Talk:Anatolian hypothesis

message: What I think about this idea is that there are too many problems with overly slow language change to permit such an early date for Proto-Indo-European expansion. As well, attributing something as important as agriculture to them seems a bit much.
That being said, however, there is without doubt SOMETHING to this theory. While the people in question were not Proto-IE (Proto-Indo-European) as we know it, they may well have had a MAJOR impact on the Proto-IE culture as we know it. Simply put, there are a good deal of deep grammatical rules and sounds that suggest that Proto-IE is related to Uralic (i.e. Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Komi, Udmurt, Ngagasian, and many others), BUT with a very heavy influence from the Caucasian languages. Some of these are suggested in Greenberg's highly controversial and in my eyes, at times highly suspect, Eurasiatic theory - though having said it to be controversial and suspect, there seems to be a good deal of potential truth that is merely overextended, and that could well be applied in comparisons between two languages, especially in the grammatical points.
NOW. We know that there is a culture with Caucasian AND Indo-European characteristics, the Maykop Culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maykop_culture). This is without doubt a terribly late date for influence, but if it were considered to be a descendent of other cultures in that region, it could well be not only the link for this Caucasian ad-/sub-/super-stratum of words in Proto-IE, but also, the Maykop culture ITSELF is almost a perfect match for a vehicle of transmission of some words of Semitic origin into Proto-IE (such as for "lion" and "wine", and possibly one of the words for "apple"), and vice-versa (maaaaaaaaaaybe the word for "star" in Proto-IE, *h2ster, could have begotten the Semitic word similar to the Akkadian ishtar (Goddess of Love and War, whose name might originally mean "star")).
But what of these Anatolian languages, huh? WELL, if one looks at the Kurgan hypothesis, such languages that emerged from Anatolia could have become - or at least influenced - many of the "Old European" languages. It is possible that this might account for Indo-European-like words in Etruscan, and a grammatical structure in Linear A that is reminiscent of Indo-European. The alternative is that these languages were given heavy doses of Indo-European Anatolian influence, or were even highly wayward Indo-European languages. The extreme waywardness, however, weakens the latter option (although it doesn't discount it completely).
One final point, just to be clear, should be made. The Basque language doesn't feature in this equation; the Basques seem to have been minding their own business in Iberia and southwestern France during this time. None of its core vocabulary is descended from any known language, and so it's probably just a hanger-on from goodness knows how long ago, maybe even back to the time of the Lascaux caves. Irregardless, it never really had an impact in Proto-Indo-European.
In the section marked "Scenario" there is the following sentence: "This is incompatible with the Kurgan topology of the Indo-European family tree, and with mainstream linguistics which places Balto-Slavic no closer to Indo-Iranian than to Germanic or Italic."  I am removing "and with mainstream. ." because Balto-Slavic languages are in the Satem branch of IE and are thus closer to I-Ir than Germanic and Italic.  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the passage, but in the meantime I think it should be removed.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wwtrimble (talk • contribs) 17:17, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: What about Gamkrelidze and Ivanov and Gray and Atkinson?--Eupator 17:54, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: what about them? the Gray and Atkinson paper is discussed fwiiw. G&I favour an "Armenian hypothesis" incompatible with Renfrew. dab (ᛏ) 12:49, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Others besides Renfrew 

