Formation of the Indo-European Branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic Revolution (original) (raw)

John T. Koch* Formation of the Indo-European Branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic Revolution Philology and archaeology evolved in tandem for over a century in a general awareness that reconstructed proto-languages (such as Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Celtic) and later prehistoric cultures inhabited the same world. In effect, the two disciplines were studying the same thing. However, mapping reconstructed linguistic evidence onto text-free archaeology presented a near insurmountable challenge. The widespread astonishment that greeted the decipherment of Linear B as Late Bronze Age Greek illustrates the unreliability of carefully argued circumstantial inferences, even at the protohistoric horizon. David Anthony’s The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (2007) impressed many readers, but I know of no prior adherents of the Anatolian hypothesis of Indo-European origins who changed views upon reading it. By then, we knew that ancient DNA evidence was coming. What we had not expected is that it would reveal, not incremental changes of population, but changes so dramatic that they very probably came with a change of language. In particular, this was the case with massive gene flow from the Pontic–Caspian steppe in the 3rd millennium BC, which transformed the Siberian Altai and central, northern, and western Europe. In other words, this new data seemed to confirm, for at least some key elements, the steppe hypothesis that had been constructed and won adherents on the basis of completely non-genetic evidence, rather linguistic and archaeological. There were also less dramatic negative discoveries. For example, Cassidy et al. 2016 shows that three Early Bronze Age men from Rathlin Island were very different genetically from Neolithic woman from near Giant’s Ring outside Belfast. But the men were much closer to the modern Irish. In other words, the shift at the Neolithic–Bronze Age Transition was much greater, and relatively little had happened since. The authors accordingly suggested that the Rathlin men spoke the Indo-European language that then evolved into Gaelic in situ. We can anticipate that genome-wide samples of ancient Europeans will soon number many 10,000s, filling gaps in most parts between the expansion from the steppe and historical populations speaking attested pre-Roman languages. We shall soon see whether this new evidence (archaeogenetic and isotopic) provides a conclusive advance for mapping nodes of the Indo-European family tree onto prehistoric populations and archaeological cultures. The paper will attempt a snapshot, reviewing results of some recent archaeogenetic studies and what they might imply about languages in later prehistoric Europe. What gaps and uncertainties remain? And where might answers come from? *University of Wales, Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies