{"id":736,"date":"2025-02-06T12:29:04","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T11:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paulheggarty.info\/blog\/?page_id=736"},"modified":"2026-01-04T22:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T21:06:11","slug":"blog-home-post-with-image","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/paulheggarty.info\/blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row type=”full_width_content” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”custom” column_margin_custom=”7vw” equal_height=”yes” content_placement=”middle” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” bg_color=”#ffffff” scene_position=”center” top_padding=”8%” bottom_padding=”5%” left_padding_desktop=”6vw” constrain_group_2=”yes” right_padding_desktop=”6vw” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overflow=”visible” id=”about” advanced_gradient_angle=”0″ overlay_strength=”0.8″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_color=”#000000″ shape_divider_position=”bottom” shape_divider_height=”99%” bg_image_animation=”none” shape_type=”straight_section” gradient_type=”default”][vc_column left_padding_desktop=”2vw” column_element_direction_desktop=”default” column_element_spacing=”default” centered_text=”true” desktop_text_alignment=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_backdrop_filter=”none” column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” column_position=”default” advanced_gradient_angle=”0″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” animation_type=”default” enable_animation=”true” animation=”fade-in-from-bottom” animation_easing=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” column_padding_type=”advanced” gradient_type=”default”][nectar_highlighted_text text_color=”#a4aa66″ style=”none” custom_font_size=”4vw” font_size_tablet=”6vw” font_line_height=”1.2″ text_direction=”default”]\n

Beating the retreat from the Steppe hypothesis<\/h1>\n[\/nectar_highlighted_text][vc_column_text css=”” text_direction=”default”]\n

Commentary by Paul Heggarty on:<\/h5>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”” text_direction=”default”]\n

Lazaridis et al<\/em>. (2025):\u00a0 The genetic origin of Indo-Europeans<\/h4>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”” text_direction=”default”]\n

See this blog post as a pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”” text_direction=”default”]\n

Nature<\/em> has just released a paper on \u201cThe genetic origin of Indo-Europeans\u201d (Lazaridis et al<\/em>. 2025).\u00a0 Indo-European is a linguistic concept, the name of a family of languages, but this paper presents no language data or analyses.\u00a0 Rather, it reports data and analyses of ancient DNA.<\/p>\n

Although presented as if supporting the Steppe hypothesis of Indo-European origins, the paper\u2019s basic result is actually a retreat from it.\u00a0 Some smoke and mirrors are deployed to cover this retreat, not least in proposing to change what \u2018Indo-European\u2019 actually refers to (page 8).\u00a0 Harvard\u2019s shot was off-target, so they propose moving the goalposts.\u00a0 (See below on this naming issue.)\u00a0 This still does not obscure where the whole language family originated:\u00a0 not<\/u> on the Steppe, as this paper itself reconfirms, only not in such clear terms.\u00a0 Instead, it focuses on asserting the Steppe as the home of most<\/em> of the family, through some self-citation, but introduces no new data on that, and no linguistic data at all.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, Lazaridis et al. (2022) themselves acknowledged that the family\u2019s ultimate origins lie where many have long argued:\u00a0 in \u201cthe highlands of West Asia, the ancestral region\u201d.\u00a0 On page 1 of this new paper, they further subscribe to it being \u201cwidely agreed\u201d that a major ancestry component is \u201cNeolithic people from [the] Zagros and south Caucasus\u201d.\u00a0 Note that Neolithic here entails farmers (crops and animals), and that the Zagros mountains form the \u201chilly flanks\u201d (Braidwood 1960) to the Fertile Crescent, not least in north-western Iran. \u00a0The corresponding aDNA samples in the new paper\u2019s Figure 1b (reproduced below, with some observations) are labelled \u2018Iran\u2019, and in the key specifically \u2018Iran Ganj Dareh N[eolithic]\u2019.\u00a0 The link with (some) early farming origins is clear.<\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][image_with_animation image_url=”728″ image_size=”full” animation_type=”entrance” animation=”None” animation_movement_type=”transform_y” hover_animation=”none” alignment=”” border_radius=”none” box_shadow=”none” image_loading=”default” max_width=”100%” max_width_mobile=”default”][vc_column_text css=”” text_direction=”default”]\n

Some observations on Figure 1b in Lazaridis et al<\/em>. (2025)<\/h5>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”” text_direction=”default”]\n

