The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans

[jdean]

The word for honey in chinese comes from PIE.
Possibly from Proto-Tocharian *ḿətə, from Proto-Indo-European *médʰu (“mead”).
Pronunciation
e
Mandarin
(Standard)
(Pinyin): mì (mi4)

I think this is considered slightly contentions and there are other plausible explanations. From the point of view of Tocharian it is apparently only found in Tocharian B and the Tocharians would have probably been unfamiliar with honey bees anyway.

[Gabru77]

I was thinking about what "if" Remontnoye is somehow a relic of actual Steppe_LN group which was almost like Nalchik and higher in South Caucausus input? And "if" Progress_En(PG2004), Vonyuchka_En(VJ1001) are instead Remontnoye + Kuban Steppe Mesolithic, while, Berezhnovka = Remontnoye + Lebyazhinka/Ekaterinovka_Meso-RELATED(Elshanka), take this with a grain of salt
And I missed Tutkaul/Tyumen/Eastern input here for some reason, yes

Although more chances are Remontnoye being mixed with Darkveti / Meshoko-Svobdnoe / Ginchi / Sioni-Tsopi as well that may explain hike in South Caucausus type input in Remontnoye. Nonetheless, Maykop input is also possible but I don't think it's there

[VladMC]

The problem is also that Darkvetti (Chalcolithic of the Caucasus), according to Reinhold’s presentation, is only 50% composed of Neolithic of Georgia (Tsopi, Sioni), and another 50% consists of “pure” CHG, which may well be local North Caucasian, there same as sample 4500 BC from Remontnoe



https://imgur.com/FujWtww

[Gabru77]

Yes, Unakozovskaya(Darkveti, Meshoko-Svobodnoe) is rich in CHG. That's not a problem. Ideally as I said, given Remontnoye shows hike in South Caucausus input, it should be Sioni-Tsopi, Darkveti, Meshoko-Svobodnoe, typically NEC/NWC groups that admixed

It would've been helpful if there were samples from Remontnoye location but 5000 BCE, that is the prime CLV population scattered throughout North Caucausus to Lower Volga, potentially around Lower Don, having quite of input(31% in PG2001) from Aknashen related Shulaveri-Aratashen groups

Although I'd like to think Nalchik people existed till later and then moved into center, so Remontnoye = Nalchik. Various chances. Even Nalchik could have immediate Post-Shulaveri input from Alikemek-Kultepe over generic PG2001 profile, it's a mess

[J Man]

The problem is also that Darkvetti (Chalcolithic of the Caucasus), according to Reinhold’s presentation, is only 50% composed of Neolithic of Georgia (Tsopi, Sioni), and another 50% consists of “pure” CHG, which may well be local North Caucasian, there same as sample 4500 BC from Remontnoe



https://imgur.com/FujWtww

Hopefully within the next few years we see results of more Eneolithic or older samples from Lower Don and Kuban Steppe sites. It will be interesting to see if any more samples like the Krivyanskiy J2a sample will show up in those regions.

[qijia]

The word for honey in chinese comes from PIE.
Possibly from Proto-Tocharian *ḿətə, from Proto-Indo-European *médʰu (“mead”).
Pronunciation
e
Mandarin
(Standard)
(Pinyin): mì (mi4)

It might be a good idea in this case to mention the forms found in other dialects of Chinese, in Korean, in Japanese, and so forth since the Mandarin form has regularly lost the final consonant.

蜜 "honey"
Cantonese mat6
Vietnamese mật
Korean mi:l ("beeswax")
Japanese mitsu, michi, bitsu ("honey, nectar, syrup")

The Mandarin form descends most directly from something with a */ð/ or */r/ sound at the end, phonetically close to the Korean form.

