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Post by Admin on Jul 24, 2022 17:00:39 GMT
The majority view in historical linguistics is that the homeland of the Indo-European language family was located in the Pontic steppes (present day Ukraine) around 6000 years ago. The evidence for this comes from linguistic paleontology: in particular, certain words to do with the technology of wheeled vehicles are arguably present across all the branches of the Indo-European family; and archaeology tells us that wheeled vehicles arose no earlier than this date. The minority view links the origins of Indo-European with the spread of farming from Anatolia 8000-9500 years ago. The minority view is decisively supported by the present analysis in Science. This analysis combines a model of the evolution of the lexicons of individual languages with an explicit spatial model of the dispersal of the speakers of those languages. Known events in the past (the date of attestation dead languages, as well as events which can be fixed from archaeology or the historical record) are used to calibrate the inferred family tree against time. The lexical data used in this analysis come from the Indo-European Lexical Cognacy Database (IELex). This database has been developed in MPI's Evolutionary Processes in Language and Culture group, and provides a large, high-quality collection of language data suitable for phylogenetic analysis. Beyond the intrinsic interest of uncovering the history of language families and their speakers, phylogenetic trees are crucially important for understanding evolution and diversity in many human sciences, from syntax and semantics to social structure. A Family of Languages English is part of the large Indo-European language family, which includes Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Balto-Slavic, and Indo-Iranian languages. The origin of this family is hotly debated: one hypothesis places the origin north of the Caspian Sea in the Pontic steppes, from where it was disseminated by Kurgan semi-nomadic pastoralists; a second suggests that Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey, is the source, and the language radiated with the spread of agriculture. Bouckaert et al. (p. 957) used phylogenetic methods and modeling to assess the geographical spread of the Indo-European language group. The findings support the suggestion that the origin of the language family was indeed Anatolia 7 to 10 thousand years ago—contemporaneous with the spread of agriculture. Abstract There are two competing hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European language family. The conventional view places the homeland in the Pontic steppes about 6000 years ago. An alternative hypothesis claims that the languages spread from Anatolia with the expansion of farming 8000 to 9500 years ago. We used Bayesian phylogeographic approaches, together with basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages, to explicitly model the expansion of the family and test these hypotheses. We found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin. Both the inferred timing and root location of the Indo-European language trees fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8000 to 9500 years ago. These results highlight the critical role that phylogeographic inference can play in resolving debates about human prehistory.
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Post by Admin on Aug 28, 2022 21:32:39 GMT
In a trio of papers, published simultaneously in the journal Science, Ron Pinhasi from the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology and Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences (HEAS) at the University of Vienna and Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg from the University of Vienna and Harvard University, Iosif Lazaridis and David Reich at Harvard University -- together with 202 co-authors -- report a massive effort of genome-wide sequencing from 727 distinct ancient individuals with which it was possible to test longstanding archaeological, genetic and linguistic hypotheses. They present a systematic picture of the interlinked histories of peoples across the Southern Arc Region from the origins of agriculture, to late medieval times.
In the first paper the international team investigated the homeland and the spread of Anatolian and Indo-European languages. The genetic results suggest that the homeland of the Indo-Anatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian Indo-Europeans from the Eurasian steppe. At the first stage, around 7,000-5,000 years ago, people with ancestry from the Caucasus moved west into Anatolia and north into the steppe. Some of these people may have spoken ancestral forms of Anatolian and Indo-European Languages.
All spoken Indo-European languages (e.g., Greek, Armenian and Sanskrit) can be traced back to Yamnaya steppe herders, with Caucasus hunter-gatherer and Eastern hunter-gatherer ancestry, who ~5,000 years ago initiated a chain of migrations across Eurasia. Their southern expansions into the Balkans and Greece and east across the Caucasus into Armenia left a trace in the DNA of the Bronze Age people of the region.
As they expanded, descendants of the Yamnaya herders admixed differentially with the local populations. The emergence of Greek, Paleo-Balkan, and Albanian (Indo-European) languages in Southeastern Europe and the Armenian language in West Asia, formed out of Indo-European speaking migrants from the steppe interacting with local people, and can be traced by different forms of genetic evidence. In Southeastern Europe, the Yamnaya impact was profound and people of practically full Yamnaya ancestry came just after the beginning of the Yamnaya migrations.