As always, it is good that that this paper brings further aDNA coverage of this key region (just as Ghalichi et al. 2024 did in Nature<\/em> a few months ago, though curiously not cited here).\u00a0 The new coverage brings refinements on the key role of this particular ancestry component, taken slightly more broadly in much other recent work as \u2018CHG\/Iranian<\/em>\u2019.\u00a0 The new data reconfirm that it is essentially this component, from this region, that expands.\u00a0 One movement heads northwards to become the main ancestry component of core Yamna.\u00a0 The paper blurs this direction over time by its presentation of a \u2018cline\u2019 that it calls \u201cCaucasus\u2013lower Volga\u201d (CLV), but the key population movement is spreading from the Caucasus end and heading northwards, not from the lower Volga southwards.\u00a0 The CLV cline itself is questionable:\u00a0 it has very few samples in the middle.\u00a0 Most importantly for interpretations with respect to Indo-European languages, the dotted lines that delineate this cline in Figure 1 are arbitrary in including one CHG sample but not the other, and thus also excluding the Neolithic Iran samples, even though they are just next to it (see figure reproduced and annotated below).\u00a0 The paper also makes it all the clearer that core Yamna was essentially an incoming population: \u00a080% of its ancestry originated further south, and most of that ultimately from the Caucasus\/Zagros region.<\/p>\n

That is of course where other hypotheses on Indo-European origins had long placed the family\u2019s homeland, whether on linguistic grounds (Gamkrelidze & Ivanov\u00a01984, 1995) or archaeological ones (Renfrew\u00a01987). \u00a0Now that this new paper supports that original homeland from genetic data too, the next big questions are obvious.\u00a0 Which branch(es) of the language family spread north to end up as core Yamna on the Steppe, and to emerge later from there?\u00a0 And which branches never went through the Steppe, but emerged independently out of the South Caucasus\/Zagros homeland, spreading in directions other than northwards?<\/p>\n

On those questions, this paper brings no new data, but just cites the same team\u2019s past claims.\u00a0 As in Lazaridis et al. (2022), this paper does now accept that the Anatolian branch did not emerge from the Steppe.\u00a0 This therefore contradicts the Steppe hypothesis, which had always specifically claimed that Anatolian also emerged from the Steppe:\u00a0 see arrow 1 on the map in Anthony & Ringe (2015).\u00a0 And the \u2018Steppe hypothesis\u2019 was of course named in the first place for where it set the family\u2019s original homeland.<\/p>\n

Beyond conceding on the Anatolian branch, this new paper continues to maintain that all other branches emerged only from the Steppe.\u00a0 Indeed the authors would have the name \u2018Indo-European\u2019 refer now only to those, to exclude Anatolian \u2014 notwithstanding universal agreement that Anatolian belongs to the family. \u00a0But Pandora\u2019s box is already opened.\u00a0 If one branch of the family certainly did not emerge from the Steppe, how solid really is the case that all others did?\u00a0 The authors appeal to Anatolian as a popular candidate, in linguistic analyses, for having been the first branch to separate from the rest of the family.\u00a0 Without linguist authors they actually oversimplify how much (dis)agreement and clarity there is on this, and on whether the family diverged in a clear-cut sequence of successive binary branches at all. \u00a0They suppose a \u201cmuch-earlier\u201d split, but in fact there is no good case for a long period of separate development of an \u2018all except Anatolian\u2019 branch (for Anthony & Ringe 2015 themselves it could be as little as 300 years), and more for an early branching in multiple directions.<\/p>\n

In any case, the paper here bases its interpretations essentially on ancient DNA, and other past publications by the same Harvard team.\u00a0 So it is worth a recap of those papers, through the story of the Harvard team\u2019s apparent drive to confirm, through ancient DNA, the Steppe hypothesis as expounded particularly by their co-author and Steppe archaeologist David Anthony (e.g. Anthony 2007).\u00a0 He had hitherto insisted, as late as Anthony & Ringe (2015), that the Steppe hypothesis did not entail major demographic movements.\u00a0 Nonetheless, when Haak et al. (2015) found \u201cmassive migrations\u201d into much of Europe from the Yamna culture on the Steppe, from c. 4800 bp, it was this demographic logic that most observers saw as making a strong case for this bringing Indo-European languages, too, into Corded Ware Europe.\u00a0 That made a good potential fit with several branches of Indo-European, but in fact not even all of the family\u2019s branches in Europe.\u00a0 So the search was then on to tick off the same Steppe ancestry for all remaining branches of Indo-European, too, by analysing ancient DNA from past populations that most plausibly would have spoken them.<\/p>\n

Over the ensuing years, more ancient DNA papers duly reported on these other branches, including key papers by the Harvard team, and which they cite here to assert that all branches except Anatolian emerged from the Steppe.\u00a0 What they do not state, however, is just how low are the proportions of Steppe ancestry in these cases.\u00a0 The \u201cmassive migrations\u201d into Corded Ware northern Europe proved elusive elsewhere.\u00a0 For Lazaridis et al. (2022), \u201cAnatolia is remarkable for its lack of steppe ancestry down to the Bronze Age\u201d \u2014 that only appears remarkable, though, if one expected it in the first place, because one had presumed the Steppe hypothesis.\u00a0 This new paper now states that \u201cThe CLV people contributed \u2026 at least one-tenth of the ancestry of Bronze Age central Anatolians, who spoke Hittite.\u201d\u00a0 The CLV cline is not Yamna on the Steppe, anyway, and 10% is no \u201cmassive migration\u201d that might be expected to rewrite the language identity of central Anatolia (and western Anatolia, where these languages also dominated).\u00a0 More likely it left no major linguistic effect;\u00a0 the Anatolian branch remains better explained by stronger candidates (see Lazaridis et al. 2022).<\/p>\n

