Talk:Proto-Indo-European homeland/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

References

The references are a mess. There are a lot of links to nonexistent Harvard-style references. Were these copied and pasted here from another article? If so, could someone bring the refs themselves here too? —Angr 05:29, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Genetics

Under the graph of the haplogroups the "Y-" had to be added, otherwise the normal reader had to guess weather X or Y-DNA is meant. HJJHolm (talk) 14:24, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Merging on the ridiculous

I propose the merger of Paleolithic Continuity Theory into this page, probably reduced to a paragraph or two in the "dissenting views section", as I feel it lacks the notability to warrant an article ofits own.

Boynamedsue (talk) 17:22, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Introduction

States that there is no theory that the majority of linguists support. The Pontic-Caspian theory is in fact well-supported, has been accepted by the majority of linguists for quite some time, and is taken as the consensus theory in the main article on Proto-Indo-European. Winter Maiden (talk) 04:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

File:Haplogroup F (Y-DNA).jpg Nominated for speedy Deletion

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"Leptodolichomorphous"?

Searches for this word all seem to reference the same sentence, apparently derived from a particular scientific paper on genetics. The original reference is no longer extant, but it seems to be this one-

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/290/5494/1155.abstract

The word does not seem to be in general usage. So far as I can see it means lepto- "slender, light" dolicho "long" morphous "shaped". So, tall, slim people. I doubt that anyone coming to a wiki page for information would understand this word. It is contrasted with "robust". Wouldn't "gracile" be sufficient?82.71.30.178 (talk) 08:51, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Centum satem

There is a distinction between an isogloss, which belongs under Wave model, and phylogenetic branching, which belongs under Tree model. An isogloss does not define a branch point, it defines a wave based on a single feature. A branch is defined by comparing multiple phonological, lexical and morphological features. In 19th and early 20th century linguistics, centum and satem branches were defined. They were never really satisfactory, being based mainly on only one feature. Other features indicated a different division was warranted. Finally more progress was made on Hittite and Tocharian was discovered. These did not conform to any such division. Some items were centum, some satem. So, the phylogenetic division was abandoned. There are no centum languages or satem languages. The distinction was recognized as an isogloss, a single feature that spread like a wave over a range that did not correspond to language boundaries. Dialects might be defined on it, but not languages. Our article here does not recognize the difference. This is understandable, as all books before a certain date speak of the centum languages and satem languages. Single isogloses do not define languages, they define dialects and dialect continua. There is too much editorial conjecture as the editor tries hard to put it all together, but unsuccessfuly. We need to stick to the sources on this, and some of them have to be sufficiently up to date to give us an accurate picture of the current state of affairs.Dave (talk) 05:09, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

My understanding is that PIE started out with an initial k (or some sort of hard c) in a great number of words which in certain daughter branches evolved into s via something like ch as in bach, then sh. This process is called satemization. Those branches that split off the earliest, including Celtic and Tocharian, experienced no satemization. Satemization was strongest in the branches that remained within the more centrally located dialect continuum for the a longer period of time. Or to put it another way, the initial k was a feature of early PIE while satemization was a feature of late PIE. In the Celto-Italo-Germano-Balto-(Slavic)-Indo-Iranian continuum, Celtic is the least satemized (not at all), Indo-Iranian is totally satemized, and the branches in between are partially satemized, for example ch or kh in Germanic, sh in Baltic. The point is, it's not just the words for hundred. Zyxwv99 (talk) 14:52, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

You've come thus far, maybe you will be willing to go a little further. I never said it was only two words. First of all, the whole change is only one character, or feature of the language. If a phylogeny is to have any hope of being credibly valid, it must have many of all sorts, phonological, lexical and morphological. Second, there is a distinction between a genetic branch and an isogloss. They aren't the same at all. The branch is a feature of the Tree model, which you need to read forthwith (your friends, such as I, can tell you these things). The isogloss is a feature of the Wave model (which I have only just started revising), and never the twain shall meet. The tree model describes branches in the subsequent evolution of a hypothetical proto-language. There have to be definite discrete languages with definite discrete borders. The isogloss is a line marking the furthest extent of a single feature. The feature does not have to belong to one language. The isogloss can cross language borders. In the big picture, isoglosses have a home in explaining dialects and dialect continua. The original goal of the wave modelists was to replace the tree. The did not think there were any languages as such, only dialect continua. Now, on the one hand you speak of a centum-satem branch, which belong to the tree model. In the same breath you speak of the centum-satem isogloss, which is not the same thing at all but belongs to the wave model. One final thing. How do we know it is an isogloss and not a branch? Well, the neo-grammarians were very strict about their trees. You had to find a linguistic rule, such as Grimm's Law, or Verner's Law, or many other laws, which would create a shared innovation and apply universally to the branch and distinguish it from any other. The problem with centum-satem is, it was not a law. It did not apply universally. The questioning started with Tocharian, which was in the eastern range but was a centum language. Then it went on to Hittite, which has some features of one and some of the other. Moreover, this satemization of which you speak was imperfectly applied to its languages. The whole concept of satemization belongs to the wave model and not the tree model. A law is universal. For example, no one speaks of a "Grimmization". Now, the there is in fact a partial Grimmization along the Rhine creating a dialect continuum. This is one of the problems with the tree model. Nevertheless it is such a good explanation of basic differences in discrete languages that the wave model has not been able to replace it. So, what we end up with is a mixture. The branch into satem and centum has been gone for at least 30 years, probably more. Sturteyvant and Bloomfield opposed it, among others. I don't have the time right now but if you Google books on "Hittite centum" you will find some snippet views that substantiate what I am saying. Don't feel bad - I was brought up on the centum-satem split and it was somewhat of a shock to me to discover 15 years ago that it was gone now. I heard it from the lips of Calvert Watkins, who explained that he was finally convinced by his best student, Craig Melchert, whom not long after I met at a wine party at his house. Watkins was hosting some Russians. I was taking a course. I don't want to drop names on you only to demonstrate the division really is gone. Our editors can't be blamed for not keeping up with everything; after all they are mainly students and besides no one can read everything or be expert in everything. I am shortly going over this article (slowly) but your bringing this up probably underlines the need for a reference there and a little of the history. That maybe should be under Centum Satem Isogloss. Gosh there is so much to do. Well this took some time I could have spent on the article but it probably was worth it as all the editors now need to be convinced and multiple articles changed. The Centum Satem Isogloss article looks all right at first glsnce but I should check it. Later.Dave (talk) 15:50, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

First two sentences

"The Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses are designed to explain the origins of the Proto-Indo-European language and the people. The identity of the Proto-Indo-Europeans has been a recurring topic in Indo-European studies since the 19th century."

Going to rewrite. Vague and misleading. An urheimat does not explain the origin of a language; it is a geographical location, not a linguistic fact. The language does not explain the origin of the people. Postulating a location does not establish any identity, only a location. What the editor probably means is, which archaeological cultures might be associated with the speakers, but typically it is the other way around, they want to see how far the culture matches an identity inferred from the language.Dave (talk) 16:18, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

misquote?

I think "Neolithic farmers, possibly coming from Anatolia and settled there, developing pastoral nomadism." should read "Neolithic farmers, possibly coming from Anatolia had settled there, developing pastoral nomadism". A mistransfer I often make myself, but without Cavalli-Sforza 2006 in hand, I can't fix this.--Wetman (talk) 20:56, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Inclusion of sub-families

Since January this article has been mostly a discussion of the homelands of the various branches of the Indo-European family rather than, as the title suggests, the Proto-Indo-European homeland. One option to fix this would be to rename the article to something like "Indo-European urheimats", but I think such accepting wide scope makes the article too unwieldy. The original change was by a now blocked sockpuppet that went apparently went on a spree of radical, poorly justified editing around historical linguistics and ethnicity topics back at the beginning of the year. So unless anyone objects, I'm going to merge the content back into urheimat (where it came from). Admittedly that article is rather long, but I'll let editors there decide if they want to fork them off into separate articles – they don't belong here. joe•roe^t•c 14:18, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Forget that – looks like the sock's removal of content from urheimat never stuck. I'll just go ahead and remove the redundant copy here. joe•roe^t•c 14:20, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

The Uralic contact argument

This article makes the point that early contacts with Uralic, especially early Indo-Iranian loanwords in Uralic, present difficulties for the Anatolian hypothesis (and similar proposals such as the Armenian hypothesis, as well as the fringe Out-of-India proposal) that are not usually paid respect to by archaeologists. While the argument of very early Indo-European loanwords in Uralic, or even a possible original "Indo–Uralic" relationship, is open to doubt, the presence of early Indo-Iranian loanwords in Uralic seems not to be easily discounted, and the best argument for a northern origin of Indo-Iranian, which supports the Kurgan hypothesis but presents considerable problems for the main competitors (as well as Out of India, of course).

I might note that a northern location of Proto-Indo-Iranian (somewhere north of the Caspian, consistent with an identification with the Poltavka/Sintashta/Andronovo context) also shifts the balance in favour of (especially Central/Eastern) Europe and against Asia even more in the context of the locations of the individual branches. Only Anatolian, Tocharian, Armenian and the fragmentarily attested Phrygian are based in Asia, whereas Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Greek and Indo-Iranian as well as various other (extinct and fragmentarily attested in antiquity) branches of unclear affiliation are based in Europe, in the sense that there is general agreement that the relative proto-languages are placed in Europe via general and – except perhaps Indo-Iranian – overwhelming consensus. (Possible evidence for origins in Europe of Phrygian, Armenian and Tocharian is even completely neglected here.) That's a landslide in favour of Europe, and it is difficult to argue that the greatest diversity of Indo-European is found in Asia instead, even within the wiggle room that changes in the tree such as acknowledging Balto-Slavic as a single branch afford. (Unless, of course, one manages to successfully reduce all the European branches to possibly as few as two, but how would Proto-Italo-Celto-Germano-Balto-Slavic and Proto-Balkan-IE – which would, however, have to include Armenian and Phrygian – or Proto-Graeco-Aryan – which might well include Armenian or Phygian, or both – differ from PIE? These large-scale proposals are difficult to defend. Similarly, a Proto-Satem proposal would not affect the European predominance, either. Where the deepest divisions in PIE are found is controversial anyway, hence my throwback to an agnostic comb-type classification which treats all obvious branches as primary.)

The GeoCurrents article also points out that even if Anatolian was the first branch to split off (which is by no means a given, nor would it mean that the rest of IE is monophyletic, i. e., forms a single branch, at all), it would say nothing about the placement of the IE Urheimat; Anatolian could equally be an early off-shoot, as the Kurgan hypothesis envisions. Also, there are some common but unjustified implicit assumptions, such as that Anatolian was always spoken in Anatolia, or that there is linguistic continuity in the region of the Urheimat. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:00, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Is there an article on "Academic Credibility"?

That would be an interesting read!

I myself prefer Popper, and a good dose of humility when addressing questions larger than any individual or even several.

People are asked to provide sources for all kinds of things, can we objectively define and quantify the academic credibility of something. Sounds a bit vague... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:6000:1800:6D:A4B5:319D:3B9C:C25D (talk) 07:58, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

See WP:RS for what we have relevant to Wikipedia article-writing. AnonMoos (talk) 10:01, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Misleading summary of state of scholarly opinion?

"Many hypotheses for such an Urheimat have been proposed, but none of them has gained general acceptance among the linguistics community."

If "general acceptance" means anything like near-unanimity, then the preceding sentence could be considered correct, but if it implies that no one hypothesis has significantly more acceptance than any of the others, then it's wrong. The overall Pontic-Caspian or generalized quasi-"Kurgan" hypothesis has found more support among linguists than any of the main alternatives in recent times (obviously with many elaborations and slight variations). The Anatolian hypothesis has gained support among some archaeologists, geneticists, and others -- but has conspicuously failed to gain much real support from linguists who intensively study Indo-European historical linguistics. All the other hypotheses are pretty much also-rans at this point.

Also, the next sentence in the article ("There is no single archaeological pattern that might correspond to a migration on an appropriate geographic scale throughout Europe.") ignores the fact that recent reconstructions have explored the possibility that much of the early expansion of Indo-European was based as much on "elite recruitment" as on pure military conquest as such (see The Horse, the Wheel, and Language etc.)... -- AnonMoos (talk) 18:59, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree. The lead should reflect what the body of the article says, i.e. that the Kurgan hypothesis has majority support at the moment (from linguists and archaeologists etc – it's an interdisciplinary question, after all) with the Anatolian hypothesis as a runner up.

I interpret that second sentence as saying there's no archaeological evidence for a Europe-wide migration and so backing up Anthony. It is a big vague though. And technically incorrect, since the spread of farming fits the bill. joe•roe^t•c 21:21, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

The sentence is about linguists, and I'm not sure that archaeologists are as solidly behind it as linguists (if they are, then it would seem to be a change from the 1980s, though I know much less about archaeology than linguistics). AnonMoos (talk) 08:01, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Why do you write here, if admittedly having no deeper overview??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.4.79.26 (talk) 07:04, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

What does that mean? My having a closer connection to academic linguistics than to archaeology doesn't disqualify me from offering suggestions to improve this article. Not everybody can be an expert equally on everything... AnonMoos (talk) 10:06, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Hypotheses

Was renamed so, because the former title "Glottochronology" was consistent only with the upper part. Moreover the two entries did not convey a minimum overview about the involved problems. HJJHolm (talk) 14:53, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

The now noted "Baltic hypothesis" does not exist. It has been a misunderstanding by J. Mallory of the views of the late Wolfgang P. Schmid, who always and only maintained particular rich connections of the Balic languages to the other Indo-European ones, never a Baltic homeland. Schmid had always been very angry about this misinterpretation. If there are no serious sources for this alternative, it must be cancelled a.s.a.p. HJJHolm (talk) 08:12, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Ah, OK. But the hypothesis does exist, even if it has been out of fashion for quite some time: as I'm sure you know, it was customary in the early 20th century, especially in German-speaking Europe, to identify the Corded Ware culture with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, hence a Northern European Urheimat which appealed to nationalistic fervour and white supremacist sentiments. That said, the evidence of (especially upper-class) individuals with light hair and eyes in Indo-European-speaking ancient Southern Europe and Asia is suggestive of a Baltic Urheimat. (The high conservativity of the Lithuanian and Old Prussian languages especially has been adduced as another argument, but I don't think it is particularly convincing: it's probably due to the long relative geographic isolation of the speakers of Baltic languages. After all, Iceland isn't the Germanic or even North Germanic Urheimat either.)

People who don't realise that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were called "Aryans" at the time, based on now discredited etymologies, won't understand the connection with Nazi racial ideology: German nationalists regarded light-haired Germanic-speaking Europeans as the purest descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and hence as the "master race", claiming that the Proto-Indo-Europeans, imagined as fair-haired and warlike, had spread their allegedly superior civilisation throughout Eurasia (with the pre-existing swarthier people lumped together as "Semites"). However, this historical baggage, the fact that the Baltic Urheimat hypothesis was abused for the purposes of white supremacist ideology, culminating in the Nazi genocides, is in itself not a reason to reject the hypothesis.

However, Allentoft et al. 2015 (cited, among others, in Blond#Asia) appears to imply that the Southern European and Asiatic branches too can be derived from the Corded Ware, instead of the Yamna, effectively resurrecting the Baltic hypothesis. ADNA evidence (Haak et al. 2015) suggests that the people of the Yamna culture were not particularly fair and that the assimilation of Northern European hunter-gatherers, especially in the Baltic region, resulted in the Corded Ware and the association of Indo-Europeans with light pigmentation. However, it is entirely possible, even plausible (per Klingenschmitt 2005), that the eventual breakup of the final stage of the Indo-European proto-language only happened in the early third millennium, rather than the fourth or fifth, and it is entirely compatible with Gimbutas's original Kurgan hypothesis as well, as her third and final posited wave of migration out of the steppes happened in the early third millennium and involved the Corded Ware.

White supremacists may like this narrative (although one wonders why the Northern European hunter-gatherers needed the help of the swarthy steppe people, and took over their culture and language, if they were so superior, and why there was nothing comparable to the relatively complex and advanced cultures of 4th millennium BC West Asia and Egypt in Northern Europe at the same time, so I can't see this model playing into a white supremacist narrative from a more level-headed point of view, but then, ideologues don't really care for facts and logic), but again, that's not in itself a valid reason to reject it. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:46, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Sources

@Joe Roe: here's another source: Asya Pereltsvaig, Languages of the World: An Introduction, p.23 ff. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:19, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that one is good.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:44, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

And Mallory (2013), Twenty-first century clouds over Indo-European homelands. It deals with the steppe hypothesis, Near Eastern proposals, and the Anatolian hypothesis. So, I'm not convinced yet that the Armenian hypothesis should be put in the fringe-section. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 11:52, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 3 July 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Andrewa (talk) 13:09, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

---

Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses → Proto-Indo-European homeland – There are two rationales for this move:

• Per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:USEENGLISH, the English word "homeland" is preferably to the German/linguistics jargon "urheimat". Google results for Indo-European homeland are an order of magnitude greater than for Indo-European urheimat, reflecting the fact that discussions of IE origins in the press and recent journal articles tend to use "homeland".
• All the major individual hypotheses have well developed articles of their own, relegating this article to a list. The proposed move adjusts the scope to being about the PIE homeland as a concept rather than a bundle of hypotheses, which will let us turn this into a much-needed summary article that gives the historical background and context that we're currently missing, and makes it a more natural link from pages like Proto-Indo-European.

