What do we know about the peoples who lived in Europe from about 10,000 BC to the beginnings of the spread of Indo-European ethnic groups into Europe? Were there other migrations prior to this (i.e. the Indo-European migration)? Do we know anything about their language?
Thanks,
Rob
Whoops, this was supposed to be in GQ.
Mods, please move.
Thanks,
Rob
One groups was probably the ancestors of today’s Basque speaking peoples. They were, even in historical times, spread over a much larger area than they are today.
DNA studies shed some light on this question. Although it provides only part of the picture, Y-chromosome studies are particularly interesting: there is clear evidence that certain male groups were far more successful at procreation than other groups. In particular, the haplogroup R1b is overwhelmingly dominant in Western Europe today; the R1a haplogroup is overwhelmingly dominant in Eastern Europe.
Much of the success of these groups must have occurred rather recently, in the Late Neolithic or even Bronze Age. Y-chromosomes sampled from 7000-year old corpses in Germany show G2 or F* haplogroups, but never (so far) R1b.
Although “sibling,” the R1a and R1b groups diverged about 16,000 years ago, so should be treated as independent for this discussion. R1a became predominant among several tribes in Central Asia, especially Indo-European speakers, and is especially common today among Slavs, Baltics, Iranians, and the Brahmin caste of India.
The R1b migrations may be less clear. This group also emerged near Central or Southwest Asia, but is found among the (now extinct) Tocharians of East Central Asia, Chadic speakers in West Africa, and especially in Europe – it must have migrated (by land or by sea) across southern Europe during the Neolithic. Groups in which R1b is especially dominant include the Basques of Spain and the Celts of Ireland, so it shouldn’t be connected with a specific language. The expansion of R1b males throughout Western Europe was presumably connected with the expansion of the megalithic tomb building motif along the Atlantic coast, beginning ca 4000 BC. Long-distance trading was coming into play, so Western Europeans presumably adopted the prestige Indo-European language of the neighboring Corded Ware culture, rather than inheriting this language.
Done.
septimus that was fascinating. What can you tell me about haplotype I1a of which I am a member?
A beautiful book I’d recommend for anyone interested in European prehistory is Europe Between the Oceans (9000 BC - AD 1000) by Barry Cunliffe. It may not answer OP’s questions, but that’s largely because the answers are unknown. (Cunliffe, who is not a linguistic scholar, is of the opinion that the Indo-European languages spread throughout Europe with the arrival of farming; this is in disagreement with the evidence and a majority of linguists.)
On page 123, Cunliffe describes the spread of farming to S.W. Europe:
This “enclave colonization” seems likely to have been related to the spread of the R1b Y-chromosome haplogroup to Western European (though not, as Cunliffe might speculate, the Indo-European language).
The construction of prehistory from DNA evidence is still in its infancy. Here’s a website showing DNA results from ancient corpses. Though R1b is now ubiquitous in Western Europe, the earliest R1b shown on that page is from Bell Beaker ca 2550 BC. (The G2a specima shown, BTW, are not the strain sometimes associated with Sarmation migrations 1500 years ago, but a different strain, rare today outside Sardinia.)
The topic really is fascinating! I have no comment to offer about I1 beyond saying it must have been one of the earlier haplogroups displaced by R1a and R1b. And do be aware that the nomenclature is constantly being revised. The “I1a” of 2007 is now called “I1”, and so on.
It really is fascinating, and a bit frustrating because archeology, genetics, and linguistics all paint incomplete pictures that don’t always overlap very well. There was a recent paper in * Science* that shows (from a purely linguistic approach) that PIE was likely spoken in Anatolia. But IIRC that doesn’t jibe well with archeological evidence, which points more toward the Pontic steppe.
I’m going to have to check out that book.
