaya are linked to the
> Globular Amphora culture of western Europe. This concept was worked out further by Nikolaeva and
> Safronov (1974), who argued that the practice of burials in the Novosvobodnaya-type tombs was introduced
> in the Caucasus together with other features like Globular Amphora, Funnel Beaker, Corded
> Ware, and even the Baden-Boleraz cultural complex. This then spawned the local development of
> “two-chambered” tombs into “true” dolmens (Nikolaeva and Safronov 1974; Safronov 1989).


actual DNA evidence and dating is pointing just the opposite.

"Long Report Excavations of Soyugbulaq Kurgans"




> The roots of the Leylatepe Archaeological Culture to which the Soyugbulaq kurgans belong to,
> stemmed from the Ubaid Culture of Central Asia. Although burial grounds located outside the
> boundaries of Ubaid Culture settlement sites had been found thus far, these did not have earth
> mounds. The earliest kurgans found in the South Caucasus before the discovery of the
> Soyugbulaq site were dated to the early Bronze Age, i. e. third millennium, B.C. The Soyugbulaq
> kurgans have provided substantial evidence that the earliest kurgans in the South Caucasus
> belonged to the tribes of the Leylatepe Culture.
> The Leylatepe Culture tribes migrated to the north in the mid-fourth millennium, B.C. and played
> an important part in the rise of the Maikop Culture of the North Caucasus. A number of Maikop
> ...


_BETWEEN WEST AND EAST PEOPLE OF THE GLOBULAR AMPHORA CULTURE IN EASTERN EUROPE: 2950-2350 BC_




> The parts of cultural groups from the southern limits of eastern Europe which
> are listed in the title above: Kemi-Oba, Mikhailivka I, Maikop (more precisely, its
> Novosvobodnaya stage/type) and—in accordance with the terminology proposed by
> M.B. Rysin [1997:85] — the dolmen-building cultures of the western and Northern
> Caucasus (mainly the northern Caucasus culture, according to Markovin [1994b] or
> the Kuban-Terek culture, according to Nikolayeva [1981]), besides many differences,
> possess the common characteristic feature of ‘megalithic’ structures constructed for
> the funeral rite30. In all of the above-mentioned groups, we can find stone cist graves
> (or graves of similar form) and other stone structures (e.g. cromlechs, stelae), which
> is often interpreted as being an element convergent with the GAC.





> The second position [Nikolayeva, Safronov 1974;
> Rezepkin 1987] is the antithesis of the first: here, the central European groups (the
> GAC, Corded Ware culture and Funnel Beaker culture) are considered to be at the
> origin of processes leading to the formation of Black Sea-Caucasus structures (Kemi-
> -Oba, Mikhailivka I, Novosvobodnaya, and Caucasus ‘dolmen’ cultures).





> In the opinion of Gimbutas: “There
> is a complete congruence between the burial rites of the Globular Amphora people
> and those of the Kurgans of the Mikhailivka I stage of the Maikop culture in
> the North Pontic region: mortuary houses built of stone slabs, cromlechs, and
> stone stelae, engravings on stone slabs, ritual burial of horses, cattle and dogs;
> also human sacrifice in connection with funeral rites honoring high-ranking males”
> [Gimbutas 1997b:283]. A particularly strong similarity is also said to characterise
> ceramics of the GAC and Mikhailivka I (globular vessel bellies, shell, sand and
> plant admixtures) as well as settlement types (small, briefly-settled encampments)
> [Gimbutas 1997b:285; 1997c:363-365].





> The second of the standpoints related above, actually more of a group of hypotheses,
> supposes the participation of European models (and even groups of people),
> deriving from the circle of the GAC or of the Funnel Beaker culture, in the
> origins of Black Sea and Caucasus groups. This discussion was initiated with the
> suggestion by A. Äyräpää [1933:121] of possible links between the GAC population,
> erecting megalithic tombs in Volhynia and Podolia, and the builders of the so-called
> ‘northern Caucasus dolmens’. These views were revived in the 1970s and are still
> presented in a range of versions today. The most extreme viewpoint pertaining to
> this issue assumed a direct link between Novosvobodnaya (Tsarskaya) type tombs
> ...


"Bioarchaeological Analysis Mutual Relations of Populations
Armenian Highlands and Eurasia Using Craniological and Dental
Nonmetric Traits"




> Affinities are closest between the Armenian highland sample from Shengavit (3, Kura-Araks culture), and
> sample from Volga region (Late Fatianovo). The Armenian highlands sample (4, Kura-Araks culture: 0.446) and
> the Late Fatianovo sample from Volga region exhibit very close affinities to one another. The results, however,
> fail to demonstrate even a low-level phenetic affinity between Fatyanovo and either of the Western Europe
> samples. The sample from Georgia (Tkviavi) match the sample from the Volga region (Abashevskaya culture)
> (figure 1).





> The samples from the Georgia (Samtavro /Late Bronze
> Age - II period) and Iran (Tepe Gissar III), Uzbekistan (Sapallitepe) are identified as the samples with closest
> affinities samples from Ukraine (Shirochanski) and Poland, Germany (Corded Ware culture) in particular (figure
> 3). This suggests that some of the European genes do actually stem from this area.

----------


## Cato

*Analysis of the Mitochondrial Genome of a Novosvobodnaya Culture Representative using Next-Generation Sequencing and Its Relation to the Funnel Beaker Culture*

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4115223/

*Six complete mitochondrial genomes from Early Bronze Age humans in the North Caucasus*

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...05440316301091

Both studies found mtDNA Hg V7 in the North Caucasus area. The first study (2014) concluded that it reached the Caucasus from Central Europe while the second study (2016) shown that it was already present in the Maykop culture

----------


## bicicleur

> *Analysis of the Mitochondrial Genome of a Novosvobodnaya Culture Representative using Next-Generation Sequencing and Its Relation to the Funnel Beaker Culture*
> 
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4115223/
> 
> *Six complete mitochondrial genomes from Early Bronze Age humans in the North Caucasus*
> 
> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...05440316301091
> 
> Both studies found mtDNA Hg V7 in the North Caucasus area. The first study (2014) concluded that it reached the Caucasus from Central Europe while the second study (2016) shown that it was already present in the Maykop culture


look here

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...cluding-Maykop

----------


## MarkoZ

> I have yet to weight your reasoning. As a first reaction concerning demography, why Caucasian migrants at first sight inadapted to Steppes life could do as better than "steppes natives" and increased dramatically the population size? Or you think all the Steppes typical economic elements went there only when Caucasians arrived, making it easier to live on Steppes and creating an overwhelming baby boom?
> Have we serious basis to evaluate the Steppes populations of the time preceding the arrival of new Caucasians (because surely there had been a beginning of mixing before the metals ages)? Nomadic pops leave less traces than sedentar ones. Except for elite buryings, what traces have we of Mongols tents of the past? Mongols have been numerous at some stage of History, but are the archeologic traces we have of them of the same level?
> Finally, you reverse the famous question of mating: it's no more the Steppic males who "rapted" southern females but southern males who "rapted" Steppes females? (I know the term "rapt" is a bit simplistic, let's call it an "unbalanced osmosis")


I think what lead to some of the more twisted pet theories surrounding purported pugnacious hordes leaving the Siberian ice and conquering large swaths of culturally developed lands despite their comparatively primitive technology is the ignorance of the processes taking place to the immediate south of Central Asia. One need only look at some of the more clearly derivative steppe economies like the transhumant herders at Afanasiev - quite clearly a continuation of the herder cultures of eastern Iran and the Turkmen deserts - to make an inference about the general vector of demic spread around the Chalcolithic. Herding, as it seems, was an invention that became yet more useful as its originators migrated northwards out of pastoralism's West Asian cradle. So of course these 'southerners' would be more succesful than the local hunters and fishers that inhabited the steppe biome.

What the original herders brought with them as they spread in various directions is of course up for debate. Intuitively I would think that they were at least intrumental to the complex jumble of linguistic strata ensuing the population implosion in the chalcolithic and the bronze age which eventually gave rise to a language that was perhaps similar to what we know as Proto-Indo-European. The hypotheses of Ivanov, Gramkelidze, Grigoriev, Nichols et. al. ultimately provide a better explanation of the dynamic oberved in the Caucasus and West Asia. I also feel that these researchers are less invested in their particular narratives - I am aware of several crucial cases where Anthony outright distorts the conclusions of the Russian archeologists he's apparently worked with. The type of creative writing & speculation that Anthony's popular treatment abounds with I've become wary of; it's unfortunate that this takes up such a large part of his book.

This is not to say that the northern Pontic need to be removed from the debate about Indo-European origins - a question that I'm really agnostic about. But the focus should probably shift away from the austere and egalitarian Yamnaya culture to the much more remarkable Maykop and Catacomb cultures, the latter of which evinces the high degree of stratification that would have been required to effect the language changes that eventually lead to the emergence of the European linguistic landscape by elite domination.

----------


## MOESAN

> Of course famers can suffer big climatic upheavals delivering hunger and deads, but such deads place a new "equilibrium" with the ecosystem, and once the climatotogy backs to normal the farmer societies can increase numbers very quickly.
> 
> For herders, Mongolia is quite similar in extension and ecosystem to Yamna and even they use horses and wagons, but this is the case:
> 
> 
> 
> So if the Yamnayan steppe was one million square km they would reach some 500000 people. For comparision, the Amhara in Ethyopia, 90% living from traditional farming, have a density of 110 per kilometer, so if we would deliver to the Amharas the same extension of land suitable for their farming they could be 110 milions, but as in 3000 BC there were not vaccines the real population possible would be about a thrid.
> 
> With such simple numbers and the advice that Yamnaya autosomals are not realy the source of CW there are enough things as to doubt about the Yamnayans, moreover when no archaeological proof is provided.


_Some evidences are contradicted by facts: Steppes delivered a number of tribes and their numbers were not of the smallest, seemingly: Sarmatians, Scythians, Huns, Mongols, Turcs/Tatars, Hungarians: apparently, for regions unable to provide support for life, these Steppes and their nomadic or partly nomadic way of life doesn't seem having prevented human reproduction._

----------


## MOESAN

Concerning pops, I argued concerning sedentary pops of S-E Europe compared to Yamnaya steppic pops (already herders) - I did not compare Steppic HGs to subsequent pops newly arrived into their homelands. Sure, there have been big changes since the HGs world: farmers come from South (which South?: surely Balkans as well as South Caucasus, even if I suppose Balkans weighted more at the first step). An-AuDNA and mtDNA for Yamnaya Samara show an (or several) imput(s) from more Southern pops into the Steppes, uneasy to date (Neolithic + Bronze, perhaps at Copper) and it's difficult to distinguish between old and new. So, yes, surely a demographic increase before Yamnaya.
I agree Catacombs which were more sedentary could have had a more important imput concerning language but even the Catacombs complex is under debates: metrics found two partly different pops of catacombs (I've not the detail helas) as there were two partly different kinds of Pit Graves people (Kalmykia vs others). Catacombs seems being under influence of Iran cultures according to Grigoryev but, spite its status of less mobile people, it shows (in some places at least) having an mtDNA more Steppic less Southern. So we have metallurgy beginning among Yamnaya rather by East towards West, and Catacombs whose females seem showing an East to West travel too... puzzling. And to complicate things, Maykop seems more an exception than a typical local pop, even compared to West Caucasus. ? A "syndicat" of rich traders-warriors of diverse origin sharing their skills and living at the depends of a less evolved local pop? In older compilations I red Maykop culture was not producing so much metal locally and their barbaric richness was closer to spoils or "muscled trade" than something else.

----------


## MOESAN

> More data pointing "Carpato-Caucasian" relations:
> 
> "SHEPSI, THE OLDEST DOLMEN WITH PORT-HOLE SLAB IN THE WESTERN CAUCASUS"
> 
> 
> 
> actual DNA evidence and dating is pointing just the opposite.
> 
> "Long Report Excavations of Soyugbulaq Kurgans"
> ...


So the supposed TRBK or GAC culture origin for these kinds of "megalithic" structure is discarded by dates?

Concerning non-metric surveys based on discret characters, they give poor results and i don't rely too much on them: too rare specific cases (almost familial) I suppose, compared to classical metric craniology. They need bigger samples if I rely on a classical anthropologist. It's true even metrics need finer analysis very often rather than their measures means and PCA's without speaking of their dendograms. What doesn't exclude some links, but in which proportion?

----------


## MOESAN

Markoz wrote or cited:
But the focus should probably shift away from the austere and egalitarian Yamnaya culture to the much more remarkable Maykop and Catacomb cultures, the latter of which evinces the high degree of stratification that would have been required to effect the language changes that eventually lead to the emergence of the European linguistic landscape by elite domination.

