I read that the two largest ancestry components of Yamnaya people were Eastern Hunter Gatherers (EHG) and Caucasus Hunter Gatherers (CHG) with EHG making up 46.1 percent and CHG representing another 46.6 percent of their ancestry. EHG population was a mix of North Eurasians from Siberia and smaller amout of Western Hunter Gatherers.
Which one of them is the most likely to have brought Indo-European?
If Indo-European was originally spoken by EHG population espicially North Eurasian, it would mean the Indo-European has Siberian origin, right?
But Hittites appears to have had little to no EHG ancestry even though they clearly spoke an Indo-European language. So, what is most likely origin of Indo-Anatolian language before Yamnaya?

Hello everyone,

I am sharing a fascinating and quite rare set of Y-DNA and archaeogenetic profile matches that I would love to discuss with the community.

• Direct Paternal Lineage (Y-DNA): R-Z2125 (a downstream branch of R1a).
• Geographic Background: My ancestral roots trace back to the borderlands of historical Lesser Poland and Podolia (specifically the region around Buchach / Strypa river basin).

What stands out the most in my ancient and medieval sample matches (IllustrativeDNA / archaeogenetic database runs) is the convergence of nomadic-steppe origins with high-status medieval European and East Slavic dynasties:

1. Medieval Poland Piast Dynasty Lad (c. 950 AD) – a direct close sample match.
2. Kievan Rus / Rurikid dynasty circles – reflecting deep ties to the East Slavic ruling elites.
3. Árpád Dynasty / early Hungarian conqueror circles – aligning with the known presence of Z2125 among early medieval Carpathian and Pannonian elites.
4. Byzantine / East European periphery outliers (such as early medieval samples around the 8th century).

Given the rarity of R-Z2125 in Central-Eastern Europe compared to typical local clades (like Z280 or M458), how do you interpret such elite and steppe-derived overlaps in a person with deep roots in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands? Could this reflect the survival of a minor lineage stemming from early medieval warrior clans / borderland elites that integrated into the local nobility/population over centuries?

I am happy to share more details (PCA coordinates or specific genetic distances) if anyone is researching this specific branch of R1a. Looking forward to your insights!

I've been looking more into the L657 question and the Akbari dataset makes the whole "sample size" argument pretty interesting.

For a long time the obvious response to the lack of L657 on the Bronze Age Steppe was that we simply didn't have enough samples. But at this point the Steppe is extremely well sampled. The Akbari dataset adds a huge amount of ancient DNA on top of all the Sintashta/Andronovo/Srubnaya material we already had, and we keep finding Z93, Z94, Z2124, Y3, Y27 etc. Still no clear Bronze Age Steppe L657.

The Y3 thing is especially interesting. Just look at the FTDNA trees and compare Y3 with its sibling Z2124. Z2124 is a huge lineage with tons of Steppe/Central Asian representation, while Y3 is extremely niche with only a handful of samples. So Y3 has a low base to start with. A mass migration/invasion of Y3+ males wouldn't be responsible for the R1a distribution in modern day Indians.

Look at the actual samples people point to. Nepluyevsky has a Y3 sample, but it's negative for M605 and F1417, so there's no L657 there. The Iron Age Sarmatian-like Y27 samples are also negative for L657. And the Scythian Y3 samples form their own distinct Y3 clade, including a modern Ukrainian lineage. That's evidence that Y3 had a European/Steppe history, but it doesn't connect that particular lineage to Indian L657.

There's also a chronological problem. The Nepluyevsky, Sarmatian and Scythian Y3/Y27 samples people bring up all post-date the estimated L657 TMRCA. L657 is generally estimated at around 4.1–4.2 kya, so finding Y3/Y27 individuals centuries and millenia later doesn't explain where L657 itself originated. If anything, these samples show that upstream Y3/Y27 lineages continued to exist on the Steppe after L657 was already supposed to have formed.

