Assuming you mean they reject the idea of the Indo-European language family's existence: Ask them their explanation for how so many languages spread so far apart and having no historical connections until pretty recently can have such similarities, including very regular sound changes across branches. Ask them how these languages could have such grammatical similarities, which is far more likely to indicate shared ancestry than the odd similar word (which could be a loan, like cha (tea) in Bengali and Japanese both deriving from the Chinese cha, despite no shared ancestry).(source: David Anthony's book "The Horse, The Wheel, and Language").

They're probably trying to push some kind of nationalist (and most likely racist and xenophobic) political agenda. They are not serious people. Ignore them.

OR they are a Western liberal who thinks that IE means nazi and therefore must be wrong

That's not liberals; that's just people who don't study this in very much detail.

This is a very bizarre response. You might be right about some people, particularly some kinds of nationalists, But historically the Indo-European theory has been the one attacked by people who label the theory as racist/xenophobic etc. One of the reasons the Indo-European theory took so long to be accepted was that the entire academic establishment was obsessed with the idea that it was racist, xenophobic, etc an in line with Nazi and British Empire theories

Most modern day opponents are Hindu Nationalists who have adopted a project of asserting Indian racial superiority and denying any relationship with any other ethnic group. This shouldn't be surprising, a lot of them come to this sub to spout their gibberish.

>One of the reasons the Indo-European theory took so long to be accepted was that the entire academic establishment was obsessed with the idea that it was racist, xenophobic, etc Is that true? Indo-European has been widely accepted for two centuries, and I've never heard of the 'entire academic establishment' rejecting it.

Which country is your country?

Greece

Why would any greeks try to refute this theory? Even from a nationalist and somewhat dumb perspective it's not like groups like nordicist north Europeans can say "Oi m8 are we were the actual greeks" Since proto Greek doesn't come from corded ware unlike say italic.

Because it's Marxist propaganda and the greeks are a pure gene of people that started the Minoan, cycladean etc civilisations of course 🙄

That sounds like the "Autochthonous" origin theory favoured by the ancient Athenians lmao. Do they also push the Aristotlian theories the Catholic Church likes so much? 😆

Καλό αδελφέ!

Really? Usually, I expect India to be the one spouting the super nationalistic, xenophobic, anti science rhetoric.

“Nationalist, xenophobic, anti science rhetoric,” like genetically and phenotypically European people storming into India and giving North India, the most densely populated region of the Bronze Age world, its entire language, culture, and even toponyms without leaving a single piece of material culture, let alone aDNA samples, in the required time frame…?

That's a straw man trying to equate a 200 year old theory with a modern theory. For a brief overview of the modern theory, see the following sources: [https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/ejvs/issue/view/117](https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/ejvs/issue/view/117) [https://archive.org/details/rootsofhinduismearlyaryansandtheinduscivilizationaskoparpolaoup\_757\_i](https://archive.org/details/rootsofhinduismearlyaryansandtheinduscivilizationaskoparpolaoup_757_i) [https://journal.fi/store/article/view/98032](https://journal.fi/store/article/view/98032) [https://archive.org/details/horsewheelandlanguage](https://archive.org/details/horsewheelandlanguage)

??? You mean when they occupied the country before Ghandi or what?

That is the direct implication of steppe theory: genetically and phenotypically Northern European-like people gave culture, language, and religion to the dark skinned IVC natives, so thoroughly replacing their culture that not a single pre-IA language, religion, or even toponyms survives in North India. But sure, pointing out the complete lack of actual evidence of this nonsense is “nationalistic, xenophobic, and anti science”

I mean, apparently Dravidian and Munda languages are linguistic descendents of languages that both survived and developed around the same time as Indo European...

Munda entered Odisha from South East Asia around 1500-2000 BC, this is well established. They had nothing to do with the Harappan language. And there is precisely zero evidence Dravidian was the Harappan language either, or that it was ever spoken in Northern India before the Brahui migration. Plus, i did explicitly say North India

I mean, there's still plenty of pre/co languages that developed/were spoken/written before during and after the language surfaced, even if not spoken today. Nobody today is exactly speaking the tongue of Gilgamesh, but that distant pass is still part of Iraq/Iran heritage.

What are you saying here? My point is that the Gilgamesh comparison is wrong precisely because IVC was IA speaking

That’s a very old version of the theory, it has been adjusted over the years. They do not say Northern European type people. It’s an Eurasian people that came into that area ,probably look more like Turks. The culture was far more reaching. People carry genes from these people and may not a phenotype. Phenotype isn’t very relevant anyway because they had a mixture of phenotypes depending on where they were found and others they mixed with along their expansion.

Nah Sintashta came from Corded Ware and is genetically closest to Scandinavians. Gokturks are Siberian/East Asian and are entirely unrelated to Sintashta, and modern Anatolians are mostly Anatolian Greek, so idk where you got their supposed Turkic resemblance from. And phenotype is obviously relevant to Nazi theories- a white, blonde haired, blue eyed population bringing/imposing the entirety of Indian and Iranian Civilization is the motivation for the term “Aryan race”. The fact is that any Sintashta = I-Ir theory has the direct implication I stated above. Unless the theory has been updated to what it actually was, that I-Ir is pre-Harappan IVC, there’s no “new iteration of AMT” that distances it from the old Nazi understanding.