message: If you read the papers by Gray and Atkinson (e.g. here) you'll find that they are definitely NOT doing glottochronology. Glottochronology is a simple pairwise comparison between cognate counts. The phylogenetic approach they are using is very different and compares each lexical item, in each cognate set, in each language all at once and combines this with a model of lexical evolution. They are NOT the same thing.
:they are not the same thing, but the term glottochronology spans the lot. Glottochronology is not just "the simple pairwise comparison between cognate counts", thank goodness, like other fields, glottochronology is allowed to make progress, and I grant you that the G&A study is an example of 'advanced' glottochronology, yet still glottochronology. dab (𒁳) 09:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: G&A simply do not know what the term means. Moreover, they based their computation on a - to my knowledge unpublished - source for Anatolian. Given our only fragmentary knowledge of this language, any method based on the completeness of those so-called Swadesh-lists, and the believe into the computability of language change per time, MUST end in a far to early result.HJJHolm (talk) 08:28, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Note that ALL glottochronological approaches, including those of Gray & Atkinson, Starostin, or Bouckaert et al. work with more or less strict clock assumptions (hence the term), which might or not be true in the here essential languages as Hittite and Tocharian. The clock assumption has repeatedly been refuted and no historical linguist believes in it. Moreover, the data base of the 2003 attempt was very bad, and since then has insufficiently and not completely been updated. Mathematically, the many gaps and isolates in the lists of these languages tend to extend the separation times to older as they in fact may be. Thus, all these computations can never prove the age, let alone the Urheimat/original home of a language family. HJJHolm (talk) 09:10, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Traditionally, mainstream linguists have considered glottochronology useful in some cases for suggesting new hypotheses and indicating potentially useful future lines of research, but NOT as capable of "proving" anything much by itself, or of providing useful absolute dates.  It doesn't seem that this situation has changed much in recent years... AnonMoos (talk) 18:26, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

text: Obviously nobody has noticed that in www.sciencemag.org - SCIENCE, VOL 342, 20 DECEMBER 2013, p 1446., 2013 the 2012 article has clandestinely (i.e., as unsigned "correction" in small letters) been revoked because of a serious systematic error. The therin presented new date (median = 7579 years BP) could not be reproduced with the accompanying data and published software. Note further the huge so-called "confidence interval". And this is only the top of the "iceberg". After some more corrections and several billions(!) of test runs the results circle around 6'600 "BP" /4'600 BC. HJJHolm (talk) 16:15, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I have to correct myself there, the 2003 paper by Gray and Atkinson is very clearly using a form of glottochronology. I was thinking of the later paper that uses a spread analysis on the established phylogeny without making chronological assumptions.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:21, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gray & Atkinson & Glottochronology 

message: What do people think about the finding that Haplogroup R1b, the most typical Y-chromosome haplogroup among Western European populations (including Basques), is also present at readily detectable frequencies among populations such as the Uyghurs of Xinjiang as well as among the Manchus, Koreans, Han Chinese, etc.? It seems odd that mummies with distinctively Western European physical and genetic characteristics have been discovered in a region (i.e., Xinjiang) that is also strongly associated with the Tocharian languages, whose apparent affinities with Indo-European languages of Central and Western Europe have long been of note. Personally, I am beginning to reconsider the possibility of the Paleolithic Continuity Hypothesis, or at least a theory that allows some sort of convergent evolution in the development of the Indo-European languages. It seems to me that one or two particular Paleolithic population(s) of Europe or Western Asia might have come into contact with a Neolithic population expanding from the Middle East, absorbed some cultural and perhaps genetic characteristics of the Neoliths of Middle Eastern origin, and subsequently spread features of their particular dialect(s) of Paleolithic European/Northwestern Asian language throughout much of the vast regions inhabited by related (formerly) Paleolithic tribes and perhaps even beyond into the territory of completely unrelated peoples. The sparsely attested languages of Classical Antiquity in Europe that appear to bear some sort of resemblance to Indo-European or Uralic languages could then be considered as remnants of the Paleolithic European/Northwestern Asian languages and dialects that were spoken in those areas prior to the immigration of Neolithicized Indo-European former-Paleoliths and concomitant linguistic homogenization of most of Europe. Ebizur 03:37, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Everybody knows that Indo-Europeans arrived in what is now China circa 2500 BCE. They are known to archaeologists as the Afanasevo culture. They are thought to be the ancestors of Tocharian-speaking people. Tocharian is a branch of Indo-European. Of course there were likely migrations much earlier, including Mesolithic, Upper Paleolithic, etc., but these would have nothing to do with Indo-Europeans. Conversely, Asian-looking people migrated into Northern Europe (including Scotland and Scandinavia) as soon as the Ice Age ended. This is only "surprising" to people haven't looked into it. Zyxwv99 (talk) 21:41, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Haplogroup R1b in Xinjiang and East Asia 

