there are times in human history that appear calm
like the surface of a lake on a still Summer's Day then there are other times when those Waters
of History bubble and froths crashing against the shores of time in a furious Gale sweeping away
all that stands before the surging forces of fate the origins of the world we know today was
born in such tumult shaped by the fires of War migration and catastrophe thousands of groups
have been swept away by the bloody tides of fate many of which we know nothing about some of
which we have but the footprints they left behind yet few such periods were as significant
to the origins of so many people across the world as a dramatic events that took place
in Eastern Europe some five thousand years ago from the Far Western shores of Ireland and Iberia
to the Indus Valley and the deserts of Xinjiang China a mysterious people hardly recognized in
archaeology defeated the forces of nature and the civilizations that came before them to conquer
more lands than any Empire in pre-modern history from those people the languages of Hindi
Persian Russian Spanish English German and Gaelic have all come they are
known commonly as the indo-europeans but who really were these people when did they
exist and where did they actually come from how could they possibly have had such a dramatic
impact on the languages and cultures of so many people across the world new linguistic theories
have recently been birthed to challenge the long-standing views all of which will be examined
as we seek to answer who were the indo-europeans hi friends I'm Kevin McLean don't forget
to like subscribe and consider supporting the channel through patreon PayPal or
YouTube super stickers your support helps me to make long in-depth videos like
this I appreciate all of your support though indo-europeans are a popular topic
of conversation among those interested in ancient pre-history archaeology
mythology and Linguistics today it has been popular for quite some time
the modern awareness that many of the languages of Europe Iran India were anciently
connected can be dated to the 16th century individuals who had experience in India
recognized linguistic commonalities but it wasn't until the 18th century that the question
began to be more widely known and discussed in some detail by academics Mikhail lomonosov a
Russian polymath born in Saint Petersburg in 1711 known for his groundbreaking achievement in
astronomy geology physics engineering and poetry noted that Latin Greek German and Russian must
have had a common ancestry in the ancient past and by the end of the 18th century the
topic was taken up by Sir William Jones and by 1813 the use of the term Indo-European
was coined by Thomas Young using the Western and Eastern extremities of the proposed
language grouping as the basis for the name now noticing a relationship between
Indo-European languages is really only as difficult as becoming familiar with a
few while there are a lot of differences there are key similarities in nearly all of the
languages that are recognizable to nearly anyone family names and structures are some of
the most core vocabulary in a language and Indo-European languages nearly all share
many important family words father in English in Greek pedar in Persian Pita in Hindi athair in
Gaelic and we also have English mother Latin matar Greek mitera Persian modar Russian mat Gaelic
Mathair there are many other words shared across many of the languages so that anyone familiar
with several would have some inkling that there was a connection so why then did it take until the
16th century for anyone to notice it may not have the ancient Greeks had extensive dealings with a
wide range of people many who spoke Indo-European languages and some others who didn't in their
myths they claim that the ancient Greek hero Perseus was the founder of the Persians now
this is often explained by the similarities of the given name of the hero to the name of the
ethnic group but it may have been more than this while modern Greek and modern Iranian languages
have moved further away in part due to different sets of loan words ancient Greek and ancient
Iranian were more similar to each other recognizing this might have given justification
to some Greeks for thinking there was an ancient connection between the people as with most
mythology this was explained through a Founder myth this is the same for many other European
peoples that the Greeks interacted with Greek accounts typically depict all other Europeans as
having an ancient blood relation with Greeks often via the wide travelling Heracles many nations in
Europe agreed that they were related to the Greeks in ancient times with an account by Ammianus
Marcellinus recording a Germanic Community who proclaimed themselves the descendants of
Odysseus when he was on his 10-year Journey the Romans also recognized a commonality though
they tried to express this in a less direct way famously The Aeneid tells of how the Romans were
the descendants of the Trojan hero Aeneas however the Roman knowledge of the ethnic character of
the Trojans was entirely derived from Homeric epic which depicts them as speaking and being
essentially Greek worshipping Greek gods and following Greek customs the idea that the Romans