Some of the most striking results are found in the core region of the Southern Arc, Anatolia, where the large-scale data paints a rich picture of change -- and lack of change -- over time. The results show that in contrast to the Balkans and the Caucasus, Anatolia was hardly impacted by the Yamnaya migrations. No link to the steppe can be established for the speakers of Anatolian languages (e.g. Hittite, Luwian) due to the absence of Eastern hunter-gatherer ancestry in Anatolia, contrasting with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken.
In contrast to Anatolia's surprising impermeability to steppe migrations, the southern Caucasus was affected multiple times including prior to the Yamnaya migrations. "I did not expect to find out that the Areni 1 Chalcolithic individuals, who were recovered 15 years ago in the excavation I co-led, would derive ancestry from gene flow from the north to parts of the southern Caucasus more than 1,000 years prior to the expansion of the Yamnaya, and that this northern influence would disappear in the region before reappearing a couple of millennia later. This shows that there is a lot more to be discovered through new excavations and fieldwork in the eastern parts of Western Asia" says Ron Pinhasi.
"Anatolia was home to diverse populations descended from both local hunter-gatherers and eastern populations of the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and the Levant" says Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg. "The people of the Marmara region and of Southeastern Anatolia, of the Black Sea, and the Aegean region all had variations of the same kinds of ancestry," continues Alpaslan-Roodenberg.
First farming societies and their interactions
The second paper seeks to understand how the world's earliest Neolithic populations (~12,000 years ago) were formed. "The genetic results lend support to a scenario of a web of pan-regional contacts between early farming communities. They also provide new evidence that the Neolithic transition was a complex process that did not occur just in one core region, but across Anatolia and the Near East" says Ron Pinhasi.
It presents the first ancient DNA data for Pre-Pottery Neolithic farmers from the Tigris side of northern Mesopotamia -- both in eastern Turkey and in northern Iraq -- a prime region of the origins of agriculture. It also presents the first ancient DNA from Pre-Pottery farmers from the island of Cyprus, which witnessed the earliest maritime expansion of farmers from the eastern Mediterranean. It furthermore provides new data for early Neolithic farmers from the Northwest Zagros, along with the first data from Neolithic Armenia. By filling these gaps, the authors could study the genetic history of these societies for which archaeological research documented complex economic and cultural interactions but could not trace mating systems and interactions which do not leave visible material traces. Results reveal admixture of pre-Neolithic sources related to Anatolian, Caucasus, and Levantine hunter-gatherers, and shows that these early farming cultures formed a continuum of ancestry mirroring the geography of West Asia. The results also chart at least two pulses of migration from the Fertile Crescent heartland to the early farmers of Anatolia.
The Historic Period
The third paper reveals how polities of the ancient Mediterranean world preserved contrasts of ancestry since the Bronze Age but were linked by migration. The results show that the ancestry of people who lived around Rome in the Imperial period was almost identical to that of Roman/Byzantine individuals from Anatolia in both their mean and pattern of variation, while Italians prior to the Imperial period had a very different distribution. This suggests that the Roman Empire in both its shorter-lived western part and the longer-lasting eastern part centered on Anatolia had a diverse but similar population plausibly drawn to a substantial extent from Anatolian pre-Imperial sources.
"These results are really surprising as in a Science paper that I co-led in 2019, on the genetic ancestry of individuals from Ancient Rome, we found a cosmopolitan pattern that we thought was unique to Rome. Now we see other regions of the Roman Empire were also just as cosmopolitan as Rome itself," says Ron Pinhasi.
