I can recommend the new book Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, by Laura Spinney. It's an overview of what we know about Proto Indo-European and its spread across the world. Much of the book is evidence from linguistics but it also regularly dips into Reich's ancient DNA work and other sources to cross-correlate with the linguistic evidence. It's very well written.
Also David Anthony's book _The Horse, the Wheel, and Language_ (2007), which just missed the ancient DNA revolution but essentially anticipated its findings on Yamnaya migration from the Pontic-Caspian steppe into Europe.
> It's an overview of what we know about Proto Indo-European and its spread across the world.
That's a bit misleading isn't it? PIE died out a long time ago. And it certainly didn't spread all over the world. It's descendent languages moved into india, middle east and europe. And it's european languages ( primarily spanish, french and english ) that went global. Nobody would say Latin went global just because spanish is spoken around the world. Or old english went global because much of the world speaks english.
Before agriculture, supply trains weren't a thing. How much less wouldn't they have been a thing before language.
It's not that I think ancient people were nice, far from it. But "vast clashes" suggest armies, wars of extinction etc. and those wouldn't have been a thing for economic and logistic reasons. Your tribe might have been better at killing than your neighboring tribe, but they weren't a thousand times better at it.
Even into recent prehistory, this was true. I speak a language descendend from more or less invading steppe peoples (as do we all here), but they're just a small part of my genetic ancestry. That is actually still mostly from European hunter-gatherers. My Y-DNA is from EHGs too, like the majority in my country, so there clearly wasn't the stereotypical "taking all the women as slaves" event that many imagine either.
Agriculture and horses gave some people from outside a big advantage, sure, big enough to dominate in many ways, but not big enough to wholesale replace the people who lived in this part of the world already. "Vast clashes" is not the right way of thinking about how some early hominids replaced others.
I highly recommend that people who read the book also read criticism addressing the authors understanding of race and genetics in said book, such as https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/bfopinion/race-genetics... quote: ‘Reich’s understanding of "race" … is seriously flawed.’
I have read the book in its entirety and thought the crude notion of "race" attributed to Reich in that letter was a strawman. Of course he doesn't subscribe to scientific-racist notions from a century ago! Have you read the book?
Not that I disagree. You're very likely correct in your assessment.
I only wanted to point out that you're almost forced to come up with some theory you have to explain genomic findings. Over time, yes, most of those theories have historically been shown to be bunk. (My gut tells me this one will share a similar fate.)
But that's the scientific method. Propose a hypothesis (theory). Design experiments to test said theory. Present the results. Which should lead you to another hypothesis.
In the "propose a hypothesis" phase, at least in fields like this one, the proposals will tend to be informed more by world view than by science. That's how humans think. I don't think there's any changing that. The control, or "check and balance", is supposed to be the objective review and validated replication of the results. Which is, I grant you, lacking at times.
I can recommend the new book Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, by Laura Spinney. It's an overview of what we know about Proto Indo-European and its spread across the world. Much of the book is evidence from linguistics but it also regularly dips into Reich's ancient DNA work and other sources to cross-correlate with the linguistic evidence. It's very well written.
Also David Anthony's book _The Horse, the Wheel, and Language_ (2007), which just missed the ancient DNA revolution but essentially anticipated its findings on Yamnaya migration from the Pontic-Caspian steppe into Europe.
> It's an overview of what we know about Proto Indo-European and its spread across the world.
That's a bit misleading isn't it? PIE died out a long time ago. And it certainly didn't spread all over the world. It's descendent languages moved into india, middle east and europe. And it's european languages ( primarily spanish, french and english ) that went global. Nobody would say Latin went global just because spanish is spoken around the world. Or old english went global because much of the world speaks english.
But thanks for the recommendation.
I'm sorry you didn't understand my perfectly clear colloquial description of the spread of a language family.
Here's the archive.org link - https://web.archive.org/web/20250615092146/https://www.lapha...
> The evidence for much of these vast clashes
Before agriculture, supply trains weren't a thing. How much less wouldn't they have been a thing before language.
It's not that I think ancient people were nice, far from it. But "vast clashes" suggest armies, wars of extinction etc. and those wouldn't have been a thing for economic and logistic reasons. Your tribe might have been better at killing than your neighboring tribe, but they weren't a thousand times better at it.
Even into recent prehistory, this was true. I speak a language descendend from more or less invading steppe peoples (as do we all here), but they're just a small part of my genetic ancestry. That is actually still mostly from European hunter-gatherers. My Y-DNA is from EHGs too, like the majority in my country, so there clearly wasn't the stereotypical "taking all the women as slaves" event that many imagine either.
Agriculture and horses gave some people from outside a big advantage, sure, big enough to dominate in many ways, but not big enough to wholesale replace the people who lived in this part of the world already. "Vast clashes" is not the right way of thinking about how some early hominids replaced others.
I highly recommend Reich's book _Who We Are and How We Got Here_.
I highly recommend that people who read the book also read criticism addressing the authors understanding of race and genetics in said book, such as https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/bfopinion/race-genetics... quote: ‘Reich’s understanding of "race" … is seriously flawed.’
I have read the book in its entirety and thought the crude notion of "race" attributed to Reich in that letter was a strawman. Of course he doesn't subscribe to scientific-racist notions from a century ago! Have you read the book?
Yes I have read the book and agree with the signatories to the letter. I respect that you have read the book and do not.
David Reich was on the Dwarkesh podcast about a year ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj6skZIxPuI
It's a really good interview. Recommended if you're an amateur wanting to understand more about human prehistory.
Highly recommend watching Dwarakesh interviewing Reich: https://youtu.be/Uj6skZIxPuI
You will learn more about human prehistory in that 2 hours than anything else.
This strikes me as more of an an attempt to cherrypick and graft genomic findings onto a pre-decided worldview than an objective, scientific article.
Not that I disagree. You're very likely correct in your assessment.
I only wanted to point out that you're almost forced to come up with some theory you have to explain genomic findings. Over time, yes, most of those theories have historically been shown to be bunk. (My gut tells me this one will share a similar fate.)
But that's the scientific method. Propose a hypothesis (theory). Design experiments to test said theory. Present the results. Which should lead you to another hypothesis.
In the "propose a hypothesis" phase, at least in fields like this one, the proposals will tend to be informed more by world view than by science. That's how humans think. I don't think there's any changing that. The control, or "check and balance", is supposed to be the objective review and validated replication of the results. Which is, I grant you, lacking at times.
Don't worry, there is a tremendous amount of genetic ancestry data in the world, and that data will overwhelm prior beliefs