Neolithic Farmers and the Spread of Indo-European, The Case for Euphratic, etc.

[rms2]

I have been re-reading both Mallory and Anthony lately (I sit and read early in the morning poolside at a local park while my daughter is taking her swimming lessons there). Their arguments for the Pontic-Caspian and against Anatolia are pretty powerful.

The standard glottochronology, according to Anthony, shows that IE was beginning to fracture into its various son languages by about 3,000 BC. However, work with the Anatolian branch indicates it intersects with Proto-Anatolian about 3,400 BC. So, anyway, some of the earlier pre or proto sons were forming sometime in the late 4th millennium BC.

The son languages that formed earliest would have reflected the state of IE when they split away from it, and that was apparently the centum state. The western IE languages are all centum languages, so apparently they left the PIE homeland early and migrated west. Anatolian was also one of the early sons. It retained not only the centum form but also some other oddities that cause some linguists, according to Anthony, to place it in a special class of archaic IE.

Personally, I don't see how Indo-European languages could have spread so successfully all the way to the Atlantic without some substantial migration. I understand other mechanisms for language replacement, but they are unconvincing for such a large area and so thorough a change. So, I still think R1b was the primary vector for the introduction of IE to the west. But how, and where is the proof?

[rms2]

Dienekes has something interesting on the Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT) this morning: http://dienekes.blogspot.com/.

Unfortunately, access to the entire article requires an AAAS membership, but here's the abstract (again):

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6042/560.abstract

During the economic transition from foraging to farming, the signal of a major demographic shift can be observed in cemetery data of world archaeological sequences. This signal is characterized by an abrupt increase in the proportion of juvenile skeletons and is interpreted as the signature of a major demographic shift in human history, known as the Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT). This expresses an increase in the input into the age pyramids of the corresponding living populations with an estimated increase in the total fertility rate of two births per woman. The unprecedented demographic masses that the NDT rapidly brought into play make this one of the fundamental structural processes of human history.

[alan trowel hands.]

If the really old forms of the branch really are south of the Black Sea as some suggest (predating proto-IE) then you would have to feel that the area to the north of the Black Sea was the receiver rather than the doner.  One possibility is that the early dairy farmers of NW Anatolia are the origin and their movement into Bulgaria etc spread PIE into Europe or PIE evolved there from Pre-PIE Anatolian settlers.  From there it could have spread with dairying west through middle Neolithic cultures, perhaps the origin of the centum branch.  It may have then spread to the east into the north of the Black Sea.  

This kind of middle Neolithic model falls between the first farmers and Kurgan type models.  The value of it is it means the spread west can be linked to the spread of dairying through middle Neolithic cultures from the extreme SE of Europe to the isles which is attested in archaeology rather than the usual complex house of cards that bringing steppes people to western Europe requires.  The movement east into the area north of the Black Sea could be seen as a separate process.  Perhaps that would explain the big split in IE.  That kind of model actual would close the gap between the early farmers and the Kurgan type models and it is possible that both are correct in some way and that there was one process that early spread IE west with dairying and that there was a second process that involved the steppes.  

[alan trowel hands.]

Dienekes has something interesting on the Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT) this morning: http://dienekes.blogspot.com/.

Unfortunately, access to the entire article requires an AAAS membership, but here's the abstract (again):

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6042/560.abstract

During the economic transition from foraging to farming, the signal of a major demographic shift can be observed in cemetery data of world archaeological sequences. This signal is characterized by an abrupt increase in the proportion of juvenile skeletons and is interpreted as the signature of a major demographic shift in human history, known as the Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT). This expresses an increase in the input into the age pyramids of the corresponding living populations with an estimated increase in the total fertility rate of two births per woman. The unprecedented demographic masses that the NDT rapidly brought into play make this one of the fundamental structural processes of human history.

There is still a strong feeling that the spread of farming is THE demographic event in European prehistory.  That is why it is always tempting to link it to R1b.  Of course it may well be wishing for too much to have a simple correlation like that and perhaps high demographic impact (ultimately) was low visibility.  It cant be ruled out.  An example of this is M222.  It ended up very large after an expansion phase of over 100 years but it is archaeologically invisible.

[A.D.]

I've being following this thread and others and Ive got a few questions and observations. I couldn't put together any kind of argument certainly on the DNA side of things, I'm not Knowledgeable enough. But here are a few thoughts Please point out if I'm way off' or just a little, as anything will help-

1-R1b  and R1a both originate in fairly close proximity probably around the Black Sea  Area.

