Interesting questions, all. How far back, and further and further back, might we humans ever be able to reliably go in our research before the unreliability is too great? Will further computational advances, research methods and finds help?
... is there such thing as a "light (time) cone" beyond which we might not ever be able to look?
I'm not sure I'd go quite that strongly. The Horse, The Wheel, and Language is a good book (IMO) and while from 2007 still reflects the general consensus, as I understand it. The author refers to it as the Kurgan hypothesis throughout for a reason. He even interviews Marija Gimbutas, the idiosyncratic former Soviet archaeologist who championed the steppe origin back when it was not the prevailing opinion. She was quite certain of a steppe origin, but she freely admits the various small inconsistencies and flaws.
I suggest the book, because it really emphasizes that genetics and archaeology tell us very little about a people's culture, or their language. It's extremely precarious to say, well, these two peoples made extremely similar pottery, and buried their dead in a similar way, so they must have spoken a related language. It's similarly precarious to say, well, these two people are closely related by descent, so they must have spoken a related language.
One of the methods through which the Indo-European languages may have spread so far, a hypothesis advanced in the book, involves agriculturalist neolithic non-Indo-Europeans (both in material culture and genetically) adopting the prestige language of their Indo-European pastoralist masters, without extensive intermarriage or necessarily adopting the entire material culture. (Language change, without accompanying genetic change, is probably greatly underappreciated as a dynamic. Vast swaths of North America are inhabited by English speakers who have no ancestry that traces back to Britain. Similar effects have surely happened before.)
As a former philologist (but not a historical linguist) I think for me the primary argument for a shallow (Steppe) as opposed to deep (Anatolian) dating of PIE is vibes-based. I agree with the other counterarguments raised in the article about sound shifts etc., but the main thing for me is that when one reads Homer, the Rig Veda, and the Twelve Tables side by side, one gets the distinct hard-to-articulate impression that these texts were produced by closely related cultures. I could point to discrete things like how patriarchal they were (even by ancient standards), the importance attached to herding and poetry, etc. But the vibe is more than that, and it's really hard to convey unless you've done work in the original languages. So, this comment is probably pretty unhelpful.
> Homer, the Rig Veda, and the Twelve Tables side by side, one gets the distinct hard-to-articulate impression that these texts were produced by closely related cultures.
That, in itself is a very interesting fact, fascinating.-
> I agree with the other counterarguments raised in the article about sound shifts etc.
With more DNA data, we wouldn't necessarily need linguistic characteristics to chart language ancestory, we could also look at the DNA evidence.
> one reads Homer, the Rig Veda, and the Twelve Tables side by side, one gets the distinct hard-to-articulate impression that these texts were produced by closely related cultures.
We know that the romans borrowed heavily from the greeks. That rome and greeks were closely related is well known. Everything from law to literature to religion. Not sure about the Rig Veda.
> I could point to discrete things like how patriarchal they were (even by ancient standards), the importance attached to herding and poetry, etc.
> With more DNA data, we wouldn't necessarily need linguistic characteristics to chart language ancestory, we could also look at the DNA evidence.
DNA evidence tends to favor the Steppe hypothesis.
> We know that the romans borrowed heavily from the greeks. That rome and greeks were closely related is well known. Everything from law to literature to religion. Not sure about the Rig Veda.
There are in fact some instances where Archaic Rome is closer to Vedic India than it is to Greece - the horse sacrifice, regulations around high priests and kings, etc. You can dismiss the similarities between Greece and Rome as due to borrowing, but you can't do the same with Rome and India.
> That describes a lot of cultures.
I specifically said those discrete elements weren't sufficient to convey the "vibe", so yeah.
> DNA evidence tends to favor the Steppe hypothesis.
There you go.
> There are in fact some instances where Archaic Rome is closer to Vedic India than it is to Greece
But you weren't talking about archaic rome. Also cherrypicking 'some' instances doesn't prove anything. There are some instances where the US is closer to China than Britain. So what?
> I specifically said those discrete elements weren't sufficient to convey the "vibe", so yeah.
You didn't convey anything. Not even a vibe. Your current response shows that you were just spewing nonsense with your original comment.
13 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 47.4 ms ] thread"The Sound of the Proto Indo-European Language (The King & the God)"
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCI4Y8VneP0
... is there such thing as a "light (time) cone" beyond which we might not ever be able to look?
I'm not sure I'd go quite that strongly. The Horse, The Wheel, and Language is a good book (IMO) and while from 2007 still reflects the general consensus, as I understand it. The author refers to it as the Kurgan hypothesis throughout for a reason. He even interviews Marija Gimbutas, the idiosyncratic former Soviet archaeologist who championed the steppe origin back when it was not the prevailing opinion. She was quite certain of a steppe origin, but she freely admits the various small inconsistencies and flaws.
I suggest the book, because it really emphasizes that genetics and archaeology tell us very little about a people's culture, or their language. It's extremely precarious to say, well, these two peoples made extremely similar pottery, and buried their dead in a similar way, so they must have spoken a related language. It's similarly precarious to say, well, these two people are closely related by descent, so they must have spoken a related language.
One of the methods through which the Indo-European languages may have spread so far, a hypothesis advanced in the book, involves agriculturalist neolithic non-Indo-Europeans (both in material culture and genetically) adopting the prestige language of their Indo-European pastoralist masters, without extensive intermarriage or necessarily adopting the entire material culture. (Language change, without accompanying genetic change, is probably greatly underappreciated as a dynamic. Vast swaths of North America are inhabited by English speakers who have no ancestry that traces back to Britain. Similar effects have surely happened before.)
That, in itself is a very interesting fact, fascinating.-
With more DNA data, we wouldn't necessarily need linguistic characteristics to chart language ancestory, we could also look at the DNA evidence.
> one reads Homer, the Rig Veda, and the Twelve Tables side by side, one gets the distinct hard-to-articulate impression that these texts were produced by closely related cultures.
We know that the romans borrowed heavily from the greeks. That rome and greeks were closely related is well known. Everything from law to literature to religion. Not sure about the Rig Veda.
> I could point to discrete things like how patriarchal they were (even by ancient standards), the importance attached to herding and poetry, etc.
That describes a lot of cultures.
DNA evidence tends to favor the Steppe hypothesis.
> We know that the romans borrowed heavily from the greeks. That rome and greeks were closely related is well known. Everything from law to literature to religion. Not sure about the Rig Veda.
There are in fact some instances where Archaic Rome is closer to Vedic India than it is to Greece - the horse sacrifice, regulations around high priests and kings, etc. You can dismiss the similarities between Greece and Rome as due to borrowing, but you can't do the same with Rome and India.
> That describes a lot of cultures.
I specifically said those discrete elements weren't sufficient to convey the "vibe", so yeah.
Dyeus Pita (Vedic) = Zeus Pater (Greek) = Jupiter (Roman)
Sky father
It's all quite shocking.
There you go.
> There are in fact some instances where Archaic Rome is closer to Vedic India than it is to Greece
But you weren't talking about archaic rome. Also cherrypicking 'some' instances doesn't prove anything. There are some instances where the US is closer to China than Britain. So what?
> I specifically said those discrete elements weren't sufficient to convey the "vibe", so yeah.
You didn't convey anything. Not even a vibe. Your current response shows that you were just spewing nonsense with your original comment.