Proto-Indo-European homeland already exists as a redirect here so we'll need an admin to close this. Joe Roe (talk) 12:30, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

• Support per above. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:17, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

• Support. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 13:28, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support Homeland is the more common form in English. The move will create a Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses redirect, so all bases are covered. --Mark viking (talk) 19:10, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Fringe?

Is the "Armenian hypothesis" fringe, given the R1a-diversification 'in the vicinity of present-day Iran' (Underhill et al. (2014/2015), and the connection between Caucasus and Iran (Lazaridis 2016)? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:38, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:44, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Haak et al. (2015)

"The Armenian plateau hypothesis gains in plausibility by the fact that we have discovered evidence of admixture in the ancestry of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists, including gene flow from a population of Near Eastern ancestry for which Armenians today appear to be a reasonable surrogate (SI4, SI7, SI9)."

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:31, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it "fringe" because it was proposed by legitimate scholars, but it doesn't have mainstream support either. I think using a single line in a single primary source to argue otherwise is WP:UNDUE and WP:OR. The overwhelming majority of recent review/secondary sources on IE origins put it down to (at the most) two possibilities: the steppe or Anatolia.

And my thinking in reorganising the article into mainstream vs. historical/fringe was precisely so that we can focus on that current debate, without cluttering readers' heads with a dozen other putative homelands. Joe Roe (talk) 21:57, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: it's not a single line, it's a whole section. Can you access the source? I don't remember if it's publicly accessible; anyway, I could go through the article to see if they mention more on it. My point is, that by putting the Armenian hypothesis together with OIT in one section, you clearly put it in the category of lunic errors. I do object to that; the recent publications on the origins of R1a-diversification and the role of north-western Iran in the spread of agriculture-related genes, suggests that the Armenian hypothesis is not that weird after all, as reflected in the comment by Haak et al. (2015). Haak and his colleagues are definitely mainstream; Haak himself is top of the bill. So, we do have to do soemthing with this info. As it is now, I've listed four hypotheses, with Haak et al. (2015) as a reference; maybe we could create a separate section on 'minority-views', apart from 'fringe'? Though, that sounds arbitrary, doesn't it? have you got further ideas? Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:36, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

PS: this article is on the language, of course; in that respect, the Armenian hypothesis is not mainstream. Haak et al. (2015) is about genetics; that's a different cup of tea, though they explicitly write:

"While our results do not settle the debate about the location of the proto-Indo European homeland, they increase the plausibility of some hypotheses and decrease the plausibility of others as follows:"

Okay, the Armenian hypothesis as a subsection of the Steppe-theory, on the genetic ('hardware') origins of the steppe people? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:39, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

• A couple of articles that provide indirect support for a homeland scenario that is otherwise not among the top-three supported scenarios do nothing to change the status of the field. We should not even refer to these papers until someone else discusses them in secondary sources. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 06:54, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Disagree. Genetics is not at the same speed as linguistics. By the time the seconadry sources pick-up on the most recent genetic research, the research is way further already. The journal papers are the relevant sources here. Look at Lazaridis et al. (2016); it was even published as a pre-print, and is yet highly relevant in this regard. and Mallory (1997) is not exactly up-to-date in this regard; in doesn't even come close in reflecting the recent discussions. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:47, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

That is irrelevant because genetic evidence is not evidence for linguistic heimat proposals untill someone writes about it in relation to linguistics. They are not relevant sources, because they ar enot about language. Non-linguistic data is circumstantial to linguistic heimat proposals. And as a general policy we do not include primary sources untill they are referred to in secondary literature. Especially not if their claims and conclusoins are contrary to established mainstream views. This is exactly the same for genetics studies.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:44, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

• I think it is fine to include the Armenian hypothesis, and it is fine to call it a minority view instead of a fringe view, but we should still include it following all of the normal policies for fringe content namely avoiding to give it undue weight and avoiding to use primary sources as support. Following these policies I would not want to mention the studies you refer to here untill they receive some sort commentary from scholars who are not themselves proponents of the Armenian hypothesis or authors of the studies. This is just simple measures of caution that should be followed in all areas of science writing on wikipedia.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:55, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

"Minority view" sounds better. Haak et al. (2015) is cited 108 times already; some homework to do, shifting them through... Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:35, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

NB: isn't Haak et al. (2015) a secondary source on the homeland hypotheses, in its discussion of these hypotheses? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:06, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. Regardless of whether genetics moves faster than linguistics, WP:PSTS still applies. We need to be careful on basing too much on Haak et al. (@Joshua Jonathan: I do have access to it, but thanks for asking), when it's:

• A single, primary research paper, per WP:NOR
• Published very recently; the way Indo-European studies goes, and genetics for that matter, it could well be considered completely invalid or superseded in a couple of years (cf. the Atkinson and Wade lab's papers on linguistic phylogeny)
• Only covers one aspect of the problem, the genetics of IE spread in Europe, and not the linguistics, archaeology, Asia, etc.

And fortunately we don't have to rely on it, because a number of secondary reviews of the literature have been published very recently (Anthony & Ringe, Pereltsvaig & Lewis, and apparently another Annual Review by Wade & Atkinson is forthcoming), in addition to old staples like Mallory & Adams' encylopaedia and David Anthony's book.

I understand that "fringe" is strong word though, how about we rename the section "Minority and historical hypotheses" and then move the Armenian hypothesis back there? Joe Roe (talk) 13:15, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Fine with me then, unfortunately ;). But we really have to find another source for a list of mainstream theories. NB: Allentoft et al. (2015) seem to argue against the Armenian hypothesis. It's funny, reading those different papers I get the impression that there's a lot of debate going on in-between the lines. I'd really like to know what those researchers discuss informally, at the coffee-machine so to speak. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:30, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

I would suggest some general textbooks on Indo-European - Beekes, Clackson, Mallory & Adams would be good places to find which theories have received any attention in mainstream scholarship.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:41, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Okay, I read some more about this theory; 3rd millennium BCE sounds unlikely indeed. But it doesn't change the questions, or probabilities, which are posed by the studies I mentioned at the start of this thread: the Caucasus/near Eastern genetic contribution to the Yamna-culture. If Underhill et al. (2014) are right in their geographical and time-estimates, it should be quite easy then to postulate some archaeological correlates. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:30, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

• I have rephrased the Haak et al quote as a summary instead of as a direct quote, which I think confers undue weight to the study itself, by taking their own word for its significance.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 06:46, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Linguistics versus genetics

There is almost no mention at all of the actual linugistic evidence, or the linguistic methods for establishing homelands. We also for example need to consider the distribution and subgrouping of branches as evidence. We should for example probably mention that the Indo-Hittite proposal if accepted based on linguistic data would make the steppe vs. Anatolian discussion moot, since PIE would be steppe but pre-PIE (i.e. proto-indo-hittite) would have been in Anatolia. reading over the article there is a serious undue weight given to genetic relatively to linguistic evidence - the only evidence described in any detail is genetic. This is not a tenable approach.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:48, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. Coincidentally, I was reading that Antony publication again this morning, and I also figurd that the articles hould start with linguistics, and the linguistic tree. From there, it's 'easy' to explain what theoretical issues are at stake, and to show how they are solved, or not solved, by the various theories. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:07, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Near-eastern origins

The Armenina hypothesis is a subset of near-eastern origin hypotheses. Soviet archaeology seems to also have proposed more southern origins, including the Haraffa culture, and Uruk (Meopotamia) influences. Another subset is Iranian influences; there's more on it, which I will add. The near east altogether between 4,000-3,000 BCE is very complicated, with a multitide of regional cultures which were interacting. Underhill (2014) (origins of rR1a diversification) and Lazaridis (Iranian-Caucasus intraction) are relevant in this regard. Lazaridis et al. (2016) also detected R1b, which is associated with Indo-European, in a Kura-Araxes sample. Looks like they're now pondering over it. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:04, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I am not sure if Armenia qualifies as near east (Anatolia definitely is Near East though). Other than that I think it is ok to have a catalogue of serious scholarly hypotheses that have been made and then failed to get any traction. But the Polar hypothesis that you had a subsection prepared for is not a serious hypothesis and we would have to include a lot of old pseudoscientific hypotheses if that were to be included. Also I would recommend extreme caution with genetic studies that are not specifically linked to the linguistic literature.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:11, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I hardly know what the Polar hypothesis is; wasn't it a Nazi-idea? The info was already in the article, I guess. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:25, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Ok, no it was in fact a veda based idea from the early 20th century. But noone seems to have referred to it since. Glad you won't miss it.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:28, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I put the Polar Hypothesis in with the intention of expanding it down the line. I don't agree that anything is "too fringe" to include – crazy stuff like that is part of the history of IE studies, and if we don't cover that in this article, where else? Joe Roe (talk) 08:44, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Because of WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE. Not everything needs to be covered - and some things deserve at most a sentence. I dont think the polar hypothesis deserves even that - but if you can show that it has gotten attention in 3rd party RS then perhaps. This is an encyclopedia not an academic freak show.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:59, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

There's no question of presenting it alongside the mainstream hypotheses or giving it any weight as a scientific explanation at all, but I think if you look at any historical review of the Indo-European origins problem, late 19th/early 20th century looniness looms large, if only because it played such a big role in marginalising the subject in the later 20th century. Anyway, this is all kind of moot until I (or someone) gets around to writing about it. Joe Roe (talk) 11:05, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

If so, then perhaps a section titled "19th century looniness" would be justified. I dont think the polar theory would deserve mention in such a section either.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 11:16, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Nice header ;) Regarding "Near eastern": it's the term Mallory used. I don't know how 'correct' those theories are, but at least they've been proposed and discussed; also, the Yamna-culture didn't exist in a vacuum, and these theories seem to be related to these complex interactions. They also show that searching for an even older 'homeland' may be useless on its own, but points to these complex interactions. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:59, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. Haak et al. (2015) and Lazaridis et al. (2016) trace a genetic influence of Caucasus/north-western Iran on the Steppe-people. The Steppe-people were in contact with the Caucasus (which was in contact with more southern cultures) and the Levant; north-western Iran was in contact with Mesopotamia. Both groups migrated, carrying with them different languages (I suppose), but with partly the same culture (kurgans?) and technology, the Steppe-people north and then east (after mixing with northern Europeans), the Iranians (Kura-Araxes?) east. "The metal and the language" might be a nice paraphrase of Anthony. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:03, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Article structure

We appear to be pulling the structure of this article in three different directions. I recently reorganised the existing L1 headings for each individual hypothesis into mainstream and non-mainstream sections. Since then, the individual have been hypotheses have been promoted back to L1 headings, but we retained a "Hypotheses" section with duplicate lists of the hypotheses under L2 mainstream and non-mainstream headings, and then some of the L1 hypotheses section were moved to L2s under "other theries", and there's a long-titled L1 section called "Pre-Proto-Indo-European and Near-eastern origins or influences" which I think started out about the Armenian hypothesis, but there's another section on the Armenian hypothesis under "other theories", and it has a L2 under it on the Anatolian hypothesis, which has its own L1 section... do you see where I'm going with this?

I'm not saying it has to be my way (though I did quite like my way), but please let's stop shifting things around all the time and agree on a stable structure we can use to improve this article. I'd propose three principles for structuring the article:

1. One hypothesis, or one closely related group of hypotheses (e.g. "kurgan" and "revised steppe") = one section/subsection.
2. Per consensus in the move discussion above, this article isn't shouldn't just be list of hypotheses, it should also cover broader issues like the theoretical context and history of the IE homeland concept; so individual hypotheses shouldn't be the highest level structure.
3. We need to clearly convey and give due weight to the fact that there are only 2-3 hypotheses with a significant amount of scientific support, but dozens that are fringe, defunct or were dreamt up by some obscure academic and never heard from again.

And if we can agree on those, I'd suggest the logical way of structuring the article is to bunch together hypotheses into either "mainstream" and "other" sections or into thematic sections which state level of the academic credibility up-front. Joe Roe (talk) 21:59, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry; I'm trying to figure out how the Caucasian context fits in. A historical section is missing at the moment, and should be added. The point is indeed the Armenian hypothesis, and the Caucasus/Iranian/Anatolian context. On its own, the Armenian hypothesis seems to have little support, but it is being discussed in the context of gentics, and it does seem to be related to a line of thought which favors a more southern "homeland." So, where to fit this in? I'm goi g to self-revert some parts, to see again how that looks. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:06, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

What's also missing are serious criticisms of the Steppe-theory; see Mallory (2013) and this blog. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:27, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Here's a blog by Pereltsvaig on the homeland. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:58, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

A question regarding the Steppe-theory that's on my mind: R1a-Z93 is also found in East-Asia (Underhill 2014), apparently in the territory of the Afanasievo culture - which is supposed to be founded by a steppe-off-shoot, which are R1a-Z282. Hmm... there's a big question-sign there! Or is it the Tocharian-area? But in that case, there's also a big question-sign, pointing to Indo-European languages south of the steppe. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:26, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Youre gonna need this one: Chang, W., Cathcart, C., Hall, D., & Garrett, A. (2015). Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European steppe hypothesis. Language, 91(1), 194-244.

And this one: David W. Anthony and Don Ringe. 2015. The Indo-European Homeland from Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives Annual Review of Linguistics. Vol. 1: 199-219 ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:20, 16 July 2016 (UTC)(Volume publication date January 2015)

Thanks. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:07, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• I don't completely understand why you want to group the Armenian proposal with the Iran, Sogdiana and Mesopotamian connections - but exclude the Anatolian hypothesis. The Anatolian hypothesis is basically a development of Gamkrelidze's and Ivanovs Armenian/glottalic theory - and they all share affinities with the indo-hittite proposal and more or less point out overlapping areas. I alsso dont understand where the "West Asian" label comes from, it is not one I have ever heard - and again geographically speaking Anatolia would fall under the label and Armenia would not.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:20, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind grouping the Anatolian hypothesis together with the Armenian hypothesis and all the other hypotheses which situate some sort of 'homeland' somewhere between Anatolia and the Caspian Sea. The label seemed to cover this area somewhat; that's why I used it. Regarding the Anatolian hypothesis and the Armenian hypothesis, could you tell more? Renfrew was familiair with Gamkrelidze's and Ivanov's work? To me, it seems that all those theories point to the interactions between various cultures, and the broad range of 'pre-proto-IE' influences. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:12, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, the possibility of an Anatolian homeland dates to the early 20th century when Hittite was discovered to be IE - Sturtevants Indo-Hittite was probably the earliest version of it, Gamkredlize and Ivanov's glottalic theory put the homeland in Anatolia and Southern Caucasus. Renfrew of course was familiar with these hypotheses when he realized that Peter Bellwood's idea that language's advance with the spread of faming could be seen as supporting the Anatolian hypothesis since we know that farming entered Europe from Anatolia. Anthon and Ringe mention the conceptual conneciton between Renfrew's and Gamkrelidze's theories. Sure all the theoreies point to those connections and interrelations, but they point in different directions and have very different time frames. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:50, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

You said, maybe jokingly, that the Anatolian hypothesis also situates the homeland in Anatolia, just like the Armenian hypothesis. But it might make sense, indeed, to group those two theories together, together with the Iranian/Caspian influences, in a section "Pre-Proto-Indo-European." Not as a 'homeland', but as regios from which the various influences on PPIE came. This section could open with the Indo-Hittite hypothesis, since the Anatolian languages may be a "cousin", and not a "daughter," of PIE (Anthony 2007). Haak (2015)'s commetn on the Armenian hypothesis, and Lazaridis (2016)'s findings about the interaction between Caucasus and Iran also fit in there, just like the fact that the Yamna people seem to have been a mix of Caucasus/Iran and EGH; which language did those EGH people bring? and what language was brought by the Caucasian/Iranians? What influences are there from Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Semitic languages? As I said, not a 'PPIE-homeland', but a melting-pot of PPIE influences, which gave us PIE. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:14, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

The possibility that Hittite is a cousin not a daughter of PIE is the Indo-Hittite proposal. I think it is very important that we stick to sources, and preferably only mainstream reviews, in determining the relaitons and relative standings between different hypothesis. This is why I find it particularly problematic to focus so much on genetic literature which is often not in actual dialogue or accord with the different linguistic proposals. I don't think we should add genetics here unless we have sources specifically about homeland hypotheses that discuss them. When we do we are very likely to stray into problematic synthesis.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:15, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

External Links

I removed all of the recently added External Links, none of which were really appropriate per WP:EL. Several of them were selfpublished blogs advancing fringe views, one was a link to a fringe researchers academia profile (why him and not dozens of others?) and only one was really a serious researcher from the Max Planck institute - but given that it advanced the Anatolian hypothesis and a non-mainstream view on comparative linguistic methodology I dont think it should stand alone as the only EL. External Links is not a place where fringe ideas can get equal validity to mainstream ones either. Please suggest ELs here before adding again, or at least add them with some sort rationale for why they are reasonable links.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:38, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Introduction Again, Wording Problem

"none of these enjoy a wide acceptance, or are considered to be fringe theories" ... the "or" is a weak choice. I am not familiar with is subject matter. Would "and" or "nor" be the appropriate synonym? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.169.215.11 (talk) 05:12, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

I think it means that none now have wide support, while some are fringe... AnonMoos (talk) 02:13, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Substituting either would fundamentally change the meaning. What's wrong with "or"? Joe Roe (talk) 09:14, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Quiles & Lopez-Menchero

I removed some material cited to Quiles' and Lopez-Menchero's Grammar of Modern Indo-European. Neither of the two authors are linguists (Quiles is an economist and Lopez-Menchero and engineer) and the book is selfpublished (the indoeueopean associatoin is an advocacy group attempting to revive PIE as a spoken language). We should not use their work as a source here.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:34, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

