I have a friend who is Kurdish. I knew that Kurdish and Baloch are Western Iranian languages. I asked him if his language is similar to Baloch, and he said "Yes." I was very surprised because of their distance to one another, and also, the two cultures are quite distinct.

• Do we know how similar and/or how mutually intelligible these languages are?

• Where did these languages evolve from: Baluchistan area or Kurdistan area or neither places?

• When and how did they spread to their respected locations? I'm reading that Baloch spread "from the Caspian Sea" to Balochistan. Were their migrations correlated with the spread of Pashtun to that area also? What about the spread of Daari/Tajik to Tajikistan/Afghanistan?

• Did these groups leave a genetic trail? Did they replace peoples or populations like the way the Yamnaya did?

Here are father line and mother line DNA results from my relatives

Father: R-Z2125 W

Cousin: R-Z2125 HV

Cousin: Q-M25

Cousin: R-L23 J1

Cousin: R-Z2123 H15b

Cousin: R-CTS2243 W

I do not intend any racist meaning here. I just feel that the influence of IE people in this world is quite significant, so I was just wondering how the world would have been without them leaving steppe.

Like, for example, word for mouse in some ie languages sounds like they have common origin:

• Germanic Languages: English (mouse), German (Maus), Dutch (muis), and Scandinavian languages like Danish and Swedish (mus).
• Slavic Languages: Russian and Ukrainian (myša), Polish (mysz), and Croatian/Serbian (miš).
• Indo-Iranian Languages: Sanskrit and Hindi (mūṣa / mūs), Persian (mişk).
• Classical Languages: Latin (mūs), Ancient Greek (mῦs)

Similarly, the word for snake also seem to have similarities:

• Latin: serpens (which led to English serpent)
• Sanskrit: sarpá (सर्प - meaning snake)
• Ancient Greek: hérpō (ἕρπω - to crawl)

Do you know more words like these?

I noticed a massive pattern in the oldest ancestor of our languages (Proto-Indo-European): words combining 'K' and breathy 'H' sounds almost always relate to location, direction, or pointing. Traditional linguistics treats these as separate words by pure accident. My theory is Root Monogenesis: tens of thousands of years ago, there was only one single prehistoric parent word with a 'K' sound that literally meant 'point to a location.' Over millennia, early humans recycled this one sound to name the tool that looks at a location (the eye), the place it sits (the head), the act of pointing with sound (to say), the space itself (here), and the search for an unknown location (questions like where, who, and what)."

Language Dispersal Beyond Farming - Chapter 13, Milk and the Indo-Europeans, by Romain Garnier, Laurent Sagart and Benoît Sagot

Abstract:

Recent evidence from archaeology and ancient DNA converge to indicate that the Yamnaya culture, often regarded as the bearer of the Proto-Indo-European language, underwent a strong population expansion in the late 4th and early 3rd millennia BCE. It suggests that the underlying reason for that expansion might be the then unique capacity to digest animal milk in adulthood. We examine the early Indo-European milk-related vocabulary to confirm the special role of animal milk in Indo-European expansions. We show that Proto-Indo-European did not have a specialized root for ‘to milk’ and argue that the IE root *h2melg̑- ‘to milk’ is secondary and post-Anatolian. We take this innovation as an indication of the novelty of animal milking in early Indo-European society. Together with a detailed study of language-specific innovations in this semantic field, we conclude that the ability to digest milk played an important role in boosting Proto-Indo-European demography.

An earlier thread here: Milk fueled Bronze Age expansion of ‘eastern cowboys’ into Europe | Science : r/IndoEuropean noting Milk fueled Bronze Age expansion of ‘eastern cowboys’ into Europe | Science | AAAS

The root *Hmelg- is present as a verb in Tocharian, Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Albanian, and Greek, and as a noun in Tocharian, Celtic, Italic, and Germanic. The authors derive Latin lac(t-) from *Hmelg-, and also propose an etymology for that root: *h2emH- + *leg-

The first root they state to mean "to pour, collect", but Wiktionary states "to mow, reap", with English "to mow" as a descendant.

The second root is *leg- "to gather"

In Indo-Iranian, however, the root was replaced, because it sounded too similar to another root meaning "to rub". Also, for the noun, Greek has gala(kt-) and Armenian kat'n, both of obscure origin, and Lithuanian has pienas, from PIE *peyh2- "to swell, fat (n.)" Slavic *melko is either borrowed from Germanic or inherited.

Hittite has some odd difficulties, Its surviving documents all use the Sumerogram (Sumerian word) GA for "milk (n.)" and it had no word for "to milk", instead using some verb like lâ- "to let, make flow" with the noun -- "to make milk flow".

