Ancient genomes provide final word in Indo-European linguistic origins | Hacker News Reader

Ancient genomes provide final word in Indo-European linguistic origins

phys.org

65 pointsBrajeshwar16 comments

> Findings indicate that Spanish, French and Italian populations received steppe ancestry from Bell Beaker groups, while Greek and Armenian groups acquired ancestry directly from Yamnaya populations. Their results are consistent with the Italo-Celtic and Graeco-Armenian linguistic models.

It's always nice to confirm existing models.

It's so nice that it can make you wonder just how much the existing model informed the new result.

Observations of linguistic similarities informed a hypothesis that some groups of languages are more alike than others. Data (genetics) is collected and used to confirm or contradict the hypothesis.

Textbook science process.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.02.626332v1

The direct link to the paper

The book, "Who we are and how we got here" is an excellent (but long, and detailed) look at the current knowledge of genetic history and the corresponding linguistic issues.

TIL the traditional Indian kalash is a bell beaker.

Where does it say that anywhere in this study?

This study only concentrated on genetic signals found in Europe and parts of Western Asia.

Other sequences outside this range were not utilized.

More critically, I never bought the "Kalash are Greeks" origin story. It's a fairly common origin story all over the Northwest region of South Asia. There's a reason why the name "Sikandar" (Alexander) is extremely popular, and the Sikandar-Nama was written barely 300 miles away in Ghazni under Mahmud Ghazni's empire. And the "they have white skin" argument is dumb. There is a significant lack of genetic sequencing of Inner Asians, so a lot of the dataset just doesn't exist to make a claim one way or the other.

Probably they looked up what a bell beaker is, specifically the vessel rather than the culture named after it, and thought it looked familiar.

This is exactly what happened.

More critically? I missed your clear deduction from the evidence on how it is "dumb", as you say. The Kalash are the people who Alexander (sikandar) left behind. So, you realize that is Hellenistic times, and not pre-Greek times (whatever that is) as mentioned in the article, right? Also, your last sentence is confusing as well. Someone does not need to actively disprove all other possibilities to prove what actually was recorded in history. Who do you believe the Kalash are- Sean Connery's subjects as per 'The Man Who Would be King'? lol

> The Kalash are the people who Alexander (sikandar) left behind. So, you realize that is Hellenistic times, and not pre-Greek times

Folktales and histories can be created well beyond ethnogenesis.

Neighboring Yusufzai claim descent from King Saul and the Israelites in the Ain-e-Akbari (16th century), though genetic sequencing shows little-to-no divergence from other northwest South Asian ethnic groups like Sindhis, Baloch, Brahui, Punjabis, etc [0]

In fact, the same study sequenced Kalash and found that ethnic Kalash appeared to be an isolate community [0], as was further shown in 2015 [1].

A lot of us ethnic groups all across South Asia began creating fantastical tales of ethnogenesis as our valleys and towns began opening up to outside influence in the 19th century.

Hell, even my mom's community (a neighboring one around 4-5 valleys away from Khowars and Kalash) claims ethnogenesis from Israelites or Scynthians on occasion and one sub-community claimed to have fought with Ali at Karbala, though when sequenced we're similar to our peer ethnic groups.

I don't need some damn Firangi telling me or my community about us. We chased you all out in 2021, 1989, and 1947.

> Also, your last sentence is confusing as well. Someone does not need to actively disprove all other possibilities to prove what actually was recorded in history. Who do you believe the Kalash are- Sean Connery's subjects as per 'The Man Who Would be King'? lol

This is confusing as hell as well.

But basically, what I'm getting is that there is a need for Inner Asian communities to be genetically sequenced as well. It has medical (eg. Precision medicine) as well as anthropological value.

[0] - https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jo...

[1] - https://www.cell.com/ajhg/supplemental/S0002-9297(15)00137-8

It is odd that people choose to ignore actual archeology- especially when it directly corroborates historical text. Which is quite different than folktales- perhaps your reference to 'Israelites' for which there is no real archeological evidence, is there?

Are you confusing correlation with causation? The Kalash are not an isolated group, so much as they have resisted to their best of their ability to mix with their Muslim neighbors (Pakistanis) because they are not of them and consider Phillip II to be their patriarch. The incredible lengths people go to to try and obfuscate the obvious lol... 'Isolated central asian group without much contact or intermixing with subcontinent folks claims ethongenesis with Greeks over 4 thousand miles away'.

Greeks didn’t leave much behind genetically in their Afghan settlements, Kalash are a relict from when PIE populations first came into Europe, as I think Y haplogroups show

Kalash are a relic of Proto-Indo Europeans is a catch all with no evidence. Such claims with no actual evidence is not worth talking about. But I guess the Greeks did leave behind influence given the new and improved muscled Buddhas that resembled Apollo

Nobody is denying Greek influence on Buddhas that even reached Japan. But Kalash language has absolutely nothing to do with Greek

The Kalash language is a mix of the languages found in the region- Tajik, uzbek, tartar, persian, etc. But, there are Greek words for woman, washing, winter, greetings etc used among the several Kalash tribes that are Greek. While even that can be explained under the PIE theory, your statement of 'absolutely nothing to do with Greek' does not stand.

But further study- genetic and archeological- is necessary.

>The Kalash language is a mix of the languages found in the region- Tajik, uzbek, tartar, persian, etc.

You absolutely need a citation for this. Where are these words in Nuristani? Kalash speak two languages and only one is Indo-Aryan.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com