Anatolian hypothesis

[citation needed] The Anatolian hypothesis suggests that the speakers of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) lived in Anatolia during the Neolithic era.

[6]Bouckaert et al. (2012), including Gray and Atkinson, conducted a computerized phylogeographic study, using methods drawn from the modeling of the spatial diffusion of infectious diseases; it also showed strong support for the Anatolian hypothesis[7][8] despite having undergone corrections and revisions.

Dating and mapping language distributions back into prehistory has an inevitable fascination, but has remained fraught with difficulty.

Notwithstanding these remaining limitations, in the Indo-European case the results from Bayesian phylogenetics continue to reinforce the argument for an Anatolian rather than a Steppe origin.

Horse breeding is thought to have originated with the Sredny Stog culture, semi-nomadic pastoralists living in the forest steppe zone, now in Ukraine.

[13] According to Mallory and Adams (2006), linguistic analysis shows that the Proto-Indo-European lexicon seems to include words for a range of inventions and practices related to the Secondary Products Revolution, which postdates the early spread of farming.

[15] Many Indo-European languages have cognate words meaning axle: Latin axis, Lithuanian ašis, Russian: os', and Sanskrit: ákṣa.

The reconstructed PIE root *yeu-g- gives rise to Old High German joh, juh, Hittite iukan, Latin iugum, Greek ζυγόν, zygón and Sanskrit yugá(m), all meaning yoke.

"However, Lazaridis et al. previously admitted being unsure "if the steppe is the ultimate source" of the Indo-European languages and believe that more data is needed.

[21] Archaeologist Kristian Kristiansen argues that the combination of recent linguistic research and evidence from ancient DNA studies has 'largely falsified' the Anatolian hypothesis.

[22] Linguist Alwin Kloekhorst has stated that the confirmation by recent ancient DNA studies of massive migrations from the steppe to areas of Europe and Asia means that "no one can seriously uphold the Anatolian hypothesis for Classical Proto-Indo-European anymore.