_Moesan: Markoz, could you develop, because I'm not very sure I understand well. A lack of elite domination could prevent a language to impose itself? Whatever the number? Thanks beforehand._

----------


## berun

> _Some evidences are contradicted by facts: Steppes delivered a number of tribes and their numbers were not of the smallest, seemingly: Sarmatians, Scythians, Huns, Mongols, Turcs/Tatars, Hungarians: apparently, for regions unable to provide support for life, these Steppes and their nomadic or partly nomadic way of life doesn't seem having prevented human reproduction._


MOESAN, As far as I remember, Scythians and Sarmatians weren't catching much lands out of the steppes, Greeks only refer some area in NE Anatolia and the elusive Amazons reigned over West Anatolia cities, for the other purposes they worked as mercenaries for the Byzantines. There were also the Cimmerians, but as they disappear quickly from history their number would be not so big. For Mongols they profited their military advantage (mounted archery) that gave them "free visas" to all states, but thereafter they disappear in Iran, India or China after few generations. Huns... much militar success but they disappeared so quick after being defeated. For the Hungarians the debate is not profitable here as Hungary was much like an steppe, so population would be not denser in the Middle Ages. The best case are the Turks, because they expanded over other steppe lands (Central Asia), but also they were sucessful in taking Bulgaria (but even they were not able to stablish their own language), the other areas of success are Turkey and Azerbadjan, but even if such areas provide steppe-like environements, their success was done by elite-dominance over a miriad of local languages... and in fact the success would be more by being a kind of _lingua franca_ than by their original numbers.

----------


## MOESAN

> IMO Corded Ware was probably not derived directly from Yamnaya, but rather they are both of them were descended from a common earlier ancestral population, which is why they shared in 75% similar autosomal DNA. Here is the chronological sequence of major cultural horizons in the Steppe:
> 
> - Khvalynsk (ca. 5200-4200 BC)
> - Sredni Stog (ca. 4200-3300 BC)
> - Yamnaya A (ca. 3300-2900 BC)
> - Yamnaya B (ca. 2900-2600 BC)
> 
> Corded Ware culture appeared at least around 3200 BC (the oldest branch of CW was probably the Middle Dnieper culture) so it is almost as old as Yamnaya and therefore it is probably descended from Late Sredni Stog (as is Yamnaya - but from another part of Sredni Stog horizon), not directly from Yamnaya. Also the Anatolian branch of Indo-European languages is not descended from Yamnaya, because Proto-Anatolian is associated with Cernavodă culture, which emerged around 4000 BC - so it had to be descended from Sredni Stog (as Yamnaya had not yet existed). Therefore Yamnaya cannot be considered a PIE culture because PIE languages started to differentiate long before Yamnaya emerged (with Proto-Anatolian speakers splitting away from the rest of PIE-speakers first, around 4000 BC). Yamnaya could be IE-speakers, but not PIE - rather just one of several IE branches existing at that time.


I agree, it seems first introgression of Steppic people in S-E Europe begun around the 4200 BC, before Yamnaya was well developped.

----------


## MOESAN

> Globular Amphora Culture ca. 3400–2800 BC looks very much Indo-European. Their culture corresponds to the IE vocabulary which Robert Beekes has reconstructed in his book "Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An introduction". Such words include many agricultural words and in particular words for cow, ox, bull, yoke and a verb for pulling a wagon.
> 
> Kuznetsov and Khokhlov write in "ETHNOCULTURAL RELATIONS OF THE STEPPE HABITANTS OF EASTERN EUROPE IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE" that "The initial period of the Bronze Age is represented by Yamna cultural and historic community. Comparison of radiocarbon dates of the two main areas of this community, the western (territory of Ukraine) and the eastern (the Volga River and Ural regions), confirms the hypothesis about the eastern origin of Yamna culture. The western area of Yamna cultural and historic community covers the period from 3000 to 2300 BC, while the eastern one covers the period from 3500 to 2900 BC. The eastern origin and the further expansion to the west of the bearers of Yamnaya culture is also confirmed by the data on funeral customs and inventory."
> Yamnaya Samara yDNA is mainly R1b-Z2103 and one R1b-L23. R1b-Z2103 is not typical for IE speakers but is distributed mostly in modern Turkic speakers and Caucasians.
> 
> Attachment 7911
> 
> Globular Amphora Culture starts in Kujawy Region Poland 3400 BC (with only a difference of 100 years to Yamnaya samara), and c. 2900 BC it transforms into Corded Ware "in a number of "centers" which subsequently formed their own local networks" (Wikipedia.) It is not possible that Yamnaya people turned into Globular Amphora people as they are contemporaneous and the distance between them is 2650 km. 
> 
> ...


_ME :If I would follow some reasonings Yamnaya cannot be I-E because itsDNA also today among Turkic and Uralic speaking people, cannot beTurkic because its DNA is also in today I-Ean and Uralic speakingpeople, and cannot be Uralic, because it' s also in today I-Ean andTurkic speaking people ??? It's a bit simplistic to take currentlinguistic status of these people situated in the possiblecenter of I-Eans at these times as proof fot their cultural origin.Human pops don't change easily their language but some groups canchange by time when they are surrounded by huge vagues of newsettlers I think, without speaking of other possible causes. Thelanguage shift question would deserve a special thread maybe.
I think the question is still open.
&: concerning Tokharian speakers we don't know to date when they arrived in the places where was found their language and if I don't mistake we have not their DNA?_

----------


## berun

Eurogenes delivers some abstracts from a conference, there is an interesting one: 




> Y-chromosomal markers exhibit the highest interpopulation diversity in the genome and thus form one of the most informative tools for tracing population history. However, their information value depends on discovering SNPs which subdivide haplogroups with broad geographic distribution into branches revealing fine population structure. Progress in such discoveries has recently moved from a slow linear phase to a rapid exponential phase due to NGS.
> We applied this approach to the Y-chromosomal pool of North Eurasian populations and concentrated on haplogroups C, G1, G2, N1b, N1c, and R1b. We sequenced 181 Y-chromosomes (capturing 11 Mb from each sample), developed the _NGSConv_ software for calling Y-chromosomal SNPs, and identified roughly 2,500 SNPs, most of which were new. Then we constructed phylogenetic trees and dated dozens of their branches using our estimates of the mutation rate. The last – but not the least – step included screening branch-defining SNPs in the entire Biobank of indigenous North Eurasian populations (led by prof. Elena Balanovska), which includes 26,000 samples from 260 populations. This screening resulted in frequency distribution maps of 29 branches of haplogroups R1b and C, thus increasing the phylogenetic resolution by an order of magnitude compared to the two initial haplogroups.
> *For haplogroup R1b, we identified a previously unstudied “eastern” branch, R1b-GG400, found in East Europeans and West Asians and forming a brother clade to the “western” branch R1b-L51 found in West Europeans. The ancient samples from the Yamnaya archaeological culture are located on this eastern branch, showing that the paternal descendants of the Yamnaya population – in contrast to the published autosomal findings - still live in the Pontic steppe and were not an important source of paternal lineages in present-day West Europeans.*
> For haplogroup C-M217 - the predominant paternal component in Central Asians - we found signals of simultaneous expansion in two independent branches. Both expansion times and gene geographic maps of the expanded lineages indicated the emergence of the Mongol Empire as the likely trigger.
> We conclude that simply discovering new SNP is not enough, but in combination with screening for the branch-defining SNPs in large biobanks of indigenous populations, it allows comprehensive reconstruction of male population history.


I understand that after living all our lives under the Steppe or Gimbutas' theory we have it as a fact, but as provided in this post, there are not archaeological evidences about Yamnayans going to Central Europe or even that they spread further, so it's a matter of faith to believe in Yamnayans.

Now also it is a matter of faith to suppose that the Indoeuropean ancestry came from this culture, as their Y-DNA was the "Kura-Araxes R1b" and now it's evident that everything remained there alike, so it's a matter of faith to think that the Western Yamnayans were the responsible of the spread of R1b-L51 in Western Europe and that it was done with even a more little bunch of herders.

Science does not work with faith or _argumenti ad ignorantiam_... except with this Yamnayan tale.

----------


## berun

More about genetics, in this case about F38, the guy of Tepe Hasanlu (Iranian Azerbadjan), the lad that was R1b1a2a2 (Z2013) and dwelt by 900 BC:




> It was shown above that this sample shares high amount of ancestry with Neolithic Iranians (Fig. S17-S21) but also has some specific patterns of ancestry shared with Kumtepe6 and Greek Final Neolithic and less of CHG-like and Mota-like influence (Table S15.4- S15.6). In order to investigate if we could pinpoint a source of this gene flow with F38, we tested D(Early_farmer1, F38, Early_farmer2, ǂKhomani) and we found the most significant negative results for combinations involving Samarian and Yamnaya population as Early_farmer1 and Aegean and European Early farmer populations as Early_farmer2 (Table S18.3 as an example for Anatolian Neolithic as Early_farmer2). We therefore suggest that the source of the non-local gene flow in F38 is more likely to be related to the Anatolians than the
> “Samarian” (Yamnaya-like) populations. (see Table S18.5 for exceptions of this pattern detected via further D-statistic. A systematic exception was only ound for the Steppe Sintashta population that still shares less drift F38 than more westward populations, see Table 18.6).This result is relevant for the spread of Indo-European languages as we fail to prove a direct link between Yamnaya-like populations (a potential source) and the Iran area before the Iron age, whereas a link to Anatolian population seem to be stronger


at least Broushaki et al. treat the results as it are and don't try to cheat the people, the F38 had the "Armenian R1b", without having a Yamnayan ancestry; to this guy it's possible to add up the R1b found in a Kura-Araxes sample as to check the origin of such clade (which would be the responsable to carry to Yamnayans their CHG / Iranian ancestry), so that Yamnayans were a dead end for R1b. Of course western Yamnayans must be L51 as to try to keep the faith in Gimbutas, but for that it would be necessary to accept that the steppes were a meeting point for all R1b... and that they were assigning portions of steppes to each clade. The biggest bullshit that I have smelt.

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## berun

> Tripolye clients of the Usatovo chiefs could have been the agents through which the Usatovo language spread northward into central Europe. After a few generations of clientage, the people of the upper Dniester might have wanted to acquire their own clients. 
> 
> If I had to hazard a guess I would say that this was how the Proto–Indo–European dialects that would ultimately form the root of Pre–Germanic first became established in central Europe: they spread up the Dniester from the Usatovo culture through a nested series of patrons and clients, and eventually were spoken in some of the late TRB communities between the Dniester and the Vistula. These late TRB communities later evolved into early Corded Ware communities, and it was the Corded Ware horizon (see below) that provided the medium through which the Pre–Germanic dialects spread over a wider area.


well, I have now a better picture of the IE spread in Central Europe: the Usatovo caciques were getting clientele in such area (even if they were not leaving any archaeological evidence of that), and now, after reading that Central Europeans have an unusual X Chromosome made by 10-15 local women for each Yamnayan herder, the evidence points out that:

- the Usatovo caciques were visiting the area many and many times 
- without their wifes (left in the steppes keeping the cows and caring the kids)
- the clientelage relation included a kind of universal _droit du seigneur_ to sleep with all the local women
- as _de facto_ few local men were able to have offspring, such success for the Yamnayans must be favoured by their strong appearance, by driving bright Lamborghini bronze chariots, and by the effect of leaving their long hair weaving free in the wind... unresistible combo when the husbands of the local women were ploughing the land inmersed in dirty mud

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## Milan

> - the clientelage relation included a kind of universal _droit du seigneur_ to sleep with all the local women
> - as _de facto_ few local men were able to have offspring, such success for the Yamnayans must be favoured by their strong appearance, *by driving bright Lamborghini bronze chariots, and by the effect of leaving their long hair weaving free in the wind*... unresistible combo when the husbands of the local women were ploughing the land inmersed in dirty mud


I agree with this,women's were attracted to good vehicles and luxuries ever since ancient times.
By contrast to hard working farmers.  :Bored:

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## Angela

If we're going to understand this change in Europe we have to keep the chronology and differences in cultures clear.

The earliest chariots are found all the way in Central Asia in Sintashta around 2000 BC.

Usatovo is much earlier and would not have had any chariots or very many shiny anythings.

See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co%C8%9Bofeni_culture

Most of the steppe people moving into Europe in the early days would have been walking alongside their oxen driven carts. I don't see how that's any more attractive in and of itself than a nice snug house in a village of "Old Europe". Of course, if the villagers were starving because of a change in the climate things might well change.