were related to the Trojans was likely devised in part for political purposes but expresses
the belief that they were closely connected to the Greeks among these ancient peoples who
spoke Indo-European languages was a belief that they were all related in an ancient past
and we can suppose that part of the reason for this belief was the awareness of similarities in
language which were greater than they are today one Clear Proof of the recognition
of this linguistic similarity and awareness of it is found in an
ancient account by Pliny the Elder he explained that the meaning of the word Druid
an ancient Celtic priest was likely connected to the Greek word for the oak tree which they
revere an entomology that is in fact correct Recognizing that an Indo-European common ancestral
language existed of course was the easy part the hard part was finding out who originally spoke
this language who were the proto-indo-europeans by far the most widely agreed explanation for
the origins of Indo-European is labelled the step hypothesis the theory was first widely promoted by
philologist Otto Shrouder in the late 19th century he undertook extensive study into the common
roots for domestic plants animals and Technologies across the Indo-European languages and concluded
that the early indo-europeans were pastoralists who domesticated horses as so many common
Indo-European words were related to horses and horse-related gear he thought that they must have
resided on the Pontic Caspian step where horses were Native this theory was later supported
fleshed out and articulated by Lithuanian archaeologist Maria Gimbutas and more recently
corrected and expanded on by many researchers in linguistics genetics archaeology and anthropology
such as David Anthony among many others seemingly because certain political groups and
ideologies in the early 20th century abused simplistic ideas about indo-europeans to further
their own racial views there was a reaction against a concept rooted in Emotion rather than
objective analysis which until recent advances of archaeo-genetics was trying to douse the Flames
of any Indo-European ethnic origin Theory however we now know that these theories only have guessed
at by earlier researchers were at least partly or even largely correct there was a genetic flow into
Central and Western Europe around 3000 BC from the pontic Caspian step and simplified analysis this
is often referred to as step ancestry or yamnaya modern Europeans have differing levels of this
ancestry ranging from very low in places like Sardinia to around 50 percent in places like
Britain Ireland Lithuania Belarus Norway and others most Scholars now accept that this
influx of Step air ancestry was responsible for the introduction of the Indo-European
language into Central and Western Europe although a continuing battle now surrounds
the ultimate origin of this language which we will look at shortly most agree that even
if its ultimate origin were not in the step that it spread into Europe predominantly
by populations from the step the origins of these so-called step people is to
be found in groups of Eastern hunter-gatherers who had inhabited the eastern and Northeastern
fringes of Europe since at least the Mesolithic genetically they had descended largely
from ancient North Eurasians and likely had a common origin with Uralic
peoples in a very distant past this is possibly reflected linguistically
there have been debates among linguists for over a hundred years about whether there
is a common connection between Indo-European and Uralic languages due to structural
similarities as well as some cognate vocabulary as Eastern hunter-gatherers were almost certainly
the progenitors of the Indo-European language the similarities noted by some are
likely to be explained by a very ancient common root in a language spoken by Eurasian
hunter-gatherers tens of thousands of years ago these Eastern hunter-gatherers were spread over
a vast territory and likely spoke many related languages with many Regional dialects some of
this linguistic diversity may be reflected in the different branches of early Indo-European
breaking with the typical Trend seen elsewhere in the world Eastern hunter-gatherers produce
Pottery while not practising agriculture they hunted fished in rivers and seemed to
have developed the first known trade in Amber genetic tests conducted on the remains of
Eastern hunter-gatherers revealed that they were light-skinned and carried jeans for blue
eyes and light-coloured hair importantly they also carried haplogroups r1b r1a and I2 all associated
with later step cultures such as the Yamnaya by around 5000 BC some of these Eastern
hunter-gatherers began to establish identifiable cultural groups on the steps of Western Russia
and Ukraine step is a word derived from Russian meaning grassland or Wasteland whose ultimate
etymology is unknown it's a vast expanse of flat largely treeless country that extends like a
belt from Eastern Europe to East Asia what drove them to make this cultural change we cannot know
for certain but if we look to later descended cultural practices we may get a glimpse into the
lifestyle of these archaic Indo-European Hunters one cultural feature common to many descended
