It would be interesting to examine more European and non-European populations.
But its sounds quite interesting, especially if other markers would indicate the same scenario.

But the question would still be if Neolithic farmers of the northern crescent were the first speakers of Indoeuropean which wouldnt be proved that only that way.

But it sounds quite probable if you compare archaelogical and human biological data that at least such spreading of Neolithic farmers occurred from the north of the fertile crescent.

But judging from the archaeological data, this happened long time before the indoeuropeans came.
Linguistic and cultural studies for the later coming Indoeuropeans suggest that they were patriarchal pastoralists with a corresponding mythology, religion and social structure.

So maybe this agriculturalists brought it first to europe, but the final impact, the distribution of it in so many parts of eurasia happened later and in another context.

I mean among the first Indoeuropeans were the Hethiter, and this people settled in Anatolia.
If Anatolia would be the homeland of the I-E why were there mostly non-indoeuropean languages?
Before the Hethiter which came from the north there is not even one I-E language proved.

So maybe there were different people at different times which spreaded the I-E languages.

It would be the same with the Turks. There were different people at different times which spread the languages.

But for the I-E it is quite unprobable that agriculturalists from the Balkan distributed the languages finally, because this final impact was made by the battle-axe/corded people which fit much better in the profile you would made from the linguistic and other data.

Maybe 2000 years before they got the I-E languages from the agriculturalists, but how could you prove this?
At the time of the final expansion, the battle-axe/corded people were the primary agents of I-E IN EUROPE.

great post!

i am personally skeptical of colin renfrew's idea of that IE was spread with agriculture....

A very interesting summary.

I believe that the authors also found that the CMH (Cohen Modal Haplotype), which "segregates on an Eu10 background" is apparently very close to the Eu9-background modal haplotype of the Kurds. Also, it is curious that the Syrians and Lebanese, who inhabit lands to the north of ancient Israel, have lower population frequencies of Eu9 than either Ashkenazi or Sephardic Jews.

A few corrections to my post above.

1)I'm referring to the second Nebel et al paper.

2)I meant to group Syrians and Iraqis. The Lebanese are predominantly Eu9.

"Also, it is curious that the Syrians and Lebanese, who inhabit lands to the north of ancient Israel, have lower population frequencies of Eu9 than either Ashkenazi or Sephardic Jews."

European admixture?

"But the question would still be if Neolithic farmers of the northern crescent were the first speakers of Indoeuropean which wouldnt be proved that only that way."

The people who spread IE have left their genetic signature among all the IE speakers of the 15th century AD. Languages did not spread by "convection" in prehistory. Cultural domination was only possible through armed occupation of an area for a long period of time or migration or both. Ultimately the two (or more) populations would mix.
The area I would like to focus on is Western Europe. The populations there have a strong similarity with the Basques on the paternal side (mother tongue is strangely enough decided by the father). Since the Basques are not IE it is reasonable to assume it was not people with Eu18 Y-chromosomes who spread IE.
Eu19 which prevails in Eastern Europe and shows strongly in Central is virtually absent in Western Europe and Italy. So it must be people with Eu7, Eu9 or Eu4. The genetic evidence points to the Balkans and incidentally the spread of agriculture.

"I mean among the first Indoeuropeans were the Hethiter, and this people settled in Anatolia.
If Anatolia would be the homeland of the I-E why were there mostly non-indoeuropean languages?
Before the Hethiter which came from the north there is not even one I-E language proved."

Nobody can be sure the Hittite language came to Anatolia and from where. There were other languages in Anatolia related to IE. The question is were they ancestral to IE or not.

"Linguistic and cultural studies for the later coming Indoeuropeans suggest that they were patriarchal pastoralists with a corresponding mythology, religion and social structure."

There is no evidence to support that in many cases. It was the case though where evidence exists. But it was a secondary spread. Pastoralists are of course much more mobile than settled farmers. I agree that many populations spread IE. I just want to point out that the pastoralists were infected with the agriculture bug (and IE bug). That is where they got their animals from (excluding horses perhaps).

It is hard enough to say prove that the battle-axe/corded people spread the IE in central, western and northern europe, but its just not possible to say that the first agriculturalists spoke IE.

Yes there were other IE languages in Anatolia, but Hethit was the oldest of them (as far as I know) and its seems that the Hethiter came from the North. (the people who brought the language, then an ethnogenese took place)

That there is not to much genetic influence of the original IE in western europe should be quite obvious.
Because the people which brought IE to western Europe were secondary, third or even later wave of IE.
Maybe the first waves were of special people, but the later one were already mixed with central europeans and other eastern european groups and just brought a small amount of the original genes to western europe.

Nothing that new to me. And as I said, maybe the first one were such agriculturalists, who knows, but those who spread it finally in Europe were pastoralists with special characteristics as I said.

"Nobody can be sure the Hittite language came to Anatolia and from where. There were other languages in Anatolia related to IE. The question is were they ancestral to IE or not."

As far as I know, and I'm not a linguist but just read some books from people which are better on this, the Hittite or Hethitisch was not the original IE but one of the oldest dialects, which is no surprise, because its the oldest written IE language.