2-Blue  eyes and lactose persistence come from this area at between 6000-10000 years ago.

3- the origins of IE are (by some) thought to have come from there too.

4- R1b and sub clads are not sa numerous in the area they are thought to have originated.

5-Dates suggested  for R1 in Europe range from the younger dryas to the iron-age


Ive mentioned this before but I got nothing back  around 7500 BC a population of !40,000 was displaced over 34 years. from the western side of the Black Sea with the collapse of the Bosphorus sill. There are traces thought to be of there descendants  in the Balkans.

What kind of affect would an influx into say Europe have on the DNA types in Europe.

I think I'm  right in saying this population didn't go any where on mass but rather spread going anywhere they could.

These people lived around a lake and had boats allowing contact

Could these people have carried both R1a and R1b R1a in higher proportions on the Eastern side and R1b on the western side.

The exodus could have lead some to take up a nomadic life style on the Steppe, others set off into the Med.  by boat,others over land into Europe.  

Could  these people or more likely their descendants  have had an impact on the spread of agriculture. For example they could have harvested wild wheat for bread then as population size grew over generations they needed to clear and plant to get a sufficient supply.

could any of this tie into the points above.

there seems to be a lot of coincidences and 140,000 seems to be a lot of people for that time.

[rms2]

The period around 7500 BC is too early for Indo-European, so, although I'm sure the flooding on the west side of the Black Sea around that time had a big effect on the people living in that area, I'm not sure its impact on language can be traced.

[A.D.]

I was thinking pre-proto- IE ,I  mean  the very fist step towards IE.
I guess the idea i got was from the idea that the neolithic  in Britain started slowly then exploded later. There was a BBC article on this.
So I was wondering if the black sea exodus could have laid the foundations for the much later neolithic expansion for want of a better phrase.
This sounds rather haphazard, and that only seems to make it mo re interesting.
Another question is there a 'companion' mt-DNA  to any of the R1 sub clads (or any other for that matter)?  If we're  talking about migration of tribes,clans, families shouldn't there be some kind of 'pairing'. Or would that only be seen in ancient DNA?   

[GoldenHind]

Personally, I don't see how Indo-European languages could have spread so successfully all the way to the Atlantic without some substantial migration. I understand other mechanisms for language replacement, but they are unconvincing for such a large area and so thorough a change. So, I still think R1b was the primary vector for the introduction of IE to the west. But how, and where is the proof?

How about a few wagon loads of peaceful migrants bringing love, peace and flowers and free 'PIE as a second language' lessons?

[A.D.]

How about a few wagon loads of peaceful migrants bringing love, peace and flowers and free 'PIE as a second language' lessons?
 
Wasn't  that  the 'In search of Mushrooms' 2009/10 BC Hawkwind tour? LOL

[MHammers]

I've being following this thread and others and Ive got a few questions and observations. I couldn't put together any kind of argument certainly on the DNA side of things, I'm not Knowledgeable enough. But here are a few thoughts Please point out if I'm way off' or just a little, as anything will help-

1-R1b  and R1a both originate in fairly close proximity probably around the Black Sea  Area.

2-Blue  eyes and lactose persistence come from this area at between 6000-10000 years ago.

3- the origins of IE are (by some) thought to have come from there too.

4- R1b and sub clads are not sa numerous in the area they are thought to have originated.

5-Dates suggested  for R1 in Europe range from the younger dryas to the iron-age


Ive mentioned this before but I got nothing back  around 7500 BC a population of !40,000 was displaced over 34 years. from the western side of the Black Sea with the collapse of the Bosphorus sill. There are traces thought to be of there descendants  in the Balkans.

What kind of affect would an influx into say Europe have on the DNA types in Europe.

I think I'm  right in saying this population didn't go any where on mass but rather spread going anywhere they could.

These people lived around a lake and had boats allowing contact

Could these people have carried both R1a and R1b R1a in higher proportions on the Eastern side and R1b on the western side.

The exodus could have lead some to take up a nomadic life style on the Steppe, others set off into the Med.  by boat,others over land into Europe.  

Could  these people or more likely their descendants  have had an impact on the spread of agriculture. For example they could have harvested wild wheat for bread then as population size grew over generations they needed to clear and plant to get a sufficient supply.

could any of this tie into the points above.

there seems to be a lot of coincidences and 140,000 seems to be a lot of people for that time.