groups is the concept of the young Outcast Warrior band one which is often closely
linked with the concept of the werewolf I've done a specific video on the topic which
details this in different European cultures this practice is very likely pre-step while
at times it was a rite of passage it was also related to the practice of the mass expulsion of
young men from a community facing overpopulation like most hunter-gatherer communities the Eastern
hunter-gatherers lived in relatively small family groups or tribes likely representing not
more than a few hundred people typically they would interact and share borders with other
closely related family groups with whom they would contract marriages the physical limitations of
the pre-agricultural lifestyle strictly limited the size of these groups and it also ensured
that they would have strictly enforced their boundaries if they grew larger than the population
of animals and natural Flora they consumed in the regions or if poachers from other tribes were
allowed to hunt on their territories they would face serious starvation the boundaries between
tribes was very strict because without them it was impossible to manage the limited resources
within and ensure the survival of the community all of this is very similar to how packs of
wolves organize and the similarity was likely not missed by the Ancient Hunters whenever the
population of a tribe expanded beyond the means of their territories to sustain there were only
three options expand into previously unclaimed lands violently eliminate other tribes and take
their lands likely beginning with poaching raids on their territories and escalating into total
war or take a portion of the excess population and expel them from your lands and have them live
or die by their own merits often it was the latter that was resorted to and tragically the most
Expendable people in any society are the young men in times of Crisis they would be gathered
up dedicated to the god to watch over them and cast out to live as wolves it is
Little Wonder these young men took the wolf as their totem animal and their God
was always closely linked to this animal with the warming weather in the retreat of the
ice sheet in the Neolithic the hunter-gatherer population was expanding more rapidly youths who
needed to establish their own lands either had to win their place through Warfare or be willing
to learn and adapt to different lifestyles in order to survive in land's previously unclaimed
it's likely from such bands of youthful archaic Indo-European Warriors expelled and landless
that the panda Caspian step was first settled and the dawn of Step pastoralism began a prehistoric
version perhaps of the legend of Romulus and Remus the first moves onto the step by
the hunter-gatherers were tentative they first settled in the forest step and as
they adopted pastoral activities they began to extend their range a little bit further south
so that they could graze their cattle and other domesticated animals on the steppelands but with
the invention of the wheel and the wagon perhaps around 3500 BC the range of these step dwellers
increased dramatically and soon they were living out on this step in wagons and using wagons to
haul their materials that they needed to survive a number of archaeological groups comprised
of Eastern hunter-gatherers appeared on the Step at roughly the same time one of
these possibly the first is a Samara culture around 5000 BC they took up residents
near Samara along the banks of the Volga River they were still practising a hunter-gatherer
lifestyle at this time but already with them are the first signs of what would become the core of
the step culture they produced artifacts depicting horses they performed horse sacrifices and were
responsible for their earliest known horse burials it is thought that these horses were wild horses
primarily being used as food but clearly at this early stage there is already developing a
close attachment in reverence for the horse they buried their most honoured dead
in large Mounds or Kurrigans covering their bodies with ocher a red clay used for
dye the dead were effectively painted red this may be preserved in much later mythology
which links the dead to the color red in Gaelic mythology there are Riders of the
Dead called the Fer Derga "Redmen" and the Dagda a master of fertility and death is also
named Ruad or Ruadri Ruad meaning Red King Red contemporaneous with the people of Samara were
those of the Dnieper-Donetsk culture like those in Samara they were entirely descended from the
Eastern hunter-gatherers they also buried their dead covered in Ochre placed horse bones
in burials and produced horse figurine there is at least some evidence that they may have
begun to engage in some limited agriculture though both groups lived over a thousand kilometres apart
both are genetically and archaeologically nearly the same and it speaks to their common Origins
as the first of the Eastern hunter-gatherers to settle and make a life for themselves on the step
but who had not yet adopted a pastoral lifestyle the first of these groups which appears to
have become pastoral is a kavalinsky culture sometime around 4500 BC they begin transitioning
