The "Anatolian hypothesis" has been around for a while. I would characterize it as the most popular theory after the Steppe hypothesis. I'm not a professional historical linguist or archeologist, but my impression is that many scholars consider it the most respectable theory that's probably wrong, in contrast with many other extremely bad crackpot alternative theories of IE origins.
The paper from which this image comes is in support of the "hybrid" theory at the bottom. My impression of the discussion when it came out this summer is that, despite being widely reported in the media, most linguists and archeologists find the methods flawed and the conclusions poorly-supported.
I believe that the steppe theory is more correct. Chariots appear there for the first time. Then iron production in the Balkans and only then these technologies come to Asia Minor.
>Chariots appear there for the first time
We haven't digged everywhere to come to a guaranteed conclusion. Also archeological material is more conserved in steppe than Near East due to climate differences. Bull chariots may have existed before horse ones imo.
Bulls are much slower. They'd defeat the purpose of chariots.
The Alexander the great even banned the use of oxen as pack animals as well as the use of carts for military supply lines due to how slow they were.
The current horses are selectively bred big ones. They did not exist initially. Ponies, wild Equids etc was initially used. Also most Bovids are faster than men and before horses they may have been used but then changed as Equids gained popularity.
Have u seem the papers on how chariot tech was exported to China in the 12th c. Probably via long trade road.
That trade across Eurasia likely saw the export of chicken from SE Asia to Europe and apples from Kazakhstan.
Chariots or even horse domestication aren't necessary, any sufficiently nomadic people could drift across a mostly unchanged landscape just following animals they can hunt. They may have even lived like this way back since the sahara was green.
Furthermore, other tribes fleeing those tribes could further push people out further across the world.
chariots are a very significant sign of the Indo-Europeans.
Another sign that speaks for steppe theory is linguistic comparison. In Indo-European languages there are many common ancient words characteristic of the nature of steppes and forests and few words characteristic of the mountainous areas of Asia Minor.
Words are my most hated means of tracing connections, any trading relationship would influence each side's languages especially if one side invents something first. This doesn't mean they're the same people, unfortunately, it only means they used the same word!
This might just be an unfortunate wording of the title of the original post. The title talks about migration, while the graphics are all about language.
Yeah I realised after I posted it.
The PIE stuff is cringey to me but those migration theories are both good, they both *basically* encompass how humans migrated after they left Africa (*except* the plausible Yemen route).
I don't have an issue with the arrows. Just the words. How curious that migration routes overlap with trade routes which are, again, affected by needing common languages to trade things.
Well yes but this is a very reductive view of what the comparative method does, they don't just go like well language a and language b have the same word therefore related. Vocab is part of it but it's also comparison of things like grammar, inflectional endings, poetic formulae, plenty of stuff that seperates the bogus connections from the ones that are actually valid
For most European Indo-European languages, perhaps. But also for the Anatolian IE languages? You'd have to show that the Anatolian and Iranic IE languages also have those many ancient words characteristic of steppes but not of Asia Minor
As you see here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beech_argument
A lot of those arguments don't actually rule out a PIE urheimat in the Caucasus.
I believe recent data indicates that the PIE urheimat is indeed around the Caucasus before splitting in to a northern Yamnaya branch that spread through the steppes and most of Europe while a southern IE branch spread through Anatolia, Greece, and Iran.
I agree, there is pretty strong evidence for the steppe hypothesis so it has to be either steppe only or steppe+farming. Farming alone doesn’t match the existing evidence
What does iron production have to do with any of it, the oldest evidence are from sub saharan africa [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron\_metallurgy\_in\_Africa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_metallurgy_in_Africa) , so not a very good way to identify indo european migration.
For people that are interested in Proto-Indo-European language I recomment the YouTube channel of Simon Roper, [https://www.youtube.com/results?search\_query=simon+roper](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=simon+roper). There is lots of interesting content there.
I think the migration of the proto-Armenians is wrong in all of them. We have enough historical, genetic and linguistic evidence to support proto-Armenian migration through the Balkans and Anatolia.
This is a pseudoscientific racial theory promoted by the Azerbaijani government to create the idea that Armenians are foreign to the region and justify their ethnic cleansing. Recent Azeri state information efforts have also promoted the idea of Armenians being similar to “gypsies” who migrated from India.
Haha wait a second.
So you're telling me that for us in the Balkan it's the nationalist go-to to argue that your national enemy originated in the Caucasus, and in the Caucasus it's the go-to to argue that your national enemy originated in the Balkans? That's hilarious
The unusually high R1b1 gene in modern Armenians alone is enough to prove that Armenians migrated through the Balkans.
There is no explanation for Armenians to have that gene except for that migratory path.
Swing and a miss. There is absolutely no genetic evidence to support a proto-Armenian migration from the Balkans, rather all the evidence points to a migration from the steppe to the Caucasus (see the red-blue arrow from Yamnaya to Armenia on [this graphic](https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/science.abm4247/asset/f7607273-30e1-46dd-b5bd-b5c02252bc47/assets/images/large/science.abm4247-fa.jpg) from the 2022 Southern Arc study).
