If you study the genomes of the populations of Europe as well as parts of Central and South Asia, you can reconstruct a very broad family tree rooted in a shared genetic ancestry from in a population who lived somewhere in Eurasia at a certain point in time. If you also study the languages of those same populations, you can independently reconstruct a family tree of languages that culminates in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language that would have existed at the same point in time. The simplest explanation for this is the spread of Indo-European-speaking populations, and not merely the language itself, from a single ancestral population.
David Reich is aggressive about these genetics results though. IIRC I read a NYT story once where he came in and claimed to have upended all of Polynesian history based on the genetics of a few historical skulls they found, but it didn't seem like strong enough evidence to me.
Primarily the male population. Genetically much higher proportion of the female population survived.
Of course that’s an exaggeration as well. In much of Southern Europe and other areas the replacement was far from full.
This is absolutely true.
They had agriculture as well as wheels for transportation and pottery. All predating middle eastern civilizations.
They also burned down their own cities every 50-100 years.
This culture was in constant threat from the nomads of the steppe and they learned to live in large groups as protection. This hypothesis is discussed at the end of a recent publication [2: p219-220].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucuteni%E2%80%93Trypillia_cul...
[2] https://pure.tudelft.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/144861667/enig...
Warning, link has an auto play when I opened it (but don’t let that minor obnoxiousness dissuade you from listening).
1. By intersecting ancient word sets of ancient Indo-European languages using comparative phonetics we can try and reconstruct the words of the proto-IE language, both their approximate sounds and approximate meanings. This gives us some information about the society. E.g., the PIE language very likely had a word for wheel, which puts the common PIE community in the period after the wheel was invented. Other words can help us guess what landscape the PIE people lived in, and it has been generally assumed for almost a century now that it strongly resembles Southeastern Europe, essentially the Ukrainian steppe. Two alternative hypotheses (modern-day Turkey and the area to the north, in modern-day Poland/Ukraine) had different drawbacks. We can also look at the locations of the earliest historically attested IE groups (Europe, Middle East, Punjab, Anatolia) and try and guess where they all may have had come from, given the time frame.
2. By looking at the descriptions of the earliest IE societies (first of all the society of Rig-Veda), we can try and guess what way of life these people had. We can then look at all the archaeological cultures in the roughly appropriate area from the roughly appropriate time frame and see which of those have features of interest (in the IE case, warrior-like culture with social stratification, etc.).
3. We know that IE migrated a lot and provided a lot of genetic material to modern populations in Europe and some other regions. Since quite recently, by looking at palaeo-DNA data from the remains of the people who belonged to these cultures, we can try and check who of them made the biggest contribution to contemporary populations.
All these sources of data are rather imprecise, but if you combine them all together and see a clear pattern, this looks rather convincing.
I fail to understand how the Rigvedic society can be connected to this DNA research. Rigveda never mentions anything beyond the Punjab/Swat/Haryana region in any of the hymns. The flora and fauna mentioned in it is also exclusive to this region. Lastly there is no mention of an ancient homeland both in Rigveda and Avesta.
It's about the origin of a population whose widely dispersed descendants often speak a language whose primary features descend from the language spoken by the original population (albeit changed via thousands of years of drift and borrowing from other languages).
That doesn't mean that a) all features of the descendant language come from the origin language or b) all speakers of the descendant language have ancestry from the original population.
Fun facts, the most common words of Indo-European Family are surprisingly very similar across Sanskrit (S) <--> English (E) <--> German (G) [3].
Pitara (S) <--> Father (E) <--> Vater (G)
Matara (S) <--> Mother (E) <--> Mutter (G)
Bhratara (S) <--> Brother (E) <--> Bruder (G)
Duhitar (S) <--> Daughter (E) <--> Tochter (G)
[1] New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages (147 comments):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36930321
[2] Ancient genomes provide final word in Indo-European linguistic origins (16 comments):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42515584
[3] Turandot and the Deep Indo-European Roots of “Daughter” (15 comments):
https://borissoff.wordpress.com/2025/02/06/russian-sanskrit-...
For my part I built the web based editing tool, DB and LaTeX generation system that he used to assemble this massive undertaking over the years. :)
https://borissoff.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/first-public-pres...
It was interesting hearing him talk about how you can see pieces of the original proto language preserved in the different languages. E.g. Russian has 6 cases, Sanskrit has some of these but also others and the original language had something like 12 (I don’t have any particular knowledge on the subject so might be misremembering).