Regarding #1, ultimately R1b and R1a have origins south of the steppe at some point.  I don't think they travelled together for much of their recent history as indicated by today's distinct east-west distribution.  I think they started to spiit up sometime in the mesolithic or early neolithic around Iran.  R1b chose SW Asia and Armenia, while R1a was oriented more towards the east Caspian and eventually the Urals.  This is based on the oldest ages and subclades for R1a found in this general region along with India/Pakistan, though I can't remember the name of that study.

One or both of them may have been important to the development of PIE.  In Anthony's model, PIE didn't come about until after contact with southern farmers.  With that said, all of the farmers could not haven been one monolithic Afro-asiatic speaking block.  There may be something to Euphratic as some kind of proto-language spoken predominantly by R1a/R1b populations south of the Caspian sea.  However, I haven't seen anything to connect it to anything as far back as the neolithic. The later Sumerians, just as well could have "borrowed" it from possible PIE speaking Maikop culture people in the same time period.

[alan trowel hands.]

The study of IE language origins was a real obsession with me many moons ago and I have been interested for the last 25 years.  However, its still under debate.  I dont think anyone can genuinely claim a knockout punch on this even if one side or the other does tend to try to give that impression.  I was for a long time a Kurgan theory (I use that term for brevity) supporter.  However, I just came to intuitively feel that there is something wrong with the model.  Its just so very very complex and involves an astonishing amount of shaky links and leaps of faith.  Its just pure intuition but I just came to feel that it doesnt ring true.  It fails the Occam's Razor test with bells on.  I am not going to give a justification or set out an argument for this as noone is capable of clinching this at present.  However, I just deep down have a horrible feeling that the idea of a north of the Black Sea origin of IE and its sweeping across from the east via steppe horsemen or Corded Ware etc is some kind of hangover from the assumptions and ideas of several generations ago.  

It just seems to me that invasions of steppe horsemen cultures always have made an impact about as far west as Hungary and only the most modest impact into western (or even central) Europe.  I find it very hard to believe in (and see no evidence for) a movement that penetrated west of eastern Europe which would have both imprinted its yDNA to the extent it did and was strong enough to have caused language change (some argue that language change normally only occurs with population replacement).  

It just feels like we have been given an inherited preference for the Kurgan type models and their other north of the Black Sea variants and we are straining every fibre to make this bring IE to the west.  Intuitively it just does not feel right.  It feels the answer has been decided in advance and justification of it is being retrospectively sought.  When clearcut evidence was not found complex non-intuitive model are wheeled out (no pun intended).  I am not an expert on eastern European copper age etc but I do know that its very hard to see evidence for any sort of movement into the west from a steppes source of the sort which would lead to a massive yDNA and linguistic change.

Euphratic is a fascinating idea. Sumerian is after all really a local Bronze Age (the Bronze Age was very early there) language.  From memory I think it is only attested from 3000 or 3500BC.  That is a very very long time after the appearance of farming.  Neolithic Mesopotamia and Bronze Age Sumer are not the same thing.  I would be wary of the idea of continuity based on archaeology because many archaeologists see essential continuity across vast periods.  There are for example a large majority who see mainly continuity of population in the British Isles from 4000BC to Roman times and beyond. They may or may not be right.  However, if the concept of continuity is being challenged in western Europe then it can be challenged in Mesopotamia too.

Mesopotamia has a long attested history of martial elements on the periphery invading the centre, changing the language but essentially taking over the machinery of the more sophisticated society they conquered.  If Sumerian itself had done this at some point pre-3000/3500BC then the alleged situation of a non-IE language with an IE substrate would be the result.  I think Euphratic is an incredibly exciting possibility.  Regardless of semantics, if the oldest IE-related language is placed in the sphere of contact and the next most archaic branch lay in Anatolia and the Centum languages lie western Europe then why are we looking north of the Black Sea where the known IE languages are of a derived form?  Could it not be that IE moved into Europe from somewhere around Mesopotamia in the Neolithic via Anatolia and had an early European base around Bulgaria and the Lower Danube and from there spread west in the 6th and 5th millenium and slightly later to the east with perhaps a limited reflux of the IE-ised steppes people into the eastern fringes of Europe.  That would make a lot more sense to me.  Might even explain the split in both the languages and the split in R.  Would certainly fit the phylogenic geography of R1b.

[alan trowel hands.]

I had a bit of a look into Mesopotamian cultures working back from the classic Sumerian ones.  I am a total novice in that area but it did seem to me that the Ubaid and Uruk early phases of Sumerian culture seem to have been southern Mesopotamian cultures based on irrigation polities extending power into a rather different northern Mesopotamia.  Could the origins of non-IE Sumerian relate to expansion of a group who originally were located on the southern extremity and perhaps could have even been of a different language group. 