from hunter-gatherers to primarily pastoralist herding domesticated animals although it should be
noted that hunting remained an important activity for all of these groups one which continued
well into the much later Indo-European cultures the first evidence for horse domestication
and copper working is found with them that doesn't mean that the other groups
were not doing this at the same time but its evidence bias as we know only
what has been recovered likely if one group in the region was doing it they
were all by this time engaged in it the Sreadne Stog culture developed around
4500 BC and dwelt across much of Ukraine they practice pastoralism in some
agriculture possessed domesticated horses as well as worked with copper
and engaged in long-distance Trading there is some evidence that they range as far as
the Balkans with two individuals carrying step ancestry similar to Sredne Stog examples found
near Varna Bulgaria dating to between 4500 and 4000 BC it was also among the serenity stork that
the first use of corded where Pottery is found and with those people the very origins of the later
corded Ware culture may have begun all of these early Eastern hunter-gatherer descended groups are
remarkable for their physical robustness they were noticeably larger and had stronger bones and build
than most other peoples in the same time period in part this is likely due to the lifestyle and
diet highly rich in fresh protein their custom of marrying from outside their own tribe would
also lend itself to a healthier genetic line in a short 500 years all of the groups of
Eastern hunter-gatherers who had moved into this step had adopted forms of pastoralism and were
domesticating the horse a recent international study involving 150 scientists concluded in 2021
at the ancestor of the modern domestic horse originated and was domesticated in the Volga
Dawn region of Russia all domestic horses in the world are related to the horses broken on the
step by ancient indo-europeans the first cowboys of course the most talked about group
to emerge on the step was the Yamnaya they likely developed out of the preceding Repin
culture which began around 3900 BC it was with the pastoral Repin culture that the use of the
wagon on the step began in earnest and by the Yamnaya period this appears to have developed
into family groups actually living in wagons it was a practice that would continue on the step
for thousands of years for around 450 BC the Greek historian Herodotus writes that particular
groups of Scythians lived in their wagons it is possible that the wheel was first invented by
the proto-indo-europeans sometime around 3500 BC while older theories generally placed the wheel as
being first developed in Mesopotamia and spreading north and west there is a significant problem with
this Theory most of the Indo-European languages say for the Anatolian branch have cognate
words for wheels and wagon related technology Anatolian presumably does not share
this vocabulary because it's split from Indo-European before the technology was invented
perhaps around 4000 BC these words cannot have been borrowed from one Indo-European language to
another as their morphological changes show that the terms descended from a common source thus
this very significant technological innovation must have developed During the period before
the proto-indo-european language is fragmented it not only dates the language to the time
period of wheel technology but because all the vocabulary surrounding the technology is entirely
based on Indo-European Roots it shows that the technology was almost certainly not borrowed but
invented locally within the Indo-European language community if the technology had been borrowed it
is likely its foreign name would have been used at the very least we would expect at least one
term related to wheel and wagon technology to be borrowed because all of these words are native
Indo-European constructions it's likely that the technology either developed simultaneously
north and south or that it developed first in the step and very quickly spread to numerous
other regions we do know for a fact that it was among the proto-indo-iranians in Tasha culture
that the earliest evidence for the use of the spoked wheel is found around 2000 BC and it's a
curious thing that nearly all the Indo-European cultures made the wheel a significant religious
symbol while the symbol may be originally based on the sun it later fuses with the symbolism
of the physical wagon or Chariot wheel with which the sun is strongly associated
with in the earliest Indo-European myths this expresses how important the wheel was
to the life of the proto-indo-europeians because of the open flat space of the step they
were able to utilize the wagon and later The Chariot like few other cultures could they drove
across the vast grasslands like ships upon the sea it could be that such ideas were also why
ships were poetically referred to as steeds in Norse poetry and Greek Poseidon possibly an
early God of horses and the vast land sea that was a step becomes a god of sea and ships with the
M9 is also found the first physical evidence for horseback riding a recent study by Troutman et.
