[Indo-Euro]Language family may have Anatolian origins

Science News ^ | August 23rd, 2012 | Bruce Bower

[Pharmboy]

Indo-European tongues traced back more than 8,000 years to present-day Turkey

ANCIENT SPREADThe map shows the timing and geographic expansion of Indo-European languages proposed in a new statistical analysis. The red area in what’s now Turkey is a possible birthplace of the Indo-European language family more than 8,000 years ago.Remco Bouckaert et al. Indo-European languages range throughout Europe and South Asia and even into Iran, yet the roots of this widespread family of tongues have long been controversial. A new study adds support to the proposal that the language family expanded out of Anatolia — what’s now Turkey — between 8,000 and 9,500 years ago, as early farmers sought new land to cultivate.

A team led by psychologist Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland in New Zealand came to that conclusion by using a mathematical method to calculate the most likely starting point and pattern of geographic spread for a large set of Indo-European languages. The new investigation, published in the Aug. 24 Science, rejects a decades-old idea that Kurgan warriors riding horses and driving chariots out of West Asia’s steppes 5,000 to 6,000 years ago triggered the rise of Indo-European speakers.

“Our analysis finds decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin of Indo-European languages,” Atkinson says.

[Cronos]

The Alans probably were just the latter-day descendants of the Scythians, and the Huns roared in and kicked their asses

true, and of the Cimmerians and the tribe that killed Cyrus the Great. They were Irani peoples who invaded the Fertile crescent by invading through the Gates of the Caucasus

The Sarmatians and Alans were slavicized or Germanized or Latinized as they moved.

[blam]

African click language 'holds key to origins of earliest human speech'

[Pharmboy]

Thanks for adding quality info to this thread...would either of you have a good book to read on the subject of tribal Europe and their movements?