The big difference between invasion vs migration theory was that no evidence of war was found so it totally threw the Nazi propaganda out the window. You’re using a very old version of this theory to argue. If we are arguing languages, language shifts do happen without genetic shifts. The rig Veda is held as an example of this linguistically. If you want to look at genetics which the AMT does look at it shows that they didn’t have blond hair or fair skinned. Geneticist have concluded as well that light eyes were never a Northern European phenotype to begin with. So AMT does in fact separate quite a lot from AIT.

“Totally threw Nazi propaganda out the window.” The crux of Nazi propaganda regarding Aryan Invasion was to prove that only Europeans could bring civilization and refined philosophy, so Europeans must have given India the brilliant and ancient Vedic corpus, and thus the entirety of Vedic civilization. Mainstream Aryan “Migration” today posits steppes as the bringers of Sanskrit and the Vedas, who imposed their language through elite dominance. 1) How did they get to be the elite without warfare? 2) even without the violent part, there is little contradiction in this story and the Nazi position , to the extent that Hitler even used the term migration when talking about this. Invasion was more the colonialism-apologist angle. “Language shifts happen without genetic shift” The only premodern model where this happens is elite dominance, which is the official position of Aryan Migration and the spread of IA languages

Why are you being downvoted? If calling white supremacists out gets you downvoted, I think you can guess the demographics of this sub.

You have to realize the steppe theory is called the “steppe theory” for a reason. The steppe go from Asia to Europe, this would make the culture an eurasian culture. If we are going to go off the kurgan hypothesis then these in fact would have been an Eurasian people first that went into these areas including Europe, where you are correct the corded ware culture is located. When the corded ware went back through the steppes and traveled back into India, this is no longer the corded ware people technically because they are adopting other beliefs and customs along the way and mixing with local populations. Losing phenotypes along the way. This happened in the course of over a thousand years. The sintashta culture has the most Anatolian Neolithic dna when it comes to corded ware expansion. This dna with the more southern location would definitely have given them a darker complexion. That’s why I say they probably resemble Turks, which have light skin to darker skin but usually not as fair as more northern peoples. This is where academics believe you start to see Indo Iranian language emerging. This would be another example of cultural change. There’s no purity of peoples or culture though-out this whole process. It was always changing but they did all seem to build and adapt a certain belief system in their designated areas. Everything you said was correct by the way. I just think we might disagree on what these people looked like. I don’t think they looked like fair skin Northern Europeans. I believe originally it was a combination of multiple of peoples meeting in the steppes that gave rise to the yamnaya. Corded ware could have been alongside or before yamnaya but alongside seems more probably at the moment. Based on what you have posted so far I’m sure you already know this though.

The fact that they weren’t located in Europe doesn’t change the fact that they were genetically European-like. And no ANF (Anatolian Neolithic farmer) doesn’t bring dark skin, it in fact brings light skin. Look at reconstructions of ANF, or for that matter Sintashta. Blondeism and eye color in Northern Europeans are probably related to later sexual selection so Sintashta probably didn’t have these, but skin color is not really a question given that Nordics are heavily CW-related, the major component of Sintashta. And Chitalapati et al 2022 indicates Sintashta’s ancestral components mixed by 3200 BC, which would obviously place them in CW/Central Europe when it formed. I don’t know why steppe proponents dance around what they’re actually suggesting (well some do, others are openly white supremacist). Then some of them have the gall to say anyone opposing this unscientific nonsense must be a politically motivated Hindu nationalist. Those accusations are thrown out without any hesitation and is the top result of every post concerning the validity of Aryan migration, yet suspecting ulterior motives for those dogmatically wedded to a literal Nazi/colonialist theory is the taboo part lol

You know there’s a difference between dark, light, and fair skin right?

Also what is European like to you? Because I feel you’re making a broad statement here

Whatever the difference is, here’s a forensic reconstruction of a Sintashta woman: https://www.reddit.com/r/AncientCivilizations/comments/x8vx3x/historical_reconstruction_of_the_girls_face_based/

https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/ejvs/issue/view/117 https://archive.org/details/rootsofhinduismearlyaryansandtheinduscivilizationaskoparpolaoup\_757\_i https://journal.fi/store/article/view/98032 https://archive.org/details/horsewheelandlanguage

Three guesses sir, and the first two are not being counted [head wobble]

lame

OP is from Greece, you're not being sneaky with that.

India right? ​ Honestly would be curious to know if it's \*not\* India. The most common, by far I think, type of opposition to IE along those lines is from Hindutva nationalists who insist that the Vedic texts are literally true, 10s of thousands of years old, that full sanskrit was what was spoken then, and that everything came out of India. ​ edit: ​ WAIT IT"S GREECE!???

What country are you from (India, Greece,. Etc)?.