----------


## Alan

By the way as far as I know Chariots are not even a PIE invention but thought to have been made during Sintashta period. Therefore I kinda don't see how Chariots can be seen as signal for Indo Europeans.

----------


## bicicleur

> By the way as far as I know Chariots are not even a PIE invention but thought to have been made during Sintashta period. Therefore I kinda don't see how Chariots can be seen as signal for Indo Europeans.


and what makes you think Shintasta wasn't IE ?

----------


## bicicleur

> If we're going to understand this change in Europe we have to keep the chronology and differences in cultures clear.
> 
> The earliest chariots are found all the way in Central Asia in Sintashta around 2000 BC.
> 
> Usatovo is much earlier and would not have had any chariots or very many shiny anythings.
> 
> See:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co%C8%9Bofeni_culture
> 
> Most of the steppe people moving into Europe in the early days would have been walking alongside their oxen driven carts. I don't see how that's any more attractive in and of itself than a nice snug house in a village of "Old Europe". Of course, if the villagers were starving because of a change in the climate things might well change.


according to David Anthony there was a client-host relation between Usatovo and Tripolye
and they were trading luxury goods, over land to the Volga area, and with longboats upto the Aegean and the Danube
even some Egyptian glass beads would have been found
they also grew sheep for wool, the wool being processed into textiles by the Tripolye farmers

it might have impressed some Tripolye women

5 ka Troj was founded
maybe they took a toll on the trade between Usatovo and the Aegean

if there was any expansion of Usatovo + Tripolye into Europe, I'd rather expect it to be Globular Amphora and not CW

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## Goga

> By the way as far as I know Chariots are not even a PIE invention but thought to have been made during Sintashta period. Therefore I kinda don't see how Chariots can be seen as signal for Indo Europeans.


Yeah, I don't think that was Sintashta IE either, maybe max Eastern Indo-Iranized (by that time Eastern Iranian already existed), but there is no evidence at all that Sintashta INVENTED war chariots. I do not believe in it. Sure, somehow they found some ancient chariots. But it can be simple luck that those chariots were preserved in Central Asia, simply because in that area don't live many people. But where is the evidence that those folks invented the chariots? There is NO evidence at all. They simply could copy those techniques from someone else. As far as I know they used (copied) metallurgy techniques from BMAC.

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## Angela

Just stop with this incessant ultra-nationalism. You're as bad as eurogenes. It brings even your good points into disrepute. The evidence is what it is whether you want to believe it or not. Stop spinning.

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## Goga

> Just stop with this incessant ultra-nationalism. You're as bad as eurogenes. It brings even your good points into disrepute. The evidence is what it is whether you want to believe it or not. Stop spinning.


Huh? Honestly, I'm just making a valid point. Do you have any evidence that Sintashta folks INVENTED chariots?? Sure, maybe they found some of the oldest one in that area, but that can be hardly a valid evidence that they INVENTED it. Just think about it. There is nothing ULTRA-nationalistic about it.

Maybe they can find some of the oldest ships in America or Australia, but that doesn't be that native/aboriginal people of America or Australia invented ships..


Some arguments are not reasonable and valid at all. Science is all about supporting your claims (arguments) by different valid facts..


Or maybe some think that people are stupid and can think by themselves and make their own mind by being critical???

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## Coriolan

> Huh? Honestly, I'm just making a valid point. Do you have any evidence that Sintashta folks INVENTED chariots?? Sure, maybe they found some of the oldest one in that area, but that can be hardly a valid evidence that they INVENTED it. Just think about it. There is nothing ULTRA-nationalistic about it.
> 
> Maybe they can find some of the oldest ships in America or Australia, but that doesn't be that native/aboriginal people of America or Australia invented ships..
> 
> 
> Some arguments are not reasonable and valid at all. Science is all about supporting your claims (arguments) by different valid facts..
> 
> 
> Or maybe some think that people are stupid and can think by themselves and make their own mind by being critical???


This is different from ships. Just look at the map of where the oldest chariots were found. The dates radiate clearly from Russia above the Sea of Aral. 



If there's is a clear gradient in dates then it's enough to assume that the point of origin is where it was invented. If there were 4000 years old chariots in Russia, Iran, Greece and Germany and none older than that, it would be impossible to tell where they originated. There would be a missing link even older. But for chariots the gradient is infallible.

----------


## Goga

> This is different from ships. Just look at the map of where the oldest chariots were found. The dates radiate clearly from Russia above the Sea of Aral. If there's is a clear gradient in dates then it's enough to assume that the point of origin is where it was invented. If there were 4000 years old chariots in Russia, Iran, Greece and Germany and none older than that, it would be impossible to tell where they originated. There would be a missing link even older. But for chariots the gradient is infallible.


No, this map is misleading. They didn't found any ancient full developed spoke wheeled 'war' chariots of that age or 1 or 2 centuries younger at all in the surroundings at all. I'm honestly sure it was just a simple luck that those chariots in Central Asia were preserved. But that's mostly due to climate and sparse population.We have only some painting and writing about it, but not really real 'war' chariots. The Hittites wrote about them, the Sumerians + some Iranian Plateau made painting of them. But the real 'tangible' evidence has only been found in Central Asia, but that doesn't mean that they invented it. I truly believe it was luck that those war chariots were preserved. And I don't think that war chariots entered Europe around 1600 BC. It doesn't make any sense if was chariots were already know in the Steppes. It doesn't take 400 years to import an copy a technology from a different place.If war chariots (with spoke wheels) were know in Central Asia by the year 2000 then they were also know outside the Central Asia by the same time.

This map is drawn by someone of our era. It hardly based on facts and doesn't represents that time. 


+ second stage proto-IE (of Yamnaya) and even proto-Indo-Iranians (of the Iranian-Plateau) already existed long time before 2000BC. So, there is no evidence at all that spoke-wheeled war Chariots were invented in Central Asia. The only way to prove it, is only to prove that spoke wheeled wagons didn't exist around the Yamnaya Horizon or the Iranian Plateau at that time around 2000 BC.
*How sure are you that war chariots didn't exist in Yamnaya Horizon prior to or by 2000BC ???*

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## bicicleur

Keep on going, Goga, don't give up.

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## Goga

> Keep on going, Goga, don't give up.


Why should I give up? Genetic science is on my side...  :Laughing: 

People like to forget things that they don't like and want to forget. I'm just repeating what the scientists are saying and what everybody should know before claiming anything.

For you consideration, I'm *professionally* trained/educated to recognize & counter any propaganda. (it's my (paid) job  :Innocent:  )



To get a criminal you must think like a criminal, to understand a psycho the one need to think like a psycho. To get a racist you must think like a racist and use his 'weapons' against him. This is how we do it..

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## Goga

> Keep on going, Goga, don't give up.


Can you give me evidence or prove somehow that there were no spoke-wheeled war chariots in the late second stage Yamnaya Horizon or in Iran before 2000 BC. ? If you can't, your meaningless comments are just empty air and forgetful. It is nothing.

What truly matters nowadays about this kind of topics is modern day genetic science. And science is not really on your side. True or false?

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## berun

@Angela, the plot just was a irony, taking the picture of the assumed IE charioter hungry for conquests and women...

@Goga, if archaeology is not fitting your wishes it must be wrong or modelled... you hardly will know anything Real so. Otherwise your point is to be taken into account. The first finding is not the first case usualy, and the evolution from a chart pulled by oxen to a chariot of war pulled by horses is very complex and the unique step in between was found in your beloved Kurdistan... but as the equines were controled by ropes attached to the nostrils... such chariots were not effective for war, and the worst is that such chariots would be inutile before their contemporary Sintashta chariots, so by sure in your beloved Kurdistan chariot wars were not invented. You can find out the archaeological data, if you like more thruth than your wishes, of course.

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## Alan

> and what makes you think Shintasta wasn't IE ?


Who said Sintashta wasn't Indo European? The point is chariots turn up in the Steppes during a later state after the Indo Europeans already split and therefore logically Chariots shouldn't be taken as factor for Indo Europeans altogether.

----------


## Goga

> @Angela, the plot just was a irony, taking the picture of the assumed IE charioter hungry for conquests and women...
> 
> @Goga, if archaeology is not fitting your wishes it must be wrong or modelled... you hardly will know anything Real so. Otherwise your point is to be taken into account. The first finding is not the first case usualy, and the evolution from a chart pulled by oxen to a chariot of war pulled by horses is very complex and the unique step in between was found in your beloved Kurdistan... but as the equines were controled by ropes attached to the nostrils... such chariots were not effective for war, and the worst is that such chariots would be inutile before their contemporary Sintashta chariots, so by sure in your beloved Kurdistan chariot wars were not invented. You can find out the archaeological data, if you like more thruth than your wishes, of course.


Archeology is saying: Iran -> Maykop -> Yamnaya -> Europe
also, archeolgy is saying : Iran -> SouthCentral Asia (BMAC) -> the Steppes + Northern India


And no, war chariots were probably not invented in my 'beloved' land of the GODS, Kurdistan. Since Kurdistan is mountainous area. Like modern day tanks, war chariots are pretty useless in the Kurdish Mountains / Zagros.

proto-Kurds probably didn't invented war chariots, but most probably the '*guerilla tactics/warfare*' suitable for the Kurdish mountains. I'm almost sure about that the modern day '*guerilla tactics/warfare*' were born in my 'beloved' Kurdistan.


*Maykop* predate Sintashta by thousands of years and even predate the Yamnaya Culture and they found:

" _The Maykop people lived sedentary lives, and horses formed a very low percentage of their livestock, which mostly consisted of pigs and cattle. Archaeologists have discovered a unique form of bronze cheek-pieces, which consists of a bronze rod with a twisted loop in the middle and a thread through her nodes that connects with bridle, halter strap and headband. Notches and bumps on the edges of the cheek-pieces were, apparently, to fix nose and under-lip belts.[5]_
_
Some of the earliest wagon wheels in the world are found in Maykop culture area. The two solid wooden wheels from the kurgan of Starokorsunskaya in the Kuban region have been dated to the second half of the fourth millennium.[6]_ "


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maykop...re#cite_note-6

https://books.google.ca/books?id=ygl...page&q&f=false



Can you give me evidence or prove somehow that there were no spoke-wheeled war chariots of the late second stage PIE in Yamnaya Horizon or in Iran before 2000 BC. ? And there are also 'steppes' / 'semi desert' in Iran, not only in Central Asia..

----------


## Alan

> This is different from ships. Just look at the map of where the oldest chariots were found. The dates radiate clearly from Russia above the Sea of Aral. 
> 
> 
> 
> If there's is a clear gradient in dates then it's enough to assume that the point of origin is where it was invented. If there were 4000 years old chariots in Russia, Iran, Greece and Germany and none older than that, it would be impossible to tell where they originated. There would be a missing link even older. But for chariots the gradient is infallible.


Not going to dispute Sintashtas role, but in fact it seems like the earliest chariots are from Mesopotamia 3000 BC. Chariots with spoked wheels however were modified around the Sintashta culture. The point however is that Chariots do not seem to be a PIE invention, but at max an later Indo_Iranian one.

https://www.reference.com/history/invented-chariot-46cf108725582bbd
http://www.ancientmesopotamians.com/...ia-wheels.html

----------


## A. Papadimitriou

> @Angela, the plot just was a irony, taking the picture of the assumed IE charioter hungry for conquests and women...
> 
> @Goga, if archaeology is not fitting your wishes it must be wrong or modelled... you hardly will know anything Real so. Otherwise your point is to be taken into account. The first finding is not the first case usualy, and the evolution from a chart pulled by oxen to a chariot of war pulled by horses is very complex and the unique step in between was found in your beloved Kurdistan... but as the equines were controled by ropes attached to the nostrils... such chariots were not effective for war, and the worst is that such chariots would be inutile before their contemporary Sintashta chariots, so by sure in your beloved Kurdistan chariot wars were not invented. You can find out the archaeological data, if you like more thruth than your wishes, of course.


The nomads used chariots as homes primarily. There is no real proof that Proto-Indoeuropeans used chariots for warfare. The Romans and Greeks of Classical antiquity didn't, for sure. 

Concerning Sintasha I would like to hear the arguments in favor of its IEness. I hope it's something more tangible than some similarities between its funerary practices and some hymns in Vedic Sanskrit.

----------


## Alan

> The nomads used chariots as homes primarily. There is no real proof that Proto-Indoeuropeans used chariots for warfare. The Romans and Greeks of Classical antiquity didn't, for sure. 
> 
> Concerning Sintasha I would like to hear the arguments in favor of its IEness. I hope it's something more tangible than some similarities between its funerary practices and some hymns in Vedic Sanskrit.


to be fair, Sintashta, Srubna, Andronovo, Yaz and to a good part Kura_Araxes do look Indo_Iranian or at least partly ancestral to Indo_Iranians.. Indo_Iranians spred through several related cultures and not bound to one single. 



Sintashta looks like a now extinct branch of Indo_Iranians (Dead end) 

Indo_Aryans seem to have evolved from Sintashta people moving to BMAC and merging.
Andronovo looks also to be likely a Iranic dead end culture. No one knows where the Scythians fit in but they must have been close to Yaz(since it is an East Iranic culture), possibly just north of it hiding somewhere beside Andronovo.

Iranics look connected to Srubna(Cimmerians) and Andronovo. A fusion of Yaz/Kura Araxes elements seem to have given birth to West Iranics.

Kura Araxes is the only culture that has both Kurgans as well flat graves.

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## berun

@Goga, if your beloved Kurdistan is the land of the gods... the infernal ones maybe? Your chauvinism is more pathetic than thought. 

The guerilla word is Spanish not Kurdish. You have a clue with that, but such tactics were used many centuries before against organized troops. Other question is that there were not protokurds in your beloved Kurdistan by then but kassites and hurrians... but your chauvinism blurs heavily your mind.




> Can you give me evidence or prove somehow that there were no spoke-wheeled war chariots of the late second stage PIE in Yamnaya Horizon or in Iran before 2000 BC. ? And there are also 'steppes' / 'semi desert' in Iran, not only in Central Asia..


It's YOU who must provide the POSITIVE proofs not me the negative proofs, which would be a nonsense.

----------


## bicicleur

> Not going to dispute Sintashtas role, but in fact it seems like the earliest chariots are from Mesopotamia 3000 BC. Chariots with spoked wheels however were modified around the Sintashta culture. The point however is that Chariots do not seem to be a PIE invention, but at max an later Indo_Iranian one.
> 
> https://www.reference.com/history/invented-chariot-46cf108725582bbd
> http://www.ancientmesopotamians.com/...ia-wheels.html


Mesopotamia had solid wheel carts pulled by onagers, these are not charriots.
Charriots are light-weight and therefore have spoked wheels. Speed and manouvrability are of the essence. Therefore they were pulled by well-trained horses.

Charriots have never been considered as part of the spread of PIE.
They were part of the Indo-Iranian expansion.

Charriot construction could be copied. The difficult part was to have well-trained horses.

Why did Kikkuli the horse trainer use Indic words? Because for certain terms there were no Mitanni or Hititte words.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kikkuli

A few decades ago, because of archeological discoveries in the area it was tought everything was invented in Mesopotamia : agriculture, metallurgy, the wheel, ..
Now after archeological discoveries in other areas, we know none of this was invented in Mesopotamia.

----------


## A. Papadimitriou

> to be fair, Sintashta, Srubna, Andronovo, Yaz and to a good part Kura_Araxes do look Indo_Iranian. Indo_Iranians spred through several related cultures and not bound to one single. 
> 
> 
> 
> Sintashta looks like a now extinct branch of Indo_Iranians (Dead end) 
> 
> Indo_Aryans seem to have evolved from Sintashta people moving to BMAC and merging.
> Andronovo looks also to be likely a Iranic dead end culture. No one knows where the Scythians fit in but they must have been close to Yaz(since it is an East Iranic culture), possibly just north of it hiding somewhere beside Andronovo.
> 
> ...


What make the Cimmerians Iranics? Your post doesn't even have an argument. Please, do not respond if you aren't not willing to use any.

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## Milan

> What make the Cimmerians Iranics? Your post doesn't even have an argument. Please, do not respond if you aren't not willing to use any.


I will never made Iranics out of the Cimmerians,moreover their true name appear to be "Kimberikon" as in Aristophanes perhaps "Kimberi".I am little interested in their history but we have so little chronology about them.They might had contact or mixed with Iranics but i doubt that's their origin.

The king names in Cimmerian Bosporus tell as very Thracian names but couple Iranic if they are;
The biggest dynasty is named Sparotocids,this is very common Thracian name especially among nobles Spartacus is one of them.
*Spartocids*


Spartocus I 438 BC–433 BCSatyrus I 433 BC–389 BCSeleucus 433 BC–393 BCLeucon I 389 BC–349 BCGorgippus 389 BC–349 BCSpartacus II 349 BC–344 BCPairisades I 349 BC–311 BCSatyrus II 311 BC–310 BCPrytanis 310 BCEumelos 310 BC–304 BCSpartacus III 304 BC–284 BCPairisades II 284 BC–c. 245 BCSpartacus IV c. 245 BC–c. 240 BCLeucon II c. 240 BC–c. 220 BCHygiainon c. 220 BC–c. 200 BCSpartacus V c. 200 BC–c. 180 BCPairisades III c. 180 BC–c. 150 BCPairisades IV c. 150 BC–c. 125 BCPairisades V c. 125 BC–108 BC
All of this names can be found among the Thracians,there is some Greek names among them. As well other kings with Thracian names like Rhescuporis,Cotys,Rhoemetalces and so on..

I might start a thread about them and their name in particular,cause it was surviving big time among Indo-Europeans but not among Iranics.Not speaking that someone descent from them,but their name was common among other groups too.

----------


## Goga

> @Goga, if your beloved Kurdistan is the land of the gods... the infernal ones maybe? Your chauvinism is more pathetic than thought. 
> 
> The guerilla word is Spanish not Kurdish. You have a clue with that, but such tactics were used many centuries before against organized troops. Other question is that there were not protokurds in your beloved Kurdistan by then but kassites and hurrians... but your chauvinism blurs heavily your mind.
> 
> 
> 
> It's YOU who must provide the POSITIVE proofs not me the negative proofs, which would be a nonsense.


You know nothing about history of Kurdistan. Kassites, Gutians (ancestral to the Medes/Cyrtians) were all proto-Kurds. The Kassite's Kings had Iranic names.

Kurdistan IS the land of Gods, the mighty Sumerians wrote about it! The land of ANUNNAKI! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anunnaki


guerilla might be a (universal) Spanish word, I don't know. But guerilla warfare tactics were invented in Kurdish mountains. Read what Greeks wrote about race of Kurdistan, and I do mean Greek writers like Strabo, Xenophon e.a.

Kurdish race/people are much OLDER that Spanish people. Ancestors of the Kurds (Kurdish race) made history when Spanish people didn't exist at all, lmao!



Once again if you claim something you must provide absolute evidence that you are right and other possibilities are not possible. I don't claim anything I'm just countering your arguments and showing that your arguments don't hold any ground. It is how science works. Even your 'thesis' doesn't make any sense.

thesis - antithesis - synthesis

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## Goga

> Why did Kikkuli the horse trainer use Indic words? Because for certain terms there were no Mitanni or Hititte words.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kikkuli


 Those intervals were also similar in *Avestan*


Most of those words are also even the same in the modern Kurdish

_aiga-_, = one = modern Kurdish: *yek*
_tera-_, = three = modern Kurdish: *sê*
_panza-_, = five = modern Kurdish: *pênc*
_satta-_, = seven = modern Kurdish: *heft*
_nāwa-,_ = nine = modern Kuridsh: *heh*


intervals in Kurdish.

1 = yek
2 = du 
3 = sê
4 = çar
5 = pênc
6 = şeş
7 = heft
8 = heşt
9 = neh
10 = deh


In Hindi/Urdi & Sindhi etc. it is basically the same..

*Hindi/ Urdu*
ek
do
ti:n
ca:r
pã:c
chai
sa:t
a:*t*h
nau
das


*Sindhi*
hiku
bba
*t*i:
ca:re
pañja
cha
sata
a*t*ha
nava
*d**d*aha



http://www.zompist.com/euro.htm

----------


## bicicleur

how do you know who the Proto-Kurds were if there is no anciant DNA ?
same for the Medes

oh, I know, you'll tell me you know, and I have to prove otherwise

Kurds were allies for the Ottoman Empire. They did the dirty work on the eastern border. Maybe the origin of guerilla?
Friendship with the Ottomans is certainly over now. Looking for independence now.
Respect for the fight against ISIS.

----------


## Angela

> Mesopotamia had solid wheel carts pulled by onagers, these are not charriots.
> Charriots are light-weight and therefore have spoked wheels. Speed and manouvrability are of the essence. Therefore they were pulled by well-trained horses.
> 
> Charriots have never been considered as part of the spread of PIE.
> They were part of the Indo-Iranian expansion.
> 
> Charriot construction could be copied. The difficult part was to have well-trained horses.
> 
> Why did Kikkuli the horse trainer use Indic words? Because for certain terms there were no Mitanni or Hititte words.
> ...


That's a comment which is inaccurate, imo. First of all, it wasn't thought that everything was invented in Mesopotamia; it was thought that everything was invented in the Middle East. You know, "Ex oriente lux". It's definitely true for agriculture and metallurgy. The wheel may have been invented in FB, or it may have been invented in the Middle East, or it may have been simultaneously developed in both cases. In my opinion, that's about all that can objectively be determined at this stage.

Second of all, significant developments indeed took place in the vicinity of the Tigris-Euphrates, including some forms of agriculture and metallurgy.

If you doubt any of the above use our search engine. I've provided citations ad nauseam.

As to the rest of the post, I agree. A chariot is indeed a rather light construction, with spoked wheels and barely room for two people. It had to be that way for them to attain the speed which made them apt for war. You can't fight from a lumbering "war cart" with solid wooden wheels. There's also no way on earth that people could live in a chariot. 

This whole idea that chariots had anything to do with Corded Ware or other early Indo-European movements into Europe was pushed by internet people peddling a vastly over-simplified and incorrect narrative. The map which Coriolan provided makes it crystal clear.

@Goga,
Neither I nor anyone else has to prove a negative. Sorry, but that's not how it works. The person proposing a theory has to prove it; you haven't proved yours. All you have is your desire that this be the case. 

As for me, so far as I can see at present everything points to an origin in Sintashta based on current evidence. If evidence comes to light placing the earliest *chariot* somewhere else then of course my opinion will change.

----------


## Goga

> how do you know who the Proto-Kurds were if there is no anciant DNA ?
> same for the Medes
> 
> oh, I know, you'll tell me you know, and I have to prove otherwise
> 
> Kurds were allies for the Ottoman Empire. They did the dirty work on the eastern border. Maybe the origin of guerilla?
> Friendship with the Ottomans is certainly over now. Looking for independence now.
> Respect for the fight against ISIS.


We have DNA of the modern Kurds and we have got DNA of the Copper Age, Iron Age etc. people of Kurdistan/Iranian Plateau. *The Medes* came into existence and lived during the Iron Age. My DNA is 100% identical to the Iron Age people (the Medes) of Kurdistan. 


Kurds fought especially against the ancient Greeks & Persians a guerilla warfare.


" A people called the Carduchoi are mentioned in Xenophon's _Anabasis_. They inhabited the mountains north of the Tigris in 401 BC, living in well-provisioned villages. They were enemies to the king of Persia,[8] as were the Greek mercenaries with Xenophon, but their response to thousands of armed and desperate strangers was hostile. *They had no heavy troops* who could face the battle-hardened hoplites, but *they used longbows and slings effectively*, *and for the Greeks* the "seven days spent in traversing the country of the Carduchians had been one long continuous battle, *which had cost them more suffering than the whole of their troubles at the hands of the king [of Persia] and Tissaphernes put together*."[9]

They have been also mentioned as _Gordi_ by Hecataeus of Miletus c. 520 BC. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corduene

----------


## berun

Goga, let me know the Iranic names of the Cassite kings... if you can.

For the pretended gods naned Annunaki... everybody knows they were not...
;)




> According to Sitchin, Nibiru (called "the twelfth planet" because, Sitchin claimed, the Sumerians' gods-given conception of the Solar System counted all eight planets, plus Pluto, the Sun and the Moon) was the home of a technologically advanced human-like extraterrestrial race called the Anunnaki in Sumerian myth, who Sitchin states are called the Nephilim in Genesis. He wrote that they evolved after Nibiru entered the solar system, and they first arrived on Earth probably 450,000 years ago, looking for minerals, especially gold, which they found and mined in Africa. Sitchin states that these "gods" were the rank-and-file workers of the colonial expedition to Earth from planet Nibiru.
> Sitchin wrote that Enki suggested that to relieve the Anunnaki, who had mutinied over their dissatisfaction with their working conditions, that primitive workers (Homo sapiens) be created by genetic engineering as slaves to replace them in the gold mines by crossing extraterrestrial genes with those of Homo erectus.[6][7] According to Sitchin, ancient inscriptions report that the human civilization in Sumer, Mesopotamia, was set up under the guidance of these "gods", and human kingship was inaugurated to provide intermediaries between mankind and the Anunnaki (creating the "divine right of kings" doctrine). Sitchin believes that fallout from nuclear weapons, used during a war between factions of the extraterrestrials, is the "evil wind" described in the Lament for Ur that destroyed Ur around 2000 BC. Sitchin states the exact year is 2024 BC.[8] Sitchin says that his research coincides with many biblical texts, and that biblical texts come originally from Sumerian writings.