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Materials provided by University of Vienna. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal References:
Lazaridis et al. The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe. Science, 2022; 377 (6609) DOI: 10.1126/science.abm4247 Lazaridis et al. A genetic probe into the ancient and medieval history of Southern Europe and West Asia. Science, 2022; 377 (6609): 940 DOI: 10.1126/science.abq0755 Lazaridis et al. Ancient DNA from Mesopotamia suggests distinct Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic migrations into Anatolia. Science, 2022; 377 (6609): 982 DOI: 10.1126/science.abq0762 Benjamin S. Arbuckle, Zoe Schwandt. Ancient genomes and West Eurasian history. Science, 2022; 377 (6609): 922 DOI: 10.1126/science.add9059
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Post by Admin on Sept 5, 2022 6:17:06 GMT
The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe Abstract By sequencing 727 ancient individuals from the Southern Arc (Anatolia and its neighbors in Southeastern Europe and West Asia) over 10,000 years, we contextualize its Chalcolithic period and Bronze Age (about 5000 to 1000 BCE), when extensive gene flow entangled it with the Eurasian steppe. Two streams of migration transmitted Caucasus and Anatolian/Levantine ancestry northward, and the Yamnaya pastoralists, formed on the steppe, then spread southward into the Balkans and across the Caucasus into Armenia, where they left numerous patrilineal descendants. Anatolia was transformed by intra–West Asian gene flow, with negligible impact of the later Yamnaya migrations. This contrasts with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken, suggesting that the homeland of the Indo-Anatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian Indo-Europeans from the steppe. Connecting genes and history Stories about the peopling—and people—of Southern Europe and West Asia have been passed down for thousands of years, and these stories have contributed to our historical understanding of populations. Genomic data provide the opportunity to truly understand these patterns independently from written history. In a trio of papers, Lazaridis et al. examined more than 700 ancient genomes from across this region, the Southern Arc, spanning 11,000 years, from the earliest farming cultures to post-Medieval times (see the Perspective by Arbuckle and Schwandt). On the basis of these results, the authors suggest that earlier reliance on modern phenotypes and ancient writings and artistic depictions provided an inaccurate picture of early Indo-Europeans, and they provide a revised history of the complex migrations and population integrations that shaped these cultures. —SNV Structured Abstract INTRODUCTION For thousands of years, humans moved across the “Southern Arc,” the area bridging Europe through Anatolia with West Asia. We report ancient DNA data from 727 individuals of this region over the past 11,000 years, which we co-analyzed with the published archaeogenetic record to understand the origins of its people. We focused on the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages about 7000 to 3000 years ago, when Indo-European language speakers first appeared. RATIONALE Genetic data are relevant for understanding linguistic evolution because they can identify movement-driven opportunities for language spread. We investigated how the changing ancestral landscape of the Southern Arc, as reflected in DNA, corresponds to the structure inferred by linguistics, which links Anatolian (e.g., Hittite and Luwian) and Indo-European (e.g., Greek, Armenian, Latin, and Sanskrit) languages as twin daughters of a Proto-Indo-Anatolian language. RESULTS Steppe pastoralists of the Yamnaya culture initiated a chain of migrations linking Europe in the west to China and India in the East. Some people across the Balkans (about 5000 to 4500 years ago) traced almost all their genes to this expansion. Steppe migrants soon admixed with locals, creating a tapestry of diverse ancestry from which speakers of the Greek, Paleo-Balkan, and Albanian languages arose. The Yamnaya expansion also crossed the Caucasus, and by about 4000 years ago, Armenia had become an enclave of low but pervasive steppe ancestry in West Asia, where the patrilineal descendants of Yamnaya men, virtually extinct on the steppe, persisted. The Armenian language was born there, related to Indo-European languages of Europe such as Greek by their shared Yamnaya heritage. Neolithic Anatolians (in modern Turkey) were descended from both local hunter-gatherers and Eastern populations of the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and the Levant. By about 6500 years ago and thereafter, Anatolians became more genetically homogeneous, a process driven by the flow of Eastern ancestry across the peninsula. Earlier forms of Anatolian and non–Indo-European languages such as Hattic and Hurrian were likely spoken by migrants and locals participating in this great mixture. Anatolia is remarkable for its lack of steppe ancestry down to the Bronze Age. The ancestry of the Yamnaya was, by contrast, only partly local; half of it was West Asian, from both the Caucasus and the more southern Anatolian-Levantine continuum. Migration into the steppe started by about 7000 years ago, making the later expansion of the Yamnaya into the Caucasus a return to the homeland of about half their ancestors. CONCLUSION All ancient Indo-European speakers can be traced back to the Yamnaya culture, whose southward expansions into the Southern Arc left a trace in the DNA of the Bronze Age people of the region. However, the link connecting the Proto-Indo-European–speaking Yamnaya with the speakers of Anatolian languages was in the highlands of West Asia, the ancestral region shared by both.
