Ancient genomics reveal the origins of Italo-Celtic and Graeco-Armenian languages

Archaeology News ^ | January 4, 2025 | Dario Radley

[SunkenCiv]

A new study revealed key insights about Mediterranean language families' origins, including Italo-Celtic and Graeco-Armenian branches of Indo-European. An international team of geneticists and archaeologists conducted this research. They examined how ancient migrations influenced the emergence of linguistic groups that shaped Mediterranean civilizations...

They analyzed genetic data from 314 ancient individuals who lived in the Mediterranean 5,200 to 2,100 years ago. The researchers used advanced genome sequencing and strontium isotope analysis. This revealed significant genetic and cultural differences between eastern and western Mediterranean populations.

The study pinpoints two key migration patterns that had an impact on the genetic and linguistic roots of the Mediterranean. People in the Western Mediterranean, including those in Spain, France, and Italy today felt the influence of the Bell Beaker culture, a group with origins in Western Europe. This culture is linked to the rise of Italic and Celtic languages.

In contrast, populations in the eastern Mediterranean, like those in Greece and Armenia, showed direct genetic input from the Yamnaya, a group of herders from the Western Steppe area covering parts of today's Ukraine southern Russia, and Kazakhstan. These movements set the stage for the development of classical Greek and Armenian languages. The findings align with the linguistic hypotheses of Italo-Celtic and Graeco-Armenian.

The genetic evidence supports linguistic theories about how Indo-European languages diverged in the Mediterranean. The researchers showed how people from the steppes brought their genes and introduced big cultural changes. These included chariot technology and advanced metallurgical techniques, which local societies adopted.

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Distribution of Bell Beaker-derived and Yamnaya-derived ancestry proportions obtained from the IBD admixture model. The proportion of each steppe source is standardized by the total steppe contributions, i.e. the sum of Corded Ware, Bell Beaker and Yamnaya-Samara contributions. [More information: Yediay, F. E., Kroonen, G., Sabatini, S., Frei, K. M., Frank, A. B., Pinotti, T., … Willerslev, E. (2024). Ancient genomics support deep divergence between Eastern and Western Mediterranean Indo-European languages. bioRxiv. doi:10.1101/2024.12.02.626332]

Credit: Fulya Eylem Yediay et al. (2024)

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[dp0622]

I was taught Italian was invented in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. :)

[Adder]

From another source:
“In its early phase, the Bell Beaker culture paralleled the Corded Ware culture of Central Europe. Around 2400 BC, it began to expand eastwards into the Corded Ware horizon. The mature phase of the Bell Beaker culture is recognized for its complexity, involving characteristic artifacts, metalwork in copper and gold, long-distance exchange networks, archery, and specific ornamentation types. This phase also saw the emergence of social stratification and regional elites.”

Supposedly the ultimate source of Bell Beaker peeps was also the steppes.
Seems like a lotta folks hated being there and left...

[Adder]

https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/the-bell-beaker-culture-a-comprehensive-overview

Sorry...forgot to cite my source...

[Cronos]

And yet Greek is really far from the “mainstream” of Indo-European.

I know Latin, French and basic Italian and Spanish + English, German and pidgin Dutch + Polish and some understanding of Russian (SOME) as well as passable Farsi and Sanskrit, Hindi and Marathi — its not as impressive as it sounds as I do see common strains in many of these - and there are words, grammatical sense etc. that seem to repeat.

Armenian was passable as it seemed Iranic to me

But when I tried to pick up modern Greek, it was all Greek to me. I could not detect linkages. Yes, granted, I’m not a linguist and far better men have found linkages, but I couldn’t.

Did Greek take on a different sub-strata (Pelasgian) or what?

[Red Badger]

[Red Badger]

That was Italian Hand Signs.................

[SunkenCiv]

Unlike most languages, the native speakers of Greek parked it thousands of years ago, and while under foreign rule for much of that interval, they're still largely where their ancestors have been for over a hundred generations, as their language has slowly evolved.

A well-preserved juniper post, painted blue and with modern door hinges, was recovered from a modern village house simply because it looked suspiciously old. The sample we were given did not fit anything in our Neolithic inventory, so we sent a piece of it to Heidelberg to see what radiocarbon analysis would reveal. The date is 2117 B.C. + 110 years, which means it is from some Early Bronze Age occupation near the lake at Kastoria. (Kuniholm 1998, 4)

Yes, this does actually mean (given the right climate and conditions) that four thousand-year-old pieces of wood can be reused in building! Given the 'blue door' phenomenon, it should be obvious that the latest dendro dates from a structure, site or culture are the most significant.

Fifteen Frequently Asked Questions | Centuries of Darkness website

[PUGACHEV]

There are a couple of videos on YouTube where someone speaking classical Latin asks for directions from native Italians in Rome. They respond immediately and seem to understand him just fine, but I wonder where they think he is from.