I am not too much into the use of physical characteristics to reconstruct prehistory but it is interesting that the Sumerians self-description is thought to mean 'the black haired people'.  That would seem odd if that was not somehow being used in contrast with those who were not.  Could the Euphratic archaic IE substrate in Sumerian be due to an iE population substrate in northern Mesopotamia that was overlaid by southern Mesopotamians with a more complex society based on the need for irrigation and large scale organisation in the south.  Could the IE homeland have lain in and around northern Mesopotamia or at least included it?  If that was the case then what archaeological cultures were included in that archaic IE (pre-PIE) world.  I have no idea as I am a novice in that area but its worth a bit of reading into. 

[OConnor]

I am away off in left field compared with others with my suspicions of migration leading up to L21. I have no science to back up my suspicions.

I suspect Scandinavia is a key route from the east..People from north of the Black Sea.
Perhaps many passed through Finland to Norway, and then on to Scotland, the Orkneys, Greenland, England...and France. The later..France having recieve migration from Norwegian males with later snp's from the isles, as well as migrant L21 variations coming directly from Norway or proximities.
 

[MHammers]

The study of IE language origins was a real obsession with me many moons ago and I have been interested for the last 25 years.  However, its still under debate.  Idont think anyone can genuinely claim a knockout punch on this even if one side or the other does tend to try to give that impression.  I was for a long time a Kurgan theory (I use that term for brevity) supporter.  However, I just came to intuitively feel that there is something wrong with the model.  Its just so very very complex and involves an astonishing amount of shaky links and leaps of faith.  Its just pure intuition but I just came to feel that it doesnt ring true.  It fails the Occam's Razor test with bells on.  I am not going to give a justification or set out an argument for this as noone is capable of clinching this at present.  However, I just deep down have a horrible feeling that the idea of a north of the Black Sea origin of IE and its sweeping across from the east via steppe horsemen or Corded Ware etc is some kind of hangover from the assumptions and ideas of several generations ago.  

It just seems to me that invasions of steppe horsemen cultures always have made an impact about as far west as Hungary and only the most modest impact into western (or even central) Europe.  I find it very hard to believe in (and see no evidence for) a movement that penetrated west of eastern Europe which would have both imprinted its yDNA to the extent it did and was strong enough to have caused language change (some argue that language change normally only occurs with population replacement).  

It just feels like we have been given an inherited preference for the Kurgan type models and their other north of the Black Sea variants and we are straining every fibre to make this bring IE to the west.  Intuitively it just does not feel right.  It feels the answer has been decided in advance and justification of it is being retrospectively sought.  When clearcut evidence was not found complex non-intuitive model are wheeled out (no pun intended).  I am not an expert on eastern European copper age etc but I do know that its very hard to see evidence for any sort of movement into the west from a steppes source of the sort which would lead to a massive yDNA and linguistic change.

Euphratic is a fascinating idea. Sumerian is after all really a local Bronze Age (the Bronze Age was very early there) language.  From memory I think it is only attested from 3000 or 3500BC.  That is a very very long time after the appearance of farming.  Neolithic Mesopotamia and Bronze Age Sumer are not the same thing.  I would be wary of the idea of continuity based on archaeology because many archaeologists see essential continuity across vast periods.  There are for example a large majority who see mainly continuity of population in the British Isles from 4000BC to Roman times and beyond. They may or may not be right.  However, if the concept of continuity is being challenged in western Europe then it can be challenged in Mesopotamia too.

Mesopotamia has a long attested history of martial elements on the periphery invading the centre, changing the language but essentially taking over the machinery of the more sophisticated society they conquered.  If Sumerian itself had done this at some point pre-3000/3500BC then the alleged situation of a non-IE language with an IE substrate would be the result.  I think Euphratic is an incredibly exciting possibility.  Regardless of semantics, if the oldest IE-related language is placed in the sphere of contact and the next most archaic branch lay in Anatolia and the Centum languages lie western Europe then why are we looking north of the Black Sea where the known IE languages are of a derived form?  Could it not be that IE moved into Europe from somewhere around Mesopotamia in the Neolithic via Anatolia and had an early European base around Bulgaria and the Lower Danube and from there spread west in the 6th and 5th millenium and slightly later to the east with perhaps a limited reflux of the IE-ised steppes people into the eastern fringes of Europe.  That would make a lot more sense to me.  Might even explain the split in both the languages and the split in R.  Would certainly fit the phylogenic geography of R1b.

