ACADEMIA Letters Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language Xavier Rouard In my study The Odyssey of Gauls and Slavs from North-Western India to Europe, I conclude, on the basis of linguistic, genetic and archaeological studies that the peopling of Europe took place from N-W India, Pakistan, Iran, the Caucasus and Anatolia, creating a proto-IndoMediterranean culture. These studies give credit to the linguistic matches I found between Gaulish, Slavic, Dravidian and Burushaski (250 Dravidian and 160 Burushaski words out of 500 Gaulish/Slavic words). A study published in Science, Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family, also tends to strengthen this theory. It states that there are two competing hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European language family. The conventional view places the homeland in the Pontic steppes about 6000 years ago. An alternative hypothesis claims that these languages spread from Anatolia with the expansion of farming 8000 to 9500 years ago. Using Bayesian phylogeographic approaches, together with basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages to model the expansion of the family and test these hypotheses, this study concludes in a decisive support to an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin, as both the inferred timing and root location of the Indo-European language trees fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8000 to 9500 years ago. A map from this study clearly places the origin of Indo-Iranian languages between North-Western India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Caspian Sea and Zagros, which would be for me the original homeland of Dravidian and Indo-European languages, and shows close links between Indo-Iranian, Caucasian and Anatolian languages, which clearly plead for a formation of Indo-European languages in this region from before 8.000 BC, according to the dates indicated in this study. This theory could be also attested by the interesting Burushaski language of Northern Pakistan which, according to Michael Witzel’s study Origin and Development of Language in South Asia: Phylogeny Versus Epigenetics? mixes features Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Xavier Rouard, rouardx@gmail.com Citation: Rouard, X. (2021). Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language. Academia Letters, Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1645. 1 from Dravidian, Sanskrit and Caucasian languages and shares the vigesimal numeration with Dravidian, Caucasian and Basque (vimsati, twenty in Dravidian, could even have given vingt, twenty in French). The interesting study of Simon Greenhill, The shape and tempo of language evolution, places Burushaski between Kannada (a Dravidian language), Hindi, Caucasian languages and Basque, which also supports its archaic character. The Ukrainian archaeologist Iurii Mosenkis also underlines the links of Burushaski, which he considers as very archaic, with Sino-Caucasian and Indo-European languages as Armenian, Phrygian and paleo-Balkan languages. According to the recent study Rapid radiation of the inner Indo-European languages: an advanced approach to Indo-European lexicostatistics, these languages stem from an original Eurasian language, which included Samoyedic languages from Siberia and split between 18.000 and 8.000 BC. A very interesting study of the University of Québec, Classification of the Indo-European languages using a phylogenetic network approach, underlines the close links between Celtic, Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages, considering that this may be the evidence of a much closer common ancestry between these families than generally thought, or of an intensive migration of the ancestors of the involved nations. The timeframe set in these studies also fits, besides the expansion of agriculture from Anatolia, with the development of megalithism, which expanded, according in particular to the Ukrainian archaeologist Iurii Mosenkis, jointly with Dravidian religion and language, from Zagros (around 10.000 BC) to Çatal Höyük (7.400 BC-6.200 BC), Vinča (6.000-4.000 BC) and Gaul, where megalithism developed from around 5.000 BC. It also fits with genetic data from ancient DNA, which attest that 30% of the French genetic pool, mainly Anatolian and Basque, came at the Neolithic, as haplogroups Y-DNA H2, I-M170 and R1b, found from Iran, Anatolia and the Balkans to Gaul and characteristic of megalithic DNA. The presence of Dravidian haplogroups H2, as well as L-M20 (found in South Caucasus and Southern Europe), attests of the Dravidian component of this Neolithic migration. Another study, Global Picture of Genetic Relatedness and The Evolution of Humankind, published in Biology in 2020, underlines the major role of Central Eurasia (Central Asia, Iran, Caucasus) in the transmission of genes, the peoples which genes are the most diversified, as Uighurs, Azerbaijani, Uzbeks and Iranians, carrying roughly equal genetic contributions from the Middle East, Europe, China, and India. As concerns Europeans, this study clearly shows that Neolithic migrations strongly modified the European genome by bringing MiddleEastern, and in particular Anatolian, genes (40%), in the same proportion as the genes of original hunter-gatherers (40%). Indian genes spread in decreasing proportion in Iran (20%), the Caucasus (14%) and Europe (5%). Arctic and Siberian genes mostly spread in NorthEastern Europe (15% against 5% elsewhere). Finally, African genes spread mostly in Southern Europe (10% in Spain and 7% in Italy). This study strengthens the theory of a major Neolithic Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Xavier Rouard, rouardx@gmail.com Citation: Rouard, X. (2021). Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language. Academia Letters, Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1645. 2 migration from India and Central Asia to the Caucasus, Anatolia and Europe by the Balkans and Northern Africa. Central Asia, at the crossroad of these influences, appears as a very serious candidate as original homeland of the ancestor of Indo-European, Dravidian and Ibero-Caucasian languages, of which Burushaski, which could have come from Altay, bringing also Altaic linguistic elements, as well as haplogroups R1a and R1b, which originated from Southern Siberia and spread to Europe, would be an archaic remnant, as Kalasha, archaic Indo-Aryan language of the Pamir. This spread is also corroborated by archaeological discoveries dating from the Gravettian in Altay, Pamir and Uzbekistan, according to researchers as Marcel Otte, and this first migration brought haplogroup R1b in Italy (Villabruna, 14.000 BC), in France (12.000 BC) and in Serbia (11.000 BC). This major early migration for the peopling of Europe from Anatolia and the Caucasus is also corroborated by the study A major Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b Holocene era founder effect in Central and Western Europe, by Natalie Myres et al. The alleged Pamirian origin of haplogroup L-M20, carried by 15% by the Burushos and 25% of the Kalash, found in the Caucasus, but also in Southern Europe, as well as the Pamirian origin of Bulgarian genes, according to a study of Slavyan Stoilov, and the proximity of the genes of Pamirian Tajiks and European genes according to Evelyne Heyer also plead in this direction. The presence of features of Pamirian languages in Thracian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Albanian and Aromanian, language of Vlachs, as bac, sheepfold in Burushaski, bacija in Balkan languages, and zamiina, earth in Burushaski, close to zemlja, earth, reinforces this theory. It could explain that the name of Zalmoxis, Thracian Grand Priest considered as being at the origin of Druidism, would come from Dravidian. The presence even in French of words close to Burushaski linked to pastoralism and agriculture (terre, earth, close to ter, mountain pasture, bélier, ram, close to belis, ewe, lamb, bouc, he-goat, close to buc, he-goat, charrue, plow, close to har, plow, pomme, apple, close to phamol, fruit), family (maman, mother, close to mama, mother, papa, father, close to bapo, father, fils, fille, son, daughter, close to pilili, child), human body (cœur, heart, close to guru, heart, bouche, mouth, close to buk, throat), as well as feu, fire, close to phu, fire, servir, serve, close to ser, serve, je, I, close to je, I, also close to ja, I in Slavic, le, the, close to le, the, and to articles found in Balkan languages, and the presence in Gaulish, French and Slavic of many Dravidian and Burushaski words quoted in this study, undoubtedly plead for a migration linked to the expansion of pastoralism and agriculture from Central Asia and the confines of India to the Caucasus, Anatolia, the Balkans and Western Europe at the Neolithic. This migration is attested by the arrival in France of goats carrying genes from Central Asia and Pakistan. It brought to Europe an archaic Euro-Asiatic language, mixing features of the most archaic Indo-European languages of India and AnatoAcademia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Xavier Rouard, rouardx@gmail.com Citation: Rouard, X. (2021). Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language. Academia Letters, Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1645. 3 lia, Dravidian, Elamite, Altaic and Ibero-Caucasian languages, taking part in the formation of Indo-European languages, of which Burushaski, classified by the famous linguist Eric Hamp as the most archaic Indo-European language linked to Indo-Hittite, is a remnant. According to Csaba Barnabas Horvath’s study, How Eurasia was born, published by International relations quarterly, Burushaski was the first language spoken on the Iranian plateau, before being replaced by Elamo-Dravidian and later Indo-European. This tends to confirm the anteriority of Burushaski and the theory that this language, as well as Elamo-Dravidian, contributed to the formation of Indo-European languages. I will quote Rongxing Guo’s Chinese study Wadier: A New History of Civilizations What do the Ancestral Voices and Glyphs Say? according to whom all ancient civilisations, Chinese, Indian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, European, but