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Post by Admin on Sept 8, 2022 7:43:59 GMT
The Balkans and Anatolia are often portrayed as being geographically peripheral to Europe and Asia rather than as central to an interconnected region spanning both continents. Here, we take a different view by providing a systematic genetic history of what we refer to as the “Southern Arc,” a region (Fig. 1A) centered on the large Anatolian peninsula (Turkey), including in the west (in Europe) the Balkans and the Aegean, and in the south and east, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, the Levant, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. We present new genome-wide DNA data from 777 individuals from the Southern Arc: 727 previously unsampled and 50 previously published for which we report new data from 1094 newly generated ancient DNA libraries (1). As a resource to guide future sampling efforts, we also report negative results for 476 samples that we screened using 537 libraries and that failed to yield ancient DNA data meeting the criteria for authenticity (1). Finally, we provide 239 new radiocarbon dates on the same skeletal elements analyzed for DNA (1). We studied these along with the previously published individuals for a total sample size of 1317 ancient individuals in the region (Fig. 1B) (1). Our newly reported data fill many sampling gaps in space and time in the Southern Arc. In Turkey, our new sampling has a particular focus on the western (Aegean,Marmara), northern (Black Sea), and eastern (Eastern Anatolia, Southeastern Anatolia) regions connecting it with the rest of the Southern Arc. Another area of high-density sampling is Armenia, with substantial coverage of the Bronze and Iron Ages representing an order of magnitude more individuals than previously available. Many individuals of the Bronze-to-Iron Age time frame are also sampled from the Iranian highlands at Hasanlu, where only a single individual has previously been studied (2), and from Dinkha Tepe, neighboring Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and the Caucasus. In the southern part of Southeastern Europe, we sample Mycenaeanera individuals from multiple regions of the Aegean. From the Southern Balkans, we present a full time transect of Albania; numerous individuals from North Macedonia, where previously data from only a single Neolithic individual had been published (3); and more than double the previously available body of ancient DNA data from Bulgaria. Farther north, at the western wing of the Southern Arc, we sample individuals from Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia in the west and Romania and Moldova in the east, which interface with the extensively studied worlds of Central Europe and the Eurasian steppe. This dataset includes >100 Bronze Age individuals, including many from Cetina Valley and Bezdanjača Cave in Croatia, which add to only five previously published from the entire area (3, 4). Some of the Balkan individuals include culturally Yamnaya individuals from Serbia and Bulgaria,
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Post by Admin on Sept 9, 2022 7:19:13 GMT
allowing us to compare themwith those of the Eurasian steppe. With this greatly enhanced dataset across the entire region, we are able to fill in major gaps in sampling in time, space, and cultural context. Our large sample sizes also allow us to identify main clusters as well as genetic outliers, providing insights about within-population patterns of variation and contact networks with neighboring groups. Details of all studied individuals can be found in (1) (figs. S5 to S21). To discuss the geographic distribution of these individuals, we take a flexible approach, in some cases using the names of ecological or topographical regions and in others the names of present-day countries depending on how well these align with genetic patterns. In some cases, we also use more specific regional location information to add precision (5). In the interest of having a uniform nomenclature that is easily accessible to readers familiar with the current political map of the Southern Arc, we also refer to groups of individuals with labels prefixed with three-letter International Standards Organization (ISO) codes for countries, as in Fig. 1. Multiple toponyms have been used for the same sites during the Southern Arc’s long history, and we typically choose labels appropriate for the period and/or present-day usage. To designate the period in which individuals lived, we use conventional archaeological designations for each region; e.g., Eneolithic and Chalcolithic both denote copper-using cultures in different parts of the archaeological literature. We caution that the transition between the Eneolithic or Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age did not occur simultaneously in different parts of the Southern Arc. Detailed archaeological information for each individual is presented in (1), specifying the analysis labels we use integrating information fromchronology, geography, archaeology, and genetics.
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