"I just want to point out that the pastoralists were infected with the agriculture bug (and IE bug). That is where they got their animals from"

But how would this scenario sound to you?
The agriculturalists lets call them Danubians spread over Europe and they spoke not IE but another language, maybe related to the sumerians.
They go further and further in the east were they came together with quite primitive people, in a patriarchal organisation and which domesticated the horse at that time.
These two groups learned from each other and the more primitive ones, lets say the original IE learned just very fast, they were better in war, and had the horse on their side.
They assimilated the danubians first, and then they spread with their new ressources and more people all over europe and parts of asia.
Possible? I would say so.

Just think about the relation between Scyths and some Asian groups. At first the Scyths were dominant but then more primitive people learned from them what was useful and were much more aggressive fighters.
Thats the story of the steppe.
It was the same with the groups which followed each other like Meder, Persians, Parthians, Huns in Iran.
The successful ones get settled, they got saturated and became more passive in war. The next wave took their place...

I would just assume that in Europe this combination of eastern farmers under the rule of pastoralists in a patriarchal and hierarchic society distributed the IE language in Europe.

If the agriculturalists or these later pastoralists spoke it first...
I see no definite proof in any of these directions...
Or maybe there were even more groups lumped together. More improbable, but not totally impossible.
But to think of the people which prayed to Zeus, Indra, Wotan etc. as agriculturalists is something strange...
Everything about the social structure, religion, mythology, art of war etc. we know of the early IE groups is going in a clear direction.

"It is hard enough to say prove that the battle-axe/corded people spread the IE in central, western and northern europe, but its just not possible to say that the first agriculturalists spoke IE."

I am only saying the IE either originated or passed through the Balkans. In my opinion it is the only option. I do tend to believe that it spread with agriculture.

"Because the people which brought IE to western Europe were secondary, third or even later wave of IE.
Maybe the first waves were of special people, but the later one were already mixed with central europeans and other eastern european groups and just brought a small amount of the original genes to western europe."

In prehistory there was no clear technological advantage. Even the horse or use of metals would not have been able to tilt the balance in favour of one side, if that side was vastly outnumbered. Significant numbers of invaders would have to be involved. In a second wave of expansion their genetic input would be less prominent but it will still be significant. Take the example of India. Even in southern parts of the country, there is significant "European" male ancestry in the upper castes(In IE speaking areas). It is lower than in the north, where the primary expansion took place but it is there. In western Europe and Italy Eu19 ranges between 0% and 1%. I assume the invading from the steppe pastoralists would initially carry at least equal to today's Ukrainian percentages of Eu19. About 50% at least. After invading central Europe I would expect it to be diluted to about 25%. In a subsequent expansion to western europe about 12%. I would be willing to accept 5%. Not almost 0%. Then there is the lack of archaeological evidence. Nothing to support such an expansion in France or the UK. Nothing in Italy.

"These two groups learned from each other and the more primitive ones, lets say the original IE learned just very fast, they were better in war, and had the horse on their side.
They assimilated the danubians first, and then they spread with their new ressources and more people all over europe and parts of asia.
Possible? I would say so."

As you know there is no magic spell in any IE language which will help you win all your battles.
In the steppe rapid expansion may be possible. Not in the mountainous terrain of the Balkans. I agree IE spread to the steppe and then Iran and India by mounted warriors. In Europe it was a slower process (less spectacular but no less heroic) of colonisation step by step.

But to think of the people which prayed to Zeus, Indra, Wotan etc. as agriculturalists is something strange...

As far as Zeus is concerned he was neither god of pastoralists nor of farmers. He was the god of lightening. If have seen and heard lightening crash about 200 m from where I was standing and I can tell you I have never experienced anything more impressive. Nothing strange about Zeus being father of gods and humans, whatever their profession.

Melnorme,

European admixture is a possibility, also suggested by the authors as a possible explanation for the higher frequency (12.7%) of Eu19 (R1a?) among Ashkenazim. However, I think they interpret their data as a sign of ancient connections between the progenitors of Jews and Kurds. Comparisons of specific haplotype microsatellite marker constellations yielded the result that "the three Jewish communities had many additional haplotypes in common with Muslim Kurds... They shared more haplotypes and chromosomes with Muslim Kurds than with either Palestinians or Bedouin." On this basis and on the basis of inter-group comparison of haplogroup distribution, the authors concluded that Jews are genetically closer to Muslim Kurds than to Palestinians or Bedouin.

I doesn't surprise me that Jews share affinities with a wide variety of Near and Middle Eastern peoples, both genetically and physically.

This map makes it clear -
http://www.uoregon.edu/~atlas/europe/static/map11.html

How about those Lebanese, by the way? Another case that needs explaining.

Lightning gods tend to be Gods of war. I've been working on a theory that primary (earliest) political organization was usually military, and that nations formed as military units. The lightning God / war God would also be the God of the war chief and thus, the state.

Victor Davis Hansen has a theory of the military origins of western civilization in the milityary forms of the Greek polis.

Zeus was not a war god, Ares and Athena were the main war gods in Greek religion. Also, Zeus was of Pelasgian origin (Ilias, 16.233). The association of Zeus with the bull is also important, as the bull was a prominent symbol of power in the Neolithic.

this is the standard origin of zeus we learn of in america dienekes. it is generally asserted that zeus is indo-european, that the pelasgian's were not, ergo, i assumed zeus was not a pelasgian god. which part is incorrect?

Achilles addresses "Pelasgian Dodonian Zeus" in the Ilias. One of the sanctuaries of Zeus was in Dodona where according to Strabo 5.2.4 the Epirotic ethnê were Pelasgian.

The notion that the Pelasgians were non-Indo-Europeans is a complete invention (*), since nothing is known about the language of the various groups called "Pelasgian" in antiquity. Some have hypothesized that the Pelasgians were IE speakers, but not Greek speakers. The ancient testimony is split with Herodotus calling Pelasgians barbarians, while Dionysius of Halicarnassus calls them a Hellenic ethnos.

Actually, Herodotus' story has some logical flaws, since he thought that only Dorians were Hellenes (H. was Dorian, BTW) at the beginning and Athenians were non-Hellenes, Pelasgians. Hellenization supposedly happened, according to Herodotus, via the Dorian-Hellenes. However, the discovery of pre-Dorian Mycnaean Linear B Greek tablets all over southern Greece indicates that Greeks existed there before the "Dorians".

(*) Based on the distinction between Hellenes and Pelasgians. Since Hellenes were assumed to be IE intruders, Pelasgians were assumed to be indigenous "pre-IE".

"Then there is the lack of archaeological evidence. Nothing to support such an expansion in France or the UK. Nothing in Italy."

There is not to much support yes, but dont forget, that this expansion in Western Europe and Italy happened much later.
The people which brought IE were just partly descendents of the original IE. They lived already hundreds of years in regions were already the majority was non-IE.

F.e. Hallstatt:
I know that the most people in the Hallstatt-culture complex which presumable spoke IE were not of IE descendent.
Just in some regions they were the absolut majority and in the upper class. (The upper class was usually taller and more dolichokephal)

But then there occured a massive change in the world of the Hallstatt culture, you even can call this a revolution.
The old structures partly broke up and the old elite lost control.
Huge groups of lower warrior class people seemed to get in power.
And this bands of warriors spread their new social structure, new culture (La Tene) and ideas over western Europe and Northern Italy.
= first waves of celtic expansion after Hallstatt.
That this people had not to much genes of the original IE, who wonders? I dont.

Just think if the today Haitians would have made a revolution vs. the colonial power (they did) and then spread the French language.
I mean would they have to much French genes?

"As you know there is no magic spell in any IE language which will help you win all your battles"

At first I dont know if they would have fought so much battles always on their own.
If you look at all this steppe people, they crushed one big tribe, and then they showed their power and cruelty (usually).
All the other tribes in the region had two possibilities: 1. to flee, 2. to become vasalls.

With the new vasalls, with their ressources and manpower they were not weaker after the first battles but much, much more stronger.
And always you see in the history of IE that they even if they established usually a class system, they worked together with the local people on the long term in a useful way.

They got the horse (most say so today), they got good weapons (battle axe and excellent bow), they had an effective patriarchal-hierarchic organisation, they were quite mobile (first oxes than horses), they knew all techniques of that time which were really important for fighting or subsistence.

All this things together. And now think again of Europeans at that time which were mostly agriculturalist with a lower level of organisation, and not too much military power.
They had to fought against good equipped, horsed, well organised and maybe fanatic nomads.

Almost everytime in history before modern the agriculturalists lost quite fast.
The main thing was, was the invading group so intelligent, and had such an high organisation level that they could implement their own structures at the long term, they IE could.

If you argue Anatolian agriculturalists were the first IE, I want just to raise some questions:

Why were there no proved IE in Anatolia and it seems that the first came from the north?
There were proved non-IE in Anatolia before and afterwards, but no IE.

Why if they invaded the Balkan they did not come to Greece? I mean the Minoan culture which was the first high-level-civilization was A) not patriarchal, and B) not IE.

And this bull-worship and mythology was typical for many Mediterraneans.
I see in this bull-and mother goddess idea the original characteristics of the agriculturalists.
Thinking of the agriculturalists which came from Anatolia to Europe I think of such people, with a similar language and cult like the Minoans got.
Maybe they influenced the IE very much, but it seems unprobable that they brought the IE language.

To the Jewish discussion I just want to supplement that even before the genetic analysis all racial anthropologists said that the Jewish, especially the Ashkenazi Jews are much more Armenid than Orientalid.
Orientalid is typical for the original Semitic people, Armenid not.
But Armenid types can be seen quite often under the Kurds.
The only thing I wonder is that the difference between Sephardic and Ashkenazi is not as big as I thought it would be...

And the Libanese are to me much more Mediterranean than other people of this region, which are usually a mix of Orientalid and Armenid people with some other admixture (Pseudo-Alpin and Mediterranean f.e.) too.

So this study fits quite good in the picture we got from the racial anthropology if its like that.

I even got an ethnological example which is for me partly the model for the IE expansion.

This model is in East Africa and its about the Hima states.

The Hima states were made by a minority of people, you can call them Hamites, Tussis or like you want.
They came in with a solid knowledge, good weapons, an excellent social organization, they were very mobile (as pasturalists with cattles) and had tall and lean body which was made for being able to be fast on the long distance and to have long range in battle.

They subdued the local Bantu people (lets call them Hutus) and Pygmies.

They made up a state(s) with a quite high niveau for this region and with a strong hierarchic order.

Everybody who follows the international history and news know what heppened today.

But just think, the Europeans would have never came in, which possibilities would be there?

First they could have totally mixed at the long time with the aboriginals. (which they partly did, but just partly)
This new mix-population could have brought the culture to other groups too. Maybe establishing a similar system like the Hamites did when they came.

Or there could be strong hierarchic system, like it was in Greece, in the early times of IE in central europe and in India.
In fact if you ever saw how the organisation of this Hima states was, it was a segmented society.
Maybe not all people even knew who they are (Hima or Bantu etc.) but they lived on the one side as warriors and pastoralists, and on the other as agriculturalists.
So the main difference was no longer the Ethnic identity, but the "profession" and position in the society.
Does that remind anyone on something?
Maybe India or Greece?
And like their sometimes especially women could have come in the former pure Hima upper class.

This Hima even had no bow, no horse, and they fought on extreme terrain.
But partly military, partly peaceful, they besame the masters of the region and over a majority of agriculturalists.

Not only the IE did it that way but many other groups as well, f.e.: The Hamites in East Africa, the Semites, the Bantus, different Indian tribes, the Mongols, the Turks.
Some had more success, others less.
But if you look at the world linguistically, what linguistic groups dominate?
That of agriculturalists?
No!
The vast majority of languages today comes from herders, pastoral and patriarchal people with a strong hierarchic stable and rigid social system.

Because this way of living was military superior to the agriculturalists.
Only if the agriculturalists reached very high levels of culture and state they could defend themselves.

It is not by chance that all early IE we know of show characteristics of patriarchal pastoralists.
I would just wonder if not...

>> They got the horse (most say so today), they got good weapons (battle axe and excellent bow), they had an effective patriarchal-hierarchic organisation, they were quite mobile (first oxes than horses), they knew all techniques of that time which were really important for fighting or subsistence.

The first domesticated horses were eaten (hippophagy). There is no evidence for military use of the horse before the 2nd millennium BC, long after any date of IE expansions.

>> Why were there no proved IE in Anatolia and it seems that the first came from the north?

You're making a statement that is not backed by any facts. How exactly is it proven that Indo-Europeans were intrusive in Anatolia, or that they came from the "north"? I'll tell you how: it can't be proven, because there's no evidence for it.

What we do know is that the earliest attested IE languages are in Asia Minor. If they were the earliest then they would be closer to Proto-Indo-European. Actually Hittite is barely recognizable as Indo-European, and is very differentiated from the other branches.

The supporters of the "northern origin" theory argue that it's so different because the "Proto-Anatolians" separated first. But, there is no evidence for an early intrusion of any kind into Anatolia. Indeed, the supporters of the Pontic steppe hypothesis have to postulate that the Indo-Europeans took a trip around the Black Sea to end up conveniently in Anatolia early on.

Much of the discussion of IE origins is informed by inaccurate ideations as to the nature of "Old Europe" and the "Kurgan culture" that is largely due to Marija Gimbutas. "Old Europe" was neither matriarchal, nor egalitarian. The "Kurgan culture" were not mounted warriors, they were dirt-poor agro-pastoralists scratching a living in the steppe.

Also, whether or not Kurgan groups infiltrated Eastern and southeastern Europe is completely irrelevant to the problem of IE origins. History gives us many examples of conquerors (Normans, Visigoths, Lombards, Bulgars, Varangians) who were completely and utterly linguistically absorbed by their host populations. And, these were highly militarized hierarchical and organized tribal groups, not primitive chalcolithic agro-pastoralists.

>> It is not by chance that all early IE we know of show characteristics of patriarchal pastoralists.
I would just wonder if now...

All early Indo-Europeans don't appear like "patriarchal pastoralists". They appear as settled farmers with a mixed economy including both plants and animals. The only ones who appear as "pastoralists" are the nomadic Scythians (whose Indo-European affiliation is based on 4 words from Herodotus and a few late inscriptions, if I may add).

>> But if you look at the world linguistically, what linguistic groups dominate?
That of agriculturalists?
No!

Chris, you have many ideas that are simply not backed by any empirical evidence. I suggest that you examine the literature more carefully and not rely on your own ideas.

Farmers and their Languages is a good place to start.