I agree partly with the steppe people not making it further west than Hungary.  There is support for this in physical anthropology studies.  The large dolichocephalic cro-magnon-like phenotype does seem to decrease significantly in frequency in the Bronze age in Central Europe.  
  
In the case of R1b, I think they were from pre-existing populations (a later wave of farmers?), that lived in an interaction sphere with the steppe and IE.  The final push of Yamnaya pastoralists into Hungary around 3000 may have started the big wave of R1b all the way to Iberia without R1b actually being from the steppe.  R1b just happened to speak IE and lived a similiar lifestyle from their long-term contact with pastoralists.  If R1b aDNA is found in western Europe (Briatain, France, Iberia) before 3000 BC, we may have to discard this model.

[rms2]

R1b and R1a are both R1, so their points of origin cannot have been that widely separated.

I am not sure of the answer, but there are some real difficulties with the Neolithic Farmers theory, mostly having to do with the very early date for the entry of the first farmers from Anatolia or the Aegean into Greece, the low diversity of the Anatolian IE languages (they should be more diverse if they had begun in Anatolia, despite their obvious archaic nature), and a couple of other points that escape me at the moment.

A Neolithic Farmers vector for IE is neat because the Neolithic Revolution was so obviously impactful. A kurgan source just doesn't scream "THIS IS A BIG DEAL!" the way the spread of the Neolithic Revolution does.

Alan makes a good point about horse-folk from the steppe getting only to the Hungarian Plain and seeming to fizzle out. That has happened several times throughout the historical period. For one thing, when you hit a well-forested area, horseback transport, while still useful, is a bit more problematic, as is finding grassland for fodder.

On the other hand, Anthony and Mallory have some powerful arguments for their point of view.

I have said this before, but my main dog in this race is R1b. Since I am R1b (to make a long story short), that is my interest. Where did it come from? How did it get to where my ancestors were (in the British Isles somewhere) before they came to America?

I don't see how Indo-European languages could have spread all the way to the Atlantic and have been as successful as they obviously were without a substantial influx of speakers of Indo-European.

[Mikewww]

....I don't see how Indo-European languages could have spread all the way to the Atlantic and have been as successful as they obviously were without a substantial influx of speakers of Indo-European.

I agree. I think we are hard pressed by a couple of concerns. One, the Neolithic was such a big deal that it seems like there must be a connection with R1b and its high frequency. A second concern is the trails leading from the mostly like PIE homeland seem to be fade out before hitting Western Europe.
However, at least as far as Y DNA goes, as Alan mentioned there are some very large and very young subclades like M222. I think L226 is another although not of the same magnitude. How did these groups become prolific in these more recent times? I think it is possible that the Y DNA expansion of R1b types just may be as recent as the Celtic expansions we commonly know of. We may not even need to go back to the Bell Beakers on the Atlantic.

[alan trowel hands.]

I must say though I found the Eurphratic papers very convincing.  Whatever it is defined as, it is interesting that the most archaic IE-related languages could follow the path Mesopotamia-Asia Minor-then the other centum languages.  The dialects in the area north of the Black Sea are less archaic.  An alien from space would look at that and conclude that the language spread south of the Black sea then into Europe in a largely westward trajectory and that the movement north of the Black Sea was secondary (perhaps later causing a reflux movement from the steppes back into eastern Europe). 

I am not personally a believer that dating through vocab etc is safe.  There are critics of the method and some basic problems spring to mind.  That method ignores the fact that once something is invented it could pass like lightning though the contact networks that are manifested by 'cultures' like TRB, Globular Amphorae, Corded Ware, beaker etc or combinations of more than one network.  Could we really distinguise between a word spread that way (at a times when the individual dialects might not have formed) and a word spread by the original migration of IE speakers? Usually loan words are identified by looking to see f they follow the rules of the dialect they are found in or not.  However, what if words for new stuff travelled across the IE world in the period before distinct dialects had formed?  Lets just say for example, if IE was spread by early milk pastoralists c. 5000BC into Europe, could we distinguise between a word they brought with them then and a word for some innovation they got through contact networks in 4000 or 3000BC? There were enough contact networks in the mid to late Neolithic to take ideas and words from the Atlantic to India relay style. 

