Indo-European dialects dispersed across Eurasia in successive waves over the course of 8,000 years
Word origins and ancient DNA reveal the evolutionary path traveled by the languages spoken by half the world
Jul 28, 2023 - 20:09 CEST
Lenguas indoeuropeas
A Hittite tablet found in Hattusa, the ancient empire’s capital, now the Turkish town of Boğazkale.nutcat (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
“Noche,” the Spanish word for “night” comes from the Latin “noctis.” It’s “nyktós” in Greek and “nuit” in French. In Sanskrit, the classical language of India, night is “naktasya.” Around 250 years ago, Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux, a French Jesuit priest, was one of the first to suggest a common origin for certain languages. Since then, linguists have been on an Indiana Jones-like quest to discover the origins of these Indo-European languages. Now, a collaborative scientific effort using linguistic analysis, advanced computing, archaeology, and ancient DNA reconstructed a common ancestor of the Indo-European language family called the Proto-Indo-European language.
According to Glottolog’s database, there are around 400 Indo-European languages spoken today (although the distinction between regional variety, dialect and language may be somewhat arbitrary). Almost half of the world’s population speaks one of these languages. Their original expansion occurred over thousands of years, reaching from present-day Ireland in the west to China in the east, and from Scandinavia in the north to India in the south.
For decades, experts in this field have been divided into two major camps. Some argue that the ancestral Proto-Indo-European language was spoken approximately 9,000 years ago in the northern Fertile Crescent, which encompasses present-day Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq. This region holds great significance as it bore witness to the birth of agriculture. As agricultural practices expanded, the language of early farmers spread far and wide. An alternative hypothesis suggests that around 6,000 to 4,500 years ago, steppe populations migrated in both western and eastern directions. One fascinating example is the mysterious Yamnaya people. They brought their languages to Europe, giving rise to the Italic, Germanic and Celtic branches of the Indo-European family tree.
Indoeuropean languages
This map shows the expansion and diversification of Indo-European languages, but experts disagree on the routes taken by those who spoke the precursor languages of Persian and Sanskrit.
Led by researcher Paul Heggarty, a team of over 80 scientists, including linguists and geneticists, challenged the prevailing Anatolian sedentary farmer theory and the theory of the nomadic herders from the steppes. They contend that while both are flawed, they also contain elements of truth. “We analyzed linguistic data as if it were genetic data,” said Heggarty. To accomplish this, a database of 5,013 cognates was meticulously crafted. These cognates represent words that share a common origin, such as the various iterations of the word “night.” Spanning across 161 Indo-European languages, including 52 ancient or extinct ones like Tocharian, Gothic and Old Spanish, this exhaustive compilation has paved the way for constructing the phylogenetic tree of Indo-European languages. To determine the divergence of each branch (ten branches currently exist), the team has also dated languages where historical dating was previously unknown. “For example, we set the date for Classical Latin at 50 BC,” said Heggarty, who led the project while he was a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany). They then worked backwards to find the point of origin. “The approach aims to unify all branches to ascertain the age of the common ancestor of all languages,” said Heggarty, who is now a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.
Approximately 7,000 years ago, the Indo-European linguistic lineage had already split into numerous distinct branches, according to the study published in Science. “This would rule out the steppe hypothesis,” said Heggarty. Around 8,120 years ago, the Proto-Indo-European language likely experienced its initial diversification event, give or take a few centuries. Recent studies of ancient DNA suggest that farmers from the Caucasus region — between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea — migrated towards Anatolia, which supports the Anatolian theory. Hittite, an extinct language spoken by the Anatolian civilization, is another significant branch of the Indo-European family. For decades, a large group of linguists argued that Hittite was the common ancestor of the other Indo-European languages, with some even considering it to be the direct heir of Proto-Indo-European.
Ancient DNA, on the other hand, has provided compelling evidence in support of the steppe hypothesis. Since 2015, it has become clear that individuals originating from the Pontic steppe, situated to the south and northeast of present-day Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, migrated to Central Europe approximately 6,000 to 4,500 years ago. Their genetic legacy is evident in both modern Europeans and the indigenous populations of that era. Notably, studies conducted in 2018 and 2019 revealed how these migrant eastern populations replaced a significant proportion of males on the Iberian Peninsula. Furthermore, they brought with them Italic, Germanic, and Celtic languages. It is important to note that when they departed from their original homeland, they likely spoke a common or closely related language descended from Proto-Indo-European. However, as their very slow journey progressed (the Celts took centuries to reach present-day Ireland) and they settled in new territories, language diversification began to emerge.
