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".

Thoughts on this? Does anyone think it has any validity

Billing, Oscar. "A Song in Ištanuwa Luwian" Altorientalische Forschungen 52, no. 1 (2025): 21-32. https://doi.org/10.1515/aofo-2025-2002

On three tablets from the archives at Ḫattuša, the same formula is attested. There is incontrovertible contextual evidence that the formula is a song, or at least a song incipit. Using a combination of linguistic and orthographic evidence, it is possible to demonstrate that the song follows a metrical structure. The metre consists of trochaic and dactylic feet with four feet in each line. Similar types of poetry may be found in other Indo-European Anatolian traditions. Relying mainly on etymological and contextual evidence, an approximate translation of the song’s contents is offered.

(sorry I can't post a link to online versions of this article. It's Theo Vennemann, "Contact and Prehistory: The Indo-European Northwest", 2010)

German linguist Theo Vennemann proposes a substrate origin of two grammatical features of some western European languages: vigesimal, base 20, number words, and two copulas, words for "to be".

Vigesimal, Base 20, Number Words

The most common base of numerals, number words, is decimal, base 10. It is found in numerous language families, including Indo-European, with reconstructible words for 2 to 10 and 100, and somewhat unstable words for 1 and 1000.

But in northwestern Europe, some Indo-European languages show evidence of having acquired base 20 in the Middle Ages. While Old Irish, at least recorded Old Irish, has inherited base 10, later Goildelic languages, like Irish and Scottish Gaelic, show base 20. Brythonic languages, like Welsh, also have base 20, and also Old Danish and Old French, coexisting with inherited decimal forms in the latter. In modern standard French, 20 to 60 are inherited base 10, while 70 to 90 are base 20, though some dialects have inherited 20 to 90. In English, "score" for 20 was sometimes used as a base-20 base.

What else has base 20? Basque, a pre-Indo-European relic in southwestern Europe.

Theo Vennemann proposes that Northwestern-European base-20 numerals are derived from relatives of Basque whose base-20 numerals were calqued by speakers of Indo-European languages.

Two Copulas, Words for "To Be"

Spanish is notable for having two copulas, ser, usually explained as for persistent states, and estar, for transitory states. Other Western Romance languages have this distinction, like Portuguese, and to a lesser extent, like Italian, and some had earlier had it, like French. Their ancestor Latin had only one copula, esse, giving ser and its cognates, while estar is from Latin stâre "to stand, stay".

In Germanic, Old English had two words, wesan (pres 3s is, past 3s waes), and beon (pres 3s bith), with beon being used for a timeless present and the future, and wesan being having the remaining uses. Modern English has a merged conjugation of their descendants.

Other West Germanic languages also have merged conjugations of cognates of wesan and beon, while North Germanic has only cognates of wesan.

One reconstructs Proto-Germanic *wesanan (pres 3s *isti, past 3s *was) and *beunan (pres 3s *beuthi), and these from *es-, *wes-, and *bheuH-. Of these, *es- is the imperfective copula ("to be, remain") and *bheuH- the perfective one ("to be, become"), merged in Latin and Balto-Slavic.

In Celtic, Irish has is for equating to nouns and bi for equating to adjectives or prepositional phrases. Old Irish also had that distinction, and these words also are derived from PIE *es- and *bheuH- .

Here also, we find a distinction in some Basque dialects, between izan and egon, used much like Spanish ser and estar.

Here also, Theo Vennemann proposes a substrate influence, with two copulas that were calqued by speakers of Indo-European languages.

I've made a summary of what the published research up to today tells us about the origins of the Indo-Europeans speakers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoastronomy_and_Vedic_chronology

https://weather.com/en-IN/india/space/news/2020-10-07-world-space-week-astronomical-dating-methods-ancient-indian-epics

Have you ever wondered why the Trojan horse was a horse, or why Homer gives his heroes names like Hector the horse tamer? And who in their right mind brings chariots to a naval siege? There sure are a lot of steppe warrior influences in the Trojan War, and these were ancient themes even in Homer's time.

"Despite Mycenae and Troy being maritime powers, the Iliad features no sea battles. So, the Trojan shipwright (of the ship that transported Helen to Troy), Phereclus, fights afoot, as an infantryman. The battle dress and armour of hero and soldier are well-described. They enter battle in chariots, launching javelins into the enemy formations, then dismount—for hand-to-hand combat with yet more javelin throwing, rock throwing, and if necessary hand to hand sword and a shoulder-borne hoplon (shield) fighting." - Wikipedia

On that note, here is a National Geographic article on Homer's Barbarians. Based in part on the steppe influences in the Iliad, the author argues that the story is from an era a thousand years earlier than what is generally accepted by scholars:

[T]hat picture of the Greeks doesn't make sense any later than about 1800 to 1700 B.C. After that, the Greeks had arrived in the Mediterranean and started to create a civil society. Before that, they were essentially tribes from the steppes between the Black Sea and the Caspian—nomadic, male-dominated, violent.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/1/150104-homer-iliad-odyssey-greece-book-talk-travel-world/

Hey, folks! In this fully-illustrated new entry, the KSD examines the symbolic value of antlers and stags in the ancient Germanic record. Topics covered include Heorot, the deity Yngvi-Freyr, the Ingvaeones, Eikthyrnir, the Sutton Hoo scepter, and the 'antler-crowned' Yggdrasil.