al. points to horse riding by Yamnaya individuals by around 3000 BC the cult status of the horse
noticeable in the Samara culture from around 5000 BC his likewise found in many later attested
Indo-European cultures with similar very strange rituals found in both Irish and Vedic sources of
a sovereign wetting a horse then sacrificing it the commonalities between such extreme practices
suggests that it must have originated from a proto-indo-european cult practice developed
on the step the cow was also an extremely important ritual animal and in the daily life of
the yamnaya and other Western step-herder groups Indo-European mythology envisioned a primordial
cow whose milk represented the cosmic Waters and many goddesses and subsequent
Traditions are connected with cattle the burials of the rapid culture began with
typical flat Graves the dead covered in ochre the same as nearly all the other Eastern
hunter-gatherer descendant peoples as they expanded they began to adopt the use of tumuli
and the practice was maintained by the Yamnaya also notable is the use of cromlechs meaning
essentially megalithic Stone circles many ancient Repin and Yamnaya stone circles have been
identified in Russia and many other men hears or standing stones are associated with them sometimes
they would encircle a tumulus with Standing Stones something we see replicated in Britain and
Ireland even in cases when the tumulus was built by the preceding population they created
the karunosivsky idol a stone carving possibly of a god which strongly resembles other later
carvings throughout Europe and clearly they had a tradition of using stones to Mark sacred spaces
on this step there was a limited supply of wood while the alumni have gained Fame for being
identified as a source of the proto-indo-european language recent genetic research suggests that
the details are likely more complicated than this while the yamnaya certainly spoke a dialect
of proto-indo-european they do not appear to have been the primary Vector for the
language's dispersal across Europe and Asia instead their dialect of the languages argued
to have given rise to the Balkan Indo-European languages such as proto-greek they were also the
origin of the afanasievo culture which moved to the Far East and it's not to be the origin of the
mysterious tocharian language that was recorded around 600 A.D in the Tarim basin of Xinjiang
China the root of most of the Indo-European languages is however with groups of close
relatives of the yamnaya the corded Ware culture while it was earlier believed that the courted
where culture had been formed directly from migrations from the yamnaya genetic studies
suggest that this was not the case though most courted where individuals carry a high percentage
of so-called step ancestry that is a genetic mixture that was very similar to that possessed
by yamnaya there are slight differences in male haplogroups that suggest that they were derived
from a very closely related but separate group though they were primarily pastoralists they did
not dwell directly on this step but within the forest step and even the forest evidence suggests
they cleared great stretches of land Through Fire and used these cleared areas to pasture animals
and plant cereal crops they buried their dead in singular Graves sometimes with accompanying
tumuli very much like the yamnaya and other groups of a similar origin though they probably spoke a
dialect understandable to the Yamnaya and shared a very similar genetic origin and culture they would
have also had cultural and linguistic differences it could be that it was a forest step-dwelling
cousins of the Yamnaya speaking of very closely associated language or dialect which
was the ancestor of the Indo-European languages like Slavic Celtic Iranian italic
dramatic while the yamnaya were responsible for the spread of other branches such as
proto-greek illyrian thracian and Albanian however these proto-indo-europeans whether yamnaya
or not were similar enough linguistically and culturally that we can probably make some
broad sweeping generalities about them they wove textiles using plant fibers and wool
and created fired pottery they raised a variety of livestock and possibly were instrumental
in the breeding of sheep for wool production they engaged in some farming of cereals and had
native words for plow and field they fermented milk to create cheese and they collected
honey and produced a fermented beverage of it they used specially designed stones for grinding
grain nuts and other plant material they trained horses and produce some horse gear still familiar
today though not the saddle and they built both two and four-wheeled carts designed with yolks
to be pulled by animal power they engaged in the production of copper and gold artifacts they
must have had houses with doors fences boats and many other tools and other artifacts that
we don't always associate with step culture on a political level they organized in tribes
known as the tuataha which were led by a tribal leader called the "hregs" known in descendant
language as "raj" "rex" or "ri" generally selected through a complex combination of aptitude social
status and ritual these tribes were often bound up with other closely related tribes and client
Patron relationships sometimes based on lineage historical debts marriage and even mythological
reasons this network of tribal alliances could at times bring vast numbers of people under the
political guidance of a single ruler likely one who at least verbally traced his lineage back
to the Gods the legitimacy of rulers was upheld or cast down by a group of elders who served as
priests while another group of people served as poets tasked with the memorization and recital
of tribal histories and divine hymns they had structured views of social class status honour and
one's relationship to the gods and his community they were strongly patriarchal and they likely