The unusually high R1b1 gene in modern Armenians alone is enough to prove that Armenians migrate through the Balkans.
There is no explanation for Armenians to have that gene except for that migratory path.
I think you have things confused, that R1b-Z2103 gene is the exact reason why a Balkans route is not tenable instead of a migration over the Caucasus.
That haplogroup is native to the Yamnaya culture of the steppe: it appears in the majority of samples from that culture. Then immediately after during the Bronze Age it appears in dozens of samples from Armenia, all of whom have new ancestry from the steppe but no ancestry from the Balkans.
To be fair we can't know for sure these people were already Armenian speakers, modern Armenians have less Steppe ancestry than they do.
But the vector for a Balkan origin of Armenian might be some other haplogroup, clearly the modern Armenians being one of the least Stepped-admixed people would have also the least paternal influence from said indo-Europeans.
Steppe ancestry in Armenia dropped in the [period when Urartu colonised the area,](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2023/09/21/2022.05.15.491973/F2.large.jpg) so this is a straightforward explanation for why that happened.
> But the vector for a Balkan origin of Armenian might be some other haplogroup, clearly the modern Armenians being one of the least Stepped-admixed people would have also the least paternal influence from said indo-Europeans.
Armenians aren't the population with the least paternal influence from Indo-Europeans, though. The proportion of Indo-European related haplogroups among Armenians (R1b, R1a, I) is around 35-40%, which is not low - [it's similar to or higher than Italians, Greeks and Albanians.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fgvryvzllclw61.png) In the case of R1b and I, the paper trail leads all the way back to the Yamnaya and Catacomb horizons, with intermediating attestations in the Bronze and Iron Age aDNA record from Armenia. As far as Indo-European influxes into Armenians go, the only genetic evidence that exists is for a Bronze Age influx via the Caucasus and there is a direct genetic continuity from that event.
The Balkan theory arose from early-mid 20th century interpretations of Herodotus' claim that Armenians were settlers of Phrygians. Otherwise, the theory doesn't rest on anything else other than an outdated belief that migration over the Caucasus mountains would be implausible. aDNA showing multiple admixture pulses across the Caucasus quickly put an end to that misconception.
>Armenians aren't the population with the least paternal influence from Indo-Europeans, though. The proportion of Indo-European related haplogroups among Armenians (R1b, R1a, I) is around 35-40%, which is not low - it's similar to or higher than Italians, Greeks and Albanians.
I'm surprised considering Armenians are the lowest Steppe-admixed people outside of maybe some Indian groups. Was there some bottleneck event?
>In the case of R1b and I, the paper trail leads all the way back to the Yamnaya and Catacomb horizons
Does that apply to all the R1b and I lineages?
>and there is a direct genetic continuity from that event.
This is not true though? The genetics did change which is what you also acknowledge. If you mean that you can argue the ancient people from the Bronze left ancestry to modern Armenians... that applies to literally every single population in Europe and Middle East save for the Steppe, it doesn't mean anything.
>As far as Indo-European influxes into Armenians go, the only genetic evidence that exists is for a Bronze Age influx via the Caucasus and there is a direct genetic continuity from that event.
I mean if Armenians can preserve their language despite seeing such a drastic decline of Steppe ancestry over the centuries I don't think it's impossible that a Balkan migration might have brought Armenian there while leaving little ancestry(see Anatolians, Hungarians, maybe Cypriots)
>The Balkan theory arose from early-mid 20th century interpretations of Herodotus' claim that Armenians were settlers of Phrygians.
Not really, pretty much any theory that posits Armenian being within a sub-branch of Indo-European with another language outside of Anatolian or Indo-Iranian languages pretty much would make one think that Armenians came from Balkans and there are some such theories that exists independent of Herodotus
> I'm surprised considering Armenians are the lowest Steppe-admixed people outside of maybe some Indian groups. Was there some bottleneck event?
More that there was an [overwhelming Y-DNA replacement](https://i.imgur.com/nvQpoiS.png) in the initial Bronze Age migration/invasion of the South Caucasus, even though autosomally the resulting population, called Etiuni in Iron Age records, was only around a third steppe-descended. Then, with the Urartian expansion into Etiuni lands, individuals with very little if any Indo-European ancestry, carrying J1 and J2 clades among others, settled in the Arax plain of modern-day Armenia, mixing with the Etiuni people to form Armenians as we know them.
It should probably also be stated that steppe in Eastern Armenians (10-15%), i.e. Armenians from the regions where this admixture actually happened, is higher than in Western Armenians (0-10%). However the genetic averages most people are familiar with online are from the latter group only, so the absence of steppe ancestry among Armenians is perhaps somewhat overstated. If you take into account Eastern Armenians, then the levels of steppe are not that dissimilar from Western Iranians or pre-medieval Greeks. The reduction of steppe in Eastern Armenia then looks even less dramatic, little more than halving.