Some answers here:
Quote:
The Paleolithic Continuity Theory (or PCT, Italian La teoria della continuità), since 2010 relabelled as the Paleolithic Continuity Paradigm (or PCP), is a hypothesis suggesting that the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) can be traced back to the Upper Paleolithic, several millennia earlier than the Chalcolithic or at the most Neolithic estimates in other scenarios of Proto-Indo-European origins. Its main proponent is Mario Alinei, who advanced the theory in his Origini delle Lingue d’Europa, published in two volumes in 1996 and 2000.[1]
The PCT posits that the advent of Indo-European languages should be linked to the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe and Asia from Africa in the Upper Paleolithic.[2] Employing “lexical periodization”, Alinei arrives at a timeline deeper than even that of Colin Renfrew’s Anatolian hypothesis.[3]
I’m of the opinion that the Gimbutas-Mallory “Kurgan” Theory of Indo-European Homeland is almost certainly true, but variations of Renfrew’s view that the language arose earlier in the Neolithic are stubborn and will not die. And some Indian scholars claim to be convinced that the I-E language originated in India.
One point on which all serious linguistic scholars seem to agree is that the “Paleolithic Continuity Theory” is absurd.
Good point.
I found out my haplotype because we became involved in a DNA family tree project using the Y chromosome.
We havent been connected that way to others of the same surname(some of them are R1 variants), but perhaps sooner or later.
I am going to find the book you recommended. Thanks!
This book may be a little dated now, but you may also be interested in reading The Seven Daughters of Eve..
It is important to remember that genetic data can conflict or mislead. In particular the matrilineal (mtDNA) and patrilineal (Y-chromosome) signatures may point in very different directions. Even if the per-generation difference in migration or mate selection between males and females is small, the effect will be amplified exponentially over the 300 generations separating us from the first farmers.
I was disappointed to see discussion dwindle, as the topic is fascinating. If the fault is mine for not being controversial enough, let me try to make amends! 
The only pre-IE language in Europe about which much is known is Basque (Etruscan speakers in Italy may have arrived in the Early Iron Age, long after the arrival of Italic speakers.) The coastal regions of Spain, S.W. France, and especially Portugal provide excellent habitat for hunter-gatherers; genetic evidence suggests that it is from here that the Magdalenian culture spread toward North Central Europe as glaciers retreated. This is shown by some genetic markers which are especially strong among the Basque, centered where the Magdalenians presumably originated.
BUT the Y-chromosome picture is quite different. The mutation that dominates Western Europe today didn’t even exist until thousands of years after the Magdalenian expansion. The male and female lines of Western Europe had completely different sources. My previous quote from Cunliffe hints at this:
The almost-complete replacement of Western Europe’s Y-chromosome makes one suspect there was brutality involved, with male invaders enjoying their conquests.
As for language – I think it is normal for a people to switch to the prestige language of their male conquerors; attempts to relate Basque (or, worse, Indo-European) to pre-Neolithich European languages are doubtful. And there is another reason to suspect the proto-Basque language was brought to Spain by its Neolithic conquerors:
Linguists like John Bengtson and George Starostin claim a genetic relationship between Basque and the Northern Caucasian languages; based on cognate counts, Starostin dates their mutual ancestor to 7000 BC, just right if they both derive from the early Anatolian farmers. (I realize that such dating is considered extremely problematic, but the basic idea shouldn’t be in doubt – just the size of the “error bars.”)
The claimed connections between Basque and Caucasian languages are very controversial, and probably rejected by a majority of linguists. My own layman’s impression is that the “splitters” tend to get overly hysterical! :dubious: Here is one paper on the topic showing not only cognates, but hints at regular sound changes. (This paper seeks to relate the minor Burushaski language of Pakistan to Vasco-Caucasian, so shows only three-way cognates.) Here’s an example cognate trio from that paper:
[ul][li] zikiro (castrated ram, Basque)[/li][li] ts’ts’ik’er (young goat, Karata of N.E. Cauc.)[/li][li] tshigir (she-goat, Burushaski)[/li][/ul]
This is one of many examples; can the sound resemblance be mere coincidence? Such cognates for domesticated animals (and others for cultivated crops) suggests, as with Starostin’s date estimate, that any connection is Neolithic.
Or that they are loan words. But as you say, this is not a consensus view by actual linguists. I doubt you’ll find many consensus views of relationships between languages that date back that far. Once you get past ~ 5,000 years, things get too blurry.
True. But that article does go beyond mere cognates (some of which might be loan words), and gets into things like shared suppletive forms (akin to English “good”/“better”/“best”, e.g.). Sure looks interesting to me, though I am completely a non-specialist, so who knows. (My knowledge of Basque begins and ends with *izquierda *and jai alai).