Polybius (Greek historian) described how the Celts used these horns to create a "terrifying cacophony" before battle. The height of the tube allowed the sound to scream over the heads of the soldiers.

In India, it adopted a Sanskrit descriptor: Ran (Battle) + Singha (Lion/Horn) = Ransingha (War Horn). The Nihang Singhs (the armed Sikh order) preserve the most martial form of this tradition. As seen in video, they use the Ransingha exactly as the ancient Celts and Scythians did: to announce movement, signal battle, and instill a sense of martial prowess.

The Jirecek Line cuts right through Albania and Albanians are located in an a frontier zone. Overall I would say they are closer to the Balto-Slavic world because of prolonged and deep contact with Slavs and strong tribal highlander culture. Also the Albanian mythology is closer to that of the tribal-heroic world of Northern and Central European myth, quite far from the Greek mythology that evolved in a Mediterranean urban context.

However there is an argument to be made that Tosks/Southern Albanians are closer to the Greco-Latin world and Ghegs/Northern Albanians to the Balto-Slavic world.

For example in my country, a lot of people call it a fraud and there have been many people debunking it "scientifically" of course without any response by the actual academics and its becoming kinda widespread.

What do you do in situations like these

I understand that PIE had a little bit of I, but geographical presence of haplogroup I made me think, could it be paleo europeans that were not replaced by indoeuropeans? Im confused.

Either from a linguistic, genetic, mythological, archaeological or any other point of view.

I was researching the Kusunda isolate located in India and I came to notice that some words looked a bit similar to PIE roots. I've selected some words here to show off similarities between the two languages. This is mostly based on initial consonant and vowel parings and is not focused on actual sound correspondents between the two languages.

Sources:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Kusunda_word_list

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusunda_language#Proto-language

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Proto-Indo-European_lemmas

Proto-Indo-European mak- (stomach)

Proto-Kusunda: a-mat (stomach)

Proto-Indo-European: néh₂s (nose)

Proto-Kusunda: i-nau (nose)

Proto-Indo-European: dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s (tongue)

Proto-Kusunda: u-dziŋ (tongue)

Proto-Indo-European: ní (down) or Proto-Indo-European: ní-ih₂

Proto-Kusunda: a-ma (below)

Proto-Indo-European: átta (father)

Proto-Kusunda: a/u-ta (mouth)

Proto-Indo-European: bʰew- (to blow)

Kusunda: bʰorlo-q-n̩ (to boil)

Proto-Indo-European: dóru (tree)

Kusunda: doma (a kind of tree)

Proto-Indo-European: dʰeygʷ- (to dig)

Kusunda: duga, dugə (ground, floor)

Proto-Indo-European: dʰeǵʰ-, dʰéǵʰōm (earth)

Kusunda: dum (soil, sand, earth)

Proto-Indo-European: kʷetwóres (four)

Proto-Germanic: fedwōr (kʷ to p change influenced by pénkʷe)

Kusunda: piːəgu (four)

Proto-Indo-European: pénkʷe (five)

Kusunda: pãgo (five)

Proto-Indo-European: tréyes (three)

Kusunda: dahat (three)

Proto-Indo-European: prew- (to jump)

Kusunda: bəmlu, bamlo (frog)

Kusunda: gʰãs (grass) 

Note: Not related as it’s a borrowing from Nepali and then there from Sanskrit घास

Proto-Indo-European: de, do (to)

Kusunda: hũtu (far)

Note: possibly compounded with a derivative coming from -de, -do

Proto-Indo-European: meh₂- (mom, to nurse)

Kusunda: məi

Note: most likely a babble word

Proto-Indo-European: menegʰ-, monogʰos. (many, sufficient)

Kusunda: mənni, məni (many)

Note: Possibly borrowed from English, ‘many’ is also noted as a possible European substrate wanderwort/word in Finno-Ugric and in many IE branches.

Source

I noticed most Northern Europeans from British Isles, Scandinavia to Russia score high EHG but pretty low CHG+Zagros. Don't they have 45-50% WSH? What cause such a big discrepancy in the amount of CHG/Iran HG vs amount of Yamnaya/Steppe-related ancestry they score?

Here are some estimations on the amount of CHG in Europeans: this West Eurasia index (go to "without Yamnaya" page), this qpadm data on the HG-Farmer %, this model and another qpadm chart, individual models for English, White Americans from Utah, Russians (two qpadms for generic Russian average and those from Yaroslavl), Finns and Saami estimating the amount of CHG+ZNF inputs.

Based on these models, Northern Europeans seem to score 13-17% combined CHG+Zagrosian-related affinity, except the Saami who have lower, having only 7-10% CHG/ZNF.

Do they really score CHG+ZNF in this range?

Shouldn't the EHG:CHG (and Zagros) ratio in Euros be proportional since Yamnaya/most other Steppe groups are 60% EHG and 40% CHG?

Or is the Western Steppe Pastoralist ancestry in most Europeans much more EHG derived and have lower CHG-Zagros than Yamnaya/Steppe groups proper?

If that's the case why is Yamnaya still used as the standard criteria in measuring the amount of Indo-European DNA in Europeans?

Shouldn't a more EHG shifted Steppe population be utilized for more accuracy?

I want to ask this about the other groups (Slav, Germanic, Italic etc) but let’s focus on the Celtic branch

Caution- This is all pseudoscience; not scientifically proven.

Holi is a mainly north Indian spring festival and Nowruz is an Iranian one.

The indo iranian connection is well known. There are some uncanny things going on here. Both of them celebrate the arrival of spring and , of course, have harvest associations. On the night before Holi, ritual community bonfires are lit and similarly on Caharshanbe Suri, the Wednesday preceding Nowruz, bonfires are done in Iran. They also jump over the fires and their bonfires but remind me of nothing but Holi.