also American would stem from an ancestral civilisation in which wadi and various variants as wan, meaning river, valley, forest, mountain, mother-earth, can be found with a religious connotation in numerous languages as Dravidian and Gaulish. The root wa can also be found in names of Gods as Dewa, Siwa or Yahweh. Other words as mako, child, or mena, think, which can be found in many languages as Gaulish, could also come from this original language. As a conclusion, I can agree with Mel Copeland who, in his review of my paper below, underlines, on the basis of his paper Eurasian linguistic foundations, published on Academia, that the formation of Eurasian languages appears to have occurred on a strech reaching from the Balkans to the Altaï mountains, together with the expansion of pastoralism, probably from at least 10.000 BC. Reviews and author’s comments Mel Copeland, Review “Rouard’s paper highlights what several scholars, including myself, suspect, that there was a lot of mixing among pastoral tribes, perhaps from the Neolithic and definitely in the Bronze Age. Migration lies at the core of human culture, and in terms of the animals they fed upon, their migration tended to follow the herds. A stretch of Asia, reaching from the Balkans to the Altai Mountains, has shown to be a main course of pastoral tribes, following herds and later searching for copper and tin ores, found in the Urals, south of the Urals, at Samara, above the desert of Kazakhstan, and in the Altai Mountains. More mining was done along the Silk Road (Bukarah, Samarkand), in Afghanistan (everywhere) and Pakistan, the mountain range north of Gujarit. My work, “Eurasian Linguistic Foundations,” (available on academia.edu), is sorting out the amount of linguistic mixing that took place among 35 languages, including Sanskrit, Akkadian, Hittite, Hurrian, Lycian, Altaic, Indo-European, Tocharian, Basque, Baltic, Georgian, Gujarati, Mongolian, Chinese, etc. Perhaps most remarkable in the interAcademia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Xavier Rouard, rouardx@gmail.com Citation: Rouard, X. (2021). Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language. Academia Letters, Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1645. 4 mixture of languages was the name for boat (variations of Kayak) used among Altaic peoples, Persians, Irish and the Greenland Eskimos. That common word for a skin-covered boat would have to date before 10,000 B.C., before the Eskimos migrated from Siberia to North America. Pastoralists had to cross rivers and fashioning a boat from gathered wood and animal skins is apparent. That it had a common name among the groups mentioned is significant. (See “boat” in our “Eurasian Linguistic Foundations.” No doubt there are other common lexemes that can be traced to the same period. An important area In Siberia north of Lake Baikal (the lake is the reputed to be the birthplace of Ghengis Khan), is a pastoral region between the river Irtysh and its tributary the Ob. The river’s source is the Altai Mountains. Since we have seen Chinese linguistic correspondence in our “Eurasian Linguistic Foundations,” this may be where much of the Linguistic mixing took place. I agree with Rouard, but would suggest that as people came in contact, because of herding, for trade, etc., and crisscrossed Asian and European lands, there was considerable crisscrossing in their languages (as seen in the work cited above.) I was particularly interested in the Finnish-Uralic linguistic correspondence to Akkadian. What were the Finns doing so far south? If they were cattle-traders, this may explain the relationship. If they were trading with tribes at the Samara copper and tin mines (at the corridor between the Ural Mountains and the Kazakhstan desert) they may have been trading in copper and tin. The Irish were also apparently trading with the Akkadians (Assyrians). There is much to be explored from Rouard’s inquiry. As with English, which contains Latin, Spanish, Chinese, German, Norse, French, Hebrew, etc., the people moving back and forth through Asia acquired composite lexemes. The mixing was not linear, but rather like making soup. Author’s comments Dear Mel, thank you very much for your recommendation and valuable comments. I will read your paper “Eurasian Linguistic foundations” with great interest. Rodrigo Jociles-Ferrer, Review “Yes it is. Well based and alternative thinking of the Indo-European language family problem. In principle I don’t agree completely with the main thesis, however I do and find worthy many individual data and facts.” Author’s comments Dear Rodrigo, thank you very much for your recommendation. Geoffrey W Gardiner, Review “I strongly recommend the publication of this paper. It develops a view which had seemed to me to have great merit ever since DNA studies became available around 2000AD. Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Xavier Rouard, rouardx@gmail.com Citation: Rouard, X. (2021). Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language. Academia Letters, Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1645. 