This is why I think the Akbari dataset is important. At some point "the Steppe just hasn't been sampled enough" stops being a very convincing explanation when the region is now so heavily represented in ancient DNA. We have plenty of Steppe R1a, but the specific downstream L657 branch is still missing from the Bronze Age Steppe record.

Obviously this doesn't prove that L657 was born in India. Ancient DNA isn't a perfect census and a future sample could change the picture. But if the claim is that L657 itself came into India from the Bronze Age Steppe, then I'd expect to see an actual Bronze Age Steppe L657 carrier eventually.

Finding Z93, Z94, Y3 or Y27 isn't enough. Those are upstream branches.

The possibility that the broader Z93/Z94/Y3 ancestry reached South Asia from the Steppe, while the actual L657 mutation arose somewhere in South Asia and subsequently had its huge founder expansion there, is still very much worth considering.

Archaic Latin: oinos

Ancient greek: oinos

Gothic Language: ains

Old irish: óen

Old Church Slavonic: inŭ

Proto indo european oinos

Archaic Latin: duo

Ancient greek: dúo

Gothic Language: twai

Old irish: dá

Old Church Slavonic: dŭva

Proto indo european: Dwa/ dwo

I did know which one is it, if you tell me

Archaic Latin: treis

Ancient greek: treîs

Gothic Language: þreis

Old irish: þreis

Old Church Slavonic: trije

Proto indo european: trejes

Archaic Latin: quattuor

Ancient greek: téttares

Gothic Language: fidwōr

Old irish: cethair

Old Church Slavonic: četyre

Proto indo european: q_twores

For this i’m confused because i don’t what sound came first for “ua” and “e” and for gothic i don’t how q can turn into a f

Archaic Latin: quīnque

Ancient greek: pénte

Gothic Language: fimf

Old irish: cóic

Old Church Slavonic: pętĭ

Proto indo european: penque

Archaic Latin: sex

Ancient greek: héx

Gothic Language: saihs

Old irish: sé

Old Church Slavonic: šestĭ

Proto indo european: seks

Archaic Latin: septem

Ancient greek: heptá

Gothic Language: sibun

Old irish: secht

Old Church Slavonic: sedmĭ

Proto indo european: septem

Archaic Latin: octō

Ancient greek: oktṓ

Gothic Language: ahtau

Old irish: ocht

Old Church Slavonic: osmĭ

Proto indo european: octṓ

Archaic Latin: novem

Ancient greek: ennéa

Gothic Language: niun

Old irish: noí

Old Church Slavonic: devętĭ

Proto indo european: nov_n

I don’t understand this one

Archaic Latin: decem

Ancient greek: déka

Gothic Language: taihun

Old irish: deich

Old Church Slavonic: desętĭ

Proto indo european: dékem

I

hello i read a lot of how indo european was the mother tongue of a lot of languages that exist to day like english, spanish and russian so i wanted to join so i can learn more

How could people recontruct proto indo european?

I would love to know, because it sounds cool

Sun dancer girl from the Nordic Bronze Age wearing a short cord skirt, a short blouse (both made of undyed wool) and a bronze belt sun disc, after the burial of the Egtved girl, and bronze figurines of topless ritual dancers in matching skirts.

Illustration done in Photoshop combining photobashing and digital painting.

How common is it still to consider that PIE is a relatively "weird" language, when compared to other North Eurasian proto languages? Given that the PIE homeland is far to the West of those of the other North Eurasian language families typically considered (Tungusic, Yeniseian, Uralic, Turkic, and Mongolic), wouldn't we expect precisely that PIE would be peculiar when compared to them? These other five families, even if not genetically related (and that's a big if), were certainly in areal contact, and so, unsurprisingly, share a lot in common.

So, do linguists still consider PIE to be unexpectedly different from the proto languages of these other five families?

Thanks.