Your chauvinism may get you mad if you are taking pride of fantasies.

----------


## Alan

> @Goga, if your beloved Kurdistan is the land of the gods... the infernal ones maybe? Your chauvinism is more pathetic than thought. 
> 
> The guerilla word is Spanish not Kurdish. You have a clue with that, but such tactics were used many centuries before against organized troops. Other question is that there were not protokurds in your beloved Kurdistan by then but kassites and hurrians... but your chauvinism blurs heavily your mind.
> 
> 
> 
> It's YOU who must provide the POSITIVE proofs not me the negative proofs, which would be a nonsense.


Why are you even discussing with him then, by now you should have exactly known how he ticks. I have stopped even reading some of his comments, sometimes I ask myself if he is doing this to embarrass the Kurds. He doesn't seem to understand that those ancient people are not Kurds but that Kurds inherited elements of these ancient people. Alone the Medes were a confederation of several Iranic and Hurrian related tribes.

----------


## Alan

> Mesopotamia had solid wheel carts pulled by onagers, these are not charriots.
> Charriots are light-weight and therefore have spoked wheels. Speed and manouvrability are of the essence. Therefore they were pulled by well-trained horses.
> 
> Charriots have never been considered as part of the spread of PIE.
> They were part of the Indo-Iranian expansion.
> 
> Charriot construction could be copied. The difficult part was to have well-trained horses.
> 
> Why did Kikkuli the horse trainer use Indic words? Because for certain terms there were no Mitanni or Hititte words.
> ...


As I said I agree that the spoked wheel charriots are an Indo_Iranian thing. I thought people here were suggesting charriots are all PIE because people often used it as a factor for PIE debate. 

Also as I once wrote, that the Mitanni were an Indo_Aryan branch is all just a theory. A theory based on the fact that Indo_Aryan went through much less loudshifts and stayed purer to it's root and therefore anything proto Indo_Iranian or early pre_Iranic as consequence should appear closer to Indo_Aryan. Many scientists have taken up this fact this is why there is still a debate wether Mitanni was Indo_Aryan or yet unsplit Indo_Iranian. The fact that Mitanni appear 1500 BC which is exactly the same time period as the Vedas appearance makes me doubt that those Mitanni were Indo_Aryans yet but at most pre-Indo_Aryans.

There are three possibilities for Mitanni. 
1. It's an proto Indo_Iranian people who came straight out of Sintashta
2. It's an pre or proto Indo Aryan people who came straight out of BMAC when a Sintashta wave merged with the local BMAC people.
3. It's an now extinct archaic Iranic or Indo_Iranic group who came straight out of the Kura_Araxes culture who had contacts to Srubna culture. 

What speaks for the first two theories is that the Mitanni had charriots very akine to those found among Sintashta. What speaks for the third theory is that the Kura-Araxes collapse fits well with the appearance of the Mitanni and allot of things necessary for the Mitanni being already there in the Kura_Araxes culture (Horses, Kurgans, herding etc).

The wheel without a doubt is a Neolithic era contruction, are we going to dispute that? I never heard that Agriculture was invented in Mesopotamia but the fertile crescent which includes Mesopotamia. 

When I look through the net the definition of charriot varies from one source to another. Well the painting on the second link I provided with four wheels with a man on it driven by two donkeys looks like charriot or proto charriot to me. I absolutely see no difference of Sintashta charriots beside the two spoked wheel and local Horses instead of Donkeys. 

The whole design is the same which makes me *extremely* doubt that the Sintashta charriots were designed without the influence of the Mesopotamian version. In fact Sintashta charriots look like modified Mesopotamia charriots/wagons.



in comparison Iranic charriots.


It is clear that the one could not have happened in his form without the other.

----------


## berun

After reading him right here of course I have the intention to stop. Without any real scientific debate, discussing like as with a teenager high in hormones it's not worth to expend time so.

----------


## Alan

> What make the Cimmerians Iranics? Your post doesn't even have an argument. Please, do not respond if you aren't not willing to use any.





the Srubna culture is well known by any reliable scientists to be proto/pre-Cimmerian.



> The economy was mixed agriculture and livestock breeding. The historical Cimmerians have been suggested as descended from this culture.


Cimmerian language has been identified either as Iranic or a binding link of Iranic_Thracian. Though Iranic has more weight to it and the Thracian connection comes likely from the fact that several Thracian tribes are Scythian or Scythian like descend and therefore Thracians are close to Indo_Iranians altogether. 

The Srubna culture is clearly connected to Andronovo, Sintashta, Kura Araxes and especially Yaz culture. Read through the net and studies.

Now the final prove is genetic. Srubna culture dna has been extracted. The samples from this proto-Cimmerian culture belonged predominantly to the Indo_Iranian R1a-z93 branch, which nowhere else beside Indo_Iranians and their genetic descends found.




> A study on DNA variation among ancient Europeans found that, of the 6 samples extracted from Srubna culture sites for whom a Y-DNA hapogroup could be tested, all belonged to haplogroup R1a, and four of them to subclade R1a-Z93, which is common among modern-day Indo-Iranians.[2]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srubna_culture



Cimmerian is now an obviously extinct Iranic branch and the only reason why there is any connection to Thracians is because A: they were neighbors B: Thracians were a tribal confederation almost half of them made up of Scythian related groups in fact the biggest group, the Getae are probably descend or related to the Iranic Massagetae (Big/Strong Getae) east of the Caspian. And C: Thracian on it self is likely the closest Indo_European branch to Indo_Iranian. If it wasn't extinct today.

Next time you dispute my words by claiming there is no argument behind it, make sure you are not disputing obvious facts.

----------


## bicicleur

the Mitanni spoke a Hurrite language

I only mentioned that the horse trainer used Indic terms
please read what I write

I'll do like Berun, I'll take e break

----------


## Milan

> the Srubna culture is well known by any reliable scientists to be proto/pre-Cimmerian


It isn't possible to identify the Cimmerians as the bearers of any specific archaeological culture in the region



> Cimmerian language has been identified either as Iranic or a binding link of Iranic_Thracian. Though Iranic has more weight to it and the Thracian connection comes likely from the fact that several Thracian tribes are Scythian or Scythian like descend and therefore Thracians are close to Indo_Iranians altogether.


Has been* proposed* either Thracian or Iranic.
Names from later Cimmerian Bosporus.
Spartacus,Rhoemetalces,Cotys,Perisades,Rascuporis are decisively not Iranic names or you might want to check the same names from the Thracian Balkans?



> The Srubna culture is clearly connected to Andronovo, Sintashta, Kura Araxes and especially Yaz culture. Read through the net and studies.
> 
> Now the final prove is genetic. Srubna culture dna has been extracted. The samples from this proto-Cimmerian culture belonged predominantly to the Indo_Iranian R1a-z93 branch, which nowhere else beside Indo_Iranians and their genetic descends found.


Cimmerians weren't identified with any culture.
Maybe the ancestors of at least some Indo-Iranians migrated from some of those cultures you mentioned,the "proposed" Cimmerian culture.It also depends what we understand under the term Cimmerian,we know that according to Herodotus Cimmerians migrated in Anatolia? but the name was yet applied for Cimmerian Bosporus(Bosporan kingdom) for example,we find pretty much Thracian names there.



> Cimmerian is now an obviously extinct Iranic branch and the only reason why there is any connection to Thracians is because A: they were neighbors B: Thracians were a tribal confederation almost half of them made up of Scythian related groups in fact the biggest group, the Getae are probably descend or related to the Iranic Massagetae (Big/Strong Getae) east of the Caspian. And C: Thracian on it self is likely the closest Indo_European branch to Indo_Iranian. If it wasn't extinct today


Even the Getae becomed Iranians? or Massagetae? even their space of settlement isn't properly found,speaking on the Massagetae,yet you know their "original" language.
Getae are decisively Thracians i think even the Massagetae too,but perhaps with more nomadic culture than their southern kin.



> Next time you dispute my words by claiming there is no argument behind it, make sure you are not disputing obvious facts.


You provided no facts.
Distribution of "Thraco-Cimmerian" finds according to Soviet archaeology.


Most of this places were "Iranic" speaking at one point of time.

----------


## bicicleur

> That's a comment which is inaccurate, imo. First of all, it wasn't thought that everything was invented in Mesopotamia; it was thought that everything was invented in the Middle East. You know, "Ex oriente lux". It's definitely true for agriculture and metallurgy. The wheel may have been invented in FB, or it may have been invented in the Middle East, or it may have been simultaneously developed in both cases. In my opinion, that's about all that can objectively be determined at this stage.
> 
> Second of all, significant developments indeed took place in the vicinity of the Tigris-Euphrates, including some forms of agriculture and metallurgy.
> 
> If you doubt any of the above use our search engine. I've provided citations ad nauseam.
> 
> As to the rest of the post, I agree. A chariot is indeed a rather light construction, with spoked wheels and barely room for two people. It had to be that way for them to attain the speed which made them apt for war. You can't fight from a lumbering "war cart" with solid wooden wheels. There's also no way on earth that people could live in a chariot. 
> 
> This whole idea that chariots had anything to do with Corded Ware or other early Indo-European movements into Europe was pushed by internet people peddling a vastly over-simplified and incorrect narrative. The map which Coriolan provided makes it crystal clear.
> ...


I'm not sure, but weren't the Summerians known before it was even known that agriculture developped in SE Anatolia before?
Long time ago, when I went to high school, we didn't learn anything about Anatolia, or about the Natufians.
I hope they've adjusted the program by now.

And what about domesticated animals? Do we allready know? As haplo R2 has been identified as part of Iran neolithic I wouldn't be surprised if pre-domestication of goats happened in the Kupruk area in northern Afghanistan and that these people moved from there into the Zagros mountains.
Metallurgy we don't know either. It could be southern Iran, it could be Serbia or anywhere in between.

Before discoveries by Russian archeologists became known in the west, charriots were supposed to be invented in Mesopotamia.
Appearantly there are still people who don't want to believe that.

----------


## A. Papadimitriou

> Cimmerian is now an obviously extinct Iranic branch and the only reason why there is any connection to Thracians is because A: they were neighbors B: Thracians were a tribal confederation almost half of them made up of Scythian related groups in fact the biggest group, the Getae are probably descend or related to the Iranic Massagetae (Big/Strong Getae) east of the Caspian. And C: Thracian on it self is likely the closest Indo_European branch to Indo_Iranian. If it wasn't extinct today.


Please do not respond to any of my posts again. Saying that 'Cimmerian' is 'obviously' an extinct Iranic branch is pseudoscience. Saying that the 'Cimmerians' could have been Thracian or Iranian can be considered _speculative_ science but it's irrelevant. Cimmerian prehistory especially is semi-mythical. Also, I have to note that you didn't use any arguments again.

Labelling R1a-Z93 'Indo-Iranian' is based on a series of presuppositions and I don't accept it.

----------


## Goga

> Goga, let me know the Iranic names of the Cassite kings... if you can.
> 
> For the pretended gods naned Annunaki... everybody knows they were not...
> ;)
> 
> Karaindash
> Your chauvinism may get you mad if you are taking pride of fantasies.


List kings of the Kassites with Iranian names: Kadashman , Kashtiliashu , Meli-Shipak , Karaindash etc. are all IRANIAN (Aryan) names. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassites

When the Kassites conquered Babylon they renamed it into *' Karduniaš '* . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardunia%C5%A1 . Karduniaš is an Iranian names with an Iranian suffix and it meant 'land of the Kassites. You can compare it to Kurdi-stan. -stan is an Iranic name for land, Kurdistan means land of Kurds. ' *Karduniaš* ' was an Iranic name for the kingdom of the Kassites. Kardu-nias, land of Kardu/Kassites. It is known that horses were taken into Babylon by the Kassites. Like their relatives the Mitanni also the Kassites were known as horse trainers. Just GOOGLE it.