@Maunus: thanks; I hadn't noticed that they are self-published. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:35, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

NB: what about Kortlandt? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:40, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Kortlandt is a respected linguist at the University of Leiden. Some of his proposals are non-mainstream, but his published articles are RS.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:45, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

So, RS can be found on this. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:55, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Of course, I have already mentioned a number of important secondary sources that you ought to consult on these issues to make sure that the summary is in line with the way it is described by specialists in the field, Beekes, Clackson and Anthony - Anthony and Ringe's Annual Review paper, and Mallory's introduction type works (the encyclopedia).·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:02, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

• I also dont think Bomhard is a reliable source. The stuff on his academia.edu profile is also selfpublished. And he is apparently a nostraticist which is a fringe POV - especially in relation to pre-PIE.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:05, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

He's perfectly academic (see Allan R. Bomhard), but of course doesn't represent the academic quasi-consensus... AnonMoos (talk) 02:50, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't know what that is supposed to mean. An academic is someone who has an academic appointment and publishes in peer reviewed journals. He does neither. Someone who has a PhD but no academic appointment and who self-publishes on the internet about fringe theories that attracts only negative comments from professional academics is called a "CR ackpot." maunus

I've removed him. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:10, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Merger proposal: Proto-Indo-Europeans into Proto-Indo-European homeland

More or less the same topic, with the same info. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:05, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

• Support, per above. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:05, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

• Support. There is perhaps room for a separate Proto-Indo-Europeans article that brings together info on the language, society, culture, genetics, etc. of the people who spoke PIE, rather than just where they lived, but at the moment that article just duplicates this one. Better to simplify things and cut down on the redundancy in this topic area. Joe Roe (talk) 15:16, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

• Alternatively, after moving the current content of Proto-Indo-Europeans here we could redirect it to Proto-Indo-European and make that a disambig page pointing to Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European homeland, Proto-Indo-European mythology, etc. Joe Roe (talk) 15:19, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose. The people, their culture, their language, their religion, and their homeland are all notable topics with enough literature about them to merit their own articles. Overlap happens, and should. The "Proto-Indo-Europeans" article must discuss their culture, as it already does somewhat. And, as is already the case, it must have a section about the homeland theories. A section about the language and another about religion should be added. The people themselves are the main topic, and those sections should be introductory vehicles, pointing readers to the more in-depth articles about main topics related to these people. Genetics can be brought up in some or all of those articles, I suppose; but what more natural place for a discussion of genetics is there than the article about the people themselves? Subsuming the people's article under one about the homeland seems all wrong to me. SamEV (talk) 17:05, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

• I disagree that the people are the main topic. They would be if the Proto-Indo-Europeans were actually a real people, but they aren't – they're a hypothetical construct. The main article is and should be Proto-Indo-European language. Everything else is an inference from the linguistic reconstruction, hence why I suggested turning Proto-Indo-European into a dab page. Joe Roe (talk) 21:20, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose Per SamEV. The literature on the homeland hypotheses and on the people are separate.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:02, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose. If these articles and subjects were shorter and simpler, then I could see a merge. The PIE homeland would be a paragraph or two. But all of this is very involved and has been discussed and researched by so many people, and the simple discussion of the PIE people is very dense and extensive. I don't see any merit in a merge. Kortoso (talk) 22:41, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

• Support per WP:CONTENTFORK. Two articles are not needed here, especially looked at in the wider context of the amount of repetition across Indo-European migrations, Indo-Aryan migration theory, Proto-Indo-European religion, Indigenous Aryans arguments (being considered for deletion), and Proto-Indo-European society --Cornellier (talk) 22:27, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose This is about a peoples, not their homeland. This would be like proposing merging Pakistanis into Pakistan. Doesn't work.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 20:37, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose There is more to the peoples than just the homeland; for example, archaeological cultures associated with the people. However, I would support a merge of Proto-Indo-European society into the Proto-Indo-European people article. That's a WP:CONTENTFORK right there. 128.84.125.154 (talk) 20:40, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

References and notes

Fixes

There are some fixes that could be done to improve the quality and usability of this article:

• Reduce WP:REFBLOAT
• Sometimes refs are just given in bare text like "according to According to Lazaridis et al." then what? the user is supposed to scroll down into the sources to find out to what this refers? There's about a couple of dozen of these and they should be properly referenced.
• Too much use of WP:PRIMARY e.g. a ref to "The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA".
• There is a mix of references and sources. There are sources listed that are not in the references and vice versa. "The Horse The Wheel And Language" is mentioned in three different places. I don't think this helps the article.
• Explanatory notes. If the information is too long and awkward to read in the article body then it should be moved to another page. This page is a high-level introduction to the topic, since most of the content is covered in more detail on other pages like Kurgan hypothesis, Historical linguistics, Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-Europeans, Indo-European migrations, etc. For example, the discussion of the nitty-gritty of pre-proto-IE is out of scope for this page, and the info should be at Indo-Uralic languages.
• There are references that contain notes and notes that contain references, it's just a convoluted way to present the informaiton.

--Cornellier (talk) 15:30, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

I strongly agree with your third point especially. While the article has been greatly improved recently (thanks mainly to User:Joshua Jonathan), I think the addition of so many references to primary genetic literature, especially very recent papers like Haak et al. 2015 and Lazaridis 2016, is taking us worryingly close to original research. It is far too soon to know if their findings will gain widespread acceptance in what is a highly changeable and contentious field – and yet in places they're referenced as if they've settled the debate. There's also a big problem in relying too heavily on literature from one field (i.e. genetics) when we all know there's a tendency for the others (i.e. linguistics and archaeology) to have very different takes on this question. We can't take on the job of synthesizing individual findings from different fields, so we need to wait for that to happen in the secondary literature. And as I've said before, we have plenty of secondary source material in the form of books and review papers to work with. Joe Roe (talk) 15:43, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi there. Some responses:

• refbloat: I've seen much worse, due to the strong opinions of some editors who believe that the Indo-European languages did not originate at the steppes. it may be use usefull not to remove all of them, but to keep strong 'proves' of some statements which may be offensive to some editors.
• "According to": All the sentences with "According to" have references at the end of the line, as is the custom at Wikipedia. I've deliberately used the phrase "according to," c.q. attributed those specific bits of info, to make clear that these are the conclusions/opinions of specific researchers.
• "Primary sources": there's a lot of relevant research going on in the field of genetics, with highly relevant results on the Indo-European migrations. Authors of these articles include David Anthony, who explicitly uses them to underscore his archaeological research. No way you can ignore him. Another relevant researcher is David Reich; also no way you can ignore him. I also object against the use of the term "primary sources," since it suggests a lack of distance; they are plain WP:RS, published in "Peer-reviewed journals."

Anyway, I've used them because I've read a lot of them lately, due to the repeated discussions on the supposedly 'debunking' of the socalled "Aryan Invasion Theory," and the misuse of genetic research in that context. This also shows the relevance of this kind of publications.

• "mix of references and sources": that's indeed the case. I've copied sources I've used elsewhere, and I've shortened the references for the lead and the first alineas. This makes for a much easier way of editing, where one can focus ont he text, instead of having to find out again and again what is text, and what is reference. Also, named references like ":1" are not exacrtly helpfull... Most helpfull wpuold be to convert all refernces to sfn, since this is a very clear and simple way to refer to the same source at several places.

The Horse, The Wheel and Language is listed at two places: the sources section, and the further reading section. That's not a "mix of references and sources," but the difference between sources and recommended reading.

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 16:40, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Any work that is used as a source should not be in the further reading section.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:48, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Per WP:PSTS, research papers are primary sources, and should be used sparingly and carefully ("Do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so. Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them."). It doesn't matter that they're peer reviewed or authored by trustworthy researchers, because the concern is not that they're not reliable; it's that we aren't in the business of interpreting or synthesizing them ourselves without reference to secondary sources. That's a core policy, not really up for debate. Joe Roe (talk) 16:52, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

It's a serious problem with virtually any article about genetics, which are full of cherry picked data from sources, including prominent amateur sources. Doug Weller talk 17:59, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Don't emit the preceding sentences:

"Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them.[4] Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge."

Using "primary" sources is not the same as interpreting them. And note "reputably"; Haak et al. (2015) for example was published in Nature. Keyser et al. (2009) may be shortened, though; seems less relevant here. And the "root populations" could also be shortened. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:30, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

I think it generally is the same. Secondary sources are always preferable, and it is not generally possible to assess whether primary sources are apt for inclusion and how untill they have been referred to in secodary sources. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:46, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

So to summarise (please just comment if I got it wrong),

• WP:REFBLOAT: remove some but not all
• Ref style. JJ likes it. A small minority of articles use it. I think it's ugly, and less usable, especially on a phone. Why mention it in two places? And I don't think ease of editing trumps ease of reading. Also JJ, agree that named references like ":1" but I always give those human-readable names like name="horse-wheel-lang". But anyway I've got other fish to fry....
• WP:PRIMARY: I think we all agree there's work to do.
• Explanatory notes: I'd like to see 'em gone, but it's better than it was, thanks for that. --Cornellier (talk) 23:09, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Two places, because of "Further reading": when a lot of sources are being used, the most relevant can be recommanded in a "Further reading" section. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:22, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Sorry I wasn't clear; let me clarify. With conventional referencing you mouse on the ref and you see immediately what the ref points to. References with names is how it's done in most articles, and how it's implemented in the editing tools. With sfn-style in this article:

1. Mouse on the ref, see "Jones 2015", which is unhelpful.
2. Click on the ref number, go to the refs section and see "Jones 2015" again.
3. Click on "Jones 2015", and finally see the actual full referenced text. (At least that's what's supposed to happen, currently Jones 2015 doesn't link to anything, which is another downside of the system, it's harder to QA)

It's just not as good usability, especially on a phone.--Cornellier (talk) 17:29, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

@Cornellier: ah, yes that's a good point. Though my computer gives me one step less; from the reference it goes straight to the source.

WP:PRIMARY

As an example of why we shouldn't jump on new genetics papers too quickly, here's a recent paper critical of Haak et al. etc. Joe Roe (talk) 13:50, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

I can't access the publication, so how do you assess the reliability of that particular publication? Anyway, if it's relevant, you should add the info. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:55, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Better to remove Haak et al, untill its status is established.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:48, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

No. Definitely WP:RS; 134citations in just one year. At best, you can the opinions from that paper, if they are relevant. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 21:01, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

After a night's sleep, my brain functions less categorically; we might as well remove all three specificgeneticresearches from this specific Wiki-article,butleave the Pereltsvaig quote. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:53, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

It is not a question of whether it is an RS, it is a question of the amount of weight it should be assigned. Not all reliable sources merit inclusion - this is q eustion of editorial decisions weighing sources against eachother by using secondary and tertiary sources to establish relative weight. For any primary source this is determined by the amount and kind of attention it gets in secondary sources. If high quality secondary sources on a given topic ignores the primary source or gives it only negative commentary it probably does not need weight. This source is so new that the most relevant secondary sources have not included it yet, and if specific commentary by peers is critical that suggests including it is premature. Number of citations is not a relevant guide for either reliability or weight - because weight is topic dependent. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:33, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

I still don't agree. The relevant genetic research is in journals; by ignoring this kind of publications, you're missing relevant info. NB: please show the policy which says "editorial decisions weighing sources against eachother by using secondary and tertiary sources to establish relative weight." In addition: David Anthony has commented on genetic findings; I don't expect you to argue that Anthony is a voice to ignore in this regard. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:51, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Policy is pretty clear on this - try to read WP:WEIGHT, WP:PRIMARY. The weighing of different primary sources and viewpoints against eachother is EXACTLY why we are cautioned to use mostly secondary sources. That is the only we it is possible to write balanced articles that reflect neutrally the relevant body of literature. This is a basic editing principle. Anthony commenting genetics is a secondary source. I am not saying that we ignore genetic findings - but that we only include those that have received commentary from other scholars and has had their relevance relative to the homeland debate assessed. IT is really very basic stuff.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 05:40, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

"I am not saying that we ignore genetic findings" - thanks; that's helpful. I'll read the links. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:42, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

From WP:WEIGHT:

'"Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources."

• The Steppe-theory is signifcant viewpoint, published in reliable sources;
• Haak's research elaborates on/refers to this theory, offering significant support for this theory.

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:50, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

You are simplifying the issue way too much. Haak et al is a primary source for their own view point - which is that the genetic sequencing of 69 ancient skeleton supports the steppe theory. This particular viewpoint should be given weight according to how many other researchers have accepted it in secondary sources. A good deal of researchers have, so it should definitely have weight - that is not at issue. Combined with the fact that Allentoft et al corroborates their conclusion with 101 other ancient genomes, the evidence is weighty and there are many good secondary sources. The issue here is that the section should be written on the basis of the secondary sources, not on the basis of the primary sources - so we see how secondary sources summarize the two primary sources and then we summarize the different secondary sources (wikipedia is a tertiary source).·maunus · snunɐɯ· 06:57, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Genetics2

Removal of genetics sections

I have removed the two genetics sections both of which relied almost entitrely on Haak et al and Lazaridis et al. We need to find some good secondary sources that discuss the status of genetic evidence for the homeland question. The discussion by the way is quite a bit older, and should include both the early blood type based studies, the later studies by Cavalli-Sforza and more recent studies based on genomic statistical methods. Lets have a discussion of which sources should be used and how they should be weighted.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:12, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

I was in the process of rewriting it but got a conflict with your edit, so I'll put my revise text here in case it's useful later:

See also: Origins of Yamna culture and Yamna component in European genes

According to genetic studies, individuals from the Yamnaya culture have a mix from eastern European hunter-gatherer and Caucasus hunter-gatherer ancestry. Iran Chalcolithic people with a Caucasian hunter-gatherer component.

Many geneticists consider Haplogroup R1a to be associated with the origins and spread of the Indo-Europeans. R1a1 shows a strong correlation with the distribution of the Indo-European languages in Europe and south Asia, being most prevalent in Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, but also observed in Pakistan, India and central Asia. Two specific subclades dominate, namely R1-Z282 in Eastern-Europe, and R1-Z93 which is found in south-Siberia and northern India. According to Underhill et al. (2014), the initial diversification of R1a took place in the vicinity of Iran, while Pamjav et al. (2012) think that R1a diversified within the Eurasian Steppes or the Middle East and Caucasus region.

In 2015, a large-scale ancient DNA study published in Nature found evidence of a "massive migration" from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to Central Europe that took place about 4,500 years ago. It found that individuals from the Central European Corded Ware culture (3rd millennium BCE) were genetically closely related to individuals from the Yamnaya culture. The authors concluded that this was evidence for a steppe origin of the Indo-European languages. However, archaeologists have argued that although such a migration might have taken place, it does not necessarily explain the either the distribution of archaeological cultures or the spread of the Indo-European languages.

References

I don't think the section is totally irredeemable, but I agree that there is too much WP:PRIMARY going on. Not just in terms of the two recent papers by Haak et al. and Laziridis et al. – even though the R1a stuff is talked about a lot, anecdotally I've heard it dismissed as complete rubbish by geneticists. We desperately need some solid secondary sources on this. Joe Roe (talk) 12:24, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

I think we need to include Allentoft et al from the same issue of Nature (their data is MUCH more impressive than Haak et al's) and the commentary by Novembre in the same issue is an excellent secondary source for their conclusions.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:51, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

• We also need to do a better job at distinguishing between studies of contemporary DNA haplogroup distribution and studies of ancient DNA. And to describe exactly what it is that is being sampled and sequenced - and how conclusions about language is being inferred from the genetic and archeological data.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:51, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

"anecdotally I've heard it dismissed as complete rubbish by geneticists" is not the kind of secondary sources we're looking for here... Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:52, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't know which source you are referring to, but of course the reliability of a secondary source is not compromised by including such an anecdotal aside.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 05:33, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

I've reversed Maunus'removal of the second paragraph on genetics. "this section is actually worse than the one JoeRoe just deleted" is just a statement, not an argument. Maunus, above you wrote "how conclusions about language is being inferred from the genetic and archeological data"; this is not only about language anymore, it's also about people. And genetical research provides info about people. Also, in the sections on the other theories "proves" pro/against are provided; removing such "proves" (""; I can hear Popper growl) from the Steppe hypothesis section is not in line with the structure of the other sections. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:47, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Whenever someone says "indo-European" they are talking about language yes. The archeological artefacts and the people show that there were people - but saying that those people were Indo-Europeans is a claim about what language they spoke - and it has to be inferred in someway from the data because genes and pots do not speak.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 05:19, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Sources

• Novembre, J., 2015. Human evolution: Ancient DNA steps into the language debate. Nature, 522(7555), pp.164-165 (Nature pdf (via Google)). (this source summarizes and assesses the studies of Haak et al and Allentoft et al. - so it is a secondary source of high quality - Haak et al is not as impressive as Allentoft et al. but the both studies support the same conclusions of a steppe origin)
  • Haak, Wolfgang, Iosif Lazaridis, Nick Patterson, Nadin Rohland, Swapan Mallick, Bastien Llamas, Guido Brandt et al. "Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe." Nature 522, no. 7555 (2015): 207-211. (Primary source based on partial sequencing of the genomes of 69 ancient humans)
  • Allentoft, Morten E., Martin Sikora, Karl-Göran Sjögren, Simon Rasmussen, Morten Rasmussen, Jesper Stenderup, Peter B. Damgaard et al. "Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia." Nature 522, no. 7555 (2015): 167-172. (primary source based on whole genome sequencing of 101 ancient humans).