The willingness in the new paper to see even 10% ancestry as if a good case for a language spread is reminiscent of their interpretations in the cases of Mycenaean Greek (Lazaridis et al. 2016) and South Asia (Narasimhan et al. 2019).\u00a0 In both cases their own ancient DNA analyses support no \u201cmassive\u201d migration of people of Steppe origin.\u00a0 On the contrary, overall percentages are generally very low, and in South Asia also too late for a plausible first arrival of Indic languages here (let alone Indo-Iranic as a whole).\u00a0 But however small and late, and however implausible that they replaced all languages from Iran right across to northern India, that is what has to be claimed for these weak signals, for the Steppe hypothesis to be right.\u00a0 Narasimhan et al. (2019) propose a scenario to try to make this work for modern Indic-speaking populations, but it cannot simultaneously work for different patterns in speakers of Iranic languages \u2014 whereas the early histories of these two sub-branches of Indo-European cannot be separated in this way, since both emerge from a common earlier Indo-Iranic branch.<\/p>\n

The new paper thus makes various statements as if of fact, citing their own past papers, but which are entirely at variance with other perspectives, not least from archaeology. \u00a0It opens with the claim that \u201cpeople of the Yamnaya archaeological complex and their descendants \u2026 transformed \u2026 South Asia\u201d (among other places, but again incongruously omitting Iran), for which the Steppe hypothesis has long imagined the \u2018descendant\u2019 culture responsible as Andronovo.\u00a0 But there is \u201cabsolutely NO archaeological evidence for any variant of the Andronovo culture either reaching or influencing the cultures of Iran or northern India in the second millennium.\u00a0 Not a single artifact of identifiable Andronovo type has been recovered from the Iranian Plateau, northern India, or Pakistan\u201d (Lamberg-Karlovsky 2005:\u00a0155).\u00a0 There was no such \u201ctransformation\u201d of South Asia by Yamnaya or their descendants.<\/p>\n

In search of another candidate, Narasimhan et al. (2019) sought out samples from the Oxus (or \u2018BMAC\u2019) civilisation, but again effectively drew a blank:\u00a0 no significant Steppe ancestry, but largely Iranian continuity instead.\u00a0 What the main BMAC culture site at Gonur Depe does host, however, already by 4250 bp, is a burial of a horse and wagon with bronze wheel rims, and perhaps even soma<\/em> (or haoma<\/em>) preparation \u2014 supposedly good markers of early Indo-Iranic, for example, but genetically not<\/em> from the Steppe.\u00a0 Indeed while their ultimate origins would lie in the Caucasus\/Zagros homeland, there is no strong case for excluding that the long evolution into the distinctly Iranic branch proceeded in or near what is now Iran, and the distinctly Indic branch on the Indus, spreading then also along the Ganges.<\/p>\n

Other than citing their own earlier papers, on other branches of Indo-European this paper leaves rather too much unsaid.\u00a0 They recognise the major ancestry component in the homeland region of \u201cNeolithic people from [the] Zagros\u201d, and in Figure 1b this component is hiding in plain sight:\u00a0 right alongside their CLV cline, next to its source<\/em> end, and labelled \u2018Iran\u2019.\u00a0 Far more than any minor Steppe ancestry, too little too late, it is this ancestry component, from the Indo-European family\u2019s Caucasus\/Zagros homeland, that remains predominant in speakers of Iranic and Indic to this day (see Haak et al. 2015: Fig. S6).\u00a0 Narasimhan et al. (2019) seek to rule out that it simply spread eastwards bearing Indo-Iranic, but Maier et al. (2023) concede that they cannot;\u00a0 see also Broushaki et al. (2016).<\/p>\n

Where this new paper leaves us is that the cat is out of the bag:\u00a0 not all Indo-European goes back to the Steppe.\u00a0 Now freed from the Steppe hypothesis as the base presumption (or aspiration) for interpreting aDNA data, we can look forward to a neutral re-evaluation of the most plausible candidates for tracing multiple other branches of the Indo-European family out of the original Caucasus\/Zagros homeland, without all having to travel via the Steppe.\u00a0 Alongside Anatolian, these may include notably Greek, Armenian, Albanian and Indo-Iranic.<\/p>\n