This is interesting material, but one needs be careful not to dogmatically over-interpret it. But we see is a frequency distribution of the J marker, and its subtypes, amongst various Caucasian populations. Based on these differences in gene frequencies, as well as a number of other data, assumptions are made (which may well be justified and accurate), that differences in these frequencies may represent the effects of a Neolithic expansion. And that there is a North/South "fertile crescent" difference. All well and good (but not of course definitively proven). But there is quite a jump from that to say that various groups - including European ethnies (including the French!) - are "overwhelmingly derived" from the Fertile Crescent (from Neolithic times). That may well be true. Or it may not be true at all. What the data does me is that a signficant portion of the _patrilineages_ of these groups seem to derive from the Near Eastern Neolithic expansion, and that there are differences between subtypes that may indicate some differences in specific place of origin of these patrilineages. I note that for the European groups, the % of J is less than 0.5. So again, one needs to be conservatively reasonable in the interpretation of the data. I would like to see some careful and extensive work done comparing autosomal gene frequncies between these populations. I do appreciate Dienekes' note "+", because one must be careful not to equate "Neolithic Near Eastern farmers" with the present occupants of this region. Obviously, modern day Near Easterners derive significant ancestry from that source, but form other sources as well. I see no reason to assume that "neolithic farmers" (who _may_ have been one of the originators of IE speech) were in any way "semitic." Possibly the branching off of Semitic and Europid branches took place after the Neolithic expansion. If I may be forgiven for supporting a Kempian idea, it is possible that these Neolithic farmers were of "Old European" stock. Anyway, this underscores the importance of the following: if one wants to distinguish various Euro ethnies from modern Near Easterners via autosomal data, you need to pick markers that drifted to different frequencies _after_ the Neolithic expansion.

please forgive some of the spelling/grammar errors in the last post, as I am rushed here. But I trust my overall points are clear nonetheless

"All early Indo-Europeans don't appear like "patriarchal pastoralists". They appear as settled farmers with a mixed economy including both plants and animals. The only ones who appear as "pastoralists" are the nomadic Scythians (whose Indo-European affiliation is based on 4 words from Herodotus and a few late inscriptions, if I may add)."

Yes, thats right. As they appeared they were semi-nomad people with a mixed subsistence pattern, but, and thats why I used the example of the Hima states, this was when they came in the light of history.

And I stated before that I'm quite sure that the people which finally spread the IE were a mix of the nomads and local agriculturalists in eastern and central europe.
It would be the same with the Hima, the elite lived on as pastoralists and warriors, the common people were agriculturalists.
So I see it as wave, at the beginning the nomadic people.
They distributed under the agriculturalists their language, their religion and mythology, their social system and way of fighting etc.
But the main body of these later IE were agriculturalists or lets better say a mixed semi-nomadic subsistence pattern.
Typical for the Celts and Germans f.e., wereas in the East the original lifestyle of the conquerers survived without to many change and was distributed to Iran, India etc.

So what are the arguments for that:
I think its quite obvious that the social and value system of IE was not of ordinary agriculturalists.
I'm quite sure.

I'm sure that this mix (pastoralists and agriculturalists) happened, and that this mix formed the people which spread the language all over Europe.
In the east, the probable homeland they kept more their nomadic pattern.

You can say it the other way around, that the agriculturalists were the first which spoke IE.
I think thats possible too.
But the major shift in mentality and social order, happened in the context of at least semi-nomadic warriors.
And this change was the really important one for the successful distribution of what I wouldnt just call the IE language, but the IE style of living and fight.
And this were not just conquerer like the Mongols were, without culture which just raided and went back to their homelands again.
They were highly culturated people with a good knowledge of all they need to rule in a region were they were not inferior in any way.
They settled down, made alliances, and their way of living and mentality was spreading even with people which I would call "secondary IE".

So whether or not the steppe pastoralists or semi- were the first speakers, they were the more important ones finally.
But we will probably never know it for sure who was first...

And about the Hethiter one supplementation.
Ok, there is, so far as I know no certain proof for their migration from the north, that right.
But, there lived many people at this time in Anatolia and no group from this we know spoke IE.
Why was that?

Why just a very small region in Anatolia which was often the target for raids from the north before the Hethiter and afterwards. (just think about the Cimmerians, the Scyths, the Sarmatians, the Persians, the Parthians, the Huns, the Turks, the Mongols etc...)
Same for Greece, why was there another language on Crete?
And why was IE just there when people from the North definetely came in?
If you think how far it is from Anatolia to Greece, and that sea was more good for communication and migration than bad, why not?
Why was the whole North of Europe IE but the "original homeland" not?
I mean can you prove that their was replacment of people en masse?
Its the same question for proofs like you asked me for the Hethiter.

What we just know from the Hethiter is that they were just a small group at the beginning, but they reached the controll of great parts of Anatolia via secondary assimilation.
But even under their rule many of the peasants stayed to be non-IE Hatti.
And when the sea people came in this Hethiter oops were away...
I mean why?
If they would have been a mass group at all, it seems unprobable that they just disappeared.
I think this was too just possible because they were just a minority in Anatolia (the original ones) and the old non-IE languages and culture were still there.
I think all we know about the Hethiter speaks for the conclusion that they were not from the region, the original people were just a minority, and that they came into this land maybe as mercenaries like the Mitanni did it too.

Just think about the Turkish similarity.
Many Turks came first into the Islamic countries as mercenaries or to make raids, but then they became the masters.

