Ancient-DNA study identifies originators of Indo-European language family

I haven&#x27;t read the papers in detail, but can someone explain how genetics can be used to trace spread of languages? For context, you don&#x27;t need population movements for a language to spread (it is similar to religion). See this article for a logical explanation: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;incerto&#x2F;a-few-things-we-dont-quite-get-about-the-levant-da6ff702974f" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;incerto&#x2F;a-few-things-we-dont-quite-get-ab...</a>

I wonder how this lower Volga group interacted with the earliest known civilization (5000-3000 BCE), in modern day Ukraine, the Cucuteni–Trypillia [1].They had cities with between 20-40k people that overlapped with the Yamnaya people’s discussed in the article (3500-2500 BCE).<p>They had agriculture as well as wheels for transportation and pottery. All predating middle eastern civilizations.<p>They also burned down their own cities every 50-100 years.<p>This culture was in constant threat from the nomads of the steppe and they learned to live in large groups as protection. This hypothesis is discussed at the end of a recent publication [2: p219-220].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cucuteni%E2%80%93Trypillia_culture" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cucuteni%E2%80%93Trypillia_cul...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pure.tudelft.nl&#x2F;ws&#x2F;portalfiles&#x2F;portal&#x2F;144861667&#x2F;enigma_of_mind_a_theory_of_evolution_and_conscious_experience.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pure.tudelft.nl&#x2F;ws&#x2F;portalfiles&#x2F;portal&#x2F;144861667&#x2F;enig...</a>

I recently came across this presentation of Kristian Kristiansen, University of Gothenburg: &quot;Towards a New European prehistory: genes, archaeology and language&quot; (2023): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=bxTVSwt-jsU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=bxTVSwt-jsU</a> [video], which I enjoyed very much. Prof. Kristiansen is a leading researcher in this area.

David Reich, one of the principal authors of the study in question, wrote a book a few years back titled &quot;Who We Are and How We Got Here&quot;, which I quite liked (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;review&#x2F;show&#x2F;2605841954" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;review&#x2F;show&#x2F;2605841954</a>). It predates some of this research, obviously, but it does have a chapter on the Indo-European origin question, along with chapters on a lot of other interesting paleo-DNA research.

Can someone smarter than me explain how it&#x27;s even possible to use DNA to identify the origin of a language, given that e.g. if this were tried with a language like German (or maybe any Western European language) the puzzle would look very confusing and is not DNA based.

This book is a very very deep dive into this subject. It may be a bit out of date. Published in 2007 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Horse,_the_Wheel,_and_Language" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Horse,_the_Wheel,_and_Lang...</a>

Free preprints of the 2 papers:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.biorxiv.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;10.1101&#x2F;2024.04.17.589597v1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.biorxiv.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;10.1101&#x2F;2024.04.17.589597v1</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.biorxiv.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;10.1101&#x2F;2024.04.17.589600v1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.biorxiv.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;10.1101&#x2F;2024.04.17.589600v1</a>

Related HN posts [1], [2].<p>Fun facts, the most common words of Indo-European Family are surprisingly very similar across Sanskrit (S) &lt;--&gt; English (E) &lt;--&gt; German (G) [3].<p>Pitara (S) &lt;--&gt; Father (E) &lt;--&gt; Vater (G)<p>Matara (S) &lt;--&gt; Mother (E) &lt;--&gt; Mutter (G)<p>Bhratara (S) &lt;--&gt; Brother (E) &lt;--&gt; Bruder (G)<p>Duhitar (S) &lt;--&gt; Daughter (E) &lt;--&gt; Tochter (G)<p>[1] New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages (147 comments):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36930321">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36930321</a><p>[2] Ancient genomes provide final word in Indo-European linguistic origins (16 comments):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42515584">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42515584</a><p>[3] Turandot and the Deep Indo-European Roots of “Daughter” (15 comments):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29450507">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29450507</a>

has anyone else encountered the Hindu nationalist perspective when discussing this? I&#x27;ve struggled to suggest this is a scientific reality when talking to some otherwise smart people about this and I suspect this is in part to their vulnerability to Hindu nationalist talking points which I assume tend to big up local ancestry instead of an ancestry that connects a lot of different peoples and religions together.<p>Just wondering if other people have experienced the same or have effective arguments to deal with the outright rejection I&#x27;ve previously faced. I like to think of these discoveries as great unifying ancestry many of us share, which I consider a positive thing, So it surprised me when I discovered an outright rejection of the thought.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;periscope.corsfix.com&#x2F;?https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;02&#x2F;05&#x2F;science&#x2F;indo-european-language-ancient-human-dna.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;periscope.corsfix.com&#x2F;?https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;...</a>

&gt; It finds evidence that the culture may have taken root somewhere near the present-day small town of Mykhailivka in the southern part of Ukraine.<p>As anyone following the war in Ukraine closely has long since realized, village names alone are not very useful for identifying where something is in Ukraine. There are just too many places with the same names. e.g., <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mykhailivka" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mykhailivka</a>

The detail about kurgan burials being the reason we even have this data is a good reminder of how much of history is just luck. So... what other massive historical movements we&#x27;ve completely missed because the evidence didn&#x27;t survive.

An excellent book I strongly recommend about PIE is The Horse, The Wheel, and Language.

&gt; This led to a demographic explosion, so that in a few hundred years Yamnaya descendants numbered many tens of thousands and were spread from Hungary to eastern China.<p>Don’t they mean western China here?

what happened to the southern Arc paper which found that the Yamaya were &#x27;just&#x27; an early branch?

Does this mention Avestan at all?

Only 6500 years? That&#x27;s incredibly recent for such an influential language. For comparison, Sargon of Akkad died only 4000 years ago, and there are written records from him. True, he didn&#x27;t speak Indo-European, but Afroasiatic&#x2F;Akkadian, and that was the language on those cuneiform tablets the researchers used for reference.<p>On a tangent, with the advent of AI and the final decades of our species, we should make more clay tablets to leave lying around...

I love how they studiously avoid mentioning Iran in all these studies. There is a gap there between &quot;Greece, Armenia, India and China&quot;. Hmm. Is this like the disappearing Persian Gulf syndrome?