For fuller discussion of the genetic and archaeological contexts through which Indo-European language prehistory played out, see Heggarty et al. (2023: SM 13-19) in Science<\/em>, also curiously not cited here.\u00a0 To download it and explore its Indo-European languages database, see https:\/\/iecor.clld.org<\/a> and https:\/\/paulheggarty.info\/indoeuropean<\/a>.<\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”” text_direction=”default”]\n

References<\/h3>\n

Anthony, D.W. 2007. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language:\u00a0 How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World<\/em>. Princeton: Princeton University Press.<\/p>\n

Anthony, D.W., & Ringe, D. 2015. The Indo-European homeland from linguistic and archaeological perspectives. Annual Review of Linguistics<\/em> 1(1): p.199\u2013219. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1146\/annurev-linguist-030514-124812<\/a><\/p>\n

Braidwood, R. J. (1960). The Agricultural Revolution. Scientific American<\/em> 203(3), 130\u2013152. https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/24940620<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n

Broushaki, F., Thomas, M.G., Link, V., L\u00f3pez, S., et al. 2016. Early Neolithic genomes from the eastern Fertile Crescent. Science<\/em> 353(6298): p.499\u2013503. http:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/science.aaf7943<\/a><\/p>\n

Gamkrelidze, T.V., & Ivanov, V.V. 1984. Indoevropejskij jazyk i indoevropejcy: Rekonstrukcija i istoriko-tipologi\u010deskij analiz prajazyka i protokultury. [The Indo-European language and the Indo-Europeans:\u00a0 A Reconstruction and Historical-Typological Analysis of a Proto-Language and a Proto-Culture]<\/em>. Tbilisi: Tbilisi University Press.<\/p>\n

Gamkrelidze, T.V., & Ivanov, V.V. 1995. Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans:\u00a0 A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and a Proto-Culture<\/em>. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.<\/p>\n

Ghalichi, A., Reinhold, S., Rohrlach, A.B., Kalmykov, A.A., et al. 2024. The rise and transformation of Bronze Age pastoralists in the Caucasus. Nature<\/em> 635(8040): p.917\u2013925. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-024-08113-5<\/a><\/p>\n

Haak, W., Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N., Rohland, N., et al. 2015. Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature<\/em> 522(7555): p.207\u2013211. http:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/nature14317<\/a><\/p>\n

Heggarty, P., Anderson, C., Scarborough, M., King, B., et al. 2023. Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages. Science<\/em> 381(6656): p.414, eabg0818. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/science.abg0818<\/a><\/p>\n

Lamberg-Karlovsky, C.C. 2005. Archaeology and language:\u00a0 the case of the Bronze Age Indo-Iranians. In E. Bryant & L. L. Patton (eds) The Indo-Aryan Controversy:\u00a0 Evidence and Inference in Indian History<\/em>, 142\u2013177. London: Routledge.<\/p>\n

Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N., Anthony, D., Vyazov, L., et al. 2025. The genetic origin of the Indo-Europeans. Nature<\/em>, 1\u201311. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-024-08531-5<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n

Lazaridis, I., Alpaslan-Roodenberg, S., Acar, A., A\u00e7\u0131kkol, A., et al. 2022. The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe. Science<\/em> 377(6609): p.eabm4247. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/science.abm4247<\/a><\/p>\n

Lazaridis, I., Nadel, D., Rollefson, G., Merrett, D.C., et al. 2016. Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near East. Nature<\/em> 536(7617): p.419\u2013424. http:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/nature19310<\/a><\/p>\n

Maier, R., Flegontov, P., Flegontova, O., I\u015f\u0131ldak, U., et al. 2023. On the limits of fitting complex models of population history to f-statistics M. Nordborg, M. Przeworski, D. Balding, & C. Wiuf (eds). eLife<\/em> 12: p.e85492. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.7554\/eLife.85492<\/a><\/p>\n

Narasimhan, V.M., Patterson, N., Moorjani, P., Rohland, N., et al. 2019. The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia. Science<\/em> 365(6457): p.eaat7487. http:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/science.aat7487<\/a><\/p>\n

Renfrew, C. 1987. Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins. London: Jonathan Cape.<\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row type=”full_width_content” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”custom” column_margin_custom=”7vw” equal_height=”yes” content_placement=”middle” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” bg_color=”#ffffff” scene_position=”center” top_padding=”8%” bottom_padding=”5%” left_padding_desktop=”6vw” constrain_group_2=”yes” right_padding_desktop=”6vw” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overflow=”visible” id=”about” advanced_gradient_angle=”0″ overlay_strength=”0.8″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_color=”#000000″ shape_divider_position=”bottom” shape_divider_height=”99%” bg_image_animation=”none”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":95,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-736","page","type-page","status-publish"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulheggarty.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulheggarty.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulheggarty.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulheggarty.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulheggarty.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/paulheggarty.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":742,"href":"https:\/\/paulheggarty.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/736\/revisions\/742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulheggarty.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}