“The Albanians, Greek-speaking Mycenaeans and Hittites do not have a dominant genetic signal from the steppe.”
Paul Heggarty, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.none
Heggarty’s team made a significant contribution by shedding light on this question. By combining phylogenetic analysis of cognates with insights from ancient DNA, they found potentially two distinct origins. Expansion initially originated from the southern Caucasus region, resulting in the separation of five major language families approximately 7,000 years ago. “The Albanians, Greek-speaking Mycenaeans and Hittites do not have a dominant genetic signal from the steppe,” said Heggarty. Several millennia later, another wave emerged, led by nomadic steppe herders from the north. This wave not only influenced the development of western branches of the language tree, but it also possibly played a role in the evolution of Slavic and Baltic languages. It even extended its influence to the Indian subcontinent, while giving rise to the now-extinct Tocharian languages in what is present-day Tibet.
Latin and the origins of romance languages
Diversification didn’t stop there. Even when Latin was confined to Latium, one of the regions in present-day Italy, over 400 languages were spoken on the Italian peninsula. These were mostly Italic languages, which belonged to the Indo-European branch. “The Roman legionnaires spread Latin across the entire continent,” said Kim Schulte, a professor at the Jaume I University (Castelló de la Plana, Spain) and an expert in the diversification of Romance languages. As the imperial language expanded, much like Spanish and English in the Americas, it unfortunately led to the eradication of local languages. During this process, the seed of diversification was planted.
According to the study, the belief that Romance languages have medieval origins stems from the earliest writings in Spanish, Catalan, and French of that period. However, it is important to note that these languages were already spoken centuries earlier. The diversification of Vulgar Latin (popular or colloquial Latin) into distinct Romance languages had already commenced early in this era. Despite the political cohesion of the Roman Empire, various factors contributed to the fragmentation of language. “Several things contributed to language differences,” said Schulte. “One factor is the influence of local languages, like ancient Iberian or Tartessian in Spain. Another factor is political control. For example, Romanian developed differently because the Romans controlled Dacia (present-day Romania) for a relatively short period. Geographic distance also plays a role.” For example, ‘mensa’ means ‘table’ in classical Latin, which is ‘mesa’ in Spanish and ‘masa’ in Romanian. However, other areas closer to Rome adopted ‘tabula,’ a linguistic innovation from Vulgar Latin. Thus, a table is called ‘tabula’ in Italian, ‘taula’ in Catalan, and ‘table’ in French. Schulte says, “Dialects have existed in Spain and other regions since the early days of the Roman Empire.”
K it solves this problem but hold onto your constantly devaluing fiat is you prefer. Your Euro's portion of the supply decreases every year. Your BTC's portion of the total supply stays the same every year. Your euro or BTC's value may change relative to other things, but since the Euro central bank targets an inflation rate of 2%, it's designed to lose at least that much value each year. And y'know, in recent years, has lost a lot more. Fractional reserve banking ensures there will need to be bank bailouts sometimes because banks are 'too big to fail'. You will pay for those with the value of your Euro while the rich people who own banks don't. Money printing doesn't hurt them, their wealth is tied up in assets, not cash. Money printing hurts poor and middle class, who have the greatest portion of their wealth in money. Bitcoin solves all of this. It solved it over a decade ago.
Most cryptos are scams. Bitcoin has kept to its original economic policy and enabled sending transactions across the globe 24/7 365 for 15 years without a single hour of downtime or hack. You can send transactions in less than a second for pennies in fees to anybody on planet earth with a cell phone and a halfway reliable internet connection. It has a market cap of 850 billion dollars, that's bigger than sweden's GDP. It does this for less than 1% of global electricity usage, mostly from renewables.
Bitcoin and crypto are not the same. This will be the year Bitcoin is finally dead though, right? Finally all those users moving trillions of dollars a year in value I mean crypto bros will get whats coming to them and the entire Bitcoin ecosystem will disappear overnight because it was based around nothing but hype.
The Euro. solid second or third tier currency. I’m surprised Europeans want to celebrate this also ran fiat currency.