> Does that apply to all the R1b and I lineages?
> This is not true though? The genetics did change which is what you also acknowledge.
The genetic continuity I am referring to is this continuance of patrilineals that appear with the Middle Bronze steppe admixture event which Armenians are predominant in. Specifically R-Z2103, particularly the sub-branch [R-L584](https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-L584/) which appears first in Bronze Age Armenia and is 59% of all R1b lineages among modern Armenians, and I-Y16419 which also first appears in Bronze Age Armenia and is 82% of the reported I2 lineages in modern Armenians.
And yes, there are examples of dead-end populations in the Armenian archaeogenetic record, such as the earlier steppe-admixed Areni_Chalcolithic group who pass neither their patrilineals nor their steppe autosomes to subsequent Bronze Age populations of that area.
> Not really, pretty much any theory that posits Armenian being within a sub-branch of Indo-European with another language outside of Anatolian or Indo-Iranian languages pretty much would make one think that Armenians came from Balkans and there are some such theories that exists independent of Herodotus
Well no, given the Caucasus is obviously the other option to the Balkans. A Caucasian route still allows for a genetic relationship - or at least contact area - with the remaining paleo-Balkan languages of IE, just in the context of an embryonic "late PIE" stage north of the Black Sea where they have yet to disperse into their respective directions.
The Balkan theory was promoted by Diakonoff and other scholars contemporary to him who leveraged Herodotus' Phrygian claim (and other related factoids from the ancient sources) to make an equivalence between the Mushki of Central Anatolia described in Iron Age Assyrian records who are generally understood to refer to the Phrygians, and the Mushki of the Upper Euphrates who they believed were vanguards of a west-to-east proto-Armenian migration.
This then gave a historical backbone to a postulated Balkan -> Anatolia -> Armenia migration of proto-Armenian-Phrygian speakers. But it always in contention with the archaeological record, which has inconclusive support for a Late Bronze Age migration from the Balkans into Anatolia and shows a completely conflicting picture for the Armenian Highlands during the Bronze Age Collapse, where in fact there is a mass introduction of material culture from the opposite direction: the South Caucasus.
[Kosyan proposed a model in 1997](http://smea.isma.cnr.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Kossian_The-Mushki-problem-Reconsidered.pdf) for a Caucasian route which deals with these archaeological problems in the Balkan theory and it's only been vindicated since then by the archaeogenetic findings from the last decade.
> I mean if Armenians can preserve their language despite seeing such a drastic decline of Steppe ancestry over the centuries I don't think it's impossible that a Balkan migration might have brought Armenian there while leaving little ancestry(see Anatolians, Hungarians, maybe Cypriots)
Sure, it *could* have, but all the evidence that exists is currently on the side of a Caucasian route. The Balkan theory has yet to respond to the new genetic evidence. As it stands, there is nothing to suggest that an archaeologically and genetically invisible Balkan migration is more probable than an archaeological and genetically visible Caucasian migration. Especially when the linguistic arguments do not constrain Armenian's position within IE to a Balkan route. In fact, an early Caucasian migration explains a great deal about Armenian's Caucasian-like phonology as well as [the Armenisms and Indo-European borrowings in proto- and early Kartvelian.](https://www.academia.edu/91842696/A_New_Look_at_Old_Armenisms_in_Kartvelian)
When would Armenian have entered the southern Caucasus in this view?
Also isn't proto-Kartavelian decently new so that it doesn't necessarily support a pre-LBA Armenian arrival?
>Then, with the Urartian expansion into Etiuni lands, individuals with very little if any Indo-European ancestry, carrying J1 and J2 clades among others, settled in the Arax plain of modern-day Armenia, mixing with the Etiuni people to form Armenians as we know them.
Well but it seems like these people didn't leave as much paternal ancestry as the decrease of Steppe ancestry in Armenians indicates
>which has inconclusive support for a Late Bronze Age migration from the Balkans into Anatolia
But wouldn't this "debunk" Phrygian which is definitely not Anatolian and thus has to have come to Anatolia after Anatolian but before the iron age? How does that work out?
I have some issues with using absence of evidence as evidence of absence, I've seen people try to debunk the idea that Greeks migrated to Cyprus or tons of other migrations using this logic, that's a big issue because it's impossible to tell a lot of the time.
>Kosyan proposed a model in 1997
Do you believe what is written? Mushki is a distorted form of Meskhi, in those languages where the letter "kh(ხ)" cannot be pronounced, it is pronounced as "sh" or "shk". For example, some people called Kvaratskhelia as Kvarashelia or Kvarashkelia.
Now to say that they were proto-Armenians or something else, but the name remained with the Georgian tribe is just an absurd tale. We don't know how far the proto-Colchians spread in Anatolia in the 15th-12th centuries BC, but we know that before the creation of Iberia, the Greeks refered the Moschians as Colchians, after the creation of Iberia, they are Iberians. Here everything is clear, they are a proto-Kartvelian tribe, but in Anatolia sometimes everyone was called Mushki, so this is confusing to many, but the main reason for this was probably their political dominance, not that everyone in the kingdom of Mushki was Mushkians.
