Around 2000 BC, there appears to have been large-scale destruction and abandonment of settlements in the Baluchistan uplands and the Kachi plain, which lies between the Bolan Pass and the Indus river valley. This has been noted by several archaeologists since the latter half of 20th century, as summarized by Coningham and Young, The Archaeology of South Asia (2015), p.257:

It is quite tempting to connect these events with the Indo-European invasions/migrations (I don't believe in a stark distinction between "invasion" and "migration"), as superficially the archaeological remains show possible connections with Indo-Europeans:

• After a clearly violent event involving the destruction of walls and various objects, the site of Gumla in the Gomal valley had a notable presence of horse bones and horse figurines.
• Figurines of bulls were also found alongside horses, indicating an importance of cattle for the invaders (who were likely nomadic pastoralists).
• Graves in the latest period of occupation at Mehrgarh, a very ancient site near the Bolan Pass, show similarities with some graves in Iran and Central Asia.
• Graves show that cremation was practiced, as we know was practiced in Indo-Aryan culture alongside burial in the earliest times.

However, neither the geography nor the timeline seems to be a good fit for Indo-European movements. We know that the Indo-Aryans established themselves not in Baluchistan, but further to the north and east in Punjab and Haryana. These invaders seemed to have instead moved along a more southerly axis, and also seem to have predated Indo-Europeans by at least a few centuries.

In fact, there is very little evidence of early Indo-Aryan presence or influence of any sort in Baluchistan or even the lower Indus. The only material culture that might be associated with the early Indo-Aryans, before the advent of PGW, is the Punjab-centric Cemetery H culture. Baluchistan does not have much if any links with probable Indo-Aryan cultures until late Period IIB and Period III at Pirak in the Kachi plain (very late 2nd millennium and early 1st millennium BC), where we find grey ware that might be connected with Iron Age PGW (cf. J.G. Shaffer in Ehrich, Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, 459). The site of Pirak is notable for being continuously occupied from c.2000-800 BC (i.e., immediately after the aforementioned destruction and abandonment of settlements) and for having terracotta figures of camels, horses, and riders from the earliest period of occupation as well as remains of camel and horse bones. (cf. R.H. Meadow, "A preliminary note on the faunal remains from Pirak", 334)

If these mysterious invaders were not related to Indo-Europeans, could they have been related to the Proto-Dravidians? That seems even more unlikely. It is almost certain that Proto-Dravidian was spread by the Southern Neolithic culture, which had already dispersed throughout the Deccan Plateau by the 3rd millennium BC. These Neolithic pioneers in South India were cattle-centric pastoralists much like the Indo-Aryans but, crucially, did not have horses. By the time our mysterious invaders were penetrating into the Baluchistan uplands, it is likely that the ancestors of Dravidian languages already had a strong presence in the South. Thus, the timeline mismatch here is even greater than with the Indo-European migrations.

Given the lack of any clear evidence of Indo-European settlement in Baluchistan immediately after the disintegration of IVC, as well as the lack of any evidence connecting late IVC Baluchistan with the Proto-Dravidians, this opens the possibility of totally unrelated non-Aryan migrants with some possible connection to Iran and Central Asia introducing horses and settling down in Baluchistan in a manner analogous but separate from the later Indo-Aryans. In this context, it is worth noting that Dravidians in South India seem to have adopted horses independently from the Indo-Aryans, as we find elaborate elite-centric horse burials and horse furniture in Early Iron Age South India, long before any notable Indo-European influence in South India. (cf. J.R. McIntosh, "Dating the South Indian megaliths" in South Asian Archaeology 1983, p.475)

In fact, every major Dravidian languages has their own indigenous word for 'horse' that is totally separate from Proto-Indo-European, and moreover, many Indo-Aryan languages in North India seem to use a word for 'horse' that is totally unrelated to Proto-Indo-European but possibly related to Dravidian via a third language source. For example, consider Telugu guṟṟamu, Punjabi ghuṭṭ, and Hindi ghoṛā. These words and many others are quite likely related, but probably not via Old Indo-Aryan directly borrowing from some older Dravidian word for "horse". Rather, it seems that the ancestor of Hindi and Punjabi and the ancestor of Telugu both borrowed words for "horse" from a similar third source that was neither Dravidian nor Indo-European. Given that the earliest Indo-Aryans clearly already had their own word for 'horse' that was derived from PIE (Indo-Aryan aśva < PIE h₁éḱwos; cf. Avestan aspa), the fact that non-Aryan words for 'horse' predominate in Indo-Aryan languages is quite striking and is consistent with an older, separate introduction of the horse into the subcontinent.