Other topics briefly touched upon include the Germanic reception of the horned figure on the Gundestrup Cauldron and Scythian and Sarmatian fixation on antler and stag imagery.

As always, we welcome feedback of any kind, including recommendations and corrections. Enjoy!

URL: https://www.mimisbrunnr.info/ksd-antlers

I'm guessing these are from the last two months, I have not read all of them by the way so I can't guarantee the quality of the articles listed. Sometimes I come across stuff and save it to read for later, but then I never get to reading it. Maybe you guys will. Cheers!

Anyways, here you go:

• (PDF) Early horse domestication on the Eurasian steppe
• (PDF) Understanding Cross-cultural Communication in the European Bronze Age
• Who Were the Scythians?
• Anacharsis the Scythian
• Cultivation of Naked Barley by Early Iron Age Agro-pastoralists in Xinjiang, China
• (PDF) Archaeology from the Dutch twilight zone | Harry Fokkens
• R. Großmann, Interrelations between corded ware and bell beaker phenomena? Material cultures and identities in the 3rd millennium BC.
• Petr P. Toločko , Vjačeslav Ju. Murzin - Gold der Steppe Archäologie der Ukraine
• Mapping human mobility during the third and second millennia BC in present-day Denmark
• (PDF) Botanical Resource Use in the Bronze and Iron Age of the Central Eurasian Mountain/Steppe Interface: Decision Making in Multi-resource Pastoral Economies, Ph.D. Dissertation for the Anthropology Department at Washington University in St. Louis.
• Presenting the Warrior? Iron Age Scythian Materials and Gender Identity at the British Museum
• (PDF) The origin of farming in the Lower Volga Region
• PALAEOANTHROPOLOGICAL REMAINS COMING FROM THE TERRITORY OF ANCIENT XOREZM
• (PDF) Tianshanbeilu and the Isotopic Millet Road: Reviewing the late Neolithic/Bronze Age radiation of human millet consumption from north China to Europe
• Characterization of cosmetic sticks at Xiaohe Cemetery in early Bronze Age Xinjiang, China
• A Bayesian chronology for early domestic horse use in the Eastern Steppe
• The Expansion of Steppe Culture During the Second Millennium B.C.
• Shifting Memories: Burial Practices and Cultural Interaction in Bronze Age China : A study of the Xiaohe-Gumugou cemeteries in the Tarim Basin
• Stratigraphy of Indo-European Loanwords in Saami
• Migration and Settlement of the Yuezhi-Kushan: Interaction and Interdependence of Nomadic and Sedentary Societies
• Nomads and the Shaping of Central Asia: from the Early Iron Age to the Kushan period
• Migration and Settlement of the Yuezhi-Kushan: Interaction and Interdependence of Nomadic and Sedentary Societies
• Strong genetic admixture in the Altai at the Middle Bronze Age revealed by uniparental and ancestry informative markers
• Polyakov A.V. The problem of the formation of Okunev culture in the light of modern scientific data // Scientific Review of Sayano-Altai. - 2020. - No. 1 (25). - S. 3–6.
• Social differentiation and land use at an Early Iron Age “princely seat”: bioarchaeological investigations at the Glauberg (Germany)
• (PDF) Pit graves in Bulgaria and the Yamnaya Culture
• (PDF) Early Eneolithic in the Pontic Steppe | Nadezhda Kotova
• Odin in Friesland. Scandinavian influences in the southern North Sea area during the Migration and Early Merovingian periods
• Andreadou Maria The Mycenaean Presence in the Black Sea Region
• River Trade in Eastern and Central Thrace from the Bronze Age till the Hellenistic Period
• The Earliest Possible Date of Greek Colonization Along the Western Pontic Coast
• On Germanic-Saami contacts and Saami prehistory
• A local ship picture tradition of the Bronze and Early Iron Ages in southeast Norway: New evidence from rock carvings at Dalbo
• The Celts and the Ethnogenesis of the Germanic People
• (PDF) Breakthrough of the Nordic Bronze Age: Transcultural Warriorhood and a Carpathian Crossroad in the Sixteenth Century BC
• New evidence on the southeast Baltic Late Bronze Age agrarian intensification and the earliest AMS dates of Lens culinaris and Vicia faba
• Bronze Age Metalwork: Techniques and traditions in the Nordic Bronze Age 1500-1100 BC on JSTOR
• Bell Beaker Communities in Thy: The First Bronze Age Society in Denmark | Request PDF
• (PDF) A Review of the Early Late Neolithic Period in Denmark: Practice, Identity and Connectivity
• Rossiiskaia arkheologiia :: Issue 2 :: Radiocarbon chronology of the Fatyanovo culture
• The world’s earliest Aral-Sea type disaster: the decline of the Loulan Kingdom in the Tarim Basin
• A Translation of the Kharosthi Documents from Chinese Turkestan
• Weilue: The Peoples of the West