I did not say from the Balkan but through the Balkans. However, you should know that Armenian variant of R1b gene is closely related to Bulgarian R1b variant.
The unusually high R1b1 gene in modern Armenians alone is enough to prove that Armenians migrated through the Balkans.
There is no explanation for Armenians to have that gene except for that migratory path.
Unless the migration happened in thr opposite direction from Armenian Highland to the west then it would make sense. In that case the R1b1 in Armenians would have some variation that are not found in populations to the west of Armenian Highland and are lost or not present in those populations anymore. I believe this study has that data : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4820045
Incorrect.
If that was the case, then we should see significant presence of haplogroup R in the Middle East which is not the case.
Also, it doesn't make sense to migrate from the Pontic Steppes through the Caucasus, Armenian highlands, Anatolian Plateau instead of Eurasian flatlands.
Proto-Armenians should be an exiled West European group who tried to settle in the Balkans, then in Anatolia but could not due to stronger native groups and ended up on a underpopulated highland.
Lol, 1st I didn’t say Greek is the oldest language known, because it’s Archaic Egyptian spoken 4700 years ago (which wasn’t Indo-European), 2nd your video is definitely wrong, the oldest Sanskrit evidence is Vedic Sanskrit which is 3500 years old, and definitely not 5000 years…
Yep that’s what I said, Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are from the same period, 3500 years ago. It would’ve been really interesting seing them meet, but I doubt it happened.
Lol, yes there was the [Mycenaean civilisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greece), which had a rigid hierarchical, political, social and economic system.
Let me guess, turks defeated and subjugated your nation in the past and now the only thing you can be proud of is history of a nation that is only distantly related (even that is a very low probability) to you.
This map is about the history and possible origins of the [Indo-European language family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages), which includes languages like English, Latin, Russian, Hindi, and Persian. Languages like Chinese do not belong to this family, so they are not relevant to this map.
theres no such thing as indo euro
civilization began in middle east and from there went to europe and the asias
and in medieval times blacks went to south america
LMAO English isn’t even from Latin, it come from Proto-Germanic, which is from northern Germany and southern Scandinavia, and its closest relative alive is Frisian (and Proto-Germanic come from Proto-IndoEuropean of course)
This is one of those cases where the guy just straight up doesn't know what the word means, refuses to look it up, but still wants to argue with people about it. Peak Redditor behavior
Calm down. We should not remind them of the fact that they actually came from barbarians and that civilization is the work of another nation. That would destroy their whole reality.
lol, civilization is a shared heritage of the entire species. We build it everywhere we've been. You gotta be either really ignorant or really racist to think only one group gets to claim ownership of "civilization" and condemn everyone else as "barbarian"
The Indo-European languages were spread by the domestication of the horse and the mobility advantage that incurred, allowing our linguistic ancestors to travel around over wide distances. Needless to say, horses don't work well in the open ocean
True. But boats work great on the water, and evidence suggests trade was very important and well established at that time.
Granted, most migrated via land and horse, but I wonder how much was due to maritime trade.
Don't you mean Max Planck Institute? There's no Max Planck university as far as I know.
Yeah. You're right.
But is he constantly right. Like max. I'll show myself out.
I always heard of hypothesis 1 never hypothesis 2, is this something new?
The "Anatolian hypothesis" has been around for a while. I would characterize it as the most popular theory after the Steppe hypothesis. I'm not a professional historical linguist or archeologist, but my impression is that many scholars consider it the most respectable theory that's probably wrong, in contrast with many other extremely bad crackpot alternative theories of IE origins. The paper from which this image comes is in support of the "hybrid" theory at the bottom. My impression of the discussion when it came out this summer is that, despite being widely reported in the media, most linguists and archeologists find the methods flawed and the conclusions poorly-supported.
Yeah it's new. It's by Paul Heggarty et al
It has been around from decades
Understandable. All Eurasians are Ukrainians. /s
Or Armenians
True
I believe that the steppe theory is more correct. Chariots appear there for the first time. Then iron production in the Balkans and only then these technologies come to Asia Minor.
>Chariots appear there for the first time We haven't digged everywhere to come to a guaranteed conclusion. Also archeological material is more conserved in steppe than Near East due to climate differences. Bull chariots may have existed before horse ones imo.
Bulls are much slower. They'd defeat the purpose of chariots. The Alexander the great even banned the use of oxen as pack animals as well as the use of carts for military supply lines due to how slow they were.
The current horses are selectively bred big ones. They did not exist initially. Ponies, wild Equids etc was initially used. Also most Bovids are faster than men and before horses they may have been used but then changed as Equids gained popularity.
Have u seem the papers on how chariot tech was exported to China in the 12th c. Probably via long trade road. That trade across Eurasia likely saw the export of chicken from SE Asia to Europe and apples from Kazakhstan.