It was always runner up to the dollar up until the financial crisis. Once everyone realized there was no centralized response from Europe and they had to deal with a dozen different central banks making their own policy it quickly fell out of favor.
I’d rather carry Yen as an alternative to the dollar than the Euro.
For real - didn’t think it was necessary to make a rule about this thing in particular in the context of “don’t be shitty to people” and human rights in general, but here we are.
I have a lot of questions. Why is this important? Do we need to be divided in Europe because of this? Actually, as a (not German) European citizen, why should I even care? Is the economy that important for me as a citizen? How does it effect my household budget? What is even the metric for the European economy?
I bike everyday to work, and everytime someone ask me "what about the rain" I answer "I know I'm sweet, but fortunately, I'm not made of sugar" it's gets a rolleyes or a laugh, 50/50.
In most places it actually rains a lot less that you would.think, and often it only rains a small part of the day. I know that when the forecast is for rain often the 30 minutes it takes me to commute are dry.
I commute everyday in a place that has a reputation for being a bit rainy in winter and I get actually wet like 5 times a year.
On most rainy days you can get quite far with checking rain radar prediction. It often doesn't really matter if i cycle somewhere at 16h30 or 17h00, you look at the radar and try to not get wet :'). Most rain is in short bursts, dry periods between, most cycle trips aren't longer than 20-30 mins. And yeah, sometimes you do get wet. That is okay if you got good gear and if it didn't take you by surprise.
If you have quality rain gear you will stay dry. But also, lots of people choose other transit modes when it rains. I lived in a very bike friendly city and when it rained, the public transit would be packed with people and the roads packed with cars.
In fact, this is a bit of a strange question. Are we assuming that everyone is always going to be biking with no other options? I don’t think anyone is even advocating for that.
Are we assuming that everyone is always going to be biking with no other options? I don’t think anyone is even advocating for that.
BUT WHAT IF YOUR LEGS ARE BROKEN? WHAT IF THERE'S A NUCLEAR WAR???
The people who seem to think that biking is an untenable option because you might have to very occasionally use other modes of transport make me wonder if that mindset comes from the fact that people feel that it's normal to only use one mode of transport pretty much ever, because that's how many people are with cars.
If there's a nuclear war I'd rather be using the decentralized, free to use mode of transport that is bikes. Or legs. When the war comes all the car drivers will run out of fuel in a couple days and have to steal it, but I already have a bicycle and cannot be stopped by the breakdown of society.
Rain jacket. Or just a normal coat with hood that's water proof. If it's really coming down waterproof trousers as well that I pack in my rucksack. Rain is really not a problem and I commute every day by bike.
I live in the Pacific Northwest of North America. It rains here a lot. The vast majority of my trips are by bike year round. I tend to find rain jackets and pants cause me to sweat uncomfortably. I usually wear a rain cape. I drape it over my handlebars and it keeps my pants mostly dry and my top completely dry. Once I get where I'm going it's easy to remove and tuck it into my bag.
If I'm just riding to ride I'll wear a merino wool base layer and just get wet. The wool stays warm even when I'm soaked
The last stat I've seen in Paris is that if you were to bike to work every day on a 9 to 5 job, then you will encounter rain 17 times per year in average. When that happens, as others said, you can just accept being wet and/or dress appropriately, or take public transport.
Does that take into account the hours when rainfall occurs or how could that number be so low? In a city with an average of 162 days of rainfall/year (according to climate.top, no idea how accurate that is). Apparently Amsterdam has 217 days of rain. Oooff. Been there a few times, can confirm. People still bike.
I vaguely remembered they used an assumption of 20 minutes commute with fixed hours. So yes, they were taking the hours into account.
My personal experience commuting 2 to 3 days a week is that I was soaked 4/6 times the past 2 years, slightly wet probably 15 to 20 times. I've chosen public transport once but rain was a contributing factor, not the key reason.
If you have flexible work times you can usually schedule your bike ride to avoid the rain. Rain radar helps tremendously. I am currently in the Netherlands and had to use rain protection clothes a maximum of 10 times in 2 years.
He d to bike to work daily (6km each way), 5 times a week in Lille. Used rain pants and jacket during the winter. Only time when I questioned my choice was when there was fresh snow and/or frost (25mm tires on a modified race bike)...