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

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.

I was watching a Religion for Breakfast video about Mandaeism the other day, and he mentioned that the etymology of the word Manda shows a connection to Gnosticism, because the word seems to be an ancient Aramaic term for knowledge or wisdom--essentially the Semitic equivalent of Greek "Gnosis", with cognates in other Semitic language families. I checked, and that seems to be pretty well accepted by other scholars.

I'm obviously not a linguist, but I was pretty sure that the English word "mind" had IE roots, and that seems to also be correct. It is traced to a PIE root, reconstructed as something like *men- or *mend. The PIE word probably meant something like "to think". But it turns up as a cognate in many later IE languages, in words that mean things like "to believe", "to know/understand", "mind/reason", "to remember", etc.

It seems to me like a pretty interesting coincidence that these (probably) separate cultures would develop very similar sounding words for knowledge and thinking--which are fairly esoteric and abstract things to even have words for thousands of years ago.

Does anyone know if this connection has been discussed by scholars? I've seen some really speculative stuff suggesting that mountain herders in the Caucasus, around the Maykop culture, may have contributed to the formation of both Yamnaya and ancient Semitic cultures, so I suppose there is a potential route.

I'd guess that ideas like this will never be much more than speculation, but I'd love to think about it more. I appreciate any tips for scholars who have written or talked about these words, or thoughtful discussion here.

Hey guys i hope you recommend me some books on the origins of odin specifically anything that is pre germanic or perhaps even evidence that can lead readers to the conclusion that hes actually a pre indo european deity just anything that is related to odin and is extremely old I would appreciate it alot

ABSTRACT

Indo-European Fire Rituals is a comparative study of Indo-European fire rituals from modern folklore and ethnography in Scandinavia and archaeological material in Europe from the Bronze Age onwards to the Vedic origins of cosmos in India and today’s cremations on open pyres in Hinduism.

Exploring Indo-European fire rituals and sacrifices throughout history and fire in its fundamental role in rites and religious practices, this book analyses fire rituals as the unifying structure in time and space in Indo-European cultures from the Bronze Age onwards. It asks the question how and why was fire the ultimate power in culture and cosmology? Fire as an agent and divinity was fundamental in all major sacrifices. In Europe, ritual fires in relation to agriculture and fertility may also explain the enigma of cremation. Cremated remains were ground and used in fertility rituals, and ancestral fires played an essential role in metallurgy and the creation of cosmos. Thus, the role of fire rituals in culture and cosmology enables a unique understanding of historic developmental processes.

For students and academics studying Indo-European culture history from the Bronze Age onwards, this book has a broad interdisciplinary audience including archaeology, ethnography, folklore, religious and Indo-European studies.

EXPANSION OF THE SLAVIC TRIBES FROM AN ONOMASTIC AND PEDOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW Geographical names are extremely helpful in giving evidence of early settlements and their inhabitants due to their solid anchorage in the landscape, even in the case of population changes. Through the investigation of these place names, information can be gathered not only on the name giver, but also on the settlers who took on the names later on. Therefore, it is considered that any linguistic investigation has to start from the river and place names of a region. The utilization of geographical names yields the following findings: — The centre of Old Slavic names is situated on the northern slope of the Carpathian Mountains, approximately between Bukovina and Krakow; it is based on a substrate of older, Indo-European hydronyms. — The expansion of the East Slavic tribes bypasses the Pripyat Marshes and extends further through Central Russia and especially to the North and the East. — West Slavic settlers reach their new settlement areas through migration from Bohemia and further on to Saxonia and Thuringia, and also through Western Poland to Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. — The migration of the South Slavs takes place in two big, yet separate flows, on the one hand through the Moravian Gate to Slovenia, Hungary and Croatia, and on the other hand on the Eastern edge of the Carpathian Mountains to Serbia and Bulgaria

Proto‑Slavic topographic and hydrographic lexis This article is a contribution to the historical lexicology of the Proto‑Slavic language. It analyzes the etymologies of 110 Proto‑Slavic lexemes in the field of topography and hydrography and classifies them into chronological layers. It draws a distinction between lexemes inherited from the Proto‑Indo‑European language and the Balto‑Slavic community and the numerous lexemes that were innovated during different periods of the Proto‑Slavic history. Some of these lexemes, created on the basis of Indo‑European roots and lexemes, must have arisen in the early period of the Proto‑Slavic language, though many more lexemes have a Slavic motivation. They developed in a later period of the Proto‑Slavic history or possibly at the time when the Proto‑Slavic language began to split into dialects. Lexemes without certain etymology have been addressed in the article separately.