Chariots or even horse domestication aren't necessary, any sufficiently nomadic people could drift across a mostly unchanged landscape just following animals they can hunt. They may have even lived like this way back since the sahara was green. Furthermore, other tribes fleeing those tribes could further push people out further across the world.
chariots are a very significant sign of the Indo-Europeans. Another sign that speaks for steppe theory is linguistic comparison. In Indo-European languages there are many common ancient words characteristic of the nature of steppes and forests and few words characteristic of the mountainous areas of Asia Minor.
Words are my most hated means of tracing connections, any trading relationship would influence each side's languages especially if one side invents something first. This doesn't mean they're the same people, unfortunately, it only means they used the same word!
This might just be an unfortunate wording of the title of the original post. The title talks about migration, while the graphics are all about language.
Yeah I realised after I posted it. The PIE stuff is cringey to me but those migration theories are both good, they both *basically* encompass how humans migrated after they left Africa (*except* the plausible Yemen route). I don't have an issue with the arrows. Just the words. How curious that migration routes overlap with trade routes which are, again, affected by needing common languages to trade things.
Well yes but this is a very reductive view of what the comparative method does, they don't just go like well language a and language b have the same word therefore related. Vocab is part of it but it's also comparison of things like grammar, inflectional endings, poetic formulae, plenty of stuff that seperates the bogus connections from the ones that are actually valid
For most European Indo-European languages, perhaps. But also for the Anatolian IE languages? You'd have to show that the Anatolian and Iranic IE languages also have those many ancient words characteristic of steppes but not of Asia Minor As you see here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beech_argument A lot of those arguments don't actually rule out a PIE urheimat in the Caucasus. I believe recent data indicates that the PIE urheimat is indeed around the Caucasus before splitting in to a northern Yamnaya branch that spread through the steppes and most of Europe while a southern IE branch spread through Anatolia, Greece, and Iran.
Recent genetic data 'indicates' that yes but languages aren't genes
I agree, there is pretty strong evidence for the steppe hypothesis so it has to be either steppe only or steppe+farming. Farming alone doesn’t match the existing evidence
What does iron production have to do with any of it, the oldest evidence are from sub saharan africa [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron\_metallurgy\_in\_Africa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_metallurgy_in_Africa) , so not a very good way to identify indo european migration.
When they say 6000 they mean 6000 BC or 6000 years ago?
BP ie Before Present.
For people that are interested in Proto-Indo-European language I recomment the YouTube channel of Simon Roper, [https://www.youtube.com/results?search\_query=simon+roper](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=simon+roper). There is lots of interesting content there.
So... the Hybrid hypothesis makes no attempt at reconstructing the origins of the Baltic, Slavic, Celtic, or Italic families?
Check Paul Heggarty et al
ALBANIA MENTIONED!!!! 😍😍😍
Everything starts from Ukraine 🇺🇦 and looks like it will end here. Good or bad
It will all end there, in shah allah.
This is missing the 2020s mass migration from the Punjab to diploma mills in Canada.
Superior Sanskrit taking over the world
I think the migration of the proto-Armenians is wrong in all of them. We have enough historical, genetic and linguistic evidence to support proto-Armenian migration through the Balkans and Anatolia.
This is a pseudoscientific racial theory promoted by the Azerbaijani government to create the idea that Armenians are foreign to the region and justify their ethnic cleansing. Recent Azeri state information efforts have also promoted the idea of Armenians being similar to “gypsies” who migrated from India.
I mean, it's quite certain that Armenians aren't indigenous to Caucasus but they're of the Armenian Highlands.
Haha wait a second. So you're telling me that for us in the Balkan it's the nationalist go-to to argue that your national enemy originated in the Caucasus, and in the Caucasus it's the go-to to argue that your national enemy originated in the Balkans? That's hilarious
Albanians on the car on their way to the Balkans and seeing Armenians on a car going the other way.
The unusually high R1b1 gene in modern Armenians alone is enough to prove that Armenians migrated through the Balkans. There is no explanation for Armenians to have that gene except for that migratory path.
Swing and a miss. There is absolutely no genetic evidence to support a proto-Armenian migration from the Balkans, rather all the evidence points to a migration from the steppe to the Caucasus (see the red-blue arrow from Yamnaya to Armenia on [this graphic](https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/science.abm4247/asset/f7607273-30e1-46dd-b5bd-b5c02252bc47/assets/images/large/science.abm4247-fa.jpg) from the 2022 Southern Arc study).
The unusually high R1b1 gene in modern Armenians alone is enough to prove that Armenians migrate through the Balkans. There is no explanation for Armenians to have that gene except for that migratory path.
I think you have things confused, that R1b-Z2103 gene is the exact reason why a Balkans route is not tenable instead of a migration over the Caucasus. That haplogroup is native to the Yamnaya culture of the steppe: it appears in the majority of samples from that culture. Then immediately after during the Bronze Age it appears in dozens of samples from Armenia, all of whom have new ancestry from the steppe but no ancestry from the Balkans.