My gut feeling is the Kurgan model is only the explanation for the IE-isation of part of the IE world and it was a secondary process relevant only to eastern Europe and parts of Asia.  I cant see it having much to do with most of the Centum world or with R1b.  If I had to bet about how this will pan out I would say there are two phases to IE-isation.  I would say IE was spoken primarily by R1b peoples located south of the Black Sea.  I would then think this spread with one of the early or more likely middle Neolithic waves of farmers that passed through SE Europe in a NW direction.  I would see the Indo-Europeanisation of the steppes as coming from the Lower Danube/Bulgaria etc area.  I see that as probably a later process than the one that spread IE west with R1b.  I would tend therefore to see R1a peoples as originally non-IE and receiving IE from R1b pastoralists.  I would then think this situation was further confused by a reflux of these IE-ised R1a peoples back into the east of Europe.  I basically see the Kurgans as a side show that only effected SE/east-central Europe although they may well have been the main factor in spreading it further east into Asia. 

Basically the Kurgan theory has always required very complex theorising to see it having an impact in western Europe and it feels almost impossible to see anything stemming from it that could possibly be expected to produce the genetic/linguistic stamp that we see in R1b and the centrum languages.  Certainly if it happened, it was a subtle low visibility process for such a resounding outcome.  It just does not feel right.  It just feels like being shoehorned into a preconceived model that just doesnt work for the west.  I dont doubt that much of the work looking into the spread from the steppes into the Lower Danube and also into central Asia, India etc is valid but I honestly feel in my bones that that is a separate story from the IE-isation of most of Europe.   I do think there is a strong case for the link of R1b and centum and so the geographical phylogeny of R1b could potentially be a proxy for the geography of the centum story.  That would suggest an origin somewhere around the area of the origin of farming and a spread through Asia Minor into SE Europe at some time after, and a spread from there mostly (perhaps not exclusively) west via a central European route.  To me, the fit is unexpectedly good between R1b phylogeny, IE language trees and at least some of the waves of farming influence coming from the middle east area, especially the spread of dairying from NW Asia Minor as an early although secondary phase.  It seems almost beyond coincidence to me.  Lets put it this way, if R1b and centum are not linked then the theory that genes and languages tend to spread together is dead.   

[GoldenHind]

It appears that the proto IE people had the use of wheeled vehicles, horses and metallurgy, none of which were introduced to Europe by the Neolithic farmers. When were they introduced to Europe, and by whom? Is this merely due to cultural diffusion?

[alan trowel hands.]

It appears that the proto IE people had the use of wheeled vehicles, horses and metallurgy, none of which were introduced to Europe by the Neolithic farmers. When were they introduced to Europe, and by whom? Is this merely due to cultural diffusion?

As I pointed out above, there are many who are not convinced that we can tell the difference between a share word from the PIE pre-dispersal era and a word that spread among already (at least partly) dispersed people still essentially speaking PIE somewhat later.  I am not convinced that the latest date before dispersal can be safely based on these words.  

Another thing is the arguments against IE spreading before the copper age tend to be focussed on the first farmers theory.  However, the spread of pastoralism from NW Anatolia to the Bulgaria area and on through western Europe through middle Neolithic cultures is rather different.  The spread from an early entry point into Europe around Bulgaria to the Atlantic may have largely been a process across the period 5000-4000BC. I am not sure the arguements marshalled against the early farming spread model would be so effective against the middle Neolithic pastoralists model which chronologically falls in between the early farmers and Kurgan models.

I like the middle Neolithic model because it would throw the focus on the Bulgaria area and would allow for a movement west from there across Europe and a separate movement east, possibly a little later.  In other words IE could have spread west from the Bulgaria area to the Atlantic c. 5000-4500BC with pastoralists who contributed to the formation of middle Neolithic cultures such as Funnel Beaker and several others.  The process would have SE European immediate roots but not steppe ones.  Perhaps that is the origin of both R1b and the Centum languages.  I think it fits better than either the early farmers or Kurgan models.  In such a model the steppes can be seen as another area where pastoralism came from the Bulgaria sort of direction although perhaps involving a less overwhelming migration and more influence on the R1a natives of the steppes.  Such a model moves the shift of focus to the Lower Danube/Bulgaria etc and makes both western Europe and the steppes recipients rather than doners of IE. 

I like that kind of model because it tallies with the spread of pastoralism, the phylogeny of R1b and perhaps with the phylogeny of the IE language.  In terms of deeper time, perhaps full PIE formed around Bulgaria c. 5000BC ish as an offshoot of the pre-PIE of Anatolian pastoralists which in turn was possibly a manifestation of an earlier spread from an even more archaic pre-pre-PIE Euphratic that existed in northern Mesopotamia.   To me that feels like it does tie in archaeology, the phylogenic geography  of R1b and the IE language tree.  It also seems within the confidence intervals of variance calculations.  That all seems a heck of a coincidence.  It could explain the great centum-satem split in IE.  