I just want to point out what is a problem with Igor M. D'iakonov theory.
Maybe you can say something to that too.

1. The Hethither-Luwians seems not to be from the original people of Anatolia, and if so, why were there almost just non-IE languages in Anatolia?
So the presumed home land of IE would have not even one aboriginal IE group...

2. The religion, mythology and social system etc. of the IE was not typical for agriculturalists but more for pastoralists or at least people with a semi-nomadic, mixed economy and a warrior like life of the upper class.
This upper class was almost separated from the commoners which would fit perfect for the model of pastoralists which subdued agriculturalists.

3. The estimated times are not correct from the linguistic point of view.
All linguists estimate a much younger date of the IE spreading.
Igor M. D'iakonov seems always set it back some thousands years to make it logical that the farmers, which came much earlier than the battle-axe/corded people could be the IE.
But almost every linguistic analyse I read or historians quoted estimate a much younger date for the IE spreading.

chris-i believe the tutsis speak a bantu language (not a nilotic one), the language of the hutus who they conquered....

>> But there is quite a jump from that to say that various groups - including European ethnies (including the French!) - are "overwhelmingly derived" from the Fertile Crescent (from Neolithic times).

Their J-haplogroups Y chromosomes are derived from the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. J-haplogroup Y chromosomes are only part of their Y chromosome distribution. Most European males don't have a J-haplogroup Y chromosome, but the ones that do are mostly Eu9, belonging to the same branch as those of Asia Minor and the Caucasus.

>> If I may be forgiven for supporting a Kempian idea, it is possible that these Neolithic farmers were of "Old European" stock.

The people who are most heavily descended from the Neolithic farmers are the present-day inhabitants of the Near East pace Kemp. Sure, there is some level of African [1] admixture in Arab groups of the region, although non-Arab groups in the Near East show no such admixture and are overwhelmingly descended from the population base of Neolithic times.

[1] Am. J. Hum. Genet., 72:1058-1064, 2003

>> The Hethither-Luwians seems not to be from the original people of Anatolia, and if so, why were there almost just non-IE languages in Anatolia?

Please give an argument as to why that "seems" to you. I could just as easily reply that it "seems" to me that they were originally from Anatolia.

As for non-IE languages existing in Anatolia history is a good lesson. Multiple languages have always existed in Anatolia, because Anatolia is a big place with a fragmented landscape. At the beginning of this century there were Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Assyrians, Arabs, etc. all living in Anatolia. If we turn back the clock we find Greeks, Lycians, Phrygians, Celts, etc.

>> This upper class was almost separated from the commoners which would fit perfect for the model of pastoralists which subdued agriculturalists.

The evidence for what you are saying comes from comparative analysis of customs in IE societies long after any dispersal. It comes from the analysis of such militarized Iron Age and beyond societies, not of Proto-Indo-European society.

>> All linguists estimate a much younger date of the IE spreading.

I'd take linguistic analyses with a pinch of salt. After all, the comparative method would show that Romance languages had a term *guerram for war (Latin had bellum) and glottochronology proved that Proto-Romance was dated around 1,000AD, a good thousand years after Vulgar Latin started differentiating.

>> Same for Greece, why was there another language on Crete?
And why was IE just there when people from the North definetely came in?

First, we don't know what Minoan Cretans spoke. Second, people from the "North" didn't come to Crete. Let's be more specific: Achaean Greeks and then Dorian Greeks came to Crete from Greece, not "Indo-Europeans" from the "North".

>> Why was the whole North of Europe IE but the "original homeland" not?

First of all, the whole North of Europe wasn't IE, there was a significant Finno-Ugric presence there, as well as indigenous British languages (Picts etc.), as well as other languages of the indigenous pre-IE inhabitants of northern Europe that we know nothing about because there were no literate observers to tell us about them, unlike Anatolia or Britain.

Second, Northern Europe can't have been the Indo-European homeland because it was a destination of people and cultural achievements, not a source. In the case of Anatolia and the Southern Balkans there is a documented expansion of peoples and cultural artefacts, hence these regions are candidates for being the PIE homeland, while northern Europe is not.

"Second, Northern Europe can't have been the Indo-European homeland because it was a destination of people and cultural achievements, not a source."

I didnt meant that the homeland was in Northern Europe, I just want to make clear that EVEN there the overwhelming majority was definitive IE after the invasions of the battle-axe/corded people.
And if they were all over eastern and northern europe with small exception and interestingly almost everytime where the battle axe people didnt came in, why not in their estimated homeland?

But the thing with Crete seems to me very obvious.
There culture and everything else was not IE.
And I think the Minoans are the best representents in every respect of this Neolithic farmers from Anatolia, even racially.

And as I said before there are just assumptions about the Hethiter, but, almost everything lead to the conclusion that they were mercenaries or raiders which formed and upperclass over the non-IE Anatatolians, mostly Hatti.
And I personally think it was a similar situation like it was in India, they took local wifes and mixed up with the local elite quite fast, and formed a new Hethit speaking one.