5 It also seems to me that philologists have been reluctant to accept the antiquity of IndoEuropean languages because of their assumption that ancient peoples were not as clever as later ones. Surely it must be the case that the opposite is true in view of the sophistication of ancient languages compared with modern, Ancient Greek being a perfect example. The paper shows the advantage of scientific evidence over mere speculation. Of course carbon dating has played a big a part in that as well as genetics.” Author’s comments Dear Geoffrey, thank you very much for your recommendation. Michael St. Clair, Review “I recommend publication of “Did Indo-European languages stem from a Trans-Eurasian original language?” In the new millennium, persuasive models of language prehistory need to consider, at a minimum, linguistic, archaeological and genetic perspectives. The author has made a valiant attempt to utilize these data. Although I think his model needs refinement, I believe he should be heard. His work helps other researchers to consider the available data, which helps to refine models of language prehistory, which moves the ball forward. The paper reports linguistic matches that may point to language contact between speakers of Gaulish, Slavic, Dravidian, and Buruskaski roughly eight thousand years ago. In my opinion, this model should consider language typology. For those not familiar with language classification, Slavic is a branch of the Indo-European language family that is spoken in Eastern Europe. Gaulish belongs to the Continental branch of Celtic, which is a branch of the Indo-European language family. This language of France which was replaced by Latin after the Roman conquest. Dravidian is a language family found in South Asia. Buruskaski is a language isolate found in the same region. Based on these classification data, lexical matches reported by the author were potentially inherited by Slavic and Celtic from protoIndo-European. The same matches in Dravidian and Buruskaski were potentially inherited from Indo-Iranian. Rouard’s research is striking similar to that undertaken by philologist Hrach Martirosyan. In his 2013 paper he examines lexical correspondences as found among Greek, Armenian and Indo-Iranian language. He offers a “preliminarily” conclusion and suggests that at the time of the Indo-European dispersal, Armenian, Greek, and Indo-Iranian may have been part of a dialect group. As such, Rouard’s research may also suggest that the dialect group included Proto-Slavic and Proto-Celtic. Rouard also supports research published by Brackney in 2007. The researcher presents a model of Slavic origins from historical and linguistic perspectives. He proposes that the first farmers of Europe were also the linguistic ancestors of Slavic-speaking populations. Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Xavier Rouard, rouardx@gmail.com Citation: Rouard, X. (2021). Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language. Academia Letters, Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1645. 6 From genetic and archeological perspectives, Rouard also presents a plausible argument. Rather than the R1b-M343 or L-M20, however, the G-M201 haplogroup represents an especially informative marker for deciphering the prehistory of Indo-European, Dravidian, and Buruskaski. These data link Gaulish, Slavic, Dravidian, and Buruskaski to an expansion of the Southwest Asian Neolithic that occurred roughly 8.5 thousand years ago. From the Levant, the expansion carried agriculture westwards along the Anatolian plateau to Europe, and eastwards along the Iranian plateau to Central and South Asia. This expansion, in my opinion, explains the presence of Celtic and Slavic in Europe, and Indo-Iranian in Central and South Asia (see St. Clair 2020 for more details). For those interested in seeing the Y-chromosome data, please send me an e-mail. For those interested in the archeological perspective, a good starting point is Bellwood (2005). NOTES Bellwood, Peter 2005. First farmers: the origins of agricultural societies. Malden, MA; Oxford, UK; Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing. Brackney, Noel C. 2007. The Origins of Slavonic: Language Contact and Language Change. Munich: LINCOM Europa. Martirosyan, Hrach 2013. “The place of Armenian in the Indo-European language family: the relationship with Greek and Indo-Iranian.” Journal of Language Relationship 10: 85-138. St. Clair, Michael R. 2020. “The Prehistory of Language from the Perspective of the Ychromosome.” The Genetic-Linguistic Interface Project. Preprint. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.26725.01760 ” Author’s comments Dear Michael, thank you very much for your recommendation and valuable comments. Peter D . DunphyHetherington, Review “As someone who does not buy into the stem and branch theory of linguistics but rather a river tributary one the initial origin of IE is irrelevant. The fact is there is no unified IE linguistic group in any case. Just compare one word “water” Pannu in India, is much closer to Arabic manna than to English -water, Irish- uisce, Welsh- dwr, and that is just within the British Isles, not mention the completely different aqua of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese or french - eau. So just within Western Europe we have many different language groups which were at least originally completely unrelated and gradually fused over time with trade just as Modern English is a fusion of several languages from an initial base in Heligoland in Frisia.” Author’s comments Dear Peter, thanks for your recommendation. As concerns water, I have however to make a complementary comment: water, od in Gaulish, can be linked to voda (c. sl.), wodr, woda Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Xavier Rouard, rouardx@gmail.com Citation: Rouard, X. (2021). Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language. Academia Letters, Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1645. 7 (PIE), water, otam (Dravidian), budoo (Burushaski), uda (Sanskrit). It can also be linked with wadi in Arabic or wana, which you find in Seqwana, and you also find the root wa in aqwa in Latin. Daniel Zolecki, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Review “I believe this paper is worth reading by my peers as it is a well sourced and relevant as related to the links between Indo-Iranian and European language groups. In a rapidly globalizing world, I feel that continued study of the ancient similarities and roots of our common species-wide ancestry will be crucial in building a foundation for globalized cultures and could promote conversation and continued exploration of our human story. As for the execution, the author provides a well-balanced mix of their own evidencebacked theory and reference towards integrating his ideas and assertions into the collective conversation. It’s well written, digestible, and providing an important perspective within the field of linguistic anthropology.” Author’s comments Dear Daniel, thank you very much for your recommendation. John P Hayes, Review “Interesting analysis, important questions. Coach’s are an old linguistically isolated IE group with ties to Scotus, Earmark and, Alan’s, Celts, Greeks, Slavs, and Turkic groups. They were influenced by all.” Author’s comments Dear John, thank you very much for your recommendation and valuable comments. Jo Pye, University of Exeter Review “The article centres round what seems a compelling central theme and is in a readable style. That said, it requires some reworking of grammar and longer sentences, and would benefit from graphics showing both the postulated lines of descent of languages as well as those discredited. Depictions of genetic relationships and maps would underpin the argument. Referencing should be much strengthened.” Author’s comments Dear John, thank you very much for your recommendation and suggestions. In my longer papers, there are maps and detailed referencing which I couldn’t include in this short paper. Bill Lipton, Review Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Xavier Rouard, rouardx@gmail.com Citation: Rouard, X. (2021). Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language. Academia Letters, Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1645. 8 “The opening paragraph conforms perfectly to the yDNA research papers I used as the basis for my 2011 book, Grandpa Was a Deity. Granted, I wasn’t looking at language – rather I focused on specific markers and mythologies. Given the focus on language, this brief paper is worth reading – though a more detailed paper would be far more relevant to my focus on the subject. The paper is worth the read. Author’s comments Dear Joe, thank you very much for your recommendation. You will find a 30-page more detailed paper on my Academia profile. Jacques FRANCOIS, Université de Caen Normandie Review “In my review of Xavier Rouard’s draft article, I wish to put forward points in favour of its publication in Academia Letters and points in favour of caution in this very technical and controversial field. Positive points: the article is well written, fairly well documented and clearly argued. The publications to which Mr. Rouard refers are serious, so that his thesis is plausible. On the other hand, Mr. Rouard was able to avoid the pitfall of an ideological bias, although this subject has given rise to ideological controversies for over 150 years. Question marks: the name of Mr. Rouard is not known to me, although I have read hundreds of publications on this subject, so I am not sure that he is really a recognized specialist in this field. What makes the questioning of the geographical origin of the Indo-European family so difficult is that it implies a threefold competence in historical-comparative linguistics, in archaeology and in population genetics. The number of researchers who have this threefold competence is extremely limited. In general, it is now a matter of research carried out in renowned interdisciplinary teams, such as the Max Planck Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie in Leipzig. And unfortunately the combined data of linguistics, archaeology and genetics do not yet provide a “standard theory” in this matter. For these reasons I am in favour of the publication of this article, but it has no conclusion and it should be added in conclusion that the scenario favoured by Mr. Rouard is only one of the scenarios currently in competition and that there is still no demonstration combining the three disciplines involved. Jacques FRANCOIS Prof. emer. of linguistics Université de Caen-Normandie” Author’s comments Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Xavier Rouard, rouardx@gmail.com Citation: Rouard, X. (2021). Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language. Academia Letters, Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1645. 9 Dear Jacques, thank you very much for your recommendation. I am fully aware of the difficulty to have this threefold competence, and refer therefore to recognised studies. Milenko Zailac, Review “If the question in the title is not a rhetorical one, my answer is NO. My contemplation about the language is inspired by the philosophy of L. Wittgenstein, wherein he emphasized that the “Der Satz ist ein Model der Wirklichket”. It means that the first pre-language was an invention of human spirituality, a logical consequence of his ability to think abstractly about reality. The paleo-language was a “thought model “ of the real world on the sky and earth. In some of my works, I suggested that the first phonemes (ideograms) probably have been arisen as an abstract mapping of the ZODIAC PATTERN onto the mental map. This procedure I call ZODIAC VECTORISING. The first-ever archeological and historical evidence of the abstraction of reality were the Stone figures from Lepenski Vir. Likewise, the archeological evidence of the phonetical script (symbols which could be the elements of an alphabet) was discovered only in the Vinca culture (5500-3800 BC, see for example H. Haarmann-”Das Raetsel der Donaucivilisation”. Therefore, I think that the first language, which we call mistakenly IE or PIE (attribute “Indo” is misleading) was invented in Old Europe (in the wide environment of the Vinca civilization) and was spreading in the direction west-east, not vice versa.” Author’s comments Dear Milenko, thank you very much for your recommendation. I am aware we differ on the direction, but numerous experts point to Iranian Zagros as the point of origin of IE languages. Sally McGrath, The University of New Brunswick Review “Yes, it is has good bibliographic references and does offer another point of view on the possible origins of Indo-European languages. I personally however, am not convinced and think there are other potential origins. DNA research has revealed a steppe incursion into Northern India which shows up in the caste system and would also have been responsible for the introduction of horses into the Indian sub-continent. This could equally account for the similarities in words between Indian languages, and Gaulish and other European languages if they had a steppe component. Furthermore, if the Anatolian farmers were the purveyors of the Indo-European language group, how do you explain the existence into early Roman times, of other non-Indo-European languages in Italy, or for that matter, Cretan Linear A which appears to be a non-Indo-European language? Author’s comments Dear Sally, thank you very much for your recommendation and comments. I agree with you that non-Indo-European languages came to Europe along with Indo-European languages, Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Xavier Rouard, rouardx@gmail.com Citation: Rouard, X. (2021). Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language. Academia Letters, Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1645. 10 as for instance Basque, which can be linked however also with Dravidian, Burushaski and Caucasian languages. According to various researchers those languages came earlier to Europe. mik carr, Review “Interesting synthesis of some of the most recent research in this area. I look forward to reading the complete work. One caveat: this work would benefit from sympathetic editing. One sentence covering 20 lines of text is both verbose and confusing.” Author’s comments Dear Mik, thank you very much for your recommendation. You can find my 30-page study on Academia. I take your point that I can work further on editing. Anthony Durham, Review “This article really needs references or hyperlinks, to help any reader who is not fully up to speed on that particular region, or on the genetic evidence. Also it needs more substance to the statistical claims. However, it performs a valuable service in directing attention away from western Europe, where most linguistic work was done in the past, towards the real cradle of modern societies. I think this is precisely the sort of thought-stimulating article that Academia Letters should encourage.” Author’s comments Dear Anthony, thank you very much for your recommendation. I am aware that I couldn’t put everything in this short article, but you can refer to my 30-page paper. Norm Kisamov, Review “Interesting concept, another stepping stone in a perennial puzzle of a perennial problem. A