How do you know that Anunnaki didn't exist and were not Gods? Most probably Anunnaki were aliens, but ancient people didn't understand in the concept of aliens and that why they thought that Anunnaki were Gods. That's why I'm saying that Kurdistan is the land of GODS

----------


## Goga

> @Goga,
> Neither I nor anyone else has to prove a negative. Sorry, but that's not how it works. The person proposing a theory has to prove it; you haven't proved yours. All you have is your desire that this be the case.


You don't get it. Let say I lie and do claim that I'm the son God, it is up to me to prove it that I'm a son of God. Other people don't have to disprove it.

If you claim something you have to prove it and come up with evidences. Nobody has to prove a negative, You must to prove you claims and come up with arguments that support your claims. Otherwise your claims are NOTHING.

----------


## Goga

> Why are you even discussing with him, if you by now should exactly know how he ticks. I have stopped even reading his comments, sometimes I ask myself if he is doing this to embarrass the Kurds. He doesn't understand that those ancient people are not Kurds but that Kurds inherited elements of these ancient people. Alone the Medes were a confederation of several Iranic and Hurrian related tribes.


It is you who spread mistakes and is embarrassing thee Kurds.


5 reasons why I'm a direct decedants of the Medes:

1) I'm from the same area as the Medes. Kurdistan was the land of the Medes. Kurdistan was populated by the ancient Medes (/+Parthians)
2) the Medes came into power during the Iron Age. My DNA is similar to the Iron Age Iranians of that region and my DNA is closest to other Iranians like the Persians. My DNA is different from the Hurrian (caucasian) DNA. I have much more 'Gedrosia' component. Like in the ancient times the ties between Persians and the Medes, there is even the same genetic link between brother nations modern Persians and Kurds.
3) Language. My native language is Kurmanji. Kurmanji is West Iranian. The same as the language of the Medes. The Medes were also WEST Iranian people and spoke a WEST Iranian dialect. My culture and way of life is still Iranian/Aryan.
4) Religion. As an Ezdi Kurd our religion is similar to the ancient Mithraism. The Medes were also the Sun worshippers. And our both religions are Iranic/Aryan.
5) There is no other ethnicity in the region that can claim the ancestry of the Medes. Kurds are the ONLY one who are Iranic who don't speak Semitic, Turkic or Hurrian (Caucasian) languages.


with other words: Kurds are descendants of the Medes.



I gave *5 reasons* why Kurds are Medes. People should give me 5 reasons why Sintashta INVENTED spoke wheeled chariots. They can't. Only because they found the oldest one in that region is not really a strong argument.

----------


## Angela

> I'm not sure, but weren't the Summerians known before it was even known that agriculture developped in SE Anatolia before?
> Long time ago, when I went to high school, we didn't learn anything about Anatolia, or about the Natufians.
> I hope they've adjusted the program by now.
> 
> And what about domesticated animals? Do we allready know? As haplo R2 has been identified as part of Iran neolithic I wouldn't be surprised if pre-domestication of goats happened in the Kupruk area in northern Afghanistan and that these people moved from there into the Zagros mountains.
> Metallurgy we don't know either. It could be southern Iran, it could be Serbia or anywhere in between.
> 
> Before discoveries by Russian archeologists became known in the west, charriots were supposed to be invented in Mesopotamia.
> Appearantly there are still people who don't want to believe that.


I don't know what they taught you in high school, or even in university. What I was taught in both places is that farming and other hallmarks of the Neolithic came from the general area called the fertile crescent. It's also what my children were taught in middle school and high school. This map shows the earliest sites:




Animal domestication was being experimented with in the Zagros mountains, but actual animal domestication took place in various areas and times, but always in the general area of the Fertile Crescent:


I don't know the dates for this hypothetical early goat domestication in Afghanistan, the direction of the flow of the technology, or whether they were actually domesticating the goats through selective breeding or just herding wild goats. As I told Goga, we go based on the evidence we have, and not speculations that might accord better with our prejudices.

As for metallurgy, I find your position strange, given your posts in this dedicated thread:
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...ght=Metallurgy

You might also want to take a look at this:
https://www.academia.edu/371376/Deve...rgy_in_Eurasia

Of course, there's also the paper by David Anthony to which I linked in the above cited Eupedia thread.

The pendulum definitely seems to have swung back to Anatolia, which makes sense, as that is where the first high temperature ceramic kilns are found. Given the continued ties with their cousins in "Old Europe", I think some of these early dates for Serbia make a lot of sense.

Generally, as to metallurgy, some advancements took place in "Old Europe", but most breakthroughs took place in the Near East, and yes, the greater Caucasus area, in which some of these breakthroughs took place, is part of the Near East, and no, you can't suddenly make the Caucasus Europe like Eurogenes because it fits his prejudices better. 

A war wagon with solid wheels is attested very early in the Middle East. Do you deny the evidence? The first spoke-wheeled chariot is attested in Sintashta and seems to radiate out from there. That's what the evidence shows despite Goga's xenophobic attempt to spin it otherwise. The two things should be able to be accommodated in a reasoning person's brain. No invention emerges sui generis from someone's head like Athena from the head of Zeus. Inventions build on prior knowledge and ideas. Sometimes the adjustment or advancement is minor, and sometimes it has larger implications. In the case of the spoke wheeled, lighter, and differently guided chariot it was a big leap forward. I couldn't care less personally where it was invented, but so far the evidence points to it being a Sintashta invention.

@Goga,
You asked me to prove that the spoke wheeled chariot couldn't have been invented elsewhere. Have you forgotten that? That's proving a negative. 

The only evidence we're ever going to have of where and when something was invented in pre-history is where we first find it and the technological substratum to create it. How else? 

When we see copper and gold objects on the steppe with metal traced to the Balkans, and no evidence of kilns or forges able to produce it independently, we deduce that it was an imported luxury good and not the product of the culture itself. In the case of the spoke-wheeled chariot, the people of Sintashta had the technology, and we find the carbon dated remains. How much more do you need?

Don't expect any further reply on this subject until you introduce some objectivity into your remarks.

----------


## berun

@Goga, just stop trollling, or just give up the hard drug that you take... how in thr world you say that such and such names are Iranic without any etymo, and then you link to Kassites in a wiki page which moreover copies Encyclopaedia Iranica:




> As is clear from this material, the Kassites spoke a language without a genetic relationship to any other known tongue


And thereafter you are capable to defend the reality of the Annunaki even if being ETs. Wow. For better you need to give up drugs.

----------


## bicicleur

Originally Posted by *bicicleur* 
_

And what about domesticated animals? Do we allready know? As haplo R2 has been identified as part of Iran neolithic I wouldn't be surprised if pre-domestication of goats happened in the Kupruk area in northern Afghanistan and that these people moved from there into the Zagros mountains.

_




> Animal domestication was being experimented with in the Zagros mountains, but actual animal domestication took place in various areas and times, but always in the general area of the Fertile Crescent:
> 
> 
> I don't know the dates for this hypothetical early goat domestication in Afghanistan, the direction of the flow of the technology, or whether they were actually domesticating the goats through selective breeding or just herding wild goats. As I told Goga, we go based on the evidence we have, and not speculations that might accord better with our prejudices.


Indeed, specific microliths without any precursor elsewhere were made in the northern epi-paleolithic Afghanistan.
Their primary prey were gazelle and wild sheep.
These microliths didn't exist in the mesolithic Zarzian culture in the Zagors Mts, but they appeared in the early Zagros neolithic.

https://www.academia.edu/5738814/Pal...ic_Afghanistan

That is exactly where first goats and sheep were domesticated, probably by 'taking control of local populations of wild goats' 'as part of a more broad-based, culturally connected set of economic strategies'.

http://anthropology.si.edu/archaeobi...er_ca_2011.pdf

I don't find the link to this one, but I've read these strategies may well be selective hunting of only adult goat males and protecting the females as decoy to attract ever fresh males from further away. Probably the flock with female goats and their youngsters were even protected by the hunters from other predators like wolves, which in the long end made the flock dependant on the hunters.

If you read the paper about Iran neolithic DNA, you'll notice goats were very important to them and there was a lot of haplo R2 which I always suspected to have spent LGM in northern Afghanistan as 24 ka Mal'ta was R*.

As I stated above, I'm not sure, I have no proof, but it is not merely speculations based on prejudices.
First domestication may have been initiated by hunters from northern Afghanistan coming to the Zagros Mountains.
As you may suspect when you read the first link in this post, little investigation has been done yet as to what happened in northern epi-paleolithic Afghanistan and it doesn't look like to be happening soon either.

There is the story of the drunk person who couldn't enter his home because he had lost his keys.
There was only one lamppost in the street where he lived and he kept looking under the lamppost, because it 'was the only place where the light was'.
That is the reason why in the past so many inventions were attributed to Mesopotamia, the wheel and the war charriot included.

I have another example, you'll say it is speculation.
Natufians were E1b1-M35, which is an African tribe (all E except E1b1-M35 is African) .
TMRCA for E1b1-M35 is 24.1 ka
https://www.yfull.com/tree/E-M35/
first cereals collected were found in Ohalon 23 ka, approximately the same time
coincidence?
who says E1b1-M35 wasn't collecting cereals in Africa, berfore arrival in the Levant?
during LGM the whole of North Africa had become a desert, that is why E1b1-M35 came to the Levant
the Nile valley is filled up with tens of meters of post-LGM sediments due to erosion of the Ethiopian highlands during LGM
if E1b1-M35 were collecting cereals in the Nile Valley or delta prior to LGM, nobody will ever find traces of that
I'm not telling they did, but there is a very good possibility

----------


## Sile

> the Mitanni spoke a Hurrite language
> 
> I only mentioned that the horse trainer used Indic terms
> please read what I write
> 
> I'll do like Berun, I'll take e break


they are non-semitic anatolian language and not related to any south-caucasus language



in map......orange = ancient anatolian languages 
yellow = early semitic languages
green = belongs to "iranic" group og languages

----------


## bicicleur

> they are non-semitic anatolian language and not related to any south-caucasus language
> 
> 
> 
> in map......orange = ancient anatolian languages 
> yellow = early semitic languages
> green = belongs to "iranic" group og languages


orange are the Hittites after the fall of the Mitanni, Anatolian indeed
green are the Assyrians, Semitic, not Iranic

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## Sile

> orange are the Hittites after the fall of the Mitanni, Anatolian indeed
> green are the Assyrians, Semitic, not Iranic


assyrian was a dialect of Akkadian which was an east-semitic but which was influenced by the non-Semitic Sumerian language and adopted cuneiform writing. 

East Semitic languages can only be derived from careful study of written texts and comparison with the reconstructed Proto-Semitic.

The majority of the green was non-semitic originating from the non-semitic sumerian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_language

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## Goga

> @Goga, just stop trollling, or just give up the hard drug that you take... how in thr world you say that such and such names are Iranic without any etymo, and then you link to Kassites in a wiki page which moreover copies Encyclopaedia Iranica:
> 
> 
> 
> And thereafter you are capable to defend the reality of the Annunaki even if being ETs. Wow. For better you need to give up drugs.


You are clearly NOT familiar with the Iranic/Aryan language.

'-ash*man'* , '-dash' , 'ship-' are clearly Iranic/Aryan components in those names.


The names of Kassites GODS are very Iranic and are similr to other Indo-European GODS


*" Kassite Gods
*_
Many Kassite Gods have names in the Indo-European languages. Some names can be closely identified with the names of Gods in Sanskrit, notably Kassite Suriash (Sanskrit Surya); Maruttash (Sanskrit, the Maruts); and possibly Shimalia (the Himalaya Mountains in India). The Kassite storm god Buriash (Uburiash, or Burariash) has been identified with the Greek God Boreas, the God of the North Wind. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica there are some 30 names of Gods known, but so far, I have been able to find only about 24 of them from various sources. Most of these words occur in Mesopotamian texts of the 14th and 13th centuries BCE. 


