Reich and Lazaridis have a well-established record of trying to unravel the prehistoric genomic scene in the Eurasian steppes (and neighboring areas).

The spread from that area west and south (as well as east, as established by other studies) coincides with the spread of Indo-European languages; so the conclusion that the two spreads are in fact identical is not at all far-fetched.

It is noteworthy, however, that other studies show that the genomic spread into the Iberian peninsula seems to have included both Indo-European speakers and linguistic ancestors of the Basques; similarly, a recent study suggests that the Etruscans, who are by most counts non-Indo-European, also had steppe genomes. If these findings are correct, it would need to be acknowledged that the population spread out of the steppes did not only include speakers of Indo-European languages but also of other languages; put differently, the population spreading out of the steppes may not have been linguistically homogeneous. (If we consider later spreads, such as that of the Huns, who included in their group not only East (Central) Asian populations but also some Iranians, as well as one branch of the Goths, such mixed linguistic composition should not come as a great surprised.)

So, the Harvard study constitutes a major contribution to unravelling Eurasian prehistory and connecting it with archaeology and linguistics.

All the best,

Hans Henrich


On Feb 6, 2025, at 14:03, Antonia Ruppel via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

My take as someone who has not read the original study: I am cautious about this for several reasons.

-- A person's genes do not tell you what language they're speaking. 
-- University alumni magazines love to talk up research from their institutions and make its results sound much more 'decisive' than they are.
-- That they get wrong simple things like when Europeans noticed that Sanskrit, Latin and Greek were related by well over a century does not inspire confidence. (But hey, scientists don't need to read early 17th-c sources in Latin, right:-)?)

That said, if further study of the Nature article corroborated these findings, I'd be more than delighted. I'm definitely going to take a look.

--Antonia

On Thu, 6 Feb 2025 at 15:22, Howard Resnick via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

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