·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:29, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

• Callaway, Ewen. "DNA deluge reveals Bronze Age secrets." Nature 522, no. 7555 (2015): 140-141. (another secondary source summarizing the significance of Allentoft and Haak's studies)

·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:49, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

• Anthony, David; Ringe, Don (2015), "The Indo-European Homeland from Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives", Annual Review of Linguistics. Vol. 1: 199-219, doi:10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124812 (a review article which is among the best kinds of secondary source)
• Joshua G. Schraiber, Joshua M. Akey (2015), Methods and models for unravelling human evolutionary history, Nature Reviews Genetics (this one merely cites Haak et al without even mentioning the word indo-european or the debate - not a relevant secondary source for this article)
• Ludovic Orlando, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Eske Willerslev (2015), Reconstructing ancient genomes and epigenomes, Nature Reviews Genetics (A secondary source that doesnt really comment on the homeland debate, but simply summarizes the findings of Haak et al in two sentences)

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:48, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Novembre (2015)

This passage from Novembre (2015) is unclear, if not misleading:

"It remains to be seen whether ancient DNA samples will also support the hypothesis that the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European can be traced to a southward migration from the steppe. Research on modern DNA has posited the existence of an ancient north Indian population — can this be linked directly to the steppe populations?"

• "a southward migration from the steppe" - that's not what the steppe-theory says;
• "ancient north Indian population" - the correct term is "ancestral north Indians";
• "can this be linked directly to the steppe populations?" - no, and that's not what Moorjani (or Reich) are arguing; they (and others) seem to be arguing that ANI is a mix of indo-Aryans and pre-Indo-Aryan west-Eurasians.

So, "secondary sources" may not always be the best; I prefer the "primary sources," when the "secondary sources" are incomplete, or even seem to misrepresent the "primary sources." Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:01, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, secondary sources are always best. And yes that is what the steppe theory says (the first branch to leave the Steppe homeland was Anatolian which had to migrate south, Indo-iranians also had to migrate south from the homeland to reach their current locations ). And there is no "correct term" for the ancient or ancestral north Indian population. It is a completely reasonable question to note that it has not yet been established whether the ancestral or ancient north indian population also can be genetically traced to the Yamna population. It is absolute nonsense to think that you are personally better able to interpret the primary sources than John Novembre whose assesment is published in Nature - and that is exactly why we prefer secondary sources - to avoid our own tendency to prefer our own original research when we thikn we know better than published experts.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:14, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

According to the Steppe-theory, the Indo-Aryans descended from the Sintashta culture through the Andronovo culture, while according to Allentoft the Sintashta culture may be an offspring from the Corded Ware culture. So, no, that's not a southward migration from the steppe, but an eastward migration from the steppes, or a southward migration from the Corded ware culture. To state that it was a southward migration from the steppes is an obvious mistake. See Allentoft (2015) which we are discussing here. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:16, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

No, according to the steppe theory the proto-Indo-europeans originated in the steppes. That is the only thing steppe theory is. Which archeological cultures correspond to which PIE subgroups is not "the steppe theory", but different proposals can be contested or accepted by different proponents of steppe theory. Your statement is like saying that "Evolutionary theory says that Homo sapiens evolved from Homo heidelbergenses" - which is of course incorrect in so far as basic evolutionary theory is compatible with many different scenario for the origins of humans. The statement is perhaps a simplification of the route but it is in no way a mistake and does in no way compromise or lessen Novembre's worth as a secondary source, and it is certainly not any reason to disregard specific policy and engage in original research. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:46, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Callaway (2015)

Usefull quote:

"Only half a decade after a 4,000-year-old tuft of hair yielded the first ancient human genome, researchers are starting

to sequence ancient genomes by the dozen, much as they do with modern genomes. Such population-scale sequencing is answering long-standing questions about the Eurasian Bronze Age." It points to the novelty of these research methods, the speedy development, and the growing importance. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:09, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

I dont think we need to include the quote, but definitely we need to describe that ancient DNA is a very new and promising method for establishing ancient population movements and relatoins between them.

Muddled sentence and a half

The second paragraph under Proto-Indo-European_homeland#Genetics currently reads:

"According to genetic studies, individuals from the Yamnaya culture have a mix from eastern European hunter-gatherer[3] and Caucasus hunter-gatherer[28] ancestry. Iran Chalcolithic people with a Caucasian hunter-gatherer component.[29][29][note 4][clarification needed]"

The initial sentence is well-formed. The fragment following it may be intended as an insert or replacement at the end of that sentence, but I am not familiar enough with the material to confidently combine the two into an intelligible whole, let alone know if the result is true.

The doubled link to what is currently reference 29 (Lazaridis 2016, p. 8) similarly indicates an earlier editing error.

I hope someone more informed than I will be alerted by this note and make an appropriate correction.

Whoever does so is welcome to then delete this section!

GeorgeTSLC (talk) 21:59, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Misshap

To editor Joe Roe:, I get it now. After reviewing the article, I realize this is about the language, not just the ethnicity, so I see the need for the linguistics project tag now.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 19:38, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Anatolian origin

The article states: The major alternative theory was the Anatolian hypothesis, which put it in Anatolia around 8000 BC,[5] but this theory has lost support due to the explanatory limitations of this theory.[6][1]

At least source number six (Boukaert et al. 2012) is in support of the Anatolian hypothesis - from the abstract: We found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin. Both the inferred timing and root location of the Indo-European language trees fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8000 to 9500 years ago. Why does the article present it as saying something else? And why can't the article say that the issue is not yet settled? -- Zz (talk) 21:24, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

I assume [6] was supposed to be attached to the first clause (i.e. "put it in Anatolia around 8000 BC,[5][6]"), but has gone astray at some point. I'll fix that now. – Joe (talk) 21:35, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

As I thought I remembered, we used to have a much better explained and referenced lead. It seems to have gotten pared away at some point, I'm not sure why, and that's resulted in the sources getting jumbled up and misrepresented (Anthony & Ringe don't say that the matter is settled, they say they think it ought to be). Does anyone mind if I restore that version? – Joe (talk) 21:49, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Zickzack -- the relevant fact is that very few historical/comparative linguists focusing on Proto-Indo-European have supported the Anatolian hypothesis (see some of my comments in previous discussions above), and it will be very hard to consider the Anatolian hypothesis the leading theory until more of them do. I can't access the Bouckaert et al. paper (or even its abstract), but that paper is actually a lexicostatistics paper, not a paper in historical linguistics as this is usually defined. They're employing more sophisticated versions of the methods of glottochronology, something which had a very mixed record in 20th-century linguistics, and has often been controversial. You can see [1] for a popular account of some criticisms of Bouckaert et al... AnonMoos (talk) 09:58, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

• The Bouckaert et al. paper got a lot of attention and was particularly popular among people who like Bayesian modeling, and the Anatolian model generally has been advanced by archeologists rather than historical linguists. There is a wide agreement among linguists that it does not fit the linguistic evidence well. The few linguists who would probably be in favor are those who support the indo-hittite hypothesis. Nevertheless, it is true that the matter is no definitively settled, but the steppe-model has much stronger support in linguistics and archeology than the Anatolian model. With Haak et al's demonstration of massive gene flow from the steppes in to Europe in the period proposed by the steppe model was very important in shifting the weight of the evidence evenm further towards the steppe model. This difference in support should be reflected in the lead.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 10:03, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I personally have mixed feelings. The Kurgan thesis lacks the driving force that is supposed to stand behind the Anatolian hypothesis, namely the introduction of agriculture. But then, lexico-statistics is nothing that can make me happy, either. On the other hand, Cavalli-Sforza has pointed out that the two need not be mutually exclusive. The Kurgan area might be the region of a secondary expansion, and this makes some sense to me.

However, I just wanted to point out that the current lead might confuse well meaning readers who actually check references. A reversal to an earlier option might be an idea. -- Zz (talk) 15:57, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

According to some, the driving force of Indo-European expansion was the Secondary products revolution, accompanied by domestication of horses (including basic carts with plank wheels), and the ability to work copper and sometimes "arsenical bronze". Some further technological refinements (such as spoked wheels, chariots, and true tin bronze) were important in the expansion of certain Indo-European subgroups, but came too late for the Proto-Indo-European period... AnonMoos (talk) 16:23, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

@AnonMoos: I think you'll find that few prehistorians believe that there was a "secondary products revolution", never mind that it caused the Indo-European expansion.

In any case, our job isn't to decide which hypothesis is the most likely, it's to summarise what reliable secondary & tertiary sources say about them. Studies like Haak et al. may be hammering the nail in the coffin of the Anatolian hypothesis, but I don't think that's reflected in the literature yet. Until that happens, the pre-aDNA reviews like Mallory & Atkinson 2006 are what we have to go on. I'll go ahead and restore the lead that was based on those. – Joe (talk) 17:12, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

This might indeed be a close call and a question of timing.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:23, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Fabbri

This addition has been reverted three times now, by two different editors diff edit-summary "Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Tirgil34" diff diff; a similar addition has been reverted four times, by three different editors, at Massagetae diff diff diff diff. About time to discuss (or open a new Tirgil34 thread?). This is the reverted text:

An Armenian origin of Proto-Indo-Europeans followed by a migration through Iran northward into the Eurasian steppe is also supported by Fabbri, who proposed for the ancestors of the Indo-European and relative peoples the name Suparsthas. Under this name the descendants of peoples would have been indicated, who would have concentrated in the Armenian Mount territory after a flood over Mesopotamia around 8000 BC. Suparsthas would have then been distinguished as Suparas to the North and Parsthas to the South. Around 6000 BC, Suparas would have started to migrate northwards up to Siberia and then partially flowed back into Subartu and up to Syria. Parsthas, ancestors of Indo-Europeans, would instead have started to migrate to the South-West (Parthas/Qartas/Hattas) up to Anatolia, and to the South-East (Parsas/Arsas/Aras) up to the Iranian highlands and hence into the prairies of Central Asia between the current Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which would have become a secondary home. However, this theory is not widely accepted yet.

References

The addition "However, this theory is not widely accepted yet" hits the point, except that "theory" is too much honour, pron=bably. From the introduction of that article:

Th hypothesis of a flod on Mesopotamia due to a temporary increase in the sea level as a consequence of the melting of glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age (9000 BC6) would also explain the separation of caucasoid somatic morphology peoples into branches speaking languages belonging to apparently diffrent families, in particular the Semitic and Indo-European languages. It is believed in fact that the languages of these two families, attested in documents of the third millennium BC, can be derived from a single language through an evolution process lasted about 6000-6500 years.

If Mesopotamia was floded, the caucasoid morphology populations, who were gathered there, tried to escape into the surrounding areas, which probably were already partly occupied by their relatives. Thy thus resulted separated by a water barrier stretching from north-west to south-east. Th populations who escaped to the North, on the mountain chain stretching from Anatolia to the Iranian highlands, and those that fled to the south, on the highest parts of the Arabian peninsula, maintained the common somatic morphology with small mutations, such as minor changes in forehead, eye arch, and nose curvature. Thir descendants, in the historical age, resulted in speaking Indo-European and Semitic languages, respectively. The populations who escaped the flod to east and west probably interbred with people of diffrent morphology, settled respectively in the Indus and Nile Valley, contributing to the civilization of these areas.

References

And more:

The area where *Suparsthas were originally gathered and from which they moved into Anatolia, Caucasus, and Iranian highlands

WP:FRINGE... Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:40, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

• Fabbri is a professor of engineering who publishes his indo-european theories in romanian journals. There is no indication that this work is notable enough to merit any form of inclusion.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:10, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Indeed. Fabbri, who teaches industrial engineering by day and completely lacks relevant credentials, just makes up stuff and interprets sources arbitrarily to suit his speculations, which are essentially fantasy. He's a typical crank – amusingly, it has even been noted that engineers are somehow particularly prone to crankery. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 10:18, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

"Truthteller"

@Truthteller301: this edit of you ignores the concencus at Talk:Proto-Indo-European homeland#Fabbri, while this edit is an WP:UNDUE duplication of a WP:FRINGE theory already described at Proto-Indo-European homeland#Out of India theory. See also Talk:Indigenous Aryans/Archive 3#RfC: the "Indigenous Aryans" theory is fringe-theory. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:00, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Who is to decide what is Fringe ? you?. I have provided multiple genetic papers as references supporting this theory. Also there are numerous citations and references by Historians, linguists, Geneticists and Anthropologists. You have erased all of the content with out even attempting to create a consensus with other editors. ---User:Truthteller301 —Preceding undated comment added 19:09, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Apparently you don't get it. The Wikipedia-community has decided that the Out of India "theory" is considered WP:FRINGE here at Wikipedia, and shall not receive WP:UNDUE attention. The citations you provided were copied from Indigenous Aryans; copying them here is undue. The geneticists you provided are a biased selection of genetic research, part of them outdated, and ignoring the genetic research which clearly points to Indo-Aryan migrations into India. That's a violation of WP:NPOV and WP:OR. The concencus you refer to already exists, and is ignored by you. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:20, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

User talk:Joshua Jonathan, Please back up your talk of "The Wikipedia-community has decided that the Out of India "theory" is considered WP:FRINGE". Again, you are passing you personal judgement on the genetic studies done my multiple genetic scientist from different countries, provide references which argue against all the genetic studies I have cited. Please provide evidence of genetic studies against the Indigenous Aryans theory and since you claim it as fringe, I am sure you have references to dozens of genetic Studies. I would be glad to see them all. Thanks ---[[User talk:Truthteller301]] —Preceding undated comment added 19:53, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

I already did; there's a link above on a RFC on the Indigenous Aryans theory. Read it. Regarding the genetical studies, see Indo-Aryan migration#Genetics: ancient ancestry and multiple gene flows. There's a lot more to it than Sahoo (2006). Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:07, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

See also Razib Khan, The peopling of the Indian subcontinent at the dawn of knowing, who explains the Eurasian genetic component in Indians as the result of two waves of admixture: farmers from Iran, and IE-pastoralists. In this model, Dravidian originated in the IVC and spread from there to southern India, shortly before Sanskritization turned northern India into IE-speaking territory. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:41, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• Joshua Jonathan is right, the out of India theory is not a serious contender among the theories placing the Indo-European Urheimat. And we have discussed this, many, many times.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 06:16, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

New research: The first horse herders and the impact of early Bronze Age steppe expansions into Asia

• [2]
  • "The Yamnaya expansions from the western steppe into Europe and Asia during the Early Bronze Age (~3000 BCE) are believed to have brought with them Indo-European languages and possibly horse husbandry. We analyze 74 ancient whole-genome sequences from across Inner Asia and Anatolia and show that the Botai people associated with the earliest horse husbandry derived from a hunter-gatherer population deeply diverged from the Yamnaya. Our results also suggest distinct migrations bringing West Eurasian ancestry into South Asia before and after but not at the time of Yamnaya culture. We find no evidence of steppe ancestry in Bronze Age Anatolia from when Indo-European languages are attested there. Thus, in contrast to Europe, Early Bronze Age Yamnaya-related migrations had limited direct genetic impact in Asia."
• [3]
  • "The study also shows that the spread of the Indo-Iranian languages to South Asia, with Hindi, Urdu and Persian as major modern offshoots, cannot result from the Yamnaya expansions. Rather, the Indo-Iranian languages spread with a later push of pastoralist groups from the South Ural Mountains during the Middle to Late Bronze Age. Prior to entering South Asia, these groups, thought to have spoken an Indo-Iranian language, were impacted by groups with an ancestry typical of more western Eurasian populations. This suggests that the Indo-Iranian speakers did not split off from the Yamnaya population directly, but were more closely related to the Indo-European speakers that lived in Eastern Europe." --Wario-Man (talk) 05:16, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Full text here. The archaeological supplements contain a lot of info! Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:49, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

And here's the sitser-article: 137 ancient human genomes from across the Eurasian steppes. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:54, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Theory versus hypothesis

@Florian Blaschke: I wonder if it is correct that the Out-of-India idea is a hypothesis. On the one hand, it might be called a theory, since it takes into account a large numer of data. On the other hand, the basic premisses are the similarities between various languages (accepted fact), the notion of migration as an explanation for these similarities (accepted theory), and the idea that Sanskrit culture is 10,000 years old (pure fantasy), which mkes OoI a politico-religious narrative without any base in observed facts or data. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:20, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

It is a hypothesis which has failed to find support in the data, and which is nonetheless being kept alive for religious and political reasons.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 06:09, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

JJ, this is related to the debate we had about the two meanings of "theory" at Talk:Indo-European migrations. The scientific meaning of "theory" is that it should account for pretty much all known facts. But the regular English meaning is closer to "hypothesis". -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:34, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

For the "Out of India" hypothesis, the linguists seem to say that it is plausible but extremely unlikely. Archaeologically, there is absolutely no evidence for it. No horses in particular. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:42, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

I don't think any linguists outside of india consider it plausible. Possible, perhaps, but not plausible.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 13:44, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Indeed. Possible, not plausible. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:51, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Exactly. It is an outdated hypothesis. It was taken seriously once in the global (well, effectively European) academic community (in the 19th century), but as I've mentioned before, the discovery of the "law of palatals" was what convinced philologists that Proto-Indo-European was not as similar to Sanskrit as Schleicher thought, that there is no way to derive the European languages from anything that could conceivably be called Sanskrit (which still seems to be widely believed or propagated in India out of nationalistic zeal), and this discovery at least contributed heavily to the abandonment of the hypothesis, which however at the time was not the dominant hypothesis either way – the steppe hypothesis already existed (although I'm not sure what relevant scholars in general thought of it), with the Northern European hypothesis arising as a major competitor, for reasons that were largely equally unscientific as those that keep the Out-of-India hypothesis alive today.

It is possible, in principle, to envision Proto-Indo-European being spoken in Neolithic South Asia, and to construct a sequence of migrations out of South Asia of speakers of languages that were subsequently more and more closely related to Sanskrit until eventually only Sanskrit was left (just for fun, I recently actually constructed such a hypothetical sequence), with the migration that gave rise to the Indo-Aryan element of the Mitanni as the most recent one, and if you discount the evidential value of the "linguistic paleontology" method practically completely, you can even get around some of the most obvious objections (although this largely destroys the basis on which you could decide between any of the competing homeland proposals) – but of course, the possibiliter fallacy applies here. There is simply no way that this Denkmöglichkeit could be described as a plausible competitor.

Based on the distribution of the branches alone, which displays a remarkable northward bias (regardless of how many assumptions favouring an Asian homeland you make), a South Asian homeland is simply widely outside the range of probability, a homeland in Asia Minor just marginally plausible, and a European or perhaps Caucasian homeland the most obvious solution. Unless, to be sure, it turns out that a Proto-Anatolian stage never existed in the first place and the Anatolian sub-branches descend from Proto-Indo-European directly, that is (an even more radical alternative to the Indo-Hittite hypothesis that I wondered about in earnest recently).

(Curiously, Kümmel's recent work on the Proto-Indo-European vocalism seems to imply that Proto-Indo-Iranian vocalism – and thus indirectly also Sanskrit vocalism –, and especially the vocalism of the earliest loanwords into Proto-Uralic that can be identified as some form of Indo-Iranian, even if it may well precede the Proto-Indo-Iranian stage strictu senso – at least as conventionally reconstructed –, could actually be more similar to the original Proto-Indo-European vocalism at least in some respects, especially with respect to the vowel traditionally reconstructed as */o/ on the basis mainly of Greek; though this complication does not affect the crucial conclusion that the eventual merger of several vowels into Proto-Indo-Iranian */a/ disproves the idea that the Indo-Iranian vocalism is actually older – rather, it's possible that the European vocalism isn't quite like the original system, either, and it might actually have been different from both the generalised European and Indo-Iranian systems.)

To be fair, the term fringe theory does muddle the distinction between hypothesis and theory, reflecting the colloquial use of theory to mean a hypothesis or even merely thesis, opinion, guess, suggestion or idea. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:02, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Basically, if it wasn't for the Hindutva, we'd treat the Indo-Aryan indigenist hypothesis as a purely historical but superseded hypothesis just like the North European hypothesis. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:06, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

pov-pushing by IP

IP 133.6.203.140 has repeatedly diff diff diff editorialized info about the acceptance of the steppe theory, suggesting it's just one of several hypotheses, supported by just a specific group of scholars. This is incorrect; the steppe theory is the main theory, and widely accepted. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:19, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Joshua Jonathan is pushing the steppe theory, which is just one out of many theories without any conclusive evidence in its favor, as a theory supported by a "mahority" of scholars. That is incorrect. Moreover, the editorializing is the definition of usage of weasel words, which should be avoided in Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 133.6.203.140 (talk) 02:52, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

It's not just one out of many theories, nor is it without any conclusive evidence in its favor; it is simply the mainstream view. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 03:17, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Please try to understand that scientific theories are not decided based on whether one view is "mainstream", but on whether there is conclusive evidence to support them. The fact of the matter remains that there is no conclusive evidence to support the steppe theory. Therefore, Wikipedia is not the place to promote one theory or another using weasel words like "majority" and "mainstream'. Please respect the standards of Wikipedia and refrain from point of view pushing. Also, please understand that threatening and intimidation have no place in Wikipedia editing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 133.6.203.140 (talk) 03:25, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

The term "majority" is being used precisley because of editors like you and their persistent pov-pushing, who have a problem with the facts. This is not a "compromise," especially not WP:FORUM comments like

A systematic survey of scholars has never been conducted to find out how many support one view or another, and would not make sense to be conducted, since scientific theories are not decided by majority voting.

which don't belong in an article. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:31, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

We're not here to debate philosophy of science, 133.6.203.140 (talk · contribs · WHOIS). The wording in the lead, stating that the steppe hypothesis is the current scientific consensus in Indo-European studies, is supported by multiple inline citations, the body of the article, and the references therein. If you want to change it you will need to provide references to reliable, secondary or tertiary sources that support a different view. – Joe (talk) 09:52, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

133.6.203.140 -- In the field of linguistics, the general steppe theory is the only one with significant support from those who work in Indo-European linguistics as their main field of study, so it's not just one among many hypotheses from that point of view... AnonMoos (talk) 19:48, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Renfrew

@Sceaf: could you add a source for your addition? Thanks! Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:02, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

I believe he's referencing this lecture. Not sure how you'd cite it. – Joe (talk) 21:12, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan: I thought I did cite the youtube lecture as a reference? has it been removed. It is indeed the one Joe cited above.

Whereabouts in the lecture does Renfrew 'concede' that 'his Anatolian hypothesis was wrong'? Sweet6970 (talk) 22:47, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

At around 55 minutes into this lecture, Renfrew says that, although there is no doubt that there was a kurgan invasion/migration, it is still not clear whether this was the first Indo-European migration, or whether the first I-E migration was from Anatolia. He never says his Anatolian hypothesis was wrong. The comment in the article is not justified by referring to this lecture. Sweet6970 (talk) 08:35, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

(fr) "Même l’archéologue Colin Renfrew, pendant longtemps l’opposant principal de l’hypothèse steppique, a récemment accepté la réalité de migrations de populations parlant une ou des langues indo-européennes depuis les steppes pontiques jusqu’au nord-ouest de l’Europe (Renfrew 2017)"; from Pellard et al. (2018) "L'indo-européen n'est pas un mythe", Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris. Azerty82 (talk) 11:54, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

The above translates as: ‘Even the archaeologist Colin Renfrew, who has for a long time been the principal opponent of the steppe hypothesis, has recently accepted the reality of migrations from the steppe towards north-west Europe, of populations speaking one of the Indo-European languages.’

This is completely different from what you have added to this article. You should revert your edit. RegardsSweet6970 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:06, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

A more accurate translation would be "[e]ven archaeologist Colin Renfrew, for a long time the main opponent of the steppe hypothesis, has recently accepted the reality of migration of populations speaking one or several Indo-European languages [parlant une ou des langues indo-européennes] from the Pontic Steppes towards northwest Europe." I have reworded the sentence in the article accordingly. Azerty82 (talk) 12:15, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction and amendment to the article. (It's a long time since I was studying French at school.) Regards Sweet6970 (talk) 12:22, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

No problem, my first edit was not well worded. It may look like I'm pushing the Steppe hypothesis (for which I admit a preference considering the evidence) over the Anatolian one. But I'm basing the recent shift on two recent publications (2018 and 2019) that appears to show a growing support among academics for the first theory. Azerty82 (talk) 12:29, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Disruptive editing

@MojtabaShahmiri: could you please quit your WP:DISRUPTIVE pov-pushing and WP:OR? See also WP:DONTGETIT. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:49, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Would you please explain what you mean? It seems you just want to impose your personal opinion. MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 20:39, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Read again all the comments you have received the past month, and then consider two possibilities: you're right, and everyone else here is wrong - or, alternatively, all those people try to communicate something to you that doesn't get through to you. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:52, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

In the past month I contributed in Persian Wikipedia and my contributions were highly appreciated, I don't know why there is a strong anti-Iranian attitude in English Wikipedia, this thing has been discussed in Persian Wikipedia and other than me, several other Iranian members also said that they can't edit anything in English Wikipedia. MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 21:21, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

@MojtabaShahmiri: I explained in several edit notes why certain of your additions were WP:OR (not supported by the sources). It has nothing to do with an anti-Iranian attitude, but rather with the fact that the sources you have offered to support an Iranian origin hypothesis for PIE do not actually make that proposal/case or support that hypothesis (except perhaps for Reich in a limited way, who also suggests Armenia, and does so with the caveat that dna data from known ancient IE-speaking Anatolians/ancient IE-speakers south of the Caucasus is not yet available and thus that his suggestion is circumstantial). Here I will attempt to explain and paraphrase my statements again here below:

First I removed several sources you had used to compose a new section of "objections" to the Steppe hypothesis. One I removed because it was already included in a later section of the article (Wang et al. - the version you added was a journalistic article linked to a non-peer-reviewed version of Wang, and the study, at least the current peer-reviewed version already included, does not say/support the position what you seemed to think it did/were citing it for - and some of that had regarding Wang et al. had in already been explained to you by User:Joshua Jonathan Talk page in the topic above). Another addition (Gamkrelidze and Ivanov) was removed because in the ref you supplied there was no conclusion made against the Steppe hypothesis (and the source was too early to be an "objection" to recent research). Also, even if that conclusion was made in the source, Gamkrelidze and Ivanov's work is based on the disputed "glotalic theory" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_homeland#Near_Eastern_model (making its inclusion WP:UNDUE) in that the context in which you added it. I also noted that PIE is now considered to have a (hybrid) partially Caucasus or Near Eastern and partially Steppe/Eastern European hunter-gatherer origin (with those two components, according to the Steppe hypothesis, having at some point merged in the steppe to form PIE). So a partial Caucasus or Near Eastern influence in PIE (genetically and linguistically) is not necessarily an objections to the Steppe hypothesis as it currently exists (as explained in this section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_homeland#Alignment_with_Steppe-theory). The third source, Reich 2018, I removed because it was already present in the the "Armenian hypothesis section. I did not object when you added Reich back to "Objections", but more recently User:Joshua Jonathan thought it best to relocate/condense it to the "Armenian hypothesis" section, a decision with which I agree (now Reich 2018 is currently in that section in a somewhat expanded form incorporating some of your additions to it).

Then, after the above, you added (or relocated) sources to the aforementioned "Objections" to the Steppe theory section, regarding the possible origin and location of initial diversification of the haplogroup R1a (one of which suggested Iran as a place of origin/initial diversification for R1a) as "Objections" to the Steppe hypothesis" and stated that they indicated that PIE did not come from the Steppe. I explained that these sources did not belong there and that this conclusion regarding the origin of PIE was not in the sources, and thus that your addition was WP:OR. It was also WP:OR because (as I explained) the ultimate location of origin of R1a/its initial diversification is not especially relevant to origin of IE because R1a's origin and initial diversification occurred (in the paleolithic, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1a) long before the development of the PIE language family much later (jumping to a conclusion regarding the origin of PIE based on a source on the possible origin of R1a is not supported.

After reverting my edit you responded with a note which seemed to conflate or misunderstand the difference between the origin of the PIE language group/culture and the origin and initial divergence of the haplogroup R1a, writing: "Many geneticists consider Haplogroup R1a to be associated with the origins and spread of the Indo-Europeans" and then according to latest genetic study it says "the initial diversification of R1a took place in the vicinity of Iran."

I responded explaining (slightly paraphrased): "The initial diversification of R1a relates to its origin and is not relevant to the origin of PIE (which would have formed many millennia after the divergence and initial diversification of R1a). The origin/initial divergence of R1a is much earlier. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1a The sources do not draw conclusions from this re the origin of PIE. The initial origin and diversification of R1a was ca 22kya (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1a) and may or may not have been in (or near) Iran. However, this does not preclude/conflict with the possibility that much later (groups carrying) a branch or branches of R1a later migrated northward (possibly to the Steppe) and participated in the formation of PIE - much later after R1a's initial divergence and diversification (or alternately, that a branch/some branches of R1a migrated north not too long after R1a's initial divergence, and that PIE then eventually formed in that northern location much later). Thus (in sum) the initial origin and diversification of R1a was long before the formation of PIE, even though the spread of PIE is associated with R1a at a much later time. The location of R1a's origin/initial diversification is not synonymous with the origin of PIE and cannot be conflated with the origin of the PIE language and culture (and people group)." Skllagyook (talk) 22:02, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Cave of Dzhebel

@MojtabaShahmiri: the Cave of Dzhebel is in Turkmenistan, not Iran. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:32, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Please read it completely, he says "Djebel material is related to a Paleolithic material of Northwestern Iran". I really can't understand this behavior. --MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 05:41, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Indeed, you don't, and that's exactly your problem. Look, that the steppe-people were related to Iranian hunter-gatherers is clear. But that does not mean that they spoke the same language, or proto-language. Haak et al (2015): "However, the question of what languages were spoken by the 'Eastern European hunter-gatherers' and the southern, Armenian-like, ancestral population remains open." Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:09, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

That is just your personal opinion, David Reich who was highlighted as one of Nature's 10 for his contributions to science, believes that Iran is one of the most likely locations of the population that first spoke an Indo-European language. Several other scholars also believe the same thing, whether you mix this theory with Armenian hypothesis or call it Caspian route (!!), ... --MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 06:52, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

You really don't understand what you're talking about. Reich connects Armenian/Iranian origins to the Anatolian languages, and a route via the Caucasus. The Anatolian languages split-off ca. 4000 BCE (or even later). Sergent speaks about a Caspian route before the split-off of Anatolian languages. Reich speaks, in effect, about 'proto-proto-IE'; Sergent about a pre-proto-IE culture. And that's not "just" my personal opinion; see the Haak-quote. Such comments are unworthy for academics. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:24, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

I see no reason for continuing this discussion, Armenian/Iranian sounds good, further researches are needed to prove this is just Iranian, not Armenian. --MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 14:13, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Iranian hypothesis

Armenia is a Caucasian country and we read "Wang et al. (2018/2019) note that the Caucasus served as a corridor for gene flow between the steppe and cultures south of the Caucasus." How can it be related to Armenian hypothesis? It clearly says that the Caucasus just served as a corridor. --MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 07:41, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Please read before objecting; the Wiki-article says Gamkrelidze and Ivanov held that the urheimat was south of the Caucasus. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:32, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Copied from User talk:Joshua Jonathan#Iranian hypothesis

Please look at the talk page of Proto-Indo-European homeland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Proto-Indo-European_homeland You said "Wang et al. is already mentioned in the paragraph above; and they speak of 'south of the Caucasus', not specifically Iran." What is the name of country which is located in the south of the Caucasus? Armenian is itself a Caucasian country and it says the Caucasus just served as a corridor. And in the paragraph above of it, David Reich also says present-day Iran or Armenia, isn't it a specific mention to Iran?! --MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 08:34, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

End of copied part

Yes, Reich said so; he made a suggestion. Your "Iranian hypothesis" is one reference to a journal behind a paywall, World's most-spoken languages may have arisen in ancient Iran. What study are they referring to; Wang et al. (2018)? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:51, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, look at this one: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/all-indoeuropean-languages-may-have-originated-from-this-one-place/ There is no mention of Armenia, except in the section which talks about the geography of the Caucasus mountains. We also read: "However, there are still many who favor the conflicting theory – that the Proto-Indo-European language arose in the Eurasian steppe. But this would only take the language back about 4,800 years – when people moved from the Eurasian steppe into Europe – and specialists think the language is significantly older. The idea that it first sprung up in Iran about 6,500 years ago follows this assumption." — Preceding unsigned comment added by MojtabaShahmiri (talk • contribs) 09:23, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

There are not "two main theories" - that is, the idea that 'proto-proto-IE' originated south oftbd Caucasus is not a main theory, but a possibility that has attracted rendwd attention. The sentence However, there are still many who favor the conflicting theory is misplaced, of course; "still" implies that there has been a lot of discussion and follow-up research, which is not the case, of course. And the idea that 'proto-proto-IE' originated in western Iran is not "conflicging," but supplemental. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:03, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

There is no mention of proto-proto-IE in Wang et al. and Reich's work, I don't know why you want to mix these different theories and different lands, Iran is not Armenia, it is meaningless that theory which relates to Iran is mentioned under the title of Armenian hypothesis. MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 14:46, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

"Armenian hypothesis" is the common term for the idea that 'proto-proto-IE' origibated south of the Caucasus. Note that Wang et al. (2019) clearly state that the steppe population and the Caucasus population were clearly distinct groups as lonf ago as 6300-6100 BP (p.3). There was gene flow at the time from the south into the Maykop culture, but not into the stepe cultures. They admit that the idea that ppIE originated south of the Caucasus, based on the fact that there was some gen flow to the north into the Maykop culture, is speculation, and that IE branched off from the steppe. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:47, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "proto-proto-IE", David Reich in "Who We Are and How We Got Here" says Ancient DNA from Anatolia shows no evidence of steppe ancestry, in fact ancient Anatolian languages, as one of major IE languages, couldn't be from steppe, so as he also says, Iran is one of the most likely locations of the population that first spoke an Indo-European language, not proto-proto-IE, because ancient DNA from people who lived there matches what we would expect for a source population both for the Yamnaya and for ancient Anatolians. MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 19:59, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Isn't it interesting that there are several mentions to Iran in this wiki page, especially in objection to all other theories, for example:

According to Underhill et al. (2014), the initial diversification of R1a took place in the vicinity of Iran,[44] while Pamjav et al. (2012) think that R1a diversified within the Eurasian Steppes or the Middle East and Caucasus region.