It would be incredibly exciting if the ancestral trail of R1b really is even roughly along the lines of Northern Mesopotamia c. 8000-6000BC-NW Anatolia c. 6000BC Bulgaria c. 5000BC-western Europe c. 4500BC.  

[alan trowel hands.]

edited my last post somewhat as it was a bit confusing.  However, I think the basic idea is of the roots of IE being in Mesopotamia then spreading through Anatolia then from NW Anatolia crossing the Bosphorus to an area around Bulgaria before biforking to head both west into Europe and east towards the north side of the Black Sea. 

[A.D.]

Has anyone checked out this site  http://www.proto-english.org/o3.html it seems a bit 'out there' but there's some interesting quotes about Celts speaking German and visa-versa.

 I noticed  Alan's dates  for Euphratic 8000- 6000 BC this is in the time span of the Black Sea flood. Could pre-pre-PIE have  been known  in Sumeria then boosted by refugees going to somewhere they Knew. rms2 talks about big events. I can't get passed 140,000 people displaced (not annihilated) and not having an impact. This event was slow enough to be planed. People would have had time scout far afield to look for land.

Another theory I came across was presented by Neal Oliver stating that Carnac French Megalith) was made by Mesolithic hunter gatherers (or there descendants) in response to in coming Neolithic farmers.

[rms2]

Just my opinion, but I think that "Proto-English" site is whacky.

Sure, the Black Sea flood had an impact on many people - the ones living in the areas that were flooded. But that was so long ago its linguistic impact - if it had any - cannot be traced today.

[alan trowel hands.]

The Black Sea flood has been downgraded recently in scale (from an 80m rise to just a 30m one) and backdated to c. 7500BC.  All you can really say is it would have affected and perhaps displaced somewhat population groups focussed on the Black Sea shores.  Whether that affected R1b and R1a populations is hard to guess.  It kind of depends where they were located at the time.  It seems extremely likely that R1b was south of the Black Sea but may or may not have been close to its shores.  I have no idea where R1a would have been at the time. Does Anatole not believe R1a is oldest in the Balkans?

[GoldenHind]

It appears that the proto IE people had the use of wheeled vehicles, horses and metallurgy, none of which were introduced to Europe by the Neolithic farmers. When were they introduced to Europe, and by whom? Is this merely due to cultural diffusion?

As I pointed out above, there are many who are not convinced that we can tell the difference between a share word from the PIE pre-dispersal era and a word that spread among already (at least partly) dispersed people still essentially speaking PIE somewhat later.  I am not convinced that the latest date before dispersal can be safely based on these words.  

Another thing is the arguments against IE spreading before the copper age tend to be focussed on the first farmers theory.  However, the spread of pastoralism from NW Anatolia to the Bulgaria area and on through western Europe through middle Neolithic cultures is rather different.  The spread from an early entry point into Europe around Bulgaria to the Atlantic may have largely been a process across the period 5000-4000BC. I am not sure the arguements marshalled against the early farming spread model would be so effective against the middle Neolithic pastoralists model which chronologically falls in between the early farmers and Kurgan models.

I like the middle Neolithic model because it would throw the focus on the Bulgaria area and would allow for a movement west from there across Europe and a separate movement east, possibly a little later.  In other words IE could have spread west from the Bulgaria area to the Atlantic c. 5000-4500BC with pastoralists who contributed to the formation of middle Neolithic cultures such as Funnel Beaker and several others.  The process would have SE European immediate roots but not steppe ones.  Perhaps that is the origin of both R1b and the Centum languages.  I think it fits better than either the early farmers or Kurgan models.  In such a model the steppes can be seen as another area where pastoralism came from the Bulgaria sort of direction although perhaps involving a less overwhelming migration and more influence on the R1a natives of the steppes.  Such a model moves the shift of focus to the Lower Danube/Bulgaria etc and makes both western Europe and the steppes recipients rather than doners of IE. 

I like that kind of model because it tallies with the spread of pastoralism, the phylogeny of R1b and perhaps with the phylogeny of the IE language.  In terms of deeper time, perhaps full PIE formed around Bulgaria c. 5000BC ish as an offshoot of the pre-PIE of Anatolian pastoralists which in turn was possibly a manifestation of an earlier spread from an even more archaic pre-pre-PIE Euphratic that existed in northern Mesopotamia.   To me that feels like it does tie in archaeology, the phylogenic geography  of R1b and the IE language tree.  It also seems within the confidence intervals of variance calculations.  That all seems a heck of a coincidence.  It could explain the great centum-satem split in IE.  

