This one's for Spellus

[Jacob]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/science/indo-european-languages-originated-in-anatolia-analysis-suggests.html?_r=1&hp

[Queequeg]

Already saw. Implausible.

[dps]

Actually a fairly decently writen article.  It does show the opposing viewpoint as well.  But I agree with Spellus--I don't find the "new" evidence compelling at all.

[The Minsky Moment]

It's not that implausible, it's based on a linguistic technique - mass comparison - that is controversial but was used in the 50s and 60s to recharacterize African language families in a way that is now generally accepted.   As for Tokharian, clearly it is plausible for migration or cultural transmission to take place from the Pontic Steppes to western China.  it's also possible to have similar movement or transmission from Anatolia to the steppes.  Transitivity . . .

[Razgovory]

Doesn't seem to solve the problems with the Anatolian hypothesis.  If it was true you would expect more overlap with Sumerian and Afro-asiatic languages and archaeological evidence of a culture in Anatolia with horses and bronze 9,000 years ago.

[The Minsky Moment]

Doesn't seem to solve the problems with the Anatolian hypothesis.  If it was true you would expect more overlap with Sumerian and Afro-asiatic languages and archaeological evidence of a culture in Anatolia with horses and bronze 9,000 years ago.

Why would you expect any of these things?
Semitic languages came out of Africa and there would be reason to expect overlap.  Sumerian is a isolate and a problem for classification regardless of one's PIE theory.  It is certainly possible to postulate a PIE pre-horse domestication.  Horses and wheels are such specutacular innovations that cognates could have spread from the place of origin even after PIE had split off - i.e. the fact that the German and Japanese words for tobacco are similar doesn't necessarily imply that the Japanese and German languages have a common origin in a language spoken by mobile tobacco merchants.  The Pontic theory that takes the opposing position is based on application of a comparative method that is just as contestible and speculative, because its hard to distinguish true cognates derived out of common liniguistic parentage from loan words for new concepts.

[Queequeg]

1) There's a lot of very, very early borrowings in the Uralic languages from Indo-European.  In addition, there's some evidence of an extremely old genetic relationship, including some very basic vocabulary terms and grammar features.  This is mentioned but not addressed in the article.  I'd argue that you see something with the Altaic (or at least Turkic) group, but that's like 15,000 years or more back and thus impossible to determine. 

2) I don't really see how this works in the context of Copper Age Anatolia.  We know of a ton of likely autochthonous peoples of Anatolia, and there is a relatively large amount of evidence that the oldest Anatolian Indo-European language was introduced to the region.  I suppose it is possible that the Hatti and other peoples related to modern Northwest Caucasians conquered and replaced the native Indo-Europeans, but this seems unlikely, and would need substantial evidence.  I'd expect there to be a layer of pre-Hittite Indo-European toponymy and hydonymy that just isn't there. 

3) Are they proposing some kind of secondary expansion from the Steppe?  There's really a substantial amount of evidence for this.  I think this is possible-there's already some evidence of a relationship between the Caspain Steppe and the Fertile Crescent, and in the Kurgan Hypothesis this is one of the most important factors leading to the Indo-European expansion.

[The Minsky Moment]

2) I don't really see how this works in the context of Copper Age Anatolia.  We know of a ton of likely autochthonous peoples of Anatolia, and there is a relatively large amount of evidence that the oldest Anatolian Indo-European language was introduced to the region.  I suppose it is possible that the Hatti and other peoples related to modern Northwest Caucasians conquered and replaced the native Indo-Europeans, but this seems unlikely, and would need substantial evidence.  I'd expect there to be a layer of pre-Hittite Indo-European toponymy and hydonymy that just isn't there. 

The theory would be that the original IE language was an ancient Anatolian language all of whose local variants went extinct during the Hittite period.  Whether that happened as a result of the Hittites spreading their own IE variant, or whether the Hittites took on one of the old Anatolian variants and the rest were crowded out by the Hatti imperium, hard to say.

[Queequeg]

There's a lot of evidence that there was early interaction with North-East Caucasian peoples (proto-Circassians), but not what one would expect to see in Anatolia-with the Hatti (who spoke something likely related to a North-East Caucasian language, a kind of proto-Chechen).  Now in the Kurgan hypothesis this happens with the movement to the Pontic-Caspian, and helps to explain what is called "Satemization", a process that happened to the Indo-Iranian and Slavic languages, as well as Armenian and Albanian. 

[The Minsky Moment]

I really liked Anthony's book BTW.  Well written and argued.

[Queequeg]

The theory would be that the original IE language was an ancient Anatolian language all of whose local variants went extinct during the Hittite period.  Whether that happened as a result of the Hittites spreading their own IE variant, or whether the Hittites took on one of the old Anatolian variants and the rest were crowded out by the Hatti imperium, hard to say.

There's no evidence of these hypothetical pre-Hittite Indo-European Anatolians.  We know that the Hatti-a people likely related to modern Chechens-were there.  We know the Hurrians and the Urartians were there.  That's two completely different language groups in Anatolia that don't have any plausible genetic connection to these hypothetical pre-Hittite Indo-Europeans, don't reveal signs of borrowing, and have established, ancient toponymy. 

[Queequeg]

I really liked Anthony's book BTW.  Well written and argued.

Same.  Best book I've read on the subject. 

[Razgovory]

Doesn't seem to solve the problems with the Anatolian hypothesis.  If it was true you would expect more overlap with Sumerian and Afro-asiatic languages and archaeological evidence of a culture in Anatolia with horses and bronze 9,000 years ago.

Why would you expect any of these things?
Semitic languages came out of Africa and there would be reason to expect overlap.  Sumerian is a isolate and a problem for classification regardless of one's PIE theory.  It is certainly possible to postulate a PIE pre-horse domestication.  Horses and wheels are such specutacular innovations that cognates could have spread from the place of origin even after PIE had split off - i.e. the fact that the German and Japanese words for tobacco are similar doesn't necessarily imply that the Japanese and German languages have a common origin in a language spoken by mobile tobacco merchants.  The Pontic theory that takes the opposing position is based on application of a comparative method that is just as contestible and speculative, because its hard to distinguish true cognates derived out of common liniguistic parentage from loan words for new concepts.

Well Sumerians were building cities and were in the neighborhood.  You would expect some loan words.  The Afro-asiatic speakers show up in the mid-east at an early date so you would expect loan words from them as well.    Instead you have loan words with the Uralic languages.  That is pretty damn odd if they the PIE guys were all hanging around Anatolia with their hos.  The thing with wheels is that you don't see the words adopted by all branches of other languages. Such as Sino-Tibetan or Afro-Asiatic.  Why PIE?

[Queequeg]

There's some shared vocabulary relating to domesticated animals and early trade goods.  "Wine" is the most obvious.  These are shared in Southeast Caucasian languages, though, too. 

[jimmy olsen]

If this is to be the designated Spellus/Ancient Anatollia thread, I have to ask, what do you think of Göbekli Tepe and how it's revolutionized our understanding of the birth of civilization.