The sense of "beeswax" also exists marginally in Chinese, but it is the only sense that has been preserved for the present-day Korean form because Korean has its own non-Sinitic or native word for "honey" (pskul > ɂkul).

the influence of IE on old chinese could ( I repeat could) be greater than that

It seems to me that it started from below. If eneolithic culture in SS zone were PIE speaker, they should be connected to at least Mycenaean culture. Anthony tried to connect clay covered skull of catacomb to golden foil mask of circle graves. Some scholars did shaft grave with side chamber of catacomb to shaft tomb of circle graves. 
However, the catacomb grave is similar to qijia culture shaft grave at china and too similar to old mexican shaft graves. It is also different from yamna pit grave. It seems to me that relationship between yamna and catacomb is like Sarmatian and scythian who had different origin. Anyway circle A is archaeologically connected to Borodino site of seimaturbino which bridged europe and china at bronze age:


shimao shaft tomb at china bronze:



"The 15 pit tombs can be divided into two areas, north and south, of which the southern area has a higher level of tombs, with rounded corners and rectangular planes, and the tomb area is generally more than 10 square meters, with a depth of 3.5 meters to 4 meters."

Mycenaean shaft tomb:

[qijia]

The reason to ask is that Mycenaean and Nordic bronze culture seem not to be related with the PIE homeland steppe culture including yamna, catacomb. There is no evidence for yamna people to speak PIE. However, seima turbino culture greatly impacted upon Nordic bronze, reaching England and Balkan.

There are only some bronze items from the Seima-Turbino Network in Scandinavia. Instead, the Corded Ware cultures and their descendants were important roots fot the Scandinavian Bronze Culture. The CWC people carried mainly the Steppe ancestry and were an important factor for the Indo-European expansion.

Seima turbino people had spiral and circle culture. This culture migrated to china bronze age and Europe. The spiral represents sky or king at china.
PIE linguists know that PIE language reached china bronze age. However everybody focuses upon western front, not eastern front. Seima turbino had been bridging west and east like mongol. We can easily find altai/neolithic baikal culture at scandinavian nordic petroglyph. People recorded their thinking on rocks. 

see seima turbino spiral pattern on dagger found at borodino site:

 on spiral, double spiral and triple spiral:


one and double spiral:






Th

spirals " Migration Period picture stone from Havor, Hablingbo, Gotland:s



Cox mound gorget (Mississippian culture, found in Tennessee, c.1250–1450)



another single spiral and double spirals at Darius the Aryan:

"2. (8-15.) I am Darius the Great King, King of Kings, King of countries containing all kinds of men, King in this great 
earth far and wide, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage."


Qin shihwang:

[qijia]

the influence of IE on old chinese could ( I repeat could) be greater than that
  spp115_chinese_proto_indo_european.pdf

For the sake of analogy, Proto-Indo-European has the stem *pol “half”, that is, “a part of an object, which was split into two”, while Proto-Austroasiatic has the stem *bar “two”. It would not be difficult to show the possibility of derivation of the Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Austroasiatic words from the same root. However, it is much more difficult to suggest that Proto-Indo-European influenced the formation of Proto-Austroasiatic. It is more likely that one deals with similarities between Eastern and Western Eurasian languages, which were retained as a result of the complex separations between ancestors of Eastern and Western Eurasians in the Paleolithic.

especially zhou of which royals had N and their elites Q1a:

"But a large number of Indo-European words in Old Chinese language clearly attest to this fact. The relics left by the Huang Di people are related to the Longshan Culture in the archaeological chronicle, and the civilization of the Xia, Shang, Zhou, and Qin秦 dynasties were its successors.27 Evidence for this claim comes from two sources: the first uses the evidence of ancient documents to show that the Zhou people, and thus the Yellow Emperor’s nation, were originally a nomadic people, and the second is to reveal that there were a large number of Indo-European words in the Zhou language, using the evidence of historical linguistics. The third is the similarity in religion between the Huang Di people and Proto-Indo-European. As to the last point, please refer to the author’s paper “Old Chinese ‘帝*tees’ and Proto-Indo-European ‘*deus’: Similarity in Religious Ideas and a Common Source in Linguistics” (Zhou 2005)."