For me it was interesting that the original language seemed to be more complex than the modern descendants, like there is a general trend towards simplification with time. In my mind then there is the question as to where the original complex language came from and why would a culture that we would consider more primitive that ours would need and come up with one.
Some studies actually suggest that literacy systematically pressures languages to use longer, more complex sentences, thus disincentivizing complex inflection rules.
> Matara (S) <--> Mother (E) <--> Mutter (G)
> Bhratara (S) <--> Brother (E) <--> Bruder (G)
> Duhitar (S) <--> Daughter (E) <--> Tochter (G
Since you seem to be quoting the Sanskrit words in their root forms, (to which the case-lacking English and German equivalents most closely correspond) your spellings are incorrect. The correct forms are:
pitr
mātr
bhrātr
duhitr
No thematic 'a' on the end.
You might be confusing it with the nominative plural case forms:
pitarah
mātarah
bhrātarah
duhitarah
>Matara (S) <--> Mother (E) <--> Mutter (G)
Also some roots of the smaller natural numbers, like (E): one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, etc.
(G) eins, zwei, drei, ...
(S) eka, dvi, tri, ...
See the "Table" here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari_numerals
Although it is about numerals, there are words in a few languages, on the right side.
And Sanskrit is the ancestor of many Indian language, such as the regional languages of most of the northern (e.g. Punjabi, Haryanvi, Himachali, Hindi and its dialects), central (e.g. Hindi), eastern (e.g. Bengali, Odiya) and western (e.g. Gujarati, Marwadi) Indian states. To a rough approximation, only the languages of the 4 (now 5, with Telangana added) southern states, and of the 6 / 7 north-eastern states (Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, etc.) and maybe a few aboriginals' / forest tribals' languages, like Bhil, Gond, etc., don't descend from Sanskrit.
The same goes to Malay-Austronesian language family that is spoken in Taiwan, Malay archipelago and further away in Polynesian islands including native people of New Zealand and Hawaii, their numbers of one to ten are very similar accross very wide geographical area confirming they are from the same language tree. Fun facts their most common word is (nyior/nyiur) which further cemented their status as the community with largest number of islands because coconut tree is trademark of their islands environment.
[1] Austronesian peoples:
For example, 'to be' - French 'etre' (circumflex over the e indicates old 's' after the e), Marathi 'asane' (pronounced esnay)
'to go', German gehen, Marathi jana (when conjugated the j becomes hard)
'to give', french 'donner', Hindi 'danaa' (pronounced similarly)
'to mix', french 'melanger', Hind 'melaanaa'
Other non-obvious ones:
Vedas and Wisdom / Wit. Alternatively, Latin video (to see)
Dyaus-pitar and Jupiter, Zeus-pater
'that' in English is 'que' (that/what) in french and 'kya' (for what) or 'ki' (for that) in Hindi (pronounced similarly to French 'que').
English burden or 'to bear' and Hindi bhar (burden)
English 'ignite', Latin 'ignis' and Indic 'agni' (fire)
'Raja' and 'regal' or 'royal'
'Dental' and Hindi 'dant' (tooth)
Greek 'polis' and Indic 'pore' / 'pur' / 'puram' (the 'r' is pronounced like a soft l)
This one is slightly more interesting than a mere cognate as it is believed that the Proto-Indo-European speakers worshipped a sky god with the reconstructed name *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr ("sky-father") which is the ancestor of these (also Tyr and the like on the Germanic side). See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*Dy%C4%93us "*Dyēus is considered by scholars the most securely reconstructed deity of the Indo-European pantheon, as identical formulas referring to him can be found among the subsequent Indo-European languages and myths of the Vedic Indo-Aryans, Latins, Greeks, Phrygians, Messapians, Thracians, Illyrians, Albanians and Hittites."
Not all similarities between mondern languages are inherited, coincidences do happen.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...
Pedar, Madar, Baradar, Dokhtar
When I look at the difference between modern and “old English” they seem to have changed quite a bit [0]. When I read an etymological explanation [1], it sounds like a just so story.
0. https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/9ouweu/how_engli...
1. https://www.pimsleur.com/blog/words-for-father-around-the-wo...
If you have to make up a new just-so story for every pair of words, of course you're not gaining much, but if the same story works for many words at the same time, positing a common origin isn't too far-fetched.
Just wondering if other people have experienced the same or have effective arguments to deal with the outright rejection I've previously faced. I like to think of these discoveries as great unifying ancestry many of us share, which I consider a positive thing, So it surprised me when I discovered an outright rejection of the thought.