Abstract: The breakthrough of aDNA research during the mid-2010s fundamentally shifted the dominant focus of research on the Corded Ware period in Europe, redirecting attention to questions about migration and the interdisciplinary integration of new and older approaches. Since then, the debate on migration in European prehistory has developed significantly, but previously central questions about aspects of social organization such as social stratification and gender roles during the Corded Ware period have yet to be fully reintegrated with recent aDNA-influenced perspectives. In this article, we combine these two areas of enquiry, migration and social organization. We explore the settling of migrant groups that arrived in a previously abandoned part of the Jutland Peninsula during the decades around 2800 BCE and the cultural system that they established there during the early Corded Ware period (2850–2600 BCE). By combining archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence, we document the establishment of a new socioeconomic system centred mainly on mobile pastoralism. We then turn our focus to expressions of (material) wealth and other aspects of status in burials during this period. We identify major differences in the ability to display material wealth within a corpus of 46 burials with a mortuary palisade from this period and that high levels of wealth display or ‘burial investment’ coincides with certain locations in the study area. We then discuss these patterns while also drawing in the use of red ochre and its potential role in asserting Eastern European ancestry among these newly settled groups – and perhaps towards neighbouring late TRB groups residing in the coastal zone east of the study area. Our article demonstrates the potential of regional, high-resolution case studies for understanding dynamics of migration, settling processes, subsistence strategies and aspects of social organization as well as their causal interplay in prehistoric societies.

Hello everyone,

​I’ve recently become very fascinated by the history of Indo-European-speaking groups or populations present in Africa before the modern colonial era.

​I would love to hear more from those knowledgeable in linguistics, history, or population genetics about this. Specifically, I'm curious about:

​Who these groups or historical peoples were (their origins, migrations, and ethnic/linguistic identities)?

​Where they established themselves and how they interacted with local African populations?

​What kind of linguistic, cultural, or genetic legacy they left behind (if any)?

​Any book recommendations, academic papers, or historical overviews would be hugely appreciated. Looking forward to your insights!

Abstract - This paper aims to identify Indo-Iranian substrate words and to discuss their impact on the study of Indo-Iranian prehistory. A methodology for distinguish­ing substrate words from the inherited part of the lexicon is laid out, after which a list of Proto-Indo-Iranian and Common Indo-Iranian substrate words is presented. Here, substrate wordlists proposed by M. Witzel and A. Lubotsky are synthesized and analysed according to uniform methodological principles. The results show that Proto-Indo-Iranian was in contact with one or more now extinct languages, from which it borrowed words pertaining to animals, body parts, food and drink, cloth­ing, construction, plants, and religion, etc. Based on the semantics of certain words, the substrate language(s) can plausibly be connected to Central Asia. The contacts started during Proto-Indo-Iranian unity and persisted until Indo-Iranian had begun to diversify dialectally (which I call Common Indo-Iranian). This language contact episode was preceded by language contact with Uralic languages, which supports an Indo-Iranian migration from north to south across Central Asia in the 2nd mil­lennium BCE.

Not like what is written in the book per line by line,like some sort of realistic war omitting all of the magic and God stuff?

Maybe there was a war that happened between two cousins and this info was passed down generation to generation, miracle stuff and the involvement of gods being added alone the way?

What do you all think?

I'm asking this because just like mahabharat there is an epic story named Trojan War which also passed down through generations,and it does have some historical authenticity like the researchers have found some remains of ancient bronze civilizational remains, many speculate this can be the remains of Troy.

First of all, this is because the Scythians originated from the Fedorovo culture, and as the chart shows, Fedorovo did not descend from the Proto-Indo-Iranians.( The Abashevo–Srubnaya Origin of the Proto-Indo-Iranians )

The arguments for the Scythians being Iranian are invalid. Iranian loanwords in Slavic languages come from the Sarmatians, who were associated with the Srubnaya culture. Iranian place names and hydronyms also originate from the Sarmatians. The proposed explanations for the words attributed to the Scythians are inadequate and speculative, while the Western Scythians were in close contact with Iranian-speaking Sarmatians, so the transfer of words between them is entirely natural. Furthermore, the Khotanese and Tumshuqese texts do not belong to the Scythians of Fedorovo origin; they belong to Iranian-speaking populations in the region descended from the Srubnaya–Alakul cultural horizon. In other words, there is no evidence that the Scythians were Iranian-speaking.

