The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans

[Ebizur]

The paper, if I understand correctly, claims that it was the Progress/Vonyuchka type people (the CLV cline) who spoke Basal PIE (i.e. PIE before the Anatolian branch split and headed for central Anatolia), making the N Caucasus/Lower Volga region, NOT Sredny Stog/Dnieper-Don, the overall PIE urheimat. I'll have to read the paper first, though, heh. I wonder if they explained that Central Asian ancestry in IE speaking nomads.

I wonder what the climate in the Northeast Caucasus/Lower Volga region was like during the PIE era.

At present, the region is mostly a desert or at least semi-arid, and much of the population consists of speakers of Mongolic (Kalmyk) or Turkic languages (e.g. Kumyk, Nogai) whose indigeneity is highly questionable.

Is that really the sort of region from which one should expect a major language family to have expanded?

Of course, the real evidence, such as Y-DNA, mtDNA, and autosomal DNA, from ancient human specimens is most important to determining what has actually occurred there. I just find it to be a rather unlikely region of origin a priori.