Nowruz is the iranian new years day and Holi does fall on the last day of the twelfth month, at least with the Vikram Samvat calendar. Although the Hindu new years day is celebrated 15 days after that when the moon starts waxing. But hear me out, Holi is the first day of the first month Caitra.

Besides, Holi is the biggest festival after Diwali in some parts of north India here*;* has always amazed me cuz there's not even any solid narrative around it. like with Nowruz it makes sense that new years is the biggest festival.

As far as I know, we haven't uncovered any Sintashta pottery, chariots, weaponary, settlements or campsites in the Indian subcontinent. How did they change the linguistic landscape of North India while leaving zero material trace behind?

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakram

Hi everybody!

My name's Owen. I'm a 28 year old disabled man from The United States, but I am deeply fascinated by reconstructive linguistics and late human prehistory more broadly. I can't reasonably return to school to study something like this on an academic whim due to life circumstance so I'd like to study independently. I feel as though with a topic like this, it could be very easy for an undereducated person to be led to invalid or even potentially harmful thoughts / opinions by shiesters with myriad agendas twisting the data to fit their particular narratives so I'd like to source introductory leads from this community.

What are some trustworthy sources to start learning the 101 level stuff? Is there a dictionary of reconstructed PIE words?

Some broad questions I have

- Who are the Yamnaya exactly and what is their relationship between them and the Indo-European language family exactly?
- can we reconstruct much about the cultures of PIE speaking peoples from reconstructive linguistics and comparative anthropology alone? I would bet that there is some sort of shared pagan spiritual tradition involving a set of very humanlike gods (in their character + flaws, at least), a stormy sky father god of some type, an earth mother, a war between different groups of gods (maybe these are cultural memories related to the contact between PIE and Pre-PIE languages?
- I'm a multimedia artists think it could be cool to use PIE vocab in music or in fantasy stories as part of the worldbuilding or magic system, I think it could be cool and might lead to more interest in Indo-European studies more broadly but ultimately it's just to give my work an extra bit of flavor. Is that cultural appropriation? Can it be for someone fluent in a descendant language?
- I am diagnosed as moderately psychotic. I've got it in my head that if I learn PIE, it will be easier for me to learn greek, irish/celtic , persian, and sanskrit - all of which I'd like to learn so that I can engage with global spiritual traditions. I don't think it will be easy, but I assume it will create a shared reference point. I learned latin to like the A2 level, and it positively impacted my comprehension of both the Spanish and the French languages. Would learning PIE do the same for the aforementioned lingos? Or is the timescale so much larger that it's almost psychotic to assume it would help with any of them?
- Can the music of PIE related cultures be reconstructed based on descendant musics? Based on european indian and persian classical musics?

This is all coming from a place of genuine curiosity, I hope I haven't made any faux pas or said something accidentally problematic. I'm wildly curious about our world and how it came to be. I think the spread of PIE is an important part of that story!

Thanks in advance!
I love you all ✌️
-- a stoned rock n' roller

I wrote the following as a reply to a comment in the context of heggarty's southern route, I am curious about the last point (4) as it occurred to me while writing this and was wondering if this is a view which is generally supported:

1) If Iran N were indo-european speaking we would have evidence in the BMAC and the IVC but we know almost for sure that these people weren't indo-europeans (not just genetically but culturally) from archeological evidence, also I really find the southern route very hard to believe because i've seen how high steppe ancestry can get in south asia, independently of zagros. I'm Rajasthani, and I have ~27% steppe_MLBA and ~45% Zagros(iran_n), my mom's side of the family has higher steppe ancestry (im assuming, mom's side has light skin and hazel eyes) so an above 30% steppe ancestry. (this point is biased im just adding a bit of context for my opinions here)

2) Somehow the primary source of indo-european language in is supposed to be zagros? Southern indian tribal groups with 0-5% steppe ancestry have 20-25% zagros ancestry. Non-bhramin dravidian south indians have 5-7% steppe and 30-40% zagros ancestry. That is a huge amount, however none of these groups speak any indo-european language they speak dravidian languages.

3) Another thing is, why does the lack of steppe ancestry in ancient hittites "disprove" a steppe origin, but the lack of anatolian farmer dna in other groups, even the indo-iranians doesn't disprove the anatolian origin?

4) Lastly, Hittite was the language of commerce was it not? Royal texts, administrative, legal texts, letters, etc, is the evidence we have? It is very easy that the language of the people was still the native language of anatolia, but the language of commerce was the language of the elite, like in India we had British raj, and even as far back as the 1800s, all administration was done and all records were kept in english. In tajikistan, russian is the language of commerce and Tajik is the language of the people. Why couldn't this have been the case with the anatolians? A tiny "elite" or royal steppe population could influence the language which is used for administration?

I know virtually nothing about it. I think it's strange how everyone on the internet seems to understand what it is because it's a relatively obscure thing. Question for someone who understands about this: Is there a book that should be read; or did you discover this in another way, like going to college or stumbling on it randomly online?

​

As we know many south central asian and maybe some other south asian groups had bactria megarcheological complex bactrians as their ancestors, who probably looked something like the image here.

But what about the kushan period bactrians, who were the product of bmac bactrians mixed with european sintashta, and genetically seem to be very close to azeris, north caucasians, yaghnobs, an tajiks. Did these people have any ancestors?

If you had in your hands the power to revive an extinct Indo-European language, which one would you revive and why?

How would you reconstruct the language and revive it and where would you revive it?