Re: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language

Ossetian, of course, was once spoken on the steppes. But there also some Iranian languages in and around W. China that are descended from steppe languages such as Sogdian, the Sakan languages (evidently, present-day Saka may or may not be the same thing --there are contradictory articles in Wikipedia).

From: Richard Wordingham <richard.wordingham@...>
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 4, 2012 2:21 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family

--- In mailto:cybalist%40yahoogroups.com, Trond Engen <trond@...> wrote:

> E.g., the maximum density Urheimat of IIr is in Eastern Turkey,
> and that of Greek in the Aegaean, both in blatant contradiction to what
> we think we know from archaeology and ancient myths.

A big problem here is that there is no Iranian steppe language documented well enough to influence the result. The best I can think of is the Jász dialect of Ossetian from Hungary - but I suspect the fragments are usable.

The result they obtain is a homeland somewhere from Anatolia to just west of the Dniester. That is not very far from what one might conclude just from the branching of Indo-Hittite into Anatolian and non-Anatolian. If the trajectory of Indo-Iranian were fixed, it might change the result to *inconclusive* between Anatolian and steppe origins.

A deterrent to trying to repeat the analysis is that the technical supplement contains mention of the hardware they used - an array of graphics cards was used to perform the calculations!

Richard.