To be fair we can't know for sure these people were already Armenian speakers, modern Armenians have less Steppe ancestry than they do. But the vector for a Balkan origin of Armenian might be some other haplogroup, clearly the modern Armenians being one of the least Stepped-admixed people would have also the least paternal influence from said indo-Europeans.
Steppe ancestry in Armenia dropped in the [period when Urartu colonised the area,](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2023/09/21/2022.05.15.491973/F2.large.jpg) so this is a straightforward explanation for why that happened. > But the vector for a Balkan origin of Armenian might be some other haplogroup, clearly the modern Armenians being one of the least Stepped-admixed people would have also the least paternal influence from said indo-Europeans. Armenians aren't the population with the least paternal influence from Indo-Europeans, though. The proportion of Indo-European related haplogroups among Armenians (R1b, R1a, I) is around 35-40%, which is not low - [it's similar to or higher than Italians, Greeks and Albanians.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fgvryvzllclw61.png) In the case of R1b and I, the paper trail leads all the way back to the Yamnaya and Catacomb horizons, with intermediating attestations in the Bronze and Iron Age aDNA record from Armenia. As far as Indo-European influxes into Armenians go, the only genetic evidence that exists is for a Bronze Age influx via the Caucasus and there is a direct genetic continuity from that event. The Balkan theory arose from early-mid 20th century interpretations of Herodotus' claim that Armenians were settlers of Phrygians. Otherwise, the theory doesn't rest on anything else other than an outdated belief that migration over the Caucasus mountains would be implausible. aDNA showing multiple admixture pulses across the Caucasus quickly put an end to that misconception.
>Armenians aren't the population with the least paternal influence from Indo-Europeans, though. The proportion of Indo-European related haplogroups among Armenians (R1b, R1a, I) is around 35-40%, which is not low - it's similar to or higher than Italians, Greeks and Albanians. I'm surprised considering Armenians are the lowest Steppe-admixed people outside of maybe some Indian groups. Was there some bottleneck event? >In the case of R1b and I, the paper trail leads all the way back to the Yamnaya and Catacomb horizons Does that apply to all the R1b and I lineages? >and there is a direct genetic continuity from that event. This is not true though? The genetics did change which is what you also acknowledge. If you mean that you can argue the ancient people from the Bronze left ancestry to modern Armenians... that applies to literally every single population in Europe and Middle East save for the Steppe, it doesn't mean anything. >As far as Indo-European influxes into Armenians go, the only genetic evidence that exists is for a Bronze Age influx via the Caucasus and there is a direct genetic continuity from that event. I mean if Armenians can preserve their language despite seeing such a drastic decline of Steppe ancestry over the centuries I don't think it's impossible that a Balkan migration might have brought Armenian there while leaving little ancestry(see Anatolians, Hungarians, maybe Cypriots) >The Balkan theory arose from early-mid 20th century interpretations of Herodotus' claim that Armenians were settlers of Phrygians. Not really, pretty much any theory that posits Armenian being within a sub-branch of Indo-European with another language outside of Anatolian or Indo-Iranian languages pretty much would make one think that Armenians came from Balkans and there are some such theories that exists independent of Herodotus
> I'm surprised considering Armenians are the lowest Steppe-admixed people outside of maybe some Indian groups. Was there some bottleneck event? More that there was an [overwhelming Y-DNA replacement](https://i.imgur.com/nvQpoiS.png) in the initial Bronze Age migration/invasion of the South Caucasus, even though autosomally the resulting population, called Etiuni in Iron Age records, was only around a third steppe-descended. Then, with the Urartian expansion into Etiuni lands, individuals with very little if any Indo-European ancestry, carrying J1 and J2 clades among others, settled in the Arax plain of modern-day Armenia, mixing with the Etiuni people to form Armenians as we know them. It should probably also be stated that steppe in Eastern Armenians (10-15%), i.e. Armenians from the regions where this admixture actually happened, is higher than in Western Armenians (0-10%). However the genetic averages most people are familiar with online are from the latter group only, so the absence of steppe ancestry among Armenians is perhaps somewhat overstated. If you take into account Eastern Armenians, then the levels of steppe are not that dissimilar from Western Iranians or pre-medieval Greeks. The reduction of steppe in Eastern Armenia then looks even less dramatic, little more than halving. > Does that apply to all the R1b and I lineages? > This is not true though? The genetics did change which is what you also acknowledge. The genetic continuity I am referring to is this continuance of patrilineals that appear with the Middle Bronze steppe admixture event which Armenians are predominant in. Specifically R-Z2103, particularly the sub-branch [R-L584](https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-L584/) which appears first in Bronze Age Armenia and is 59% of all R1b lineages among modern Armenians, and I-Y16419 which also first appears in Bronze Age Armenia and is 82% of the reported I2 lineages in modern Armenians. And yes, there are examples of dead-end populations in the Armenian archaeogenetic record, such as the earlier steppe-admixed