According to Lazaridis et al. (2016), "farmers related to those from Iran spread northward into the Eurasian steppe; and people related to both the early farmers of Iran and to the pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe spread eastward into South Asia".[60] They further note that ANI "can be modelled as a mix of ancestry related to both early farmers of western Iran and to people of the Bronze Age Eurasian steppe",[60] which makes it unlikely that the Indo-European languages in India are derived from Anatolia.[61]

There are even Baltic and Indian hypotheses, but no one is allowed to add Iranian hypothesis! MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 20:14, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

See WP:OR. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:48, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

@MojtabaShahmiri: Only part of Armenia is in the Caucasus mountain range (Armenia staddles/includes both parts of the south Caucasus and parts of Eastern Anatolia. "South of the Caucasus" does not necessarily mean Iran. It could also, for instance, mean southern Armenia and/or elsewhere in Anatolia (e.g. parts of modern Turkey). Also, the source you mentioned on "ANI" ("Ancestral North Indian") ancestry in Indians/South Asians refers to the theory/evidence that ANI (the Western Eurasian genetic component in Indians/South Asians) is composed of two waves of migration (from the northwest into the Indian subcontinent) including: ancestry from Iran (an earlier wave associated with the root - or at least one of the roots - of the Dravidian languages) and also Steppe ancestry (associated with a later wave that brought Indo-European languages to the Indian subcobtinent) which is greater in the Indo-European-speaking parts of India and less to absent in the Dravidian/non-IE areas. It is not evidence for an Iranian origin of PIE but, if anything, seemingly the reverse. Skllagyook (talk) 19:00, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: Ignore all other things, David Reich says "south of the Caucasus Mountains, perhaps in present-day Iran or Armenia", is it true or not? If it is true then there should be also an Iranian hypothesis. When one of the greatest geneticists in the world say Proto-Indo-European homeland was X or Y, we can't ignore X and just focus on Y, because some people don't like X! --MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 15:26, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

In this page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Europeans we see Zagros Mountain after Armenian hypothesis and there is also Armenian Hypothesis/Iran section. I really don't know why it is forbidden here to say the same things! MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 20:36, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

The Journal of Indo-European Studies

Journal_of_Indo-European_Studies is a peer-reviewed academic journal of Indo-European studies, founded in 1973 by Roger Pearson. It publishes papers in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, mythology and linguistics relating to the cultural history of the Indo-European speaking peoples. It is really meaningless that it can't be used as a source here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MojtabaShahmiri (talk • contribs) 13:40, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

@Puduḫepa: For you everyone who opposes the steppe theory is not a notable researcher on PIE topics, whether you like it or not, this is a peer-reviewed academic article in an academic journal, so it should be mentioned. --MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 13:51, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) No comment on what state the article should take but that has nothing to do with Puduḫepa's reason given for reversion. The reason given is that Alexander Kozintsev's views aren't notable. In other words, you need non-primary sources about his views, not works by him about his views.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree with that reasoning one way or the other, though I will note that (at first glance) applying it consistently would mean the entire "North-Caspian Indo-Uralic and south-Caspian CHG" should get the boot as it cites Anthony himself with no secondary sources. Now, there is the potential argument that being published by Brill is different that getting published in a journal but... I'm not really buying that, as much respect as I have for Brill.

I'm neutral as to whether or not the Kozintsev and/or Anthony material should be included, but this isn't going to be resolved if one party mischaracterizes the other's arguments or if the other party is not being consistent. Ian.thomson (talk) 13:53, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

The fact is that first I just added Alexander Kozintsev's view on Anthony's work. But what we already see is Anthony's work about his own views. --MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 14:11, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Anthony, Mallory, and so are notable experts on IE topics (and are cited frequently on the page and on other studies on PIE) and Reich is also a notable geneticist, despite his works have serious gaps - that's why I did not and will not remove his work from the page (fyi, he also supports south Caucasus hypothesis). But it's not the case for Kozintsev or other unknown academicians. Mojtaba has a history of attempts to promote his own works (i.e., another unknown researcher) and also has a history of WP:PROFRINGE[4][5]. If including Kozintsev is so damn important and necessary, then feel free to add it back, but be prepared for WP:BLOATED and more mess due to copious trivial views on the topic. Puduḫepa 14:29, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Are you the owner of Wikipedia?! It seems I should thank you for not removing David Reich's work from the page! You and me can't say that who is notable or not, a peer-reviewed academic article in an academic journal can be certainly used as a reliable source in Wikipedia, the fact is that you are here for just supporting the steppe theory and it doesn't matter for you what others say. --MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 14:46, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

No, Puduḫepa is not the owner of Wikipedia. But they have a very good understanding of IE-topics, in contrast to you.

Kozintsev is fascinating, but indeed a big unknown. He might be relevant in connection to Nichols, though, and Anthony's proposal; they give some theoretical framework for the idea south-of-the-Caucasus origins/elements of PIE. The idea that the CHG-component came from somewhere along the southern Caspian coast sticks. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:20, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Of course you should support each other, no one understands IE-topics except you!! You just believe in the steppe theory and don't care what David Reich and other great scholars say, I don't know how long you can hide news studies, but one day you will have to believe it too. MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 17:14, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Again, no comment one way or another on content, but @MojtabaShahmiri: that kind of attitude is only going to make you come across as a tendentious crank, so you might want to drop it. That kind of attitude, combined with attempts at self-promotion, tend to lead to topic bans or even blocks.

What they mean by "notable" is that David W. Anthony qualified for an article about him (although it would have been more immediately obvious if they had linked to it here or -- even better -- in the article). The way to get around this would be to either gather independent sources to demonstrate that Kozintsev and/or his views are notable and summarize them, or else find some fault that would demonstrate that Anthony actually is not notable (which would less likely to succeed and come across as not motivated by a sincere desire to help.

Whining like a defeated cartoon villain will accomplish nothing. Finding independent works discussing Kozintsev's theories, or else writing an article about him, would get his views included in the article. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:59, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

@Ian.thomson: Please talk about Wikipedia policies, as I read: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources peer-reviewed academic publications are usually the most reliable sources, it says nothing about requirement of Wikipedia pages for the authors of these articles, David Anthony's article is from the same Journal of Indo-European Studies, in a subsequent volume of this journal, Kozintsev mentions some important problems about Anthony's theory and I added it, what is wrong about it? --MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 04:50, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

It's not about having a WP article. It seems that you do not only cherry pick the academical papers, but also cherry pick others' comments. Kozintsev wrote too much stuff re PIE and IE, but none of his theories are eloborated or discussed by other scholars, i.e., his views are not taken serious in IE studies (at least for now). There is not much info about him on the Internet, either. I have not read his paper thoroughly, but acc. your and the blogger's quotes, he supports disputed Indo-Uralic hypothesis, and at the same time claims that CHG (who were haplogroup J) were PIE-speakers? Such a mess. The paper looks like a salad, he even cited eurogenes.blogspot (a blog created by a hobbyist who has no academical background, if I remeber correctly) frequently. BTW, there is a section on his paper, called The horse, the ass, and language (mocking Anthony's "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language"). So, we have an unknown academician who has disputed views and whose views are not taken serious by other scholars writing on IE topics. I don't see why we have to include him on this page.Puduḫepa 06:49, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Try to find any source that discusses Kozintsev's ideas. It isn't even mentioned in the blogosphere. The JIES seems to be looking for ideas regarding the origins of archaic PIE; but Kozintsev is 'wild'. Being oublished is not the same as notable. At best, Kozintsev can be mentioned in a short overview of possible east Caspian "homelands" or contributions. And by the way, Kozintsev does state that those east-Caspians spoke an Indo-Uralic language. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:22, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Please tell me why you believe Kozintsev's works about Indo-Europeans are not notable? They have been used as reference in the works that Reich and Anthony have contributed, like this one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6822619/ --MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 07:04, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Sredny Stog and the 'Caspian route'

Arbitrary header #1

@Puduḫepa: no, not just one researcher; Sergent based his ideas on Soviet research. See also Anthony (2007) p.244, and this blog. It's an interesting idea, and Soviet archaeology is to be taken serious; see Anthony. Nevertheless, this is not the same as Reich's suggestion, of course. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 17:17, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

I think you misunderstood. My edit summary was not about Sredny Stog or other archaeological cultures in the former Southern Russian republics. It was about the speculations re Djebel, PIE grammar, etc. - add to this the unrealistically early date for the Indo-European (more than 10,000 years ago). Puduḫepa 18:34, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

@Puduḫepa: Bernard Sergent clearly refers to Iran by saying "Indo-Europeans were a small people grammatically, phonetically and lexically close to Semitic-Hamitic populations of the Near East", David Reich also says that Iran is one the most likely locations of the population that first spoke an Indo-European language. But who cares what the greatest scholars say?! MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 18:44, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

@Puduḫepa: I totally agree with you about the unrealistic date. But the 'Caspian route' is a possibility which is mentioned by Soviet archaeologists. I've found some blogs with literature and comments which may be relevant:

• Eurogenes Blog (December 20, 2019), A note on Steppe Maykop, on Anthony (2020), Ancient DNA, Mating Networks, and the Anatolian Split
• Eurogenes Blog (august 2, 2019), The PIE homeland controversy: August 2019 status report, refers to Anthony (2019), Archaeology, Genetics, and Language in the Steppes: A Comment on Bomhard
• Indo-European.eu (May 28, 2018), Steppe and Caucasus Eneolithic: the new keystones of the EHG-CHG-ANE ancestry in steppe groups, on Wang et al. (2018)
• Indo-European.eu (August 1, 2019), Volga Basin R1b-rich Proto-Indo-Europeans of (Pre-)Yamnaya ancestry, on Anthony (2019). Anthony (2019):

Along the banks of the lower Volga many excavated hunting-fishing camp sites are dated 6200-4500 BC. They could be the source of CHG ancestry in the steppes [...] Finally, in the Volga steppes north of Saratov and near Samara, hunter-fishers who made a different kind of pottery (Samara type) and hunted wild horses and red deer definitely were EHG.

According to Anthony,

The hunter-fisher camps that first appeared on the lower Volga around 6200 BC could represent the migration northward of un-admixed CHG hunter-fishers from the steppe parts of the southeastern Caucasus, a speculation that awaits confirmation from aDNA.

• Indo-European.eu (November 7, 2019), “Steppe ancestry” step by step (2019): Mesolithic to Early Bronze Age Eurasia, on Anthony (2019)

For what I understand about it, after going through some comments on Indo-European.eu (August 1, 2019) and reading extracts from Anthony (2019), the 'Caucasian route' seems to be favoured. CHG may have come from the northern Caucasus, moving to the lower Volga, mixing with EHG, and then back-migrating somewhat westward forming Yamnaya. In that case, no (recent) 'Iranian' migrations, neither through the Caucasus nor around the Caspian Sea.

Despite these migrations, PIE may have formed on the steppe. The Reich-suggestion has a good argument, but the dating seems unfavourable: a migration of ppIE from south of the Caucasus northwards in the 4th millennium BCE (split of Anatolian languages from PIE). That's too late. Reich (2018) p.109-110:

From seven thousand until five thousand years ago, we observed a steady influx into the steppe of a population whose ancestors traced their origin to the south—as it bore genetic affinity to ancient and present-day people of Armenia and Iran—eventually crystallizing in the Yamnaya, who were about a one-to-one ratio of ancestry from these two sources. A good guess is that the migration proceeded via the Caucasus isthmus between the Black and Caspian seas.

And here's a good argument against the "south-of-the-Caucasus IE Urheimat":

Notice what Anthony says on pages 7 and 8, i.e., that the Anatolian farmer in Yamnaya came from Europe, probably from Tripolye and/or Globular Amphora. Therefore the ancestors of Yamnaya had to have acquired their CHG before about 5000 BC, because after that date the people in the CHG source regions (eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus, Iran) had their own share of Anatolian farmer dna, but without the WHG that characterized the Anatolian farmer from Europe carried by Yamnaya.
If the ancestors of Yamnaya got their CHG before 5000 BC, they could not have gotten early Indo-European from the same source, because the oldest possible date for early Indo-European is 4500 BC and probably later.
There goes the argument for a south-of-the-Caucasus IE Urheimat on both genetic and linguistic grounds.

Some more on the Caspian route:

• DNA Era (10th December 2018), How did CHG get into Steppe_EMBA? Part 1: LGM to Early Holocene
• Ancient DNA Era (11th January 2019), How did CHG get into Steppe_EMBA ? Part 2 : The Pottery Neolithic
• Population Genomics blog (March 9, 2019), Steppe Eneolithic, or Prikaspiiskaya (Caspian Culture) from the “South”

There are sound arguments for cultural influences via the eastern Caspian on the steppes, but the data on CHG-migrations via the 'Caspian route' are inconclusive. Population Genomics blog (March 9, 2019) states:

Clearly, samples from all around the Caspian, including the Caucasus, are needed between 6500BCE to 5000BCE to really say what happened. Until then, none of us can really say for sure. Hopefully, more sampling will help to shed light on just who these Eneolithic Steppe folks were.

For the record, this link was removed from the Wiki-article:

• New Indology (3 October 2014), Can we finally identify the real cradle of Indo-Europeans?

And this one's for MojtabaShahmiri: Eurogenes Blog (June 16, 2018), Yamnaya isn't from Iran just like R1a isn't from India. And contra the Caspian route:

...mtDNA haplogroup U7 is an excellent diagnostic marker for ancestry from the southern Caspian region, and, sure enough, it appears in the Iranian Chalcolithic set. Conversely, it's conspicuous by its absence from all Bronze Age steppe remains tested to date.

Nevertheless, that does not exclude the possibility of cultural influences from east-Caspian cultures on the steppe via the 'Caspian route', as argued by various Soviet and post-Soviet archaeologists! No 'final answers', but still more questions to be investigated.

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:22, 24 December 2019 (UTC) / update Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:51, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Dispersals and Diversification: Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives on the Early Stages of Indo-European, p.4-5, treats the 'CHG-problem', and the two main possibilities for the origins of the Anatolian languages: Anthony's steppe origin, and the dispersal via the Balkans; and the Caucasian pp-homeland possibility. Looks like a very good source to summarize the present state of views on the 'neo-Armenian hypothesis' (more aptly called the Caucasian hypothesis). Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:36, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan: thank you for the links. You are doing a great job on PIE and IE topics and you have greatly improved this page. I will need time to read all these info and will write my comment accordingly (and I hope I can do that apprehensibly, because due to language barrier, maintaining long discussions on topics like this is painful). I just want you to know that your reply is not ignored. Puduḫepa 11:43, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Some more:

• Kozintsev, Alexander (2019), "Proto-Indo-Europeans: The Prologue", JIES, Volume 47, Number 3 & 4, Fall/Winter 2019
• Vybornov, Aleksandr (2016), "Initial stages of two Neolithisation models in the Lower Volga basi", Documenta Praehistoria XLIII (206)

@Puduḫepa: what do you think of Kozintsev? Eurogenes.blogspot, An exploration of distance-based models of language relationships with a special focus on Indo-European (Kozintsev 2018):

Kozintsev's results are very consistent in placing Indo-European, including Hittite (HIT in the figure below), significantly closer to Uralic than to any of the language families south of the Caucasus. This is in line with the general consensus amongst historical linguists working with more traditional methods of studying languages, and, if true, has significant implications for the search for the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) homeland. Why? Because it's very difficult to imagine the PIE homeland being located anywhere south of the Caucasus considering the present-day distribution and likely homeland of Uralic languages well to the north of this region.

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:49, 29 December 2019 (UTC) / update Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 17:07, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Will have a look at it, but Kozintsev is a random anthropologist - neither notable, nor an expert on the topic. As for the blog, frankly, I try not to read Quiles's website or Eurogenes - they cherry pick the data and play semantics to push their own point of views - might be useful to follow the recent works on the topic, though.Puduḫepa 13:37, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Arbitrary header #2

This blog, Ancient DNA Era (11th January 2019), How did CHG get into Steppe_EMBA ? Part 2 : The Pottery Neolithic, is interesting. It mentions the same Volga basin settlements from 6200 BCE Anthony (2019) refers to, but also refers to suggestions by Russian researchers that the people of those settlements came from the eastern Caspian coast. Yet, the author also states that this movement did not raise the CHG-amount sufficiently to explain the 50% CHG-ancestry in Yamnaya. Nevertheless, again, the east Caspian. But, see also Eurogenes blogspot, A final note for the year, arguing again against an Iranian 'homeland':

[The Yamnaya people] formed largely on the base of a population very much like Steppe_Eneolithic somewhere deep in Eastern Europe, well to the north of the Caucasus, and nowhere near the Iranian Plateau.

Does anyone of you know of a viable 'neo-Caucasus homeland theory', apart from Kozintsev, which accounts for a south-Caucasian archaic PIE homeland? That is, a theoretical framework, not just a suggestion? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:24, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Eurogenes Blog (May 13, 2018), Hittite era Anatolians in qpAdm, on the absence of steppe ancestry in Anatolia: I am actually seeing a minor, but persistent, signal of steppe ancestry in one of the two Old-Hittite Period (~1750–1500 BCE) samples: Anatolia_MLBA MA2203.. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:59, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Eurocentric bigotry in this page about Proto-Indo-European homeland

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

As you read here All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), "All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic."

But as I see there are just Eurocentric views here in this page, mostly from this blog: http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/

I feel like I've spent a good part of 2019 banging my head against a thicker than average brick wall. Much of this feeling is tied to the controversy over the ethnogenesis of the Yamnaya people, and my often futile attempts to explain that their origin cannot be sought in what is now Iran, or, indeed, anywhere outside of Eastern Europe.