And maybe the first IE in Europe lived on the Balkan, I dont say it cant be.
But there are not more arguments for this than for the steppe hypothesis.
And in fact, if you think about the people with mixed economy and a strong pastoral influence, or even the real IE warrior nomads in the steppe, there speaks just a litte bit more (at the moment, as long as we dont know more) for the steppe hypothesis.

Because nothing about the at least in the majority IE battle axe/corded people was typical for Anatolian agriculturalists.
They adopted the agrar economy, but did they adopt the language too?

The social structure and way of living was lets say very atypical for agriculturalists of this time.
But who knows...
In the end the final impact was made by the corded people. And about that I'm absolutely sure, which made some fusion with pastoralists or they would have made a huge change in their way of living and thinking. (what would be possible too)

And yes Razib you are right, Kinyarwanda is a Bantu language, but the model is still good for me, because it shows a more primitive society in which similar conquering happened like it maybe happened in Europe.

I think the major success of IE was not just military, but also mentally, they brought new ideas and a new living style and techniques with them.
Some even said the early IE, were not just warriors but traders too.
Traders with contacts from central europe to central Asia.
The idea of a wide spread lingua franka of the mobile traders and warriors of this time seems as plausible as the idea of Neolithic farmers.

And if they were in contact with each other over long distances, then it would be quite probable that they just dont forget their language and adopt that of the aboriginals.
This happened to many small groups which conquered huge territories.
But if the held contact with each other and came in masses of pastoralists and seme-nomadic agriculturalists and "converted" one tribe after another and fight with them in the next step, than their success would be nothing magical.

But who knows. They had a mixed economy, they had a strong pastoral influence and an atypical style of living and mentality (mythology, social system, religion etc.) for agriculturalists, thats what we know.

Why this was so, and if there was a mix of pastoral and agriculturalists, what I believe, who spoke IE first...difficult to prove.

Dienekes: " I'd take linguistic analyses with a pinch of salt. After all, the comparative method would show that Romance languages had a term *guerram for war (Latin had bellum) and glottochronology proved that Proto-Romance was dated around 1,000AD, a good thousand years after Vulgar Latin started differentiating. "

Glottochronology works best with undocumented languages, or to put it another way, it´s the only way to compute language divergence (i.e., when did language A and B split apart) based on a set of common vocabulary. It´s better than guess-work, but not much more.

But I know of no serious comparative linguist who uses the said method for Indo-European.
The comparativ method, however, is sound enough to refute Renfrew´s hypothesis. There´s no way ancient Greek and Vedic could still be so close in grammatical and sound forms and vocabulary if you posit a 5000 yrs split like Renfrew does.

>> The comparativ method, however, is sound enough to refute Renfrew´s hypothesis. There´s no way ancient Greek and Vedic could still be so close in grammatical and sound forms and vocabulary if you posit a 5000 yrs split like Renfrew does.

Renfrew has two hypotheses for Indo-Iranian, one associated with early farming and one associated with the Andronovo culture. He seems to prefer the latter one lately. This would solve the alleged linguistic difficulties of accepting an Anatolian origin.

As for the value of time depths in linguistics, I have serious reservations, since linguistic theories of time depth can only be empirically tested over long-term data and these are lacking. So, someone can extrapolate all they want based on the short-term (recorded) history of languages, but these won't necessarily apply to long-term process.

In other words, no one can reasonably say how much linguistic divergence occurs in say 6,000 years because quite simply there are no observations of languages over 6,000 years.

Linguistics won't tell us the time-depth of Indo-European in anything but the broadest terms. At most they may reveal some patterns of similarities between branches of the tree, or some diagnostic aspects of the proto-language.

"or some diagnostic aspects of the proto-language. "

Which usually state a strong pastoral influence.

And there is a difference in saying that a linguist was wrong about 500 or 2000+ years.

>> Which usually state a strong pastoral influence.

Elaborate on which aspects of the proto-lexicon hint at a "pastoral influence". Which specific aspects, not generalities. More importantly, which aspects hint at nomadism since settled pastoralism and transhumance were important in the agro-pastoral economies of the Balkans.

Dienekes: "In other words, no one can reasonably say how much linguistic divergence occurs in say 6,000 years because quite simply there are no observations of languages over 6,000 years. "

That´s just like saying we don´t know for sure the sun will rise tomorrow because we only have millions of years of data so far...

Seriously,the thing is I have reservations with mainstrean hypothesis about the homeland of the Indo-Europeans, and I would be willing to accept a Middle-Eastern origin theory if only the evidnce from archeology would fit with known linguistic facts. I hold ad hoc explanations like Renfrew´s and Gimbutas´ highly suspect, however different they might be.

>> That´s just like saying we don´t know for sure the sun will rise tomorrow because we only have millions of years of data so far...

This is a very poor analogy. Some systems are more unstable and unpredictable than others. Language changes with some regularity, but that is not on the level of the regularity of the earth's motion. This is because language change is largely stochastic while the earth rotates largely deterministically.

Anyway, it's likely that it'll never been proven how exactly IE languages spread. There is probably not enough information to come to a conclusive answer.

But Dienekes, who ever spoke IE first, you agree that the battle-axe corded/people are a archaeological complex which almost have to be IE?
So whatever was before this groups was one of the really important one for the spread of IE in central-, western and northern europe.