For a particularly extreme example of this, see Great Zimbabwe, a ruined city in what is now Zimbabwe. When the country was Northern Rhodesia (a white minority ultra-nationalist breakaway state, somewhat like apartheid South Africa but moreso), any serious discussion of the nature of the site was essentially _illegal_ there, because its existence challenged the official narrative (the government insisted that it could not have been built by black people).
Then again. Rhodesia didn't last very long. And nobody outside cared much what they thought.
A lot of political mythology is based on a group of people being either ethnically homogeneous or ethnically non-homogeneous.
For example a lot of Nazi ideology would've been undermined if it could've been shown that Germans were ethnically non-homogeneous. However it would've been supported if it could've been shown that other groups of people like WW1 German Army deserters were ethnically homogeneous. Or undermined again if there were non-German ethnic homogeneity in WW1 heroes who participated in the German army.
Recently NCERT books were edited indicating that the Rig-vedic people were a continuation of Harappans.
On the other hand, the popular science and journalism has not done any favours by framing the IE studies as "The Aryans brought the Vedas with them from Europe", which is wrong at so many levels. The AMT/AIT was also weaponized by certain political elements in India to proliferate harassment against the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu. So it's kind of understandable why some Indians get defensive about this. But for the most part it's the same blind nationalistic spirit by which boomers claim all science was invented by Indians. Given that most Hindus today won't even know what's there in the Veda which is markedly different from the contemporary Hindu religion, that much attachment to the very small part of ancestry is not required.
Sensitive fields like IE studies should be kept to serious circles and not dumbed down to the level layman whose faith in his Gods or respect towards other humans will be changed by suggesting that people moved around and fought a lot 4000 years ago.
I don't believe any reputable journalist or popular science publication has pushed that view in recent decades. Please post links if you have them
I was born and raised in Tamil Nadu, having lived there for over two decades. In my experience, I have not witnessed any widespread harassment specifically targeting Brahmins. While isolated incidents may exist—just as they do for various communities across all states—there is no substantial evidence to suggest a systemic issue. Could you provide concrete examples, statistics, or credible sources to substantiate this claim ?
That's still the theory, except it's not politically correct to say it out loud. There was an idiot re-tweeted by the VP, who claimed "Buddha was Blonde with Blue-eyes; so was Pāṇinī". You might claim he's an idiot and "AMT is a sophisticated theory you pleb", but it actually is not. As we speak, Indologists like Bronkhorst, Beckwith and many others in EBT are scheming all sorts theories, which give wind to the old-Nazi ideas of "(early) Buddhism" being close to the early "Aryan religion", by claiming that the Shakyamuni was a remnant of original Steppe clans.
The way West frames/manipulates History (based on so little evidence) is deeply violent, and has roots in Xtianity and its violence. This is precisely the issue with this racial theory from the backdoor, and anyone with any shred of morality/ethics should stand with India, and for the indegeneity of its culture, civilization and languages.
As anyone following the war in Ukraine closely has long since realized, village names alone are not very useful for identifying where something is in Ukraine. There are just too many places with the same names. e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykhailivka
Don’t they mean western China here?
On a tangent, with the advent of AI and the final decades of our species, we should make more clay tablets to leave lying around...
Hittite people created an empire centred on Hattusa, and also around northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.
> On a tangent, with the advent of AI and the final decades of our species, we should make more clay tablets to leave lying around
The irony is that even with AI we have yet to decode Indus script perhaps due to the lack of the equivalent of Rosetta Stone [1]. I think there's a Nobel prize waiting for those who can decipher the Indus script with AI or not [2].
[1] Rosetta Stone:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone
[2] Indus script:
It’s not like Porto Indo-European developed out of nothing. It was related to other languages that just didn’t survive and happens to be the most recent (hypothesized) common ancestor of all other Indo-European languages)
Oh, come on. This is what we get from social media bubbles and breathless irresponsible media reporting.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I agree it's a provocation and, worse, a generic tangent, but the rest of the comment was pretty good.
Speaking of bubbles, how sure are you that Silicon Valley and HN are not part of a bubble composed of people with an emotional attachment to technological progress and people with a financial stake in AI?
How sure are you that the AI labs aren't being even more irresponsible than the news media?
Are you suggesting: A) the Yamnaya lived in present-day Iran and that this information was purposely left out B) the studies findings about the Yamnaya are incorrect C) the study should have mentioned Iran despite it not actually being historically relevant to the Yamnaya people D) something else entirely?