But it seems you could do it here, there is no Iranian hypothesis in Wikipedia, congratulations!! --MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 04:36, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. It takes some effort to keep Wikipedia clean from soapboxing and original research, but it works. But please keep us informed on publications on your "Iranian hypothesis"; by the time it is published, and gaining serious attention, it will be included here of courss. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:27, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

As you read in the Eurogenes Blog (January 30, 2020) James Mallory and Oleg Balanovsky, about Proto-Indo-European homeland there are "those who seek the homeland either in the southern Caucasus or Iran (CHG) and those who locate it in the steppelands north of the Caucasus and Caspian Sea (EHG)." These are actually "The two leading competitors" that scholars already believe, please use the correct names, the first one is not Armenian hypothesis, Iran is more than 50 times larger than Armenia, and the second one is also not Georgia in the north of the Caucasus, the Eurasian Steppe is several times larger than Georgia. Thanks.--MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 06:40, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

As usual, you're misunderstanding several points

• those who seek the homeland either in the southern Caucasus or Iran (CHG): this is mentioned under Proto-Indo-European homeland#Renewed Caucasian homeland suggestions. You're blinded by your focus on Iran.
• The phrase "The two leading competitors" refers to two detailed theories; what you refer to is a proposal, a suggestion.

Now please stop. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:07, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

'AF ancestry'

A quote from Wang has recently been added to this article, and also to the Migrations article. It refers to 'a stream of AF ancestry'. What does 'AF' stand for? Sweet6970 (talk) 10:23, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

@Sweet6970: Anatolian Farmer, the first farmers from Anatolia. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:40, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. Sweet6970 (talk) 10:45, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Caucasus/Iran/East-Caspian homeland suggestions

Well, I concede a little bit: there seem to have been several suggestions of an Iranian homeland for pre-proto-Indo-European, c.q. Indo-Anatalian Please help me (us) with an oveview:

• EHG-CHG gradient, or migration

As an intro, Wang et al. (2019):

the Eneolithic steppe ancestry profile shows an even mixture of EHG- and CHG ancestry, suggesting an effective cultural and genetic border between the contemporaneous Eneolithic populations, notably Steppe and Caucasus. Due to the temporal limitations of our dataset, we currently cannot determine whether this ancestry is stemming from an existing natural genetic gradient running from EHG far to the north to CHG/Iran in the south or whether this is the result of Iranian/CHG-related ancestry reaching the steppe zone independently and prior to a stream of AF ancestry, where they mixed with local hunter-gatherers that carried only EHG ancestry.

• Northern Caucasus (Maykopf):

• Kristian Kristiansen (2020): "... the origin of Anatolian should be located in the Caucasus, at a time when it acted as a civilizational corridor between south and north. Here the Maykop Culture of the northern Caucasus stands out as the most probable source for Proto-Anatolian, and perhaps even Proto-Indo-Anatolian"; see The Archaeology of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Anatolian: Locating the Split. In: Dispersals and Diversification: Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives on the Early-Stages of Indo-European (eds. M. Serangeli & Th. Olander), Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2020.

Yet, Maykopf seems to be a poor fit for steppe EHG-CHG. See Anthony (2019), Comment on Bomhard, p. 9; and Koch (2018), Formation of the Indo-European branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic revolution, p.8.

• Caucasus/Iran:

• Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: "south of the Caucasus Mountains, perhaps in present-day Iran or Armenia." Also mentioned by Koch (2018), Formation of the Indo-European branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic revolution, p.8; and by James Mallory and Oleg Balanovsky (2020), The Impact of Genetics Research on Archaeology and Linguistics in Eurasia: "genetics has pushed the current homeland debate into several camps: those who seek the homeland either in the southern Caucasus or Iran (CHG) and those who locate it in the steppelands north of the Caucasus and Caspian Sea (EHG)" (see Eurogenes (30 jan. 2020, James Mallory and Oleg Balanovsky).

• East-Caspian (Central Asia):

• Soviet and post-Soviet Russian archaeologists have proposed an East Caspian influence, via the eastern Caspian areas, on the formation of the Don-Volga cultures; see Vybornov, Aleksandr (2016), "Initial stages of two Neolithisation models in the Lower Volga basin", Documenta Praehistoria XLIII (206), 43: 161–166, doi:10.4312/dp.43.7. See also "Ancient DNA Era" (11th January 2019), How did CHG get into Steppe_EMBA ? Part 2 : The Pottery Neolithic
• Johanna Nichols, "Sogdiana hypothesis." Places the homeland in the fourth or fifth millennium BCE to the east of the Caspian Sea, in the area of ancient Bactria-Sogdiana.See:

- Nichols, Johanna (1997), "The Epicenter of the Indo-European Linguistic Spread", in Blench, Roger; Spriggs, Matthew (eds.), Archaeology and Language I: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations, Routledge

- Nichols, Johanna (1999), "The Eurasian Spread Zone and the Indo-European Dispersal", in Blench, Roger; Spriggs, Matthew (eds.), Archaeology and Language II: Correlating archaeological and Linguistic Hypotheses, Routledge

From there, PIE spread north to the steppes, and south-west towards Anatolia (Kozintsev 2019, p.337). Nichols eventually rejected her theory, finding it incompatible with the linguistic and archaeological data(Kozintsev 2019, p.337).

• Bomhard, following Nichols, proposes a "Central Asian" homeland, from where a migration westwards toward the north of the Caspian Sea and Black Sea took place; see Bomhard (2019), The Origins of Proto-Indo-European: The Caucasian Substrate Hypothesis, JIES, Volume 47, Number 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2019
• Following Nichols' initial proposal, Kozintsev has argued for an Indo-Uralic homeland east of the Caspian Sea; see From this homeland, Indo-Uralic PIE-speakers migrated south-west, and splitted in the southern Caucasus, forming the Anatolian and steppe languages at their respective locations; see Kozintsev, Alexander (2019), "Proto-Indo-Europeans: The Prologue", JIES, Volume 47, Number 3 & 4, Fall/Winter 2019. NB: this proposal seems not to be taken serious.
• Bernard Sergent has elaborated on the idea of east Caspian influences on the formation of the Volga culture, arguing for a PIE homeland in the east Caspian territory, from where it migrated north. See "New Indology," (2014), Can we finally identify the real cradle of Indo-Europeans?.

Any other (serious) suggestions? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:43, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan: Where is this proposed in Bomhard? My understang was that his hypothesis was that PIE developed from the mixture of a Near Eastern or Caucasian language and an Eastern Europen Steppe language (with the latter related to Uralic or proto-Uralic). That would seem to be a hybrid origin hypothesis for the roots/ancestor(s) of PIE: i.e. at most a "semi"-Near Eastern/Caucasian/Iranian, and semi-Eastern European steppe hypothesis, so to speak, rather than a simply Iranian/Near Eastern one. Skllagyook (talk) 15:51, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

In 2016 Bomhard proposed a homeland north of the Caspian Sea; in 2019 Bomhard wrote (p.5):

As we delve further into the prehistory of of Proto-Indo-European, we begin to see that, in its earlier stages of development, Proto-Indo-European is characterized by a mix of phonological, morphological, and lexical features which link it, ever so tenuously, with other languages of northern Eurasia [...] In a paper published in 1997, Johanna Nichols argued that the earliest Indo-European speech community was located in Central Asia (note also Uhlenbeck 1937). She proposes that Pre-Proto-Indo-European spread westward across the steppes, eventually arriving on the northeastern shores of the Black Sea. I support this scenario. I would place the Pre-Indo-Europeans in Central Asia at about 7,000 BCE, and I would date their initial arrival in the vicinity of the Black Sea at about 5,000 BCE

It's not clear to me which route Bomhard (2019) proposes, but Nichols proposed a northern migration, and southern route along the southern shores of the Caspian Sea to Anatolia. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 16:37, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

I guess it's a wild idea, but could it be that CHG-people arrived in the steppes via the eastern Caspian route, mixing with Eurasiatic language speaking EHG-people; and that the language of this mixed group was influenced by a Caucasian language? Wang (2018):

...the ancestry profile in Eneolithic steppe individuals shows an even mixture of EHG and CHG ancestry[...] Due to the temporal limitations of our dataset, we currently cannot determine whether this ancestry is stemming from an existing natural genetic gradient running from EHG far to the north to CHG/Iran in the south or whether this is the result of farmers with Iranian farmer/ CHG-related ancestry reaching the steppe zone independent of and prior to a stream of Anatolian farmer-like ancestry

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 17:59, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan: The idea that PIE is basically "Proto-Uralic with a (West) Caucasian accent" is pretty old; at least Kortlandt keeps championing it. The main problem is that we don't know what West Caucasian was typologically like five or more thousands of years ago. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:17, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Just passing by but this summary implies that what is simply called an "Armenian" hypothesis on the article should perhaps be worded a bit more broadly?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:10, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Proto-Proto- Steppe apologetic nonsense

What is up with this proto-proto stuff? None of the scholarly sources cited directly make a reference to Iran or the Caucauses as being the proto-proto-indo-eurpean homeland, but rather a strong possibility of being the Proto-Indo-European homeland. Here is the latest from James Mallory and Oleg Balanovsky, in 2020: "genetics has pushed the current homeland debate into several camps: those who seek the [Proto-Indo-European] homeland either in the southern Caucasus/Iran (CHG) and those who locate it in the steppe lands north of the Caucasus and Caspian Sea (EHG)" Nothing about proto-proto so that needs to be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:1030:2070:7CC4:AA35:E6DA:7CBC (talk) 16:34, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Just in terms of logic, there can be a proto language and a "proto proto" language which can even have been in a different place. This one sentence does not therefore lead to those conclusions.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:58, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

That is really nonsense, it says "proto-proto-Indo-European is the common ancestor of both Anatolian languages and early proto-IE", the fact is the common ancestor of Anatolian, Celtic, Hellenic and etc, is Centum branch of Indo-European, and the common ancestor of Centum and Satem languages is Proto-IE. MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 18:37, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, on the whole it is a fully speculative stuff, fume in the dark, the biggest mistake to base linguistic assumptions based on genetic research, all this topic is unfortunately mostly on that phase, soon will be a proto-proto-proto*(m*x) Indo-European something in Pangea.(KIENGIR (talk) 00:05, 25 May 2020 (UTC))

You refer to this text?

Recent DNA research which shows that the steppe-people derived from a mix of Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (EHG) and Caucasian Hunter-Gatherers (CHG, native to the Caucasus and Northern Iran, but also found in northern Pakistan), has led to renewed suggestions of a Caucasian, or even Iranian, homeland for an archaic or 'proto-proto-Indo-European', the common ancestor of both Anatolian languages and all other Indo-European languages.

References

Note the inverted commas; but alas, we can remove that phrase, but not the info. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:01, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

@KIENGIR: We can't blame genetic researches but those who just believe in the Steppe theory in any case, if it is proved that all other Indo-European languages originated in another land, they will still say this land was proto-proto- and the steppe was just proto-. MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 06:09, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

You miss the point again, MS. Southern origins for archaic PIE is a possibility, a tentative hypothesis, and not more than that. "Speculative," if you like. In the case of your Iranian hypothesis: not even speculative, but nonsense. In case these 'speculations' turn out to be correct, the theory will still state that the bulk of the IE-languages can be traced back to the Pontic-Caspian steppes; that's where the migrations started which brought the IE-languages so far away. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

It absolutely doesn't matter what you and me believe, this Southern of nowhere origins for archaic PIE is your own interpretation, not what scholars say. Venezuela was not the original land of Spanish-speaking people, if it is even proved that Spanish language was spread from there to all Central and Southern American countries. MojtabaShahmiri (talk) 07:12, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan:, @MojtabaShahmiri:,

No, I've made my reaction especially to the IP's remarks and Kristian Kristiansen's speculations, however the general weakness and weak-points of the present Indo-X theories are well-known, similarly to others (i.e. Finno-X).(KIENGIR (talk) 18:24, 25 May 2020 (UTC))

Continuation of topic

My apologies if this is redundant: I am transfering the discussion form the user page of User:Joshua Jonathan#Edit warring (and possible POV-pushing) on Proto-Indo-European homeland here:

@Puduḫepa:, @Joshua Jonathan:, and @Doug Weller:

Hello. There is a fairly new editor, User:سیمون دانکرک, who has recently made an addition with a very long string of refs on the Armenian hypothesis (in the main hypotheses section, meant to support the statement that the Steppe hypothesis is "strongly debated" by new evidence). To me, this addition seems somewhat undue and redundant given the fact that the hypothesis is already represented duly in that same section of the article and elsewhere in the article in other relevant sections. I addition, the new editor's many refs contained several that were either already represented, not WP:RS (e.g. blogs and journalism), or in some cases did not even support the Armenian/Southern hypothesis or discuss it.

I reverted their addition explaining this in the edit notes, but they simply reinstated their edit with the note that it was "relevant", having seemingly ignored my explanations. I reverted them again asking them not to edit war (and to read my explanations and take objections to the Talk page), but they reistated their edit again with bery few changes (again largely igniring what I had explained). They seem to be edit warring and it looks like it may be a case of POV-pushing. It would be helpful and aporeciated to get your opinion regarding this Thank you and much appreciated. Skllagyook (talk) 16:39, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Here is the page's history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:History/Proto-Indo-European_homeland

They are now reporting me at ANI claiming that I "tend to edit war": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#WP%3AEW Skllagyook (talk) 16:39, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

"Iranian model"

User:سیمون دانکرک changed diff Near Eastern (or Armenian) model into Iranian (or Armenian) model, edit-summary

(Near East is abnormally and extensively vague in this case, especially that other important related theories are also included in Near East meaning Anatolian theory. Additionally, South Caucasus geographically is in Iranian Plateau and has been part of History of Iran for thousands of years, except some parts excluded in recent century. In addition it is culturally included in Greater Iran

It was added at 28 march 2020 by User:Alcaios diff, edit-summary

how can you used a source that clearly states "The speakers at this symposium can generally be seen to support one of the following three ‘solutions’ to the Indo-European homeland problem" and write in the article "the three leading competitors"? This is not the first case of reference hijacking in this article unfortunately

This is not what Mallory says. I've corrected this accordingly diff. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 17:10, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan:: The speakers at this symposium can generally be seen to support one of the following three ‘solutions’ to the Indo-European homeland problem: 1. The Anatolian Neolithic model ... 2. The Near Eastern model ... 3. The Pontic-Caspian model.

My original edit: The Steppe theory, the Near Eastern model, and the Anatolian hypothesis are three leading solutions for the Indo-European homeland. Alcaios (talk) 17:24, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

@Alcaios: thanks; "the two leading competitors" isn't even in Mallory (2013); must have been Anthony, if I remember correctly. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 17:42, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Page numbers

Hello, I recently noticed many citations made in the lead and in the article without referencing the page numbers of the source cited. Would it be inappropriate to ask for the specific page numbers of the sources? Regards Santoshdts ^[TalkToMe] 17:38, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@Santoshdts: no, ceertainly not inappropriate (but a lot of work!) Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:51, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan: Thanks for the reply, Irrespective of magnitude of the work involved. Do the statements made without pointing out a precise reference be considered as a reliable reference/source? To start with, can we tag all such references with - template? Santoshdts ^[TalkToMe] 19:06, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@Santoshdts: oh my, what do you expect me to do? Check all instances? In principle, all those references are from reliable sources, and a lot of them do not refer to specific quotes or statements, but to 'larger' explanations, or complete models. Bjt maybe you've got specofic examples? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:26, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan: Ohh my.. what do you expect me to do? None my comments implied, that I asked YOU do something about the referencing issue, and I never questioned the Content cited. I just pointed some referencing errors in the article and asked: could these be considerd as reliable in absence of page numbers and many reference errors and is there a procedure and workflow to correct the errors? To my initial query you commented "( but lot of work)". Would it be wise to overlook the errors, as it requires "lot of work" ? Santoshdts ^[TalkToMe] 19:49, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

I did take a quick look, but I didn't see problematic refefences. But, that waz a quick look, of course. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:05, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan: To begin with, plz see reference 75 a,b. These point to page-137, where as the cited source is of 14 page article from nature.com. Also Plz check footnotes 10 to 13, where the citations are made with sfn templates but no Sources are provided in Bibliography/Sources. Plz correct me, if iam wrong. Santoshdts ^[TalkToMe] 20:16, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Haak 2015 must be Haak 2015a, supplementary information; I've added 10-13; probably a left-over from an incomplete copying of info from Indo-European migrations. Regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:32, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Latest genetic paper on Fatyanovo Culture

This basically settled the R1a debate: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.184507v1 ThaThinThaKiThaTha (talk) 10:17, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Conclusion? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:51, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

The Fatyanovo culture (offshot of CWC culture) contains R1a, which was later found in Sinthasta culture. The Fatyanovo people themselves seem to have admixture from central europe compared to the original Yamnaya people. See figure 1 of the full paper.ThaThinThaKiThaTha (talk) 14:09, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I read about at Eurogenes, and printed the article a couple of days ago, but didn't read it yet. Well, that leaves the location of 'Indo-Hittite' as the 'last enigma', I'd say. A scientific mind is a joy forever! Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:35, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Lack of Neutral point of view

There is an obvious tendency to empower the Steppe hypothesis especially focusing on David W. Anthony, ignoring recent genetic findings that could enlighten the prehistory of Indo-European languages' speakers in this article by few users. I suppose it is a must to maintain more scientifically approach in an encyclopedia. سیمون دانکرک (talk) 13:17, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

As before: you're pov-pushing on supposedly Iranian origins of pre-PIE - a pov which is mentioned in the article. See WP:DONTGETIT. Take care. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 16:32, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

pov-pushing is a claim that you make as an undocumented one. It is an unjust label that I could tag to your claims likewise. Stop claiming and start reasoning. You are investing in Steppe hypothesis as a false dominant theory. Your judgement is personal and you have added editorial adjectives to the article to you pov-pushing approach. Have a nice day سیمون دانکرک (talk) 16:45, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Putting too much emphasis on the possible Iranian origins of pre-PIE, which is a tentative proposal within the bounds of the Steppe-theory, as you did with this edit, referring to WP:WEIGHT, is indeed pov-puhing:

Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects.