"The Original Meaning of “Rong 戎” According to Professor Yu Min: “ … [The word ‘Rong 戎’] was meant to indicate a style of life—nomadism—in the spoken language of the Zhou dynasty. The seed of agriculture was germinated in the period of Shennong (神农Holy Peasant). Whoever reverted to the life of the nomads could be called ‘Rong’” (Yu Min 1999: 210). Accepting the meaning “nomadism” for the word “Rong戎” in archaic times, we now turn to the corresponding word “Rong” in the Proto-Indo-European languages.45 The origin of “nomad” is quoted from The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (p. 613): nomad adoption of French nomade, Latin Nomad-, Nomas, pl. Nomades pastoral people wandering about with their flocks. Adoption of Greek nomad-, nomás roaming about, esp. for pasture, pl. Nomádes pastoral people, formed on *nom-, *nem- (némein pasture)… Rong 戎, Old Chinese *num > *nung, Middle Chinese nžong, Mandarin rong. Shuo Wen Jie Zi (The Analysis and Annotation of Characters, Xu Shen, 121 AD): “Qiang 羌, the western Rong people who live on pasturage of sheep (or goats).” (羌，西戎牧羊人也。) It is clear that the root of Proto-Indo-European *nom- is a cognate of OC *num. The sounds and the meanings are both equivalent. This is a good example of the fact that there were PIE words in the Old Chinese language."

[Ebizur]

especially zhou of which royals had N and their elites Q1a:

"But a large number of Indo-European words in Old Chinese language clearly attest to this fact. The relics left by the Huang Di people are related to the Longshan Culture in the archaeological chronicle, and the civilization of the Xia, Shang, Zhou, and Qin秦 dynasties were its successors.27 Evidence for this claim comes from two sources: the first uses the evidence of ancient documents to show that the Zhou people, and thus the Yellow Emperor’s nation, were originally a nomadic people, and the second is to reveal that there were a large number of Indo-European words in the Zhou language, using the evidence of historical linguistics. The third is the similarity in religion between the Huang Di people and Proto-Indo-European. As to the last point, please refer to the author’s paper “Old Chinese ‘帝*tees’ and Proto-Indo-European ‘*deus’: Similarity in Religious Ideas and a Common Source in Linguistics” (Zhou 2005)."

According to a well-known episode in Chinese history (for example, the author of the first work of literature composed using the newly invented Korean hangeul alphabet i.e. Yongbieocheonga has made reference to this episode), an ancestor of the royal family of Zhou, who belonged to the 姬 Ji clan, relocated from Bin (ostensibly Binzhou, Xianyang, Shaanxi) to Qishan (ostensibly Qishan County, Baoji, Shaanxi) and lived among northern and/or western barbarians (狄 Di, 戎 Rong) there for several generations. The histories explicitly state that the Ji clan were not northern/western barbarians themselves, but that they lived among such barbarians. The move from Bin to Qishan should be a very short move in the SSW direction if one assumes that the Bin of these records has been located within present-day Binzhou and that the Qishan of these records has been located within present-day Qishan County. It is a bit curious that the authors of these ancient Chinese histories seem to have implied that an ancestor of the royal family of Zhou has moved southward to live among "Di people" i.e. "northern barbarians."

[HurrianFam]

The interactions between early China and Indo-European speakers, while fascinating, seem more appropriate to a dedicated thread instead of here, since it doesn’t really pertain to the eponymous preprints.

[CLTVTE]

The words, related to Old Chinese 帝 dì “sage king, mythological ruler, ancestor, honorific for deceased fathers”, which is related to another Old Chinese word 禘 dêkh “a kind of great sacrifice”, were independently used to denote supernatural beings in Tibeto-Burman languages, which gives to their root of derivation the level of the presence in the Sino-Tibetan proto-language. Consequently, despite somewhat similar sounding, Old Chinese 帝 dì “sage king, mythological ruler, ancestor, honorific for deceased fathers” is not so similar semantically to Proto-Indo-European *dyḗus “daylight-sky-god”, which is based upon the concept of the beneficial daylight (*dyeu from *dei- “to shine, be bright”) as opposed to the darkness of night.

The connection between the Burushaski word *´-s ‘human child’, Proto-Indo-European element *suh- in the word ‘son’, which derived from the stem *seuh “to give birth” (at least some African Afroasiatic languages and the Kartvelian Georgian language also have rather remote words, deriving from such a stem *seuh “to give birth”), for which it was suggested that “there may be some kind of very deep-level relationship between Burushaski and Indo-European” (whereas such a very deep level “Burushaski-Indo-European” connection revealed itself on the genetic grounds in the newest article “Ancient genomes revealed the complex human interactions of the ancient western Tibetans”) should belong to the very deep Paleolithic level since the time of complex separations between Eastern and Western Eurasians.

