New Linguistics Technique Could Reveal Who Spoke First Indo-European Languages | Hacker News Reader

New Linguistics Technique Could Reveal Who Spoke First Indo-European Languages

scientificamerican.com

21 pointsBluestein10 comments

As a former philologist (but not a historical linguist) I think for me the primary argument for a shallow (Steppe) as opposed to deep (Anatolian) dating of PIE is vibes-based. I agree with the other counterarguments raised in the article about sound shifts etc., but the main thing for me is that when one reads Homer, the Rig Veda, and the Twelve Tables side by side, one gets the distinct hard-to-articulate impression that these texts were produced by closely related cultures. I could point to discrete things like how patriarchal they were (even by ancient standards), the importance attached to herding and poetry, etc. But the vibe is more than that, and it's really hard to convey unless you've done work in the original languages. So, this comment is probably pretty unhelpful.

> Homer, the Rig Veda, and the Twelve Tables side by side, one gets the distinct hard-to-articulate impression that these texts were produced by closely related cultures.

That, in itself is a very interesting fact, fascinating.-

> I agree with the other counterarguments raised in the article about sound shifts etc.

With more DNA data, we wouldn't necessarily need linguistic characteristics to chart language ancestory, we could also look at the DNA evidence.

> one reads Homer, the Rig Veda, and the Twelve Tables side by side, one gets the distinct hard-to-articulate impression that these texts were produced by closely related cultures.

We know that the romans borrowed heavily from the greeks. That rome and greeks were closely related is well known. Everything from law to literature to religion. Not sure about the Rig Veda.

> I could point to discrete things like how patriarchal they were (even by ancient standards), the importance attached to herding and poetry, etc.

That describes a lot of cultures.

> With more DNA data, we wouldn't necessarily need linguistic characteristics to chart language ancestory, we could also look at the DNA evidence.

DNA evidence tends to favor the Steppe hypothesis.

> We know that the romans borrowed heavily from the greeks. That rome and greeks were closely related is well known. Everything from law to literature to religion. Not sure about the Rig Veda.

There are in fact some instances where Archaic Rome is closer to Vedic India than it is to Greece - the horse sacrifice, regulations around high priests and kings, etc. You can dismiss the similarities between Greece and Rome as due to borrowing, but you can't do the same with Rome and India.

> That describes a lot of cultures.

I specifically said those discrete elements weren't sufficient to convey the "vibe", so yeah.

Rig Veda refers to cultural totems that appear in Greek/Roman Pantheon

Dyeus Pita (Vedic) = Zeus Pater (Greek) = Jupiter (Roman)

Sky father

It's all quite shocking.

> DNA evidence tends to favor the Steppe hypothesis.

There you go.

> There are in fact some instances where Archaic Rome is closer to Vedic India than it is to Greece

But you weren't talking about archaic rome. Also cherrypicking 'some' instances doesn't prove anything. There are some instances where the US is closer to China than Britain. So what?

> I specifically said those discrete elements weren't sufficient to convey the "vibe", so yeah.

You didn't convey anything. Not even a vibe. Your current response shows that you were just spewing nonsense with your original comment.