The Steppe-model is the dominant model, period. And your preferred pov is being covered in the article.

NB: the sentence

The most widely accepted proposal about the location of the Proto-Indo-European homeland is the steppe hypothesis

is covered by five sources: Mallory & Adams 2006; Anthony 2007; Pereltsvaig & Lewis 2015 p.1–16; Anthony & Ringe 2015; Haak et al. 2015. Could you please tell us where those sources say that

One of the three most widely accepted proposal about the location of the Proto-Indo-European homeland is the steppe hypothesis

with other words, that the Anatolian hypothesis is widely accepted; and that the supposedly Iranian origin is widely accepted? Regarding the Anatolian hypothesis, see Spencer Wells (2017), The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, Princeton University Press, p.168:

Thus, while we see substantial genetic and archaeological evidence for an Indo-European migration originating in the southern Russian steppes, there is little evidence for a similarly massive Indo-European migration from the Middle east to Europe.

And Bomhard (2019):

other scenarios regarding the possible Indo-European homeland, such as Anatolia, have now been mostly abandoned

See also note 2. Now, that's the Anatolian hypothesis. The tentative suggestions of an Iranian origin of pre-PIE are not even a hypothesis, let alone a theoretical model, but just that: suggestions, put forward by a handfull of authors. And, despite being a minority view, this pov is being covered in the article. And not widely accepted; Anthony surely doesn not agree with these two claims...

NB2: note that I added these references in response to this request by User:Chiorbone da Frittole, so be carefull with statements like you have added editorial adjectives to the article to you pov-pushing approach. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 16:52, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Regarding Iran:

• Mallory, Dybo and Balanovsky (2020): "[G]enetics has pushed the current homeland debate into several camps: those who seek the homeland either in the southern Caucasus or Iran (CHG) and those who locate it in the steppelands north of the Caucasus and Caspian Sea (EHG)."
• Haak et al. (2015a), supplementary information p.138: ""The Armenian plateau hypothesis gains in plausibility"; no mention of Iran.
• Reich (2018), p.120: "This suggests to me that the most likely location of the population that first spoke an Indo-European language was south of the Caucasus Mountains, perhaps in present-day Iran or Armenia."
• Damgaard (2018), p.7: "the early spread of IE languages into Anatolia was not associated with any large-scale steppe-related migration." P.8: "We cannot at this point reject a scenario in which the introduction of the Anatolian IE languages into Anatolia was coupled with the CHG derived admixture before 3700 BCE [Caucasus CHG => Anatolia], but note that this is contrary to the standard view that PIE arose in the steppe north of the Caucasus, and that CHG ancestry is also associated with several non-IE-speaking groups, historical and current. Indeed, our data are also consistent with the first speakers of Anatolian IE coming to the region by way of commercial contacts and smallscale movement during the Bronze Age. Among comparative linguists, a Balkan route for the introduction of Anatolian IE is generally considered more likely than a passage through the Caucasus, due, for example, to greater Anatolian IE presence and language diversity in the west [...] the Anatolian IE language branch, including Hittite, did not derive from a substantial steppe migration into Anatolia."
• Wang et al. 2019 (p.8, 9) state that the Caucasus served as a corridor for gene flow between cultures south of the Caucasus and the Maykop culture during the Copper and the Bronze Age, speculating that this "opens up the possibility of a homeland of PIE south of the Caucasus," (p.10) which "could offer a parsimonious explanation for an early branching off of Anatolian languages, as shown on many PIE tree topologies." (p.10) However, Wang et al. also acknowledge that "the spread of some or all of the PIE branches would have been possible via the North Pontic/Caucasus region," as explained in the steppe hypothesis. (p.10)
• Kristiansen (2020): ""...the origin of Anatolian should be located in the Caucasus, at a time when it acted as a civilizational corridor between south and north. Here the Maykop Culture of the northern Caucasus stands out as the most probable source for Proto-Anatolian, and perhaps even Proto-Indo-Anatolian."

Six sources on a southern pre-PIE: "southern Caucasus or Iran" or "steppelands north of the Caucasus"; Armenia; "perhaps in present-day Iran or Armenia"; southern origin 'cannot be rejected' but steppe-origins is the dominant model; "possibility of a homeland of PIE south of the Caucasus" but the steppe-model also explains the early origins; Maykop culture. That's what these sources say; "Iran" is no more than a "perhaps," as an alternate but less likely possibility for the Caucasus, which is an alternate but less likely possibility for the steppes. The only reason this minority view is being mentioned is because the Armenian hypothesis has some scholarly credibility, and because Mallory and Reich are notable scholars. That's it. And that's quite a lot of coverage already for this. So, yes, any more pushing on this is WP:DISRUPTIVE pov-pushing, giving WP:UNDUE weight to a tentative possibility. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:18, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Remarkable job in collecting a bulk of evidence but I still disagree with you in the method and tone of summarising a theory or hypothesis or suggestion _as you tend to deviate the scripts that you've well assembled_ according to your point of view. I gather you have a strong bias towards Steppe hypothesis and putting too much effort to document it in this regard. There is a difference between seeking scientific method and seeking a theory and collecting evidence in accordance with it. Finally, even your approach here is different from the main page and obviously biased.سیمون دانکرک (talk) 16:40, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Recent edits by سیمون دانکرک

User:سیمون دانکرک has added, and re-inserted, a substantial amount of info/characters, which was reverted three times by User:Skllagyook. Skllagyook explained his objections several times; the response was "relevant to the subject" and "if you have any considerations go to talk page and do not delete referenced matterial s. It's against rules."

This edit added

The former [the Steppe theory], placing the PIE homeland in the Pontic-Caspian steppe around 4000 BC, is the theory supported by most scholars, although it [the Steppe theory] is greatly debated by newest genetic findings in South Caucasus archeological excavations and linguistic studies related to Iranian model.

References

I don't understand the "although"; the Steppe theory is the leading theory. At best, it could be added to the fourth paragraph ("A notable third possibility"), but as Skllagyook noted, the "Near eastern model" is already being discussed. And Carlos Quiles definitely is not WP:RS. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 17:10, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan: Thank you for looking at this. I am going over the recently added sources again (which you have compiled here), and, as I thought, several (refs/footnotes 3, 6, 13, 14, and 15, as you have them listed here) do not seem to mention to southern hypothesis at all - some seem quite irrelevant, and the others (as I also mentioned in my notes) are for the most part already incorporated in the article (some already in the 4th paragraph of thd main theories/main hypotheses section). Skllagyook (talk) 17:48, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

The two theories are not mutually exclusive. None of those studies argue that PIE was not spoken in the Steppe. They aver that it was spoken earlier in the "Near East" (generally in northern Iran} before migrations of 'proto-PIE' speakers towards the Pontic-Caspian steppe. For instance in Kosintsev (2019): Three migration routes from the Near East to the steppe across the Caucasus can be tentatively reconstructed — two early (Khvalynsk and Darkveti-Meshoko), and one later (Maykop). Alcaios (talk) 17:51, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Gladly and (unfortunately) rarely, this recent comment has included some useful related scientific considerations and facts. سیمون دانکرک (talk) 04:32, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan, Skllagyook, and Alcaios:

I have not seen a reason for deletion of my editions. Is there a credible cause for it. In return I see this article has been turned to a cult for praising Steppe Ancestry theory and especially its contemporary progenitor and defender David W.Anthony. سیمون دانکرک (talk) 04:43, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Three problems:

• Presenting tentative proposals for a southern origin of PIE as 'the Iranian model'. That's not what those sources are about; some of them raise the possibility that the pre-proto-IE was spoken in an area in northwestern present-day Iran; they do not throw the entire steppe-model into limbo. Nor is that their prime intention; they are not about an "Iranian model"; they are about the steppe-theory.
• An unclear statement which does not adequately express your point of view: what exactly is "debated" abot the steppe model?
• Taking an agressive stance, as reflected in "cult" and your complaints at the noticeboards, while omitting the initial step of initiating a discussion at the talkpage here.

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:05, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan: your so-called problems' answers:

The limbo you are mentioning is not claimed by me. For example: there has been several excavations regarding human ancestors; many of them has been a revision on the history of human being. This does not mean that the skeletons are false or irrelevant or etc.

secondly: there is not an aggressive approach in my side of debate. Cult thing has been deducted from you and the other devoted user to delete everything that I write or reinstate anything that I delete ignoring all references and edit summaries. سیمون دانکرک (talk) 05:32, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Your pov-pushing is obvious and silly diff; but obviously, it's the easy part; it's not clear what studies exactly you're referring to, or what you're trying to say. If you want to state that PIE, or pre-PIE, originated in Iran, then construct a clear statement based on WP:RS, and add it to the right place, instead of selective deletion of sourced info, twisting accurate info, and making unclear statements at the wrong place. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:34, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

at last I invite you to review thoroughly the script of the references I presented before you impartially. We will discuss it soon. I have to go now, the debate remain open. سیمون دانکرک (talk) 05:37, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Some of the sources you mention have already been used; in essence, what you're trying to say is already said in the article. Carlos Quiles is not WP:RS. NewScientist is unaccessible. And Kozintsev has been discussed before, and rejected. The bottomline is: you want to rewrite this article based on a personal pov. See the fate of User:MojtabaShahmiri, of whom you remind me eerily. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:38, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

as you yourself admitted in the same page you have malnourished your POV based on a radical blog named «Eurogenes», an ethnocentric (in this case eurocentric) racist blog that you follow thoroughly it's lead in this entry inappropriately. I urge all the readers to review the mentioned weblog to be illuminated extensively in the subject and act duly as Wikipedia and its readers deserve. Additionally please avoid unethical warnings seriously or you will be reported upon that undoubtedly. سیمون دانکرک (talk) 02:32, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Newscientist is accessible. At least the printed version is there and the online version has the brief core of the script on it, you are avoiding and disregarding the references unnecessarily. on the contrary you mention any reference that you could reach anywhere putting too much weight on your beloved POV. In addition you ignored the sources on Carlos Quilled blog From well-known Der Spiegel, Nature and Science magazines, also Science Daily, New York Times, etc. simplifying pretention in order to flipping the coin in accordance with your desired POV-pushing. سیمون دانکرک (talk) 02:41, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

• Regarding Quiles, Carlos (2017-11-18). "The renewed 'Kurgan model' of Kristian Kristiansen and the Danish school: "The Indo-European Corded Ware Theory"". Indo-European.eu.: Kristiansen (2018) is about the Corded Ware Culture.
• Regarding Quiles, Carlos (2018-05-10). "No large-scale steppe migration into Anatolia; early Yamna migrations and MLBA brought LPIE dialects in Asia". Indo-European.eu.: Damgaard (2018) is mentioned in the artcile, and cited at Talk:Proto-Indo-European homeland#Lack of Neutral point of view:

p.7: "the early spread of IE languages into Anatolia was not associated with any large-scale steppe-related migration." P.8: "We cannot at this point reject a scenario in which the introduction of the Anatolian IE languages into Anatolia was coupled with the CHG derived admixture before 3700 BCE [Caucasus CHG => Anatolia], but note that this is contrary to the standard view that PIE arose in the steppe north of the Caucasus, and that CHG ancestry is also associated with several non-IE-speaking groups, historical and current. Indeed, our data are also consistent with the first speakers of Anatolian IE coming to the region by way of commercial contacts and smallscale movement during the Bronze Age. Among comparative linguists, a Balkan route for the introduction of Anatolian IE is generally considered more likely than a passage through the Caucasus, due, for example, to greater Anatolian IE presence and language diversity in the west [...] the Anatolian IE language branch, including Hittite, did not derive from a substantial steppe migration into Anatolia."

Damgaard doesn't even argue for Armenian, let alone Iranian, origins; they just state that they cannot 'reject' the possibility of a Caucausus-derived, CHG-related introduction of PIE into Anatolia. They also state that "the standard view [is] that PIE arose in the steppe north of the Caucasus." I'll repeat it for you: "the standard view [is] that PIE arose in the steppe north of the Caucasus." I'll repeat it again: "the standard view [is] that PIE arose in the steppe north of the Caucasus."

• Regarding "World's most-spoken languages may have arisen in ancient Iran | New Scientist". www.newscientist.com.: that's behind a paywall, but according to Carlos Quilles (May 27, 2018), The new Scicomm’s warhorse is “CHG ancestry = PIE” and the Iranian homeland, that article is about Wang (2018). Wang is also mentioned in the Wiki-article, and at Talk:Proto-Indo-European homeland#Lack of Neutral point of view:

Wang et al. 2019 (p.8, 9) state that the Caucasus served as a corridor for gene flow between cultures south of the Caucasus and the Maykop culture during the Copper and the Bronze Age, speculating that this "opens up the possibility of a homeland of PIE south of the Caucasus," (p.10) which "could offer a parsimonious explanation for an early branching off of Anatolian languages, as shown on many PIE tree topologies." (p.10) However, Wang et al. also acknowledge that "the spread of some or all of the PIE branches would have been possible via the North Pontic/Caucasus region," as explained in the steppe hypothesis. (p.10)

See also Quilles comment on this proposal.

So far, again, for your sources on Iranian origins of pre-PIE: speculations and tentative suggestions. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:18, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

"Pre-proto-Indo-European" is not a valid concept - whether this term has been used professionally or not. We have no reliable way of distinguishing between pre-proto-Indo-European and proto-Indo-European. The reality of differential splitting, makes linguistics less useful than genetics, when it comes to the PIE question.2600:1700:1030:2070:58A3:E1BE:F489:26E5 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 22:28, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

The term/concept is used in the sources to distinguish between PIE and a proposed earlier common ancestor of PIE and the basal Anatolian branch/Anatolian languages (as proposed in the hypothesis of a broad "Indo-Anatolian" or "Indo-Hittite" family including both). It concerns a proposed precursor of proto-Indo-European (another proposed one being the proposed "Indo-Uralic" ancestor according to another theory, as mentioned elsewhere). Whether it is used professionaly is indeed relevant/is what matters. Per Wikipedia policies, we edit based on the sources (WP:RS) and what they state, not on our own opinions of what they should say or our own reasoning based on syntheses of more than one source or what we personally think makes more sense. Skllagyook (talk) 22:40, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Any reader passing by here in this talk page could identify an enthusiastic coordinated biased two man team effort against an alternative ancestry theory for Indo-European urhaimat, POV-pushing in accordance with some racist eurocentric blog called Eurogenes which is not a credible source of pseudoscience let alone science. I strongly suggest reconsideration in attitudes toward Wikipedia and respecting the wiki readers. سیمون دانکرک (talk) 01:46, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Southern archaic PIE? South of what?!

It is clear that some of this article's editors as they behave like so-called self-appointed chief editors of the script, has selected a term "Southern archaic PIE" which is a vague non-informative geographical address and gets us to nowhere to avoid mentioning "Iranian origin" for PIE. You may ask the enthusiastic writers of the text : where is your compass station that shows another theory South of it, so that the presumptuous and recently questioned theory of Steppe hypothesis gain the ground zero? سیمون دانکرک (talk) 17:51, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Armenian hypothesis, quite obviously. That's a hypothesis; Iran is a tentative suggestion. Regarding "southern," see Haak et al. 2015: "the question of what languages were spoken by the 'Eastern European hunter-gatherers' and the southern, Armenian-like, ancestral population remains open.". Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:37, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

• It seems that the Proto-Indo-European origin or urhaimat is not so obvious that you want to be, otherwise there weren't so many theories about the same subject, but then again: you seem to have decided your point of view as you mentioned the name at this page based on a radical racist blog called Eurogenes which is deeply full of pseudoscience matterials. What a pity that a sharp mind wastes in such manner. Best regards سیمون دانکرک (talk) 17:03, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Exactly. All this "Proto-proto-Indo-European" and "Pre-Pie" are escapist language from pseudo-logicians, from those avoiding the impending truth - namely that Steppe theory is dead, and the PIE emerged from the nexus between Armenia/NW-Iran/E-Turkey. It's understandable that researchers have to be careful nowadays, given such a heated topic. It's about PIE - and it's not like there is a sound means to distinguish between proto-PIE and PIE, anyways. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:1030:2070:58A3:E1BE:F489:26E5 (talk) 19:03, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

I wittness too much effort in burying the evidences and unsubstantiated denial of sources (i.e. in the case of Alexander Kozintsev which the User claimed his theory related to Iran and South Caucasus Urhaimat has been rejected) and I conclude an unscientific racist enmity and a eurocentric prejudice to avoid and preserve a line of censorship and minimising the use of the name of Iran in this article especially by two teammate users which could be totally unprofessional and I think their string of editions regarding the issue necessarily should be observed thoroughly and reported ultimately through proper channels. Especially User Joe has proved to be relaxed by accusing other users impersonating multiple users which emphasizes and explains a profoundly confused User in an ivory tower of self-righteousness. I insist in the pursuit of his accusations so that everybody recognises this kind of dangerous false presupposition-based approach in an encyclopedia atmosphere.سیمون دانکرک (talk) 02:53, 6 February 2021 (UTC)