message: Why is haplogroup G mentioned in the article and not J? --Kupirijo 07:19, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Haplogroups G and J 

message: Secondly, the Hittite language of Anatolia, on which this commonness has been perceived, was a “minority” language, probably of the elites, whereas the basal language was non-Indo-European.
What's the evidence for Hittite being a minority or elite language in Anatolia? Many of the elite texts, such as sacred and magical texts, were written in Hattic, Hurrian or just straight Akkadian, which were the elite languages. I know of no evidence that the Hittite culture's basilect was anything but Hittite. On top of that, the entire paragraph which contains this sentence has been copied entire from the reference (which is expressly not-for-reproduction) without quoting it. Hence, I'm going to delete the last paragraph on the basis of copyvio and lack of other citation. Thefamouseccles 02:10, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hittite as a minority language? 

message: The article, which, in my opinion, is not particularly objective, states that, "Anatolian hypothesis falters on at least two major counts." The first objection seems to be that, if the hypothesis is correct, Indo-Iranians and Europeans "ought" to have a common vocabulary with regard to agriculture. This is, of course, highly speculative in the first place and, in the second place, should equally be true if we assume, following the current theory about the origins of nomad-pastoralism, that the nomads in question arose out of a culture with at least primitive agriculture. The second objection apparently arises out of a misunderstanding of Renfrew's model for language change and the hypothesis as originally stated. No one is claiming, as I understand it, that PIE speakers were "the original inhabitants of this area" in exclusion of all others. In Renfrew's 1987 statement of the hypothesis, he acknowledges that the language picture in Anatolia, as revealed in early historical times, was quite complicated. There is no incompatibility between this fact and the proposition that the Indo-European languages were spread throughout Eurasia from Anatolia primarily via the population explosion that resulted from the agricultural revolution. Stupahead (talk) 23:03, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Jared Diamond has pointed out that only one crop name is reconstructible for proto-Indo-European, a word for a non-specific type of grain, while many specific crop names can be reconstructed for proto-Bantu or proto-Austronesian... AnonMoos (talk) 21:45, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "two counts" 

message: I don't understand why is Balkan hypothesis redirected to this hypothesis?
If it is for merging related articles together, then we should also merge the kurgan hypothesis, shouldn't we?.--Lgriot (talk)  —Preceding undated comment was added at 06:18, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: this may be a bit unfortunate, because I suppose "Balkan hypothesis" may mean any number of things. The intended meaning here is the revised theory of Renfrew (1999), as in Renfrew's revised views place only Pre-Proto-Indo-European in 7th millennium BC Anatolia, proposing as the homeland of Proto-Indo-European proper the Balkans around 5000 BC. --dab (𒁳) 08:38, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  balkan hypothesis redirect 

message: In 2005 Colin Renfrew seemed to support the PCT. He co-authored a paper concluding: Our finding lends weight to a proposed Paleolithic ancestry for modern Europeans.[3] However the design and conclusions of this study were later questioned. aDNA studies focusing on Paleolithic remains have found a "lack of genetic continuity between modern Europeans and Paleolithic samples."[4]
This is not quite right. In the Haag paper Renfrew co-authored, is supported a genetic continuity in Europe since the Palaeolithic. needs not apply to languages. Hxseek (talk) 03:23, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Haag paper

message: It does strike me as very unfortunate that the PCT is given here as the other of only two further homeland theories. What about the Armenian hypothesis or the Out of India theory (which, although it is unconvincing, I would call even less improbable than the PCT)? What about the Baltic or "pre-Renfrewian" Balkans theories? It just seems odd that those have apparently been discarded while something as unlikely as the PCT is listed. Would it be okay if I included at least the Armenian one? Trigaranus (talk) 17:59, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. Be careful not to give it undue weight, though. SamEV (talk) 01:15, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two Competing Hypotheses 