new angle always adds material to the complexity of the problem, and brings up subjects for discussion and closer analysis. Qualified feedback would help illuminate numerous aspects of the subject, and thus help to advance the issue. Terminological clarity would require definitions of numerous terms, especially the terms cardinal to the subject where numerous conceptual definitions coexist, for example a definition of IE and PIE languages from the author’s viewpoint, a point that has numerous differing definitions, the criteria that set these languages apart from all other languages or at least from the proximate neighbouring languages, and critical parameters. Or correlation between genetic haplogroups and languages, a point innate to the material. Likewise, the diagrams depict movements, but the content of the movements is not defined: movement of the lexemes, or semantics, or syntaxes, or people, or their haplogroups, or archeological traits, etc. If some questions are open, it is useful to list Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Xavier Rouard, rouardx@gmail.com Citation: Rouard, X. (2021). Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language. Academia Letters, Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1645. 11 them.” Author’s comments Dear Norm, thank you very much for your recommendation. This article is only a short summary, and you can read my 30-page paper, which is much more detailed, on Academia. Aleksandr A . Semenenko, Review “I think the author should rather have concentrated on the description of his own discoveries of the common linguistic matches he had found between Gaulish, Slavic, Dravidian and Burushaski than on the retelling the contents of several papers of other scholars. The area he proposes to be the homeland for Indo-European languages is too large and Zagros should be considered separately from North-Western India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Eastern Iran. As for Dravidian languages one should not ignore the Tamil legend of their homeland to the south of the modern Tamil Nadu submerged by the Indian ocean. One should not also forget that the appearance of Indo-European culture is inseparably connected not only with cattle-breeding and crop-growing (that is Neolithic inventions) but also with metal-processing which developed several millennia later. We cannot speak of Indo-Europeans before the invention of metal-processing. To my mind the homeland of Indo-Europeans should be placed between Caucasian languages area in the north-west, Sumerian and Akkadian languages area in the west and south-west, Finno-Ugrian language area to the north, Tibetan language zone in the north-east and Dravidian languages zone in the south-east. So Indo-European homeland should be located in the border region of Iran, South Central Asia and South Asia that is in North-Western India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bactria-Margiana and Eastern Iran.” Author’s comments Dear Aleksandr, thank you very much for your recommendation and comments. I see we can roughly agree on the Indo-European homeland. Peter B Golden, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Review “I am not an IE specialist and this paper is somewhat out of my normal comfort zone (Turkology). Nonetheless, the paper has some interesting ideas that can be further explored.” Author’s comments Dear Peter, thank you very much for your recommendation. Bipin Shah, University at Buffalo, State University of New York Review “Out of India” theory is often advocated by the nationalist academicians from India especially after the discovery of chariot type of wheels found at Harrapan site but studies on DNA of skeletons find no steppe marker, suggesting Harrapan people did not speak any IE Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Xavier Rouard, rouardx@gmail.com Citation: Rouard, X. (2021). Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language. Academia Letters, Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1645. 12 language. IE language speakers arrived late from Central Asia or during the final phase of Harrapan civilization and purposely avoided dried river areas and settled in Gange’s doab where there was plenty of rainwater flow and rivers. Sonauli Chariot’s study remains unpublished and inconclusive. So, it is a premature to conclude anything. Indus Valley had several trade contacts with the Middle East. Perhaps, Dravidian language has its roots in the Elamite language of the Middle east. India was a melting pot of various ancient languages. I recommend the publication for others to comment on. I don’t believe the “out of India” theory can be sustained. See Parpolas’s comment on Chariot at Sonauli, he believes it was a bull-driven Wagon.” Author’s comments Dear Bipin, thank you very much for your recommendation, I’ll be glad to exchange. Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Xavier Rouard, rouardx@gmail.com Citation: Rouard, X. (2021). Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language. Academia Letters, Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1645. 13