believed that one could gain immortality through battle they glorified raiding the Abduction of
women from rival peoples and the total Destruction of enemies their Heroes were Warrior cattle
Raiders as can be seen in The Vedic texts which praise Indra for winning the cattle and Heracles
who plundered the cattle of Gerion they organized war and raiding bands who engage in ecstatic
forms of combat where the Warriors mentally and spiritually transformed into Fierce raving
animals such as wolves they may have fought naked save for an animal pelt and entered into rages
where they were perceived as being invincible yet these were not unsophisticated and
unintelligent people they had very strict rules about providing Hospitality to guests and
strangers which all the daughter branches shared they gave elevated status to priests and Poets
and people of Art upon the King was placed the burden of upholding truth as the Gaelic law
Giver Moran described it he had to guide the community like a seasoned charioteer looking
all about him judging the path in an instant responding to every bump every stone on the
field so as not to break the wheel Rim under him that path that the king must find was the concept
of the truth or right meaning to them something like Cosmic order known in Sanskrit as Rta to the
ancient Barbarian step herder the ideal King was of course a powerful Warrior who could lead
his people to Victory but he was also a wise man a guide a Pathfinder a charioteer a cattle
herder with the tribe envisioned as his chariot in what would be a shock to some studies
in 2015 revealed that the ancestry of the Yamnaya was not like earlier step groups
almost entirely Eastern hunter-gatherer while more than 55 percent of their
ancestry was Eastern hunter-gatherer they had picked up around 35 percent from a
group identified as Caucuses Hunter-Gatherers it is around this group of people that the
controversial new theory of Indo-European Origins is centred and understanding the
actual Dynamics at play here is critical it seems that as Eastern hunter-gatherer lineages
extended further southwards towards the caucuses that came into contact with a group identified
genetically as caucuses hunter-gatherers they were closely related to populations living
on the southern range of the mountains and would have been a northward expansion of this population
that crossed the Caucasus at some earlier point we don't actually know much about this population
or exactly what they were involved in if they were actually still hunter-gatherers or if they too
had adopted a step lifestyle regardless at some point prior to the rise of the Yamnaya there was a
large ad-mixing event with this population this in part is what led to a recent study by Paul Hegarty
et. al. published in science on July 28 2023 the study tries to categorize and date the Divergent
Indo-European languages based on a systematic analysis of phylogenetic changes they conclude
that while the Western step herders do indeed appear to have spoken and spread the progenitor
language of italic Celtic Germanic Slavic there is a break between these languages and the
languages of Greek Hittite and indo-iranian they theorize that proto-indo-european first
developed around 6000 BC south of the Caucasus perhaps around 5000 BC this language moved
North spoken by the Caucasus hunter-gatherers when they mixed with the Eurasian
hunter-gatherers the latter adopted the language of the Caucasus hunter-gatherers
and established the root of Indo-European before this others from this same group migrated
West into Anatolia creating the Anatolian branch of Indo-European and Anatolians moved into Greece
perhaps around 3000 BC according to this Theory Greek would have developed from the Anatolian
Branch or been very closely related to its origin they also concluded that indo-iranian
was unlikely to have been the result of Step migration but was instead the result of migration
from these proto-indo-european-speaking caucus hunter-gatherers who migrated
into Iran and through to India taking only a simplistic glance at this Theory it
appears compelling curiously there are some words in Indo-European which appear to be cognate with
ancient Sumerian "ab" or "ap" means water in both languages however these can also be explained as
linguistic borrowings as Indo-European has other words "water" in English "Voda" in Russian
which may have a common root with Uralic it locates the origin of the language centrally
and would at a simplistic level answer the question of Anatolia one key problem of Anatolian
is not only its proposed early dating but that genetic Studies have not found any significant
level of Step ancestry in Hittite samples although there are very few samples as of now
to work with but taking this as proof that indo-europeans didn't spread from the step into
Anatolia the study instead looks to this caucus hunter-gatherer population as the possible Vector
as it is found in Anatolia Iran and the step what is critical to understand is that nearly all of this caucus's hunter-gatherer ad
mixture among the Yamnaya came from women all agree that the Yamnaya and related step
populations were highly patrilineal societies as are or were all the descendant Indo-European
societies the concepts are powerfully rooted in the very language itself it's inconceivable faced
with this reality that an almost if not entirely female admixture could form the nucleus of such
a dramatic cultural and linguistic transformation especially given the nature of the language
and culture under discussion in a traditional patrilineal Society women are brought away from
their own families they dwell in the household of the male and his family and must adopt their
way of life and their language their customs it is agreed that the family structure of
indo-europeans operated in exactly this way in such a scenario word borrowings could take
place perhaps especially associated with words linked to women and women's activities say