Bugash, possibly the name of a god, it is also used as a title. 
Buriash, Ubriash, or Burariash, a storm god, (= Greek Boreas) 
Duniash, a deity 
Gidar, corresponding to Babylonian Adar 
Hala, a Goddess, wife of Adar/Nusku, see Shala 
Harbe, lord of the pantheon, symbolized by a bird, corresponding to Bel, Enlil or Anu 
Hardash, possibly the name of a god 
Hudha, corresponding to a Babylonian “Air-God” 
Indash, possibly corresponding to Sanskrit Indra 
Kamulla, corresponding to Babylonian Ea 
Kashshu, (Kassu) a god, eponymous ancestor of the Kassite kings 
Maruttash, or Muruttash, (possibly corresponding to the Vedic Maruts, a plural form) 
Miriash, a Goddess (of the earth?), probably the same as the next one 
Mirizir, a Goddess, corresponding to Belet, the Babylonian Goddess Beltis, i.e. Ishtar = the planet Venus; symbolized with the 8 pointed star 
Nanai, or Nanna, possibly a Babylonian name, the Goddess Ishtar (Venus star) as a huntress, appearing on kudurrus as a female on a throne. 
Shah, a sun god, corresponding to Babylonian Shamash, and possibly to Sanskrit Sahi. 
Shala, a Goddess, symbolized by a barley stalk, also called Hala 
Shihu, one of the names of Marduk 
Shimalia, Goddess of the mountains, a form of the name Himalaya, Semele, see Shumalia 
Shipak, a moon God 
Shugab, God of the underworld, corresponding to Babylonian Nêrgal 
Shugurra, corresponding to Babylonian Marduk 
Shumalia, Goddess symbolized by a bird on perch, one of two deities associated with the investiture of kings 
Shuqamuna, a God symbolized by a bird on a perch, one of two associated with the investiture of kings 
Shuriash, corresponding to Babylonian Shamash, and possibly to Vedic Surya, also a sun god, but this might be the star Sirius, which has an arrow as a symbol 
Turgu, a deity_ "

http://piereligion.org/kassite.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassite_deities



Kassites were similar to the Mitanni, like the Medes were similar to the Persians. Kassites/Mitanni gave birth to West Iranian races like the Medes.

----------


## Regio X

> 


Yes, things change. Just an opportune digression: a bit more than 20 years ago, people still thought that chariot warfare was pioneered in eastern Anatolia, and not before the middle of the seventeenth century B.C. See:
https://books.google.com.br/books?id=fcVIcaJxgdUC
From this same book: "Let us now look at the chronological question in detail. Surveys of this kind become obsolete as new documents are discovered, and it is inevitable that the conclusions reached here will sooner or later need some revision."

----------


## Alan

@Milan

Cimmerian culture has been connected with the Catacomb and their successors the Srubna culture by many reliable archeologists/linguists. That is simply a fact. You can claim that it is still a little disputed but you can't disregard it like their is no ground to it. 

Cimmerian language itself must have been at least partly if not fully Iranic that is also what most scientists say so how can you claim that only "few Iranic tribes were among them". To me and many scientists it is clear that this people were predominantly Iranic but had possibly connections to the Thracians too.




> Only a few personal names in the Cimmerian language have survived in Assyrian inscriptions:
> 
> _Te-ush-pa-a_; according to the Hungarian linguist János Harmatta, it goes back to Old Iranian _Tavis-paya_ "swelling with strength".[4] Mentioned in the annals of Esarhaddon, has been compared to the Hurrian war deity _Teshub_;[_citation needed_] others interpret it as Iranian, comparing the Achaemenid name _Teispes_ (Herodotus 7.11.2)._Dug-dam-mei_ (_Dugdammê_) king of the _Ummân-Manda_ (nomads) appears in a prayer of Ashurbanipal to Marduk, on a fragment at the British Museum. According to professor Harmatta, it goes back to Old Iranian _Duγda-maya_ "giving happiness".[4] Other spellings include _Dugdammi_, and _Tugdammê_. Edwin M. Yamauchi also interprets the name as Iranian, citing Ossetic _Tux-domæg_ "Ruling with Strength."[21] The name appears corrupted to _Lygdamis_ in Strabo 1.3.21._Sandaksatru_, son of Dugdamme. This is an Iranian reading of the name, and Manfred Mayrhofer (1981) points out that the name may also be read as _Sandakurru_. Mayrhofer likewise rejects the interpretation of "with pure regency" as a mixing of Iranian and Indo-Aryan. Ivancik suggests an association with the Anatolian deity Sanda. According to Professor J. Harmatta, it goes back to Old Iranian _Sanda-Kuru_ "Splendid Son".[4] _Kur/Kuru_ is still used as "son" in the Kurdish languages, and in modified form in Persian as _korr_, for the male offspring of horses.


There are only few personal names and all of them have clearly been identified as Iranic. Coincidence?

And about the Massagetae, really? they have been historically identified with the Scythians. And descend of the same branch as the Dahe confederation of which the Parni (the Parthian elite tribe) are descend of.






> The *Massagetae*, or *Massageteans* (Greek: Μασσαγέται, lat. _Massagetai_),[1] were an ancient Eastern Iranian nomadic confederation,[2][3][4][5][6] who inhabited the steppes of Central Asia, north-east of the Caspian Sea (in modern Turkmenistan, western Uzbekistan, and southern Kazakhstan). The Massagetae are known primarily from the writings of Herodotus who described the Massagetae as living on a sizeable portion of the great plain east of the Caspian Sea.[7]





> [1.215] In their dress and mode of living the Massagetae resemble the Scythians. They fight both on horseback and on foot, neither method is strange to them: they use bows and lances, but their favourite weapon is the battle-axe. Their arms are all either of gold or brass. For their spear-points, and arrow-heads, and for their battle-axes, they make use of brass; for head-gear, belts, and girdles, of gold. So too with the caparison of their horses, they give them breastplates of brass, but employ gold about the reins, the bit, and the cheek-plates. They use neither iron nor silver, having none in their country; but they have brass and gold in abundance.


In which world do the Massagetae not belong to the Iranic branch? Give me a break or do more research dear friend.

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## Goga

this post has been deleted by the original poster

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## Goga

" _Thus for example the first Kassite king, Gandash, has a name which is rather obviously reminiscent of the Indian deity Ganesha, whilst other kings such as Abirattash, Kara-indash, and Burnaburish (or Burraburiash) are equally to be placed in the Indo-Iranian family. The name Burraburiash may even be a precise equivalent of the Persian Gobryas._ "

http://www.hyksos.org/index.php?titl..._and_Scythians



" _Kassites

Kassites or Cassites (both: kăsˈĪts) [key], ancient people, probably of Indo-European origin. They were first mentioned in historical texts as occupying the W Iranian plateau. In the 18th cent. B.C. they swept down on Babylonia, conquered the region, and ruled there until the 12th cent. B.C., when they returned to the Iranian plateau. They remained more or less independent until the beginning of the Christian era, when they disappeared from history. 

__The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved._ "

http://www.infoplease.com/encycloped.../kassites.html*




Kassites & Kossaeans


*" _Several modern historians such as K. Balkan (in 1986, p. 8) and M. Heinz (in 1995, p. 167) have stated that the Kassite rulers of Babylon were members of the Indo-Iranian Kossaean people based in Hamadan-Kermanshah-Luristan area, but whose origins are not mentioned in historical records. The historians make several additional conclusions or assumptions: 

First, that the Kossaeans mentioned by Greek writers were the successors of the Babylonian Kassites who were driven out of Babylonia by conquering Elamites (neighbours of the Kossaeans) in the 12th century BCE. 

Second, that the Kassites in fleeing to Kossaea were returning to their ancestral lands. 

Third, that the Kassites were originally Indo-Iranian Kossaeans who had settled the Hamadan-Kermanshah-Luristan area prior to the 17th century BCE. 

Fourth, that the Indo-Iranian Kossaeans were immigrants to the area since they are not mentioned as being among the peoples who inhabited the central and southern Zagros in Sargonic (2270-2215 BCE) and Ur III / Third Dynasty of Ur era (21st to 20th century BCE) inscriptions. As we shall see below, these assumptions and conclusions are plausible. 

Hamadan and Kermanshah, are two provinces with eponymous capital cities that straddle the northern Zagros mountains placing them strategically on the Aryan trade roads - the Silk Roads. Luristan lies to their south and the Iranian province of Elam is found to the west of Luristan. Elam and Kermanshah border modern-day Iraq and what would have been Northern Babylonia (see map)._ "


http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zor...a/kassites.htm



" _Mesopotamia witnessed the arrival about 1760 bce of the Kassites, who introduced the horse and the chariot and bore Indo-European names._ "

https://www.britannica.com/place/Ind...riod#ref485125

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## Alan

> Please do not respond to any of my posts again. Saying that 'Cimmerian' is 'obviously' an extinct Iranic branch is pseudoscience. Saying that the 'Cimmerians' could have been Thracian or Iranian can be considered _speculative_ science but it's irrelevant. Cimmerian prehistory especially is semi-mythical. Also, I have to note that you didn't use any arguments again.


I can respond to whatever comment I like lol. If you don't want people to respond to you than don't post/comment at all. Thats basically like saying "Hey I will provide my assumption/claims as facts but dare you to dispute it"  :Laughing:  Kim Jong style.




> Labelling R1a-Z93 'Indo-Iranian' is based on a series of presuppositions and I don't accept it.


It doesn't matter much to me what you think about this, but no one with a tiny bit of knowledge would dispute the Indo_Iranian-ness of Z93 from 1500 BC downward.

All you did was dispute other peoples comments underlined by sources but I have yet to see anything from your side. Disputing is easy but giving reasoning for your own claims isn't right?  :Rolleyes:

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## Alan

Now I am not going to take any sides here but Goga is in one point right. Iranic as well Hittite elements have been identified among Kassites, the Lullubi and Zubaru. I had red few recently published studies about these and they mentioned it. Now it could be false alarm but we can't rule it out entirely. However that thing with aliens, too much History Channel.

 :Grin:

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## Alan

> A war wagon with solid wheels is attested very early in the Middle East. Do you deny the evidence? The first spoke-wheeled chariot is attested in Sintashta and seems to radiate out from there. That's what the evidence shows despite Goga's xenophobic attempt to spin it otherwise. The two things should be able to be accommodated in a reasoning person's brain. No invention emerges sui generis from someone's head like Athena from the head of Zeus. Inventions build on prior knowledge and ideas. Sometimes the adjustment or advancement is minor, and sometimes it has larger implications. In the case of the spoke wheeled, lighter, and differently guided chariot it was a big leap forward. I couldn't care less personally where it was invented, but so far the evidence points to it being a Sintashta invention.


Correct
*4,000-year old chariot burial from Georgia*

http://dienekes.blogspot.de/2014/06/...rial-from.html



It was basically a four wheeled "chariot" or wagon used for war. And looked quite similar to the later two wheeled chariots just not with two spoked wheels. Therefore I doubt the Sintashta charriots evolved without any influence from these in Western Asia. Sintasha charriots look basically like modified West Asian chariots or call them war wagons if you like.

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## Goga

> Now I am not going to take any sides here but Goga is in one point right. Iranic as well Hittite elements have been identified among Kassites, the Lullubi and Zubaru. However that thing with alians, too much History Channel.


Mitanni and Kassites were the same people of the same stock/race who gave birth to the Medes & Persians. Mitanni/Kassites were evolved from the Sumerians. Only, Mitanni found their kingdom in Rojava, Western Kurdistan + Shengal Northern Mesopotamia, while the Kassites invaded Babylon and found their kingdom in Babylon, called Karduniash. Later Kassites understood that it was not worth of effort to stay in Babylon after the Semitic tribes arrived,. They didn't want to mix with or destroy the Semites, so they went back to the mountains in Eastern Kurdistan.


Anunnaki or aliens were in Kurdistan, more precisely in the Northern Mesopotamia, *Shengal*, *Ezdixan*. The ancient mighty Sumerians wrote about them. Anunnaki (aliens) came down to earth mostly for gold. There is a huge, huge amount of GOLD in the mountain of Shengal + some other valuable minerals which I don't want to talk about. There is a lot ancient architecture from the Sumerian Ubaid culture buried under the Mountain of Shengal.

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## Milan

> @Milan
> 
> Cimmerian culture has been connected with the Catacomb and their successors the Srubna culture by many reliable archeologists/linguists. That is simply a fact. You can claim that it is still a little disputed but you can't disregard it like their is no ground to it. 
> 
> Cimmerian language itself must have been at least partly if not fully Iranic that is also what most scientists say so how can you claim that only "few Iranic tribes were among them". To me and many scientists it is clear that this people were predominantly Iranic but had possibly connections to the Thracians too.
> 
> 
> 
> There are only few personal names and all of them have clearly been identified as Iranic. Coincidence?
> ...


The thing is that there two linguistic group meet a Thracian and Iranian,you still have the Iranic branch the Ossetian language,I will not dispute the Iranic origin of names on those that migrated south account found also in Herodotus,but applying still the same term on the Thracian tribes there is not right,Cimmerian Bosporus that is,we found Thracian names.Who was "exact" Cimmerian is irrelevant. Those that migrated south could be from Srubna? Massagetae that name pretty much resemble the Getae,their neighbours the Dahae,both of names connected further to Daci and Getae -Thracians from further Balkans and north of it,according to scholars.I really have no reason to think any of them were Iranians originally without proof,reffering to them as Schytians is irrelevant the term is vague and often represent a territory,nomads,archers etc,if i wrote how many other people were called Scythians it will be more confusing.According to Procopius the Huns were called Massagetae earlier.. Is it right? Thracians were most numerous after the Indians,I still believe Herodotus and for once I do not think he was mistaken.They often formed confederation with Iranian Alan's for example and were attacking the Roman empire.