And I would say too that maybe ONE of the Anatolian groups spoke IE and that this group could have been absorbed by more mobile and pastoral people.
But you are right Dienekes, that not easy to prove if its even possible.
But I really dont believe that all the Neolithic farmers which came to Europe spoke IE.
Every group can change its character over centuries and thousands of years, but this change is for me just logical if there was a strong pastoral influence from other groups.

And exact hints for nomadism are really difficult to see.
But its the other way around too. And the mobile living with its hierarchic structure is more typical for at least semi-nomadic people.

Actually, Herodotus' story has some logical flaws, since he thought that only Dorians were Hellenes (H. was Dorian, BTW) at the beginning and Athenians were non-Hellenes, Pelasgians

Depends on how one interpits Herodutus's statement.True he clearly stated Pelasgians were not Greek but he also stated they were weak and insignificant.That the Athenians became Greek after being absorbed into the Hellenic family of nations.But since the Athenians became Greek then obviously they had a language and genes imposed on them by Greeks thus they ceased to be Pelasgians.Perhaps there was a small tribe in attica of Pelasgians that were invaded by Greek speaking people and since they were small in numbers they got absorbed and became Greek.I look to Hesoids explaination that the Ionians were related to Helen via Xuthus .The first Greek speaking peoples to move south from the area of Olympus spoke an Ionic diolect associated with Mycenae .Since the Ionians were the 1st Greek speaking people to move south they would have been the 1st ones to encounter and absorb Pelasgians.Since the 1st Greek speaking people were at first small relitive to the original population certain elements from the Pelasgians survived.The Dorian invasions were massive movements from the same area of earlier Greek speaking peoples.Following Dorian population movements all elements of Pelasgians were pertty much vannished.Athens of coursed escaped Dorians invaders were as the Peloponese and Crete did not.The name Hellas is associated with Dorians but it is also true that Ionic speaking Greeks were present in Southern Greece centures before their Dorian kinsmen.So the name Hellas became Universal via the Dorians stay in central Greece.ALSO PLEASE NOTE_ IONIC AND DORIC REFER TO DIOLECTS NOT RACE BOTH WERE GREEK Mycenean Greeks who spoke Ionic show skelital tendecies similar to north central Greeks.SEE MALLORY BOOK IN SEARCH OF THE INDOEUROPEANS -this is of course the same area where the DORIANS originated.

I agree that Herodotus was probably biased since he was a Dorian but not all of his account should be discounted despite some errors.

Does anyone know if data exists showing where the various groups of Afghanistan & West Pakistan lie, regarding the J haplogroup?

As i, & many others, have observed, some groups in Afghanistan & Pakistan, namely some tribes of Pashtuns & Tajiks, possess a kind of fierce, hyper-semitic appearance, even more so than any true semites i've seen, indicating that they may be of ancient semitic, or partly semitic, origin.

Just whether that semitic element is of Arab, Hebrew, Aramaean, or other semitic origin is an open question

Among the prime groups i would like data on are the Pashtuns inhabiting Kandahar(Qandaharis), and those of the second great Pashtun city, that of Peshawar(Peshawaris). Many sub-tribes & clans within these groups have distinctive features, too.

Thanks,

For Pakistan:

Am. J. Hum. Genet., 70:1107-1124, 2002

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v70n5/013572/013572.html

Haplogroup J = HG9

Hello again!

Thanks for the link to the article on Pakistan's haplogroups, although i've seen it before, and was hoping for something as substantial as what is usually posted at your site. As more is discovered, i suppose, data will become increasingly interesting.

Anyway, i was just wondering how much bearing haplogroups have upon phenotypes, as frequency of the former seems to be correlated with the distinctive peculiarities of the latter.

For example, we know that Palestinian official Yasir Arafat is Palestinian, & can therefore assume that he probably posseses "Hg9".
Now, would it be fair to assume that an Afghan or Tajik, or even an Italian, who has the same type of features & facial cast as Yasir Arafat is positive for "Hg9"?
Is a characteristic appearance only to be found among those who carry a certain ancestral Haplogroup?
We know that a Subsaharan African or an Australian Aborigine must have something genetically in common with his kinsmen being that he will always resemble them more than he will unrelated populations.

Therefore, is the fact that Middle Easterners resemble each other much more than they do Europeans, & vice-versa, etc. in any way related to haplogroup frequencies, paternal or maternal(Y or MtDNA) within & among populations?

Another question i have been wondering about is how haplogroups originated.
We know that they orginated by mutation, but was that mutation a collective process involving many individuals, or was it something originating within one person, something that was passed down through offspring?
If it was the latter, this would mean that we are all(everyone within certain hapologroups) brothers & sisters, sons & daughters, of a specific individual 15-20,000 years ago?
Might haplogroup frequecies hold clues as to the order of humanity eons ago, even clues about who spoke what languages ?

Sincerely, Thanks;-)

Y chromosome haplogroups have nothing to do with phenotypes. They represent only a tiny fraction of a person's ancestry, and they are based on polymorphisms not believed to have functional significance.