The language they spoke depends on what language the Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture spoke. However, that is a separate topic.

Created by Wissensgau language community.

Voices: Nikita Svetlitsky, Sofia Medvedeva, Daniil Frolov

This animated film is an artistic reconstruction. The words and grammatical forms are based on evidence from historical and comparative linguistics, but it is impossible to reconstruct an entire spoken language. We do not know the exact intonation patterns, precisely how the laryngeals were pronounced, and even the finer details of reconstructed word forms vary between different schools of thought. In some places, we have had to make assumptions.

These scenes, therefore, are not recordings from the past, but an attempt to imagine what this language might have sounded like when spoken by real people.

More info is in the video description on YouTube.

I apologize if I made any mistakes in the video

We know the Yamnaya and Coded Warfare peoples had to have split off from each other and existed simultaneously (The r1a ychrm haplogroup of the Yamnaya and r1b ychrm haplogroup of the Coded Warfare peoples split atleast 1000 before the full emergence of both groups).

We also know which branches of the ie family where propagated by which of the two peoples.

While differences between the anatolian (hittite, luwe) branches and other ie branches is well documented, what do we know about differences in the language/dialect spoken by the Yamnaya and Corded Warfare?

I know that the etymology of stool has been traced as far back as Proto-Germanic as something like stōlaz, probably meaning something like seat. However, has any research been done to determine whether or not stōlaz and Proto-Balto-Slavic stálas (the proposed ancestor of стол, which means table) are related? I mean it seems obvious to me, but I can’t find any information on it.

I find very conflicting informations about the time a few key events regarding the Italo-Celtic branch took place.

What is the consensus on when did...

- Italo-Celtic split from rest of Bell Beaker

- Italic split from Celtic

- Osco Ubrian split from Latino Faliscan

- Umbrians arrive in Italy

- Latins arrive in Italy...

?

Is this even the correct order ? Could Osco Umbrian and Latino Faliscan be no more related to eachother, actually, than they are to Celtic branch ?

I heard Osco Umbrian is rather in the Celtic branch and its speakers separated from the ancestors of specifically insular Celts right before they crossed the sea, and migrated South. I am quite unsure about that but I think the two Italic branches may have been related only insofar they were both Italo-Celtic and have converged over time due to geographical proximity.

It was once believed that Yamnaya was ancestral to Corded Ware, however, did we later discover that Yamnaya and Corded Ware are rather sister groups, and that Yamnaya is only ancestral to Anatolian, Armenian, Balkanian/Illyrian and Hellenic speakers, with Corded Ware being ancestral to Afanasievo/Tocharians, to the common ancestors of Balto-Slavic speakers and the Andronovo horizon that led to Indo Iranian speakers, and also to the common ancestors of Germanic and Italo-Caltic speakers ? Is the genealogy tree like that ?

What was like the religion of the Indoeuropeans who spred into Ceral Asia and formed the Andronovo horizon, and ultimately originated the Indic and the Iranic language groups ?

Vedic religion and Zoroastrianism have a connection, but what do we know of their ancestor, and of the religion of the Andronovo lineages that disappeared without originating any Indo Iranic language group ?

Do we know how the Deva /Daeva and the Asura/Ahura, that at the time were likely the same thing since even in early Vedic religion they were not strictly divided, were called in proto Indo Iranic language ?

And how similiar would have been Andronovo religion to its near cousin the early Corded Ware, the common ancestor of Celto-Italic, Germanic and Balto-Slavic groups ?

What was the first archeological culture that was ancestral to Indic speakers specifically, and not to also Iranic speakers ?

When and where did it live ?

I would like to suggest something, if the users are in agreement: have a fixed post with a list of linguistic resources and references for the major works on the branches made by renowned scholars.

E.g.

* Bartomeu Obrador-Cursach is one that studies the Phrygian language since forever

* John Koch is a Celticist and studies Celto-Germanic connections

* Alwin Kloekhorst has the Hittite inherited vocabulary from 2008 and studies the variations in Hittite language.

* Ignacio Javier-Adiego studies the Carian language.

etc.