message: I've moved the following from the article:
:;Recent research
:Conventional methods in historical linguistics do not employ an explicit optimality criterion to evaluate chronologal language trees. These methods cannot quantify uncertainty in the inferences nor provide an absolute chronology of divergence events. Previous attempts to estimate divergence times from lexical data using glottochronological methods have been heavily criticized, particularly for the assumption of constant rates of lexical replacement.
:Computational phylogenetic methods from biology can overcome these problems and allow divergence times to be estimated without the assumption of constant rates. These methods were applied by Q.D. Atkinson (See more: Atkinson Q.D. From Species To Languages: A phylogenetic approach to human prehistory. - University of Auckland, 2006. - 229 p.) to lexical data to test the Anatolian and Kurgan hypotheses.
:Divergence time estimates for the age of the Indo-European language family are used to test between two competing theories of Indo-European origin – the Kurgan hypothesis and the Anatolian farming hypothesis. The resulting age estimates are consistent with the age range implied by the Anatolian farming theory. Validation exercises using different models, data sets and coding procedures, as well as the analysis of synthetic data, indicate these results are highly robust.
This passage is copied verbatim from this summary of a PhD thesis . It is a PhD in psychology from Aukland university. It represents the opinion of its author, Quentin Atkinson, but no evidence is provided that it is at all notable. It's also not clear which version of the Anatolian model is being defended. The author does appear to be potentially significant , but I think we need more detail on the model and its reception. Paul B (talk) 12:27, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Moved - Atkinson's research

message: Here is today's Science article abstract and a NYT media description of the Bouckaert et al Atkinson work. Science prevents archival of its full article - it might be available on a preprint server like arXiv, but the abstract is a good start.


Boud (talk) 08:53, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: More scientific, perhaps, but also explicitly non-neutral (they view this style of analysis as an attack on their field and they are trying to defend against it). —David Eppstein (talk) 16:50, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

text: ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:45, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: David: Huh? Since when do refs have to be "neutral"? Maunus: Thanks. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:52, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Science article refs 

message: One thing I can think of that contradicts the Anatolian hypo is the archaeological findings of ancient Elam people in the Iranian plateau and the ancient Hindus river civilization, both are defined as "pre indo-iranian cultures" with their own language, religion and alphabets. Given that the two ancient civilizations are around circa 1500 BCE, it would mean that the Anatolian farming population didn't migrate eastward during the first agricultural expansion, or they did but emerged with the local population. In both way the Anatolian farmer could not be the primary force that assimilated the local population into the Indo-Iranian language speakers. Any thoughts?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Apzat (talk • contribs) 08:46, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I can tell, the only theory of the spread of Indic languages which is taken very seriously among linguists and most archaeologists is that they spread south and east from a culture in the Punjab region which gave social prominence to the chariot, and had some agriculture, but was more dependent on animal-herding.  This Punjab charioteer culture is indicated reasonably clearly in the Rig Veda and related texts.  Not sure whether the Anatolian theory has any special spin on this... AnonMoos (talk) 12:47, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

text: P.S.  The Elamites did not have an "alphabet", but rather two successive (incompatible) cuneiform systems, while the nature of the Indus valley writing system (or whether it was a writing system at all) is disputed, but it's quite unlikely to have been an alphabet. AnonMoos (talk) 12:50, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

text: Apzat does have a point, Indo-Iranian is a major weakness of Renfrew's hypothesis in both versions. (In the revised version, it isn't even mentioned. Or is it supposed to be part of the Balkan branch?) Jaakko Häkkinen agrees. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:58, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  What about the east half of IE world? 

message: Gray has since switched to an NW Iran/Armenian/E.Anatolian hypothesis.  David Reich and Max Plank Institute, independently agree with that.  The Anatolian hypothesis is dead because India doesn't show any genetic influence from Anatolia.  And there is no ancient Steppe DNA in Anatolia, and not Antolian DNA in India.  So the Iranian Neolithic, (perhaps Chalocolithic) hypothesis make sense.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:882:101:1A0:6905:DBC:1638:E27B (talk) 03:09, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Russell Gray update and Max Plank Institute