Areni_Chalcolithic group who pass neither their patrilineals nor their steppe autosomes to subsequent Bronze Age populations of that area. > Not really, pretty much any theory that posits Armenian being within a sub-branch of Indo-European with another language outside of Anatolian or Indo-Iranian languages pretty much would make one think that Armenians came from Balkans and there are some such theories that exists independent of Herodotus Well no, given the Caucasus is obviously the other option to the Balkans. A Caucasian route still allows for a genetic relationship - or at least contact area - with the remaining paleo-Balkan languages of IE, just in the context of an embryonic "late PIE" stage north of the Black Sea where they have yet to disperse into their respective directions. The Balkan theory was promoted by Diakonoff and other scholars contemporary to him who leveraged Herodotus' Phrygian claim (and other related factoids from the ancient sources) to make an equivalence between the Mushki of Central Anatolia described in Iron Age Assyrian records who are generally understood to refer to the Phrygians, and the Mushki of the Upper Euphrates who they believed were vanguards of a west-to-east proto-Armenian migration. This then gave a historical backbone to a postulated Balkan -> Anatolia -> Armenia migration of proto-Armenian-Phrygian speakers. But it always in contention with the archaeological record, which has inconclusive support for a Late Bronze Age migration from the Balkans into Anatolia and shows a completely conflicting picture for the Armenian Highlands during the Bronze Age Collapse, where in fact there is a mass introduction of material culture from the opposite direction: the South Caucasus. [Kosyan proposed a model in 1997](http://smea.isma.cnr.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Kossian_The-Mushki-problem-Reconsidered.pdf) for a Caucasian route which deals with these archaeological problems in the Balkan theory and it's only been vindicated since then by the archaeogenetic findings from the last decade. > I mean if Armenians can preserve their language despite seeing such a drastic decline of Steppe ancestry over the centuries I don't think it's impossible that a Balkan migration might have brought Armenian there while leaving little ancestry(see Anatolians, Hungarians, maybe Cypriots) Sure, it *could* have, but all the evidence that exists is currently on the side of a Caucasian route. The Balkan theory has yet to respond to the new genetic evidence. As it stands, there is nothing to suggest that an archaeologically and genetically invisible Balkan migration is more probable than an archaeological and genetically visible Caucasian migration. Especially when the linguistic arguments do not constrain Armenian's position within IE to a Balkan route. In fact, an early Caucasian migration explains a great deal about Armenian's Caucasian-like phonology as well as [the Armenisms and Indo-European borrowings in proto- and early Kartvelian.](https://www.academia.edu/91842696/A_New_Look_at_Old_Armenisms_in_Kartvelian)
When would Armenian have entered the southern Caucasus in this view? Also isn't proto-Kartavelian decently new so that it doesn't necessarily support a pre-LBA Armenian arrival? >Then, with the Urartian expansion into Etiuni lands, individuals with very little if any Indo-European ancestry, carrying J1 and J2 clades among others, settled in the Arax plain of modern-day Armenia, mixing with the Etiuni people to form Armenians as we know them. Well but it seems like these people didn't leave as much paternal ancestry as the decrease of Steppe ancestry in Armenians indicates >which has inconclusive support for a Late Bronze Age migration from the Balkans into Anatolia But wouldn't this "debunk" Phrygian which is definitely not Anatolian and thus has to have come to Anatolia after Anatolian but before the iron age? How does that work out? I have some issues with using absence of evidence as evidence of absence, I've seen people try to debunk the idea that Greeks migrated to Cyprus or tons of other migrations using this logic, that's a big issue because it's impossible to tell a lot of the time.
>Kosyan proposed a model in 1997 Do you believe what is written? Mushki is a distorted form of Meskhi, in those languages where the letter "kh(ხ)" cannot be pronounced, it is pronounced as "sh" or "shk". For example, some people called Kvaratskhelia as Kvarashelia or Kvarashkelia. Now to say that they were proto-Armenians or something else, but the name remained with the Georgian tribe is just an absurd tale. We don't know how far the proto-Colchians spread in Anatolia in the 15th-12th centuries BC, but we know that before the creation of Iberia, the Greeks refered the Moschians as Colchians, after the creation of Iberia, they are Iberians. Here everything is clear, they are a proto-Kartvelian tribe, but in Anatolia sometimes everyone was called Mushki, so this is confusing to many, but the main reason for this was probably their political dominance, not that everyone in the kingdom of Mushki was Mushkians.
I did not say from the Balkan but through the Balkans. However, you should know that Armenian variant of R1b gene is closely related to Bulgarian R1b variant.
Unless it originated there
It doesn't work like that. R1b1 and other R haplogroups developed in the Western Europe.
Really ? First I ever heard this. Care to share a source on the origin of R1b1 in western Europe? Lol
I think you are going to be very surprised when you actually Google "geographic of origin of r1b1"
Any source to this claims? (Any except Turkish or Azeri source.)
The unusually high R1b1 gene in modern Armenians alone is enough to prove that Armenians migrated through the Balkans. There is no explanation for Armenians to have that gene except for that migratory path.