I have rain proof pants and a thin rain proof jacket with me while cycling.
Sounds tedious but when the first rain drops start I stop for a second and put on the gear. It's pretty fast and then keeps me warm and comfortable. I can't stress enough how comfortable it is to cycle through rain in proper gear.
You see the clouds in the sky? They are made of tiny water droplets. At some point the cloud is saturated and the droplets get too big to stay suspended in the air any longer, so they start falling towards the earth as raindrops. Some may hit a cyclist and either roll off their raincoat or get absorbed by other clothing until they evaporate again, travelling upwards into the clouds and starting their journey all over again.
Driving in London and Paris is such a pain in the arse I would never buy one of I had to live there. If I needed a car for a weekend trip I'd just rent one.
At some point you reach critical mass, where the majority of the population uses the bicycle as at least one of their modes of transportation, after which improvements to bicycle infrastructure are more widely supported and thus more easily made - which then causes more people to use the bicycle, etc.
That's what happened in the Netherlands a couple of decades ago, and the infrastructure now is wonderful and still getting better.
The countries where most people consider immigration a problem are Bulgaria (74% of respondents), the Czech Republic (73%), Hungary and Cyprus (68% in both cases). Paradoxically, in Italy, the European country where the largest number of immigrants entered irregularly last year (157,652), only 44% of respondents viewed it as a problem and only 14% saw it as the main problem. In Greece and Spain, the second and third countries with the most irregular arrivals in 2023, respectively, only 11% of respondents considered it the issue of most concern to them, below the European average of 17%. However, Greece is the country where the most people (90%) believe their country takes in too many migrants.
So basically local poverty is a far better predictor of people thinking there's too many immigrants than actual immigrant numbers. No wonder the Tories in the UK revel in the boat people rhetoric. Lol. Lmao even. Our species is fucked.
I'm not sure what to do with these numbers. I get countries like Greece, Italy and Spain justifiably feel this way. On the other hand there are also a lot of countries that whine when asked to pull their weight, but are at the front of the line when EU is handing out subsidies.
If respondents have the perception their country takes in too many immigrants, but statistics actually show they take in below average, then frankly my response would be: tough titty, either you take in your fair share of people in need as a country or forgo your share when EU is dishing out subsidies. You can't have it both ways.
If respondents have the perception their country takes in too many immigrants
Pretty much any right wing party in the Netherlands lied about the number of asylum seekers. Then they purposely mix up the number of immigrants and asylum seekers. Plus asylum seekers are the latest group to be blamed for government failures.
People are giving significant tax benefits for work immigrants. But give them a different name (knowledge workers), so they can continue to pretend most immigrants are asylum seekers. While in reality asylum seekers make up a tiny portion of the immigrants in the Netherlands.
If I see stuff about immigrants I'm always suspicious. Likely the complaint is about asylum seekers and equalling every immigrant as an asylum seeker.
It's exactly the same in Switzerland. The economy profits tremendously from highly educated EU immigrants (of which there is a fuckton), but the right wing parties whine constantly about the asylum seekers (of which there are comparatively very few) and blame them for made up and actual problems
Same in Germany. I hate to say it, but we are actively going towards a time about 80 years ago. Yet our democratic parties are scared to ban the AfD(our right wing party where you're legally allowed to call one of their leaders a Nazi).
At this point I'm very much done with all the "theoretical politics".
Just like America saying that they want a two state solution and then block it and make up some BS reason to pretend "the entire world isn't smart enough to understand".
Because international law is more about "there's a general consensus about this" than written law (and in few places this is as true as what counts as a sovereign entity), this kind of organized action can have more impact than they might seem at first.
I am worried that this will only be a symbolic gesture. Palestine can not be a state with 700,000 settlers on the Westbank and the settlers will never accept to give up the settlements and the Israeli state will never force the settlers to do something they don’t accept.
So the question is, if the EU is ready to put real pressure on Israel like they did on the South African Apartheid regime. And will they get the only superpower and hegemon USA to join their efforts.
Not to speak of my country, Germany, where most of the people don’t even know about the Palestinian cause and every opinion differing from the Israeli government's announcements is officially considered antisemitic.
But it’s a nice move and actually Spain and Ireland are the only countries to mitigate my shame for being European.
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