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From: Dienekes Pontikos <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] R1b and R1a fate
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2010 10:23:29 +0200
References: <6E4128BA11E04BBEA289E3D198E84A30@PC>
In-Reply-To: <6E4128BA11E04BBEA289E3D198E84A30@PC>


Tocharian is not attested in the steppe. Also, it's attested about
4,000-5,000 years after early Indo-European (if one accepts the steppe
hypothesis). So, while the idea that it spread via the steppe is as
good as any, it is not, by any means, uncontroversial.

The purported similarities with Finno-Ugric are interesting; others
have suggested on the basis of linguistic data that the
Proto-Indo-Europeans lived in proximity to South Caucasian speakers.
Since, I doubt that more than a handful of people in the world are
competent in all three language families (and I'm certainly not), I
have no way of evaluating who's right and who's wrong.

As for the centrality of the steppe, that is a very broad statement.
The way I see it, in the steppe there is only one Indo-European branch
attested, the Iranian. Add, if you wish, both the Indo-Iranian
progenitor of Iranian _and_ Tocharian. But, that still lives dozens of
extant and extinct Indo-European branches and languages in Europe and
Anatolia.


On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 8:37 AM, Lancaster-Boon
<> wrote:
> Or is you point more to do with "wave upon wave" (your words) implying more
> than 2 waves. My remarks only requite more than 1 wave. Iranian must have
> spread, and that spread was a "wave".
>
> Maybe you are questioning whether any wave of IE ever got to the steppes
> before Iranian, but an earlier IE must also have apread as is shown by
> Tocharian and loan words from early IE into Finno Ugric. What's more the
> steppes are right there between all the branches of IE more generally. So
> there are generally thought to be at least two waves.


--
Dienekes' Anthropology Blog: http://dienekes.blogspot.com

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