[jdean]

The interactions between early China and Indo-European speakers, while fascinating, seem more appropriate to a dedicated thread instead of here, since it doesn’t really pertain to the eponymous preprints.

Second that !!!!

[alanarchae]

The interactions between early China and Indo-European speakers, while fascinating, seem more appropriate to a dedicated thread instead of here, since it doesn’t really pertain to the eponymous preprints.

Second that !!!!

I third it! It’s interesting but it’s not really about the origins of the IEs. It’s about IE contact with China. So a seperate thread should be started.

[alanarchae]

Personally I think the origins of the IEs is done and dusted in terms of the basic picture.It was obviously rooted in a some kind of ANE language that likely arrived in the Eurosteppe area from Siberia. I don’t know if indo-uralic is the right term or even supported but it conveys the correct idea. It would have been effected by ANE morphing into EHG by mixing with WHGs in the palaeolithic/early mesolithic era in eastern Europe. It likely was then significantly effected by heavy admixture by CHG. You can’t have all those CHG mothers bringing up kids in a language they themselves are not native speakers of without SOME effect. Possible a big effect even if it wasn’t a lexical one. There was likely a load of divert diverged dialects/languages of that sort but they were likely levelled by migration and elite networks starting with Stedny Stog then Repin and finally Yamnaya.

[jdean]

Personally I think the origins of the IEs is done and dusted in terms of the basic picture.It was obviously rooted in a some kind of ANE language that likely arrived in the Eurosteppe area from Siberia. I don’t know if indo-uralic is the right term or even supported but it conveys the correct idea. It would have been effected by ANE morphing into EHG by mixing with WHGs in the palaeolithic/early mesolithic era in eastern Europe. It likely was then significantly effected by heavy admixture by CHG. You can’t have all those CHG mothers bringing up kids in a language they themselves are not native speakers of without SOME effect. Possible a big effect even if it wasn’t a lexical one.  There was likely a load of divert diverged dialects/languages of that sort but they were likely levelled by migration and elite networks starting with Stedny Stog then Repin and finally Yamnaya.

The problem with the Indo Uralic theory is it'll probably never be proved and even if it were how would we know where it was spoken ?

Ringe had this to say is his critical review of Proto-Indo-European-Uralic Comparison from the Probabilistic Point of View - Alexei Kassian

I admit that I am deeply disappointed by this situation. Like many other Indo-Europeanists, I continue to suspect that there really is a genetic relationship between IE and Uralic (though not necessarily between any other potential subgroups of “Nostratic”), and I will be happy to applaud anyone who can provide robust, unassailable statistical proof of such a relationship. But sober consideration of the facts over many years has convinced me that no such proof will ever be forthcoming. The evidence just isn’t there, and it seems best to accept the disappointment and go work on something else.

On the other hand Alwin Kloekhorst says this in The “Anatolian Split” and the “Anatolian Trek”

In order to pinpoint more precisely where in the steppes Proto- Indo-Anatolian may have been spoken, it may be fruitful to look further back in time to see whether we can identify one or more languages or language families that could have been relatives of Proto-Indo-Anatolian.

Throughout history, there have been many attempts to connect the Indo-European language family with other language families (see Kloekhorst and Pronk 2019 for a selective overview), most of which are regarded with skepticism by Indo-Europeanists. One comparison stands out, however: namely, the one connecting Indo-European with Uralic The similarities between these two language families are mostly found in morphology (Kortlandt 2002 lists no fewer than twenty-seven morphemes of Indo-European and Uralic that are phonetically so similar to each other that he regards them as “definitely Indo-Uralic”), but there are also some matches both lexically and structurally.

If this connection between Indo-European and Uralic, the so-called “Indo-Uralic hypothesis,” is valid (and I regard this as highly likely), it would mean that Proto-Indo-Anatolian and Proto-Uralic would both stem from a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-Uralic. With Proto-Uralic being spoken somewhere near the Urals and Proto-Indo-Anatolian being the ancestor o f Classical Proto-Indo-European, which was spoken in the Pontic-Caspian steppes, it stands to reason that Proto-Indo-Anatolian should be located in an intermediate region, i.e., the northeastern part of the Pontic-Caspian steppes, near the Ural Mountains.