It would be incredibly exciting if the ancestral trail of R1b really is even roughly along the lines of Northern Mesopotamia c. 8000-6000BC-NW Anatolia c. 6000BC Bulgaria c. 5000BC-western Europe c. 4500BC.  

Putting the language issue aside for the moment, I am curious when current archaeological thought places the introduction of horses, wheeled vehicles and metallurgy into Europe. Obviously horses and wheeled vehicles would be connected. Is metallurgy thought to have come in at the same time and from the same direction? Are these thought to have been introduced by a migration of people, or are they thought to have been spread solely by cultural diffusion?

[authun]

Is metallurgy thought to have come in at the same time and from the same direction? Are these thought to have been introduced by a migration of people, or are they thought to have been spread solely by cultural diffusion?

There is no consensus on this yet but there are some investigations which are current.

There are two aspects to the subject, 1. the knowledge of metal and metalworking and 2. the ability to identify, mine and process ores.

With regard to the process of ore mining, Dienekes reported on a current study on the Abergele area in North Wales. You may recall that this area has an incidence of E3b (correct me if I have incorrectly remembered this) in this copper mining area which is of the order of 30 times higher than other areas in the UK, or indeed western Europe.

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/07/eastern-mediterranean-marker-in.html

Irrespective of the actual origin of these peoples, once ore bearing seams have been identified, it seems logical to me that someone wants to control it and that he wants specialist miners to extract it. One cannot easily persuade farmers to stop producing food and take up mining. On the other hand, those miners need feeding so they will have to trade something with the local farmers and locally produced farming tools seems an obvious item.

Another subject under investigation are the trade routes for processed metals. The Nordic Bronze Age for example was thought to be serviced by copper through a trade route with the tin producing Lusatian Culture and the copper coming ultimately from the Alpine region around Bischofshofen. However, analysis of the Fröslunda shields in Sweden, the largest find of this Herzsprung type, about 18 in total, shows that the copper is from a sulphide ore. Sweden is one of Europe's richest areas of sulphide minerals and the copper in Scandinavian bronzes from about 1600 BC onwards differs in character from that of earlier bronze and copper items that are based on the conventional continental copper ores. Whilst tools have been found in Sweden which are similar to mining tools found on the continent, no mines have been found in Sweden. There is now a programme to get the copper from more Nordic Bronze Age finds analysed and look into the possibility that Nordic bronze was a local phenomena.

You can see the tin producing areas on fig. 3 in Sources of Tin and the Beginnings of Bronze Metallurgy:

http://www.aditnow.co.uk/documents/personal-album-272/Sources-of-Tin-and-the-Beginnings-of-Bronze-Metallurgy.pdf

Interest started when it was discovered that the Nebra Sky Disc contained copper and gold from the British Isles and tin, probably, from the Erzgebirge. Previously it had been assumed that the copper was from Bischofshofen. The current nordic bronze project is by the University of Gothenburg, 'Extraction of copper in Sweden during the Bronze Age? Possibility, myth or reality?'. The abstract is given below:

"Since the work of Oscar Montelius on the Nordic Bronze Age, an established and
unques-tioned dogma has been that throughout the Bronze Age all copper in
Scandinavia was im-ported from central Europe. However, a new and original
Bronze Age culture, displaying a high level of technical and artistic mastery,
emerged in Scandinavia from about 1600 BC on-wards. This sudden rise and
continuation of the Nordic Bronze Age is an enigma that still lacks satisfactory
economic and social explanatory models. The traditional theories about
Scandinavian Bronze Age have never been tested by means of scientific methods."

http://www.historiskastudier.gu.se/english/research/extraction_of_copper_in_sweden_during_the_bronze_age+/

I have just returned from a trip Sweden and Denmark and the number of items, lurs, shields, swords etc is remarkable. It is hard to believe that the metals were imported. The quantity is simply too great. What would they have traded in return? Amber doesn't seem a credible commodity. How the knowledge of metallurgy entered Scandinavia is another mystery but the number of rock carvings with boats and chariots strongly suggests movements of peoples. These peoples knew how to extract copper from sulphide ores whereas most continental sources at that time were from arsenic ores.

But we will have to wait for the results of the studies.

cheers
authun