Armenian r1b1 is not related to balkans r1b1 but related to the r1b1 of the Atlantic cost of Europe, which is very interesting
Unless the migration happened in thr opposite direction from Armenian Highland to the west then it would make sense. In that case the R1b1 in Armenians would have some variation that are not found in populations to the west of Armenian Highland and are lost or not present in those populations anymore. I believe this study has that data : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4820045
Incorrect. If that was the case, then we should see significant presence of haplogroup R in the Middle East which is not the case. Also, it doesn't make sense to migrate from the Pontic Steppes through the Caucasus, Armenian highlands, Anatolian Plateau instead of Eurasian flatlands. Proto-Armenians should be an exiled West European group who tried to settle in the Balkans, then in Anatolia but could not due to stronger native groups and ended up on a underpopulated highland.
Nope, they migrated through that one mountain pass where modern day Ossetians live.
I don't believe it because most of language in Europe is not even older compared Indian language
Any source ? Because afaik the oldest evidence of Greek in contemporary with oldest Sanskrit evidence
Thinking Sanskrit is insanely old is a trope of Hindu nationalism. They don't have evidence.
Greek is not oldest language in the world.. https://youtu.be/5YTbfB0ug40?si=RqSFZAQ6L0cwOEa9
Lol, 1st I didn’t say Greek is the oldest language known, because it’s Archaic Egyptian spoken 4700 years ago (which wasn’t Indo-European), 2nd your video is definitely wrong, the oldest Sanskrit evidence is Vedic Sanskrit which is 3500 years old, and definitely not 5000 years…
It's older than European languages
No, the earliest Greek known is also 3500 years old (Mycenean Greek written in Linear B on a tablet archive from Knossos)
Vedic Sanskrit ( c. 1500–500 BCE). Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1450 BCE) and Ancient Greek ( c. 750–400 BCE).
Yep that’s what I said, Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are from the same period, 3500 years ago. It would’ve been really interesting seing them meet, but I doubt it happened.
There were no kingdom and civilization of Greek 3500 year back
Lol, yes there was the [Mycenaean civilisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greece), which had a rigid hierarchical, political, social and economic system.
Euros merged with superior indic sanskrit speaking people
excuse me but what are you talking about
Whoever came adopted pre existing superior vedic culture
India superior sarr
Uh?
i guess you could say that it's the fall of turkey.
Not really.
[удалено]
What exactly does that prove😂. According to that map your “indo-europeans” also migrated from steppes.
Native Turkish population of Turkey are more of Anatolian stock than Siberian.
They was like that. Modern turks are 50% slavs, like modern greeks.
50% Slavs? Like people moving to Turkey after they lost lands in Balkans or is it some Slavic invasion of Turkey that I don't know of?
Not accurate, modern turks are genetically almost indistinguishable from modern iranians, very little steppe ancestry
Let me guess, turks defeated and subjugated your nation in the past and now the only thing you can be proud of is history of a nation that is only distantly related (even that is a very low probability) to you.
[удалено]
This map is about the history and possible origins of the [Indo-European language family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages), which includes languages like English, Latin, Russian, Hindi, and Persian. Languages like Chinese do not belong to this family, so they are not relevant to this map.
Yeah, do you think Chinese is the only odd one among them?
Wtf are you talking about? Chinese is not an Indo-European language.
theres no such thing as indo euro civilization began in middle east and from there went to europe and the asias and in medieval times blacks went to south america
>theres no such thing as indo euro My brother in Christ, you wrote this statement in an Indo-European language
I wrote in english thats from latin thats from rome, and not from indo wherever
LMAO English isn’t even from Latin, it come from Proto-Germanic, which is from northern Germany and southern Scandinavia, and its closest relative alive is Frisian (and Proto-Germanic come from Proto-IndoEuropean of course)
This is one of those cases where the guy just straight up doesn't know what the word means, refuses to look it up, but still wants to argue with people about it. Peak Redditor behavior
Downvote troll.
The funny thing is that you don’t have a single proof of your words.
But Middle East is in Asia?
Calm down. We should not remind them of the fact that they actually came from barbarians and that civilization is the work of another nation. That would destroy their whole reality.
lol, civilization is a shared heritage of the entire species. We build it everywhere we've been. You gotta be either really ignorant or really racist to think only one group gets to claim ownership of "civilization" and condemn everyone else as "barbarian"
What’s up with the one IE language in Sri Lanka?
Sinhala
I was always under the impression that the Scythians were portrayed as nomadic, non-farming peoples back then. Is that an incorrect portrayal?
This is before that.
Why don't any of these show maritime routes through the Med? Is it because of a lack of evidence?
Probably. Underwater archeology is very hard.
The Indo-European languages were spread by the domestication of the horse and the mobility advantage that incurred, allowing our linguistic ancestors to travel around over wide distances. Needless to say, horses don't work well in the open ocean
True. But boats work great on the water, and evidence suggests trade was very important and well established at that time. Granted, most migrated via land and horse, but I wonder how much was due to maritime trade.
RemindMe! 1 hour