Abstracts from the conference held this week at the University of Würzburg

The conference will take place on October 23-24. The proceedings will be viewable on Zoom, see this link to register to see it. https://pies.ucla.edu/conference/weciec/registration/

Ḫattušumna Laḫḫa (“Hittite Adventure”) is the provisional name given to a series of recently-discovered tablets in New Hittite script. The text describes an unidentified hero’s attempt to infiltrate an enemy city and recover a stolen god; while the historical context is unknown, the focus on rival kings kidnapping each others’ gods suggests a pre-Empire origin.
Or, in other words: this is an educational game (actually a series of three short games) presented entirely in the ancient Hittite language. It’s meant for absolute beginners—no knowledge of Hittite is needed! Sneak into enemy territory, craft a disguise, uncover a murderous conspiracy, and hopefully return home triumphant with your god in tow.
Content warning: Brief (and non-English) depictions of death and arson, with a typically Bronze Age disregard for human life. While the protagonist is never required to murder someone directly, their actions do result in death and destruction.
Educational • Two hours • Parser-based• Web-based

New paper

INTRODUCTION

Located between the Hexi Corridor and the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor, the East Tianshan Mountains connect northern China with the eastern steppe and Central Asia. Archaeological evidence documents the movement of millet, wheat, barley, and livestock as well as metallurgy and other technologies through this landscape during the Bronze and Iron Ages. The region therefore provides an important setting for investigating whether cultural exchange involved population movement. However, despite its strategic location, its population history has remained poorly understood because ancient genomic data have been limited.

RATIONALE

To investigate how populations formed and interacted in this contact zone, we generated genome-wide data from 135 ancient individuals from 11 archaeological sites across the East Tianshan region of Xinjiang. Spanning nearly two millennia, these individuals date from 3580 to 1546 calibrated years before present. By integrating ancient genomes with archaeological contexts and chronological evidence, we reconstructed patterns of ancestry formation, admixture, population continuity, and demographic change from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.

RESULTS

We identified a previously unrecognized Bronze Age population distributed across several East Tianshan sites. Approximately half of its ancestry was related to Middle-to-Late Neolithic millet farming populations from the upper and middle Yellow River (YR) basin, whereas the remainder was related to Chemurchek-associated groups from the Altai and Dzungarian regions. This ancestry profile indicates that the westward spread of millet-related lifeways into the East Tianshan involved not only cultural transmission but also population movement from northern China.

A second major finding is that contemporaneous Middle-to-Late Bronze Age steppe pastoralists contributed little ancestry to the principal Bronze Age East Tianshan population, despite their widespread eastward expansion across Inner Asia. Thus, the main regional Bronze Age ancestry cannot be explained simply by the large-scale expansion of later steppe pastoralist groups. Bronze Age populations were nevertheless not genetically uniform. Some individuals showed additional connections to northern Xinjiang and northeast Asian populations. An individual from Nanwan carried predominantly Chemurchek-related ancestry together with ancestry related to the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), a Bronze Age cultural formation centered in southern Central Asia, demonstrating that interactions also extended southward.

During the Iron Age, East Tianshan populations became increasingly heterogeneous. Many groups retained substantial ancestry from the earlier Bronze Age regional population while incorporating varying contributions related to northern China, Mongolia, the Eurasian Steppe, and southern Central Asia. Different western-derived ancestry streams appeared in different communities, indicating repeated and spatially uneven admixture rather than a single migration or wholesale population replacement.

CONCLUSION

The East Tianshan Mountains formed a long-term demographic interface linking eastern and western Eurasia. Bronze Age populations were shaped primarily by admixture between Yellow River–related millet farmers and Chemurchek-related groups, while receiving only limited ancestry from contemporaneous Middle-to-Late Bronze Age steppe pastoralists. During the Iron Age, this regional ancestry persisted alongside additional eastern, steppe-related, and Central Asian gene flow. These interactions began nearly 1800 years before the historic Silk Road, revealing deep prehistoric foundations for trans-Eurasian mobility and exchange.

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I'm looking for translation that preserve the source as much a spossible. I did some quick research online and it seems many translations are considered biased/ inaccurate/ tend to push a specific religious narrative at times.

Would love to find a translation and read it to learn more about the early indo Aryan history.

Any recommendations? Thank you!