water which women were often responsible for fetching and for using to clean and cook with the
feminine primordial goddess is frequently linked to water in Indo-European traditions however a
complete language shift is effectively impossible most likely the ad mixture results from
one of two things or a combination of the two either the women were given over as
tribute or more likely or more frequently in my view they were taken by force through
raiding probably over the course of several Generations in pillaging of a weaker group
unable to effectively defend itself we know that elements of an earlier cultural practice of
raiding for women was preserved in nearly every descendant into a European culture making it
likely that this was part of the proto-culture while earlier this rating not only for
cattle but women who poetically are often likened to cattle was mostly confined to other
tribes that possessed Eastern hunter-gatherer ancestry when they came into contact with this
caucus's hunter-gatherer population they fully exploited them for this purpose indo-europeans
would undertake exactly the same practices throughout Europe and Asia as they spread often in
places where steppe ancestry in percentage terms is not high their male haplogroups will still
be disproportionately reflected due to their having obtained disproportionate reproductive
access to local women to put it very politely. Linguists have long considered that the Anatolian
Branch entered the region from Thrace recent genetic finds in Bulgaria show that step ancestry
similar to Sredney Stog was present in Bulgaria as early as 4500 BC and it was likely around this
same time and from related groups that Anatolian developed possibly developing from a different
dialect or sister language to Indo-European that in the case of the Hittites the language
becomes detached from Step ancestry and even step haplogroups is uncommon in the spread of the
language group elsewhere but not at all improbable in the historical case of the Hungarians the
entire ethnic group has become detached from its genetic Origins as a Ugrian step-herder group yet
the language continues in other cases The Basque region is dominated by Indo-European haplogroups
but the non-indo-european language persists the Etruscans were found to be not significantly
genetically distinct from other italic peoples with a step admixture of around 35 percent and
yet the Etruscan spoken non-indo-european language certain aspects of modern language spread
cannot be reasonably compared to ancient ones but one aspect that is common is
that power and Prestige can play a very important role in the spread of a language
and often trumps simple numbers of speakers in places where small numbers of indo-europeans
managed to gain power over an existing Society the language may have taken and been established
as the language of the ruling class during initial domination merging with the vastly superior
numbers of the local population their line can become buried even as the cultural and linguistic
forms might persist and gain dominance we have seen such things play out within the historical
period and this is the most likely explanation for the origin of Anatolia the final serious flaw
in the conclusions of the new study which I will mention here are the proposals regarding the
spread of indo-iranian breaking with earlier linguistic analysis it is claimed that there is
in fact no closer relationship between Germanic Slavic and the indo-iranian branch they estimate
that indo-iranian language broke off just shortly after Anatolian and was present through Central
Asia thousands of years before the recording of the rigveda inscriptions from the matani which
show strong indo-aryan influences including the names of Mitra varuna Indra and the nasatias and
the use of indo-aryan names since at least 1700 BC does suggest that indo-iranian and its daughter
branch indo-aryan must have not only split earlier than is sometimes thought but spread through
the region by at least this date however it is now well established that later migrations from
the step had a substantial genetic impact on the region and it seems a very large leap to accept
that step populations moving in One Direction would change the language of Europe but moving
in the other direction had no noticeable impact but that the language was already Indo-European
from a completely different source the medieval influx of turkic-speaking peoples from Asia would
reshape the language and genetics in the region their migration also stands as a test case for how
Indo-European spread during its expansion phase with these facts in mind Indo-European most
certainly developed and spread via the step the culture language and even the genetics of
these proto-indo-europeans played a role in shaping many ethnic groups from the Hindu
Pashto Iranians Russians Armenians Greeks Poles Germans French English Gaelic Spanish
Portuguese and so many others that now form the beautiful tapestry of the diverse
nations of our world it's unfortunate that at times this amazing Legacy has been
weaponized by certain groups and individuals in reality there are groups in Pakistan that
have as much Indo-European ancestry as some of those in Europe all the descendant groups are
mixed none of them are pure proto-indo-europeans instead of fighting over who has more or less
Indo-European DNA as I have unfortunately seen far too often we should respect all ethnic
groups while recognizing and appreciating this amazing source of connection that many of us
from Indo-European derived linguistic and cultural groups share and appreciate the thousands of years
of linguistic cultural and genetic Divergence that reflects the history of each peoples and adds 445
beautiful blossoms to the world I hope you like this video and if you did please like share and
subscribe and consider supporting me on patreon PayPal or through YouTube super stickers thank
you all for watching and as always stand tall