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## berun

I'm triying to know which hard drug takes Goga that he is not capable to read about Kassite as language isolate and to be able to distinguish between Sumerian, Hurrian, Kassite and Indo-Iranic adstrates... but I have no ideas, and the worst is that I'm sure that the next step will be to explain that IE is the language of the alien Annunaki gods... well, it would be not so much worse than the Yamnayan theory for now...
;)

Oh, to prevent unsanity I give up.

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## Goga

Huh? I was talking about the origin of the modern day (Western) Iranians and not about PIE at all. Original PIE folks from the Iranian Plateau (Leyla-Tepe) that invaded Yamnaya Horzion were never in the Mesopotamia. The point is that there was a time when original PIE migrated from the Iranian Plateau into South Central Asia (Northern India) Mesopotamia AND Yamnaya Horizon. 
Modern day Western Iranians have nothing to do with the Yamnaya, since they came into the existence and evolved from ancient people in their current habitat. Iranians are VERY different from the second stage late Indo-European speakers who came from Yamnaya and invaded Europe. Those Yamnaya folks were only partly from the Iranian Plateau, while ancient ancestors of the Iranians full descendants of the PIE from the Iranian PlateauOnce ALL Northwestern Asian language groups (Caucasian & Iranian) shared the same ancestors and later at some point languages went their own different way. That proto-language was neither Caucasian nor Indo-European (Iranian), but it was ancestral to Caucasians and West Iranian languages. West Iranian has many common things with the neighboring languages.

I don't know who you are, you can be everything, but they are clearly HUGE differences between West Iranian speakers and Indo-European speakers in Europe. If Iranian/Aryan is not your native language, I'm NOT talking about YOUR history, but about *MY* history.

The only thing what Indo-European 'speakers' in Europe and Western Iranians share with each other is their link to the PIE URHEIMAT on the Iranian Plateau (Leyla-Tepe ??). Later all groups went their own way and evolved separately. When I'm talking about the Kassites, I'm NOT talking about the history of the Europeans, but about history of West Iranians. Europeans don't have ancestry from the people like Kassites, but West Iranians do have ancestry from the people like Kassites. (Western) Iranian are very different from all other human races on this planet.

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## berun

Yes, by having a more Annunaki share in autosomal DNA...

Ok, I try to give up now.

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## LeBrok

> Correct
> *4,000-year old chariot burial from Georgia*
> 
> http://dienekes.blogspot.de/2014/06/...rial-from.html
> 
> 
> 
> It was basically a four wheeled "chariot" or wagon used for war. And looked quite similar to the later two wheeled chariots just not with two spoked wheels. Therefore I doubt the Sintashta charriots evolved without any influence from these in Western Asia. Sintasha charriots look basically like *modified West Asian chariots or call them war wagons if you like.*


I like your way of thinking and rationale on many subjects, but here you are pushing West Asian "patriotism" too much. Extending your metaphor we could say that modern car was invented in West Asia because it resembles the Wagon in many ways. Let's not stretch the comparisons too far, because wagons pulled by animals were known everywhere in Eurasia at the time the chariots were invented. And most likely the wagon was invented 2 thousand years before the first chariot rendering linking it and it's culture to IEs pretty much useless. Too much time elapsed, too many cultures knowing wagons, to link any of them to Chariots. 
We can also extend this discussion and and we can argue who invented the first wagon and if it was invented independently in many places, endlessly. It won't lead us anywhere.
It shouldn't even be a point in this discussion, because we can only link expansion of IEs with chariots, not the wagons. It matters here the most, who invented chariots, not who invented wagons. To do this we should not mix these two under one label of wagons. There is a distinct difference between these two to help us. One is build to be sturdy and to carry goods, the other is very light and built for speed and only to carry people. Other words, one is a truck, the other is a sports car. One is Ford 350, the other Ferrari. That's why it was important to make it as light as possible. That's why the spoked wheels, almost empty wheels when compared to full wooden wheels of wagons. That's why only two wheels not four like on wagons. That's why woven basket to stand in instead of solid wood body of the wagon. Everything in a chariot is light and build for speed. There is a lot of new technologies invented for a chariot, new wheels, body, axles, materials used in novel ways, etc. Thanks to these distinctions, one can't mistake chariot for a wagon. And if as such was invented by Sintashta, or not invented but embraced to industrial level for militaries purposes there, we could use it to trace parts of IE expansion, the invasion from the steppe part.

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## Angela

> I like your way of thinking and rationale on many subjects, but here you are pushing West Asian "patriotism" too much. Extending your metaphor we could say that modern car was invented in West Asia because it resembles the Wagon in many ways. Let's not stretch the comparisons too far, because wagons pulled by animals were known everywhere in Eurasia at the time the chariots were invented. And most likely the wagon was invented 2 thousand years before the first chariot rendering linking it and it's culture to IEs pretty much useless. Too much time elapsed, too many cultures knowing wagons, to link any of them to Chariots. 
> We can also extend this discussion and and we can argue who invented the first wagon and if it was invented independently in many places, endlessly. It won't lead us anywhere.
> It shouldn't even be a point in this discussion, because we can only link expansion of IEs with chariots, not the wagons. It matters here the most, who invented chariots, not who invented wagons. To do this we should not mix these two under one label of wagons. There is a distinct difference between these two to help us. One is build to be sturdy and to carry goods, the other is very light and built for speed and only to carry people. Other words, one is a truck, the other is a sports car. One is Ford 350, the other Ferrari. That's why it was important to make it as light as possible. That's why the spoked wheels, almost empty wheels when compared to full wooden wheels of wagons. That's why only two wheels not four like on wagons. That's why woven basket to stand in instead of solid wood body of the wagon. Everything in a chariot is light and build for speed. There is a lot of new technologies invented for a chariot, new wheels, body, axles, materials used in novel ways, etc. Thanks to these distinctions, one can't mistake chariot for a wagon. And if as such was invented by Sintashta, or not invented but embraced to industrial level for militaries purposes there, we could use it to trace parts of IE expansion, the invasion from the steppe part.


Exactly, LeBrok.

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## A. Papadimitriou

IE expansion has nothing to do with chariots. I also don't understand why steppe nomads decide to expand to mostly mountainous regions like Italy, Balkans, Greece and parts of Iran.

Chariot burials for example are uncommon in most IE cultures while they existed in cultures known (or likely) to have been non-IE.

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## Sile

> IE expansion has nothing to do with chariots. I also don't understand why steppe nomads decide to expand to mostly mountainous regions like Italy, Balkans, Greece and parts of Iran.
> 
> Chariot burials for example are uncommon in most IE cultures while they existed in cultures known (or likely) to have been non-IE.


agree

ancient samples of early neolithic central european haplogroups did not need any chariots to migrate, Ydna markers of I1, G2, T1 and H where already there ( central europe and beyond ) at 5500 BC


who are these fantasy chariot people, what a joke

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## arvistro

Which IE groups are believed to be expanded because of chariots? Indo-Iranians? Greeks (pre-Greeks) too? Celts??

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## LeBrok

> Which IE groups are believed to be expanded because of chariots? Indo-Iranians? Greeks (pre-Greeks) too? Celts??


Chariots are not very functional in Europe. They need flat grassy and semi desert expense to be very useful. Places where army of chariots can roam and conduct sudden attacks, the ancient blitzcrieg. Steppe, Central Asia and Middle East are the best places for it. For that reason a good place to start charioting was Sintashta, with its vast flatlands and being close to places where horses were domesticated. Since Botai and Yamnaya, we have cultures which revolve around horses there. They had a mixture of the right ingredients: the horses, nomadic culture, flatlands, and roaming warrior nature. It makes it most likely place for chariot to be invented, or at least if not invented there, embraced in industrial way for sport (chariot racing) and war. On top of it we have the oldest chariot found there, and archeological records of northern horsemen culture IE invading South Asia.
Chariots wouldn't do much in Europe, with too many forests, rivers and hills. Besides, Europe was already in IndoEuropean hands or almost, from Western Expansion of IEs, when chariots were being perfected in Sintashta for war purpose. Later, when chariots got to Europe, they were used more as a sign of prestige or for racing, not much for war.

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## Milan

There is even completely arbitrary assumption that prehistoric populations used the horse as a military weapon,let alone the chariot.
In our case the IE's,let's check some later dates;

1.Chariot have nothing to do with IE expansion and warfare by that time they were already spread in Europe.
2.Stirrup made it's way in Europe in about 6th,7th century,steppe people brought it.The stirrup, which gives greater stability to a rider, has been described as one of the most significant inventions in the history of warfare, prior to gunpowder. As a tool allowing expanded use of horses in warfare, the stirrup is often called the third revolutionary step in equipment, after the chariot and the saddle.
3.In Europe that we know two great early empires that spread widely were relying mostly on infantry in fact.There is now general agreement among military historians that a major change took place in Roman battlefield tactics when the cavalry replaced the infantry as the main offensive tactical arm of the Roman army.Second, shifting the emphasis from infantry to cavalry and turning cavalrymen into highly versatile warriors on horse-back was a response to the kind of warfare waged upon Romans, ever since the early 5th century, by their nomadic neighbors-Huns,Bulgars,Avars.
Romans lost so many wars against the new steppe innovation in warfare,until they adopted to it?
Conclusion;Cavalry altogether in warfare becomed much later popular in Europe upon influence on various nomadic groups.
Or does our steppe ancestors with time forget how to fight on horseback,but once conquered all of Europe with them?
Did they used and in which way their horses in warfare?
If anyone want to reply on my comment please do it and tell me where i am wrong.

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## arvistro

That is all good. But still - which IEs were chariot users from Sintashta?
Only Indo-Iranian folk? 
Say without Sintashta India would stay Dravidian and Iran something else? and II folk would be marginal steppe population??

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## MarkoZ

> 1.Chariot have nothing to do with IE expansion,it is fact that they already spread to Europe by the time chariot was invented.


Well, we find alongside the earliest concrete evidence of an Indo-European language in Europe the earliest depiction of a chariot. The Indo-European identity of Corded Ware is pretty much considered a done deal on the internet at this point, but the earlier assumption that despite its general impracticability in most types of terrain the chariot became _the_ status object at an early stage of the Indo-European development wasn't so stupid.

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## Milan

> Well, we find alongside the earliest concrete evidence of an Indo-European language in Europe the earliest depiction of a chariot. The Indo-European identity of Corded Ware is pretty much considered a done deal on the internet at this point, but the earlier assumption that despite its general impracticability in most types of terrain the chariot became _the_ status object at an early stage of the Indo-European development wasn't so stupid.


That's a cart,how can you use that in warfare?
I am practicaly asking here,how and in which way they used the horse in warfare as suggested by Marija Gimbutas,or the chariot.
There is some tool from Cucuteni Tripolye oxen on wheels if im not mistaken  :Laughing:

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## MarkoZ

> That's a cart,how can you use that in warfare?
> I am practicaly asking here,how and in which way they used the horse in warfare as suggested by Marija Gimbutas,or the chariot.
> There is some tool from Cucuteni Tripolye oxen on wheels if im not mistaken


I meant to say that the earliest proper chariots in Europe appear, to my knowledge, in the Mycenaean shaft graves which are roughly contemporary to the Linear B tablets.

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## Angela

> I meant to say that the earliest proper chariots in Europe appear, to my knowledge, in the Mycenaean shaft graves which are roughly contemporary to the Linear B tablets.


To restate the obvious, that's much later and has nothing to do with Corded Ware, so to say that the chariot had nothing to do with the early Indo-European expansion in Europe is correct.

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## MarkoZ

> To restate the obvious, that's much later and has nothing to do with Corded Ware, so to say that the chariot had nothing to do with the early Indo-European expansion in Europe is correct.


Then again, one still needs to explain why the chariot arose to such prominence in the various Indo-European cultures of Europe. Not only did it become a valued status symbol, the Indo-European deity par excellence - Indra and his European permutations Ares, Thor, Mars et cetera - was thought of as riding a chariot. How did these cultures arise from Corded Ware in biomes that generally do not lend themselves to chariot warfare? These are among the reasons champions of the IE-chariot connection like Robert Drews see the appearance of the chariot as coinciding with the earliest arrival of the Indo-Europeans in Europe.

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