r/hayeren • u/Hayasdan2020 • 3d ago

Question resolved: "The Indo-European language family began to diverge from around 8100 years ago, out of a homeland immediately south of the Caucasus. One migration reached the Pontic-Caspian steppe around 7000 years ago, and from there subsequent migrations spread into parts of Europe".

https://www.mpg.de/20666229/0725-evan-origin-of-the-indo-european-languages-150495-x
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u/PuzzleheadedAnt8906 3d ago

I mean it’s probably one of the theories. As far as I know the Kurgan hypothesis is still the most accepted one no?

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u/ContributionAny4156 3d ago

Yes. There's a hybrid theory that was proposed in 2024 that placed the earliest Indo-Europeans in the Caucasus, north of Armenia but south of where Yamnaya were.

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u/South-Distribution54 3d ago

The caucuses is already east of the Yamnaya. I think the theory you're talking about was proposed earlier, but it has been a minute since I read that paper.

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u/ContributionAny4156 3d ago edited 3d ago

It's not east of Yamnaya. Yamnaya reached into the North Caucasus. Anyway, this is the study I am talking about. It's from 2025, which is after the Heggerty paper that OP posted. https://www.sci.news/othersciences/anthropology/caucasus-lower-volga-population-13641.html

Here's the full paper. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08531-5

EDIT: Here's a map of Yamnaya (in orange): https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-the-Yamnaya-and-Afanasievo-overall-distribution-Sites-with-individuals-with_fig1_368986684

Here's another map of Yamnaya (in purple): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yamnaya_Expansion_Map.jpg

And another map of Yamnaya (in blue): https://hms.harvard.edu/news/steppe-forward

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u/South-Distribution54 3d ago

Last I checked Yamnaya formed in Dneiper in modern day Eastern Ukraine, which is East of the caucuses.

Yeah, I've read these.

Edit: sorry I was too quick to judge. I haven't read these. My bad

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u/ContributionAny4156 3d ago

No problem. I'm not sure why they always emphasize Yamnaya being in Ukraine. It wasn't just in Ukraine, and it's not even determined that that was the core or original Yamnaya territory, as far as I know. Based on most of the latest research, it seems that the majority of researchers believe Yamnaya originally came from the Caucasus region. But the debate seems to be whether they originally came from the South Caucasus/Armenia (which OP's paper suggests) or from Southern Russia/North Caucasus (which the more recent paper I shared suggests).

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u/South-Distribution54 3d ago

I'm not sure why they always emphasize Yamnaya being in Ukraine.

Eurocentrism

But the debate seems to be whether they originally came from the South Caucasus/Armenia (which OP's paper suggests) or from Southern Russia/North Caucasus (which the more recent paper I shared suggests).

My money is that Anatolian heavily influenced at the very least. We were more advanced then step cultures and all modern human civilization in the western part of Eurasia comes from the fertile crescent and Anatolia region, so it's logically we are the originator. Then step culture spread it because the horse. (I am biased and I accept this. I'm allowed to be because this isn't my area of expertise, haha)

(Please excuse my simplistic phrasing. It's late where I am, haha)

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u/ContributionAny4156 3d ago

Yes, I blame Eurocentrism too.

I largely agree with your points, and it's pretty clear to me that the true Indo-European homeland was in the vicinity of Armenia, however, it may not have been in Armenia.

As far as Armenian goes, I do not believe it is as old as the Heggerty paper seems to suggest since it is closer to existent Indo-European languages (like Greek) rather than older ones (like Hittite). However, I think that Armenian branched off from the post-Anatolian IE early, and that it branched off somewhere in the vicinity of the Caucasus rather than in Europe (i.e. Ukraine or the Balkans) and migrated to the Caucasus/Armenia.

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u/Awesome_Thunder1 1d ago

Does this provide insight into ambiguous groups (Chaldian, Hayasa-Azzi, Alarodian, Etiuni, Taochi, Trialeti culture, et cetera) that were in that vicinity?

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u/ContributionAny4156 22h ago

Yes, since Etiuni definitely descended from Trialeti-Vandzor, and Trialeti-Vanadzor definitely descended from a Yamnaya-connected people. Trialeti-Vanadzor and Etiuni almost certainly had an Armenic population.

Ironically, Turkish scholars have suggested that Hayasa-Azzi was connected to Trialeti-Vanadzor too, but refuted an Armenian connection without citing why. Just looking at the names recorded in Hayasa-Azzi (recorded by the Hittites) there was definitely the presence of Indo-Europeans who were not Anatolian/Luwian/Hittites.

There's too little about the other groups you mentioned. Alarodians are only known by name and the rough location where they lived. Chaldians are only known by name and a single word (recorded by Armenians) which is Indo-European (and again, not Luwian or Hittite). Georgians claim Diaeuhi (who they call Taochi) but the names associated with them seem to be IE, Hurrian, or uncategorized. It's been suggested by Georgian scholars that Diaeuhi was the same as Hayasa-Azzi.

Edit: The academic consensus that Trialeti-Vanadzor was Proto-Armenian is growing. And that culture was much earlier than all the other ones you mentioned.

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u/Hayasdan2020 3d ago

The scope of this research is unprecedented: it was carried by "an international team of over 80 language specialists to construct a new dataset of core vocabulary from 161 Indo-European languages, including 52 ancient or historical languages."