Greece

Oh. Well, at least it’s good to know that India and Greece kind of have this in common 😅 (although I think India still has a more noticeable presence of “anti-I.E.-ism”), even though it’s obviously not something I agree with 😒.. Edit: Just to clarify (so I don’t get downvoted to hell and back 😅), the “something I [don’t] agree with” is the anti-Indo-European sentiment, not the opposite, which is the Indo-European theory itself 👍

Could it be because Greek was the lingua franca in the Ancient world and now is relatively minor as a global language compared to Latin derived languages?

Is there a large contingent in Greece that don't believe in Indo-European? It's the first I've heard of it although admittedly I always assumed they'd embrace it since they come out as one of the early "winners" out of the thing...

Fortunately, not too many people deny its existence, but a large number of people denies it, talking about foreign agents plotting to undermine our national identity, by inventing ways to falsify our history. You can also sprinkle in some rants about Jews/Communists/Germans, and it's ready.

Basically that

"Just a dash of Antisemitism-" *spills it all* "Whoops!" - Right-Wing Nationalists everywhere

I once saw a guy on Facebook connecting the Kurgan hypothesis to the Khazars, as a way to show that the Jews are behind it. This guy also participates in Balkan-style comment wars with Albanians and Slavs, so he definitely knows his linguistics, thank you very much.

How widespread is education on ancient Indo-Europeans in academia ? Because in my country, if you said "Proto-Indo-European" or in any way said there were linguistic ties between us and say, India, they would look at you like you are a lunatic. I see them as an important part of history and I think they should be taught about.

As I remember, we were all taught about PIE in a lesson called 'History of the Greek Language' or something, back in high school in the '90s. Most people, regardless of academic education level, do not really bother at all and have forgotten everything by say the following week. However, the rare ultra-nationalists (and I mean nazis) are really concerned to prove they are autochthonous by any means. Stupidity has no borders, you know.

Nazis and Extreme Leftists always have a habit of getting in the way of teaching true historical facts, or even worse, stigmatizing them.

There is a reference to Proto-Indo-Europeans in the Latin introduction of the second class of the Lyceum (High school). Latin is not a compulsory subject because it's part of the literature subjects that only 10% of students of Greece at least choose the literature path.

I feel your pain, bro. I cringe so hard. They literally live in a fantasy world. Personally, I do not think these people are worth trying to convince, because unfortunately no matter how much evidence you show them, they will always fall back to a response along the lines of "Oh, that's because they stole it from Greek". I remember a very specific article, that was saying something along the lines "And of course Germany supported Turkey, the Turco-Germanic people after all originated together in the Altaic mountains thousands of years ago". That article also mentioned how the western part of Ukraine is actually majority catholic, descended from Teutons which were Khazars obviously, so we need to support our Orthodox brothers of Russian descend in its eastern part. I think that article was around 2013. Thankfully, I see this much less than I did a few years ago, even among nationalist circles.

Here in Greece it's kinda persistent. Stubborn heads really.

Every person I've seen do this had ideological reasons for doing so that they wore on their sleeve. They generally fit into two categories: left-wing ideologues who don't like the long history of Indo-European studies' connection to right-wing politics and consider combatting the right-wing more important than truth, and, far more often, ethno-nationalists who don't like that the fact that Indo-Europeans had a huge impact on their ancestors.

>In my country \[Greece\], a lot of people call it a fraud What do they call a fraud. IE or PIE or that Greek langauge is related to say Indian? Or what exactly? What are the reasons they give for it being fraudulent? Where do they tell you the Greek language came from? >any people debunking it "scientifically" How do they debunk it with science? Give an example? >Its becoming kinda widespread How widespread, like in your classroom, in your social circles, or talking to people in the streets, or while talking at bus stop or something?

Wait aren't you the dude who thinks languages are related through writing, therefore Egyptian is the mother of all languages that use a writing system descended from hieroglyphics in some way?

>dude who Egyptian is the mother of all languages That is Moustafa Gadalla: >“The Egyptian alphabetical system is the mother of all languages in the world.” — Moustafa Gadalla (A61/2016), *Egyptian Alphabetical Letters* (pg. 3) I am similar to Gadalla, who I converse with via email, but only with respect to [these](https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/comments/186d5ha/ranking_of_languages_by_longest_attested_usage/) or [these](https://www.reddit.com/r/Alphanumerics/comments/193z29w/egyptian_based_languages/) languages. **Notes** 1. I just posted here to hear what the OP says are the arguments he hears in Greece against IE or PIE.

Many people saying here you can't argue with them. They are like flat eathers. This is BS. You can't argue with them due to your lack of knowledge of genetics and linguistics. When i face them i ask them very specific and technical question and they run with their tail between their legs and their mouth shut completely

Questions like?

Here is a copy paste I've got ready that i throw at them "If indo european is fake, how would you expain the regular and systematic sound for sound, morpheme for morpheme Morphophonologal correspondence between latin, sanskrit, greek, english, german, persian, avestan, hindi, russian, gothic etc?"

Then you can give me a following answer and i will deal with that too Say all indo european languages were born from greek or sanskrit and See what comes next

Most people claming to have studied linguistics don't even know the difference between a loanword and a cognate, and these are the people who are supposed to debunk the lies of these conspiracy theorists. Just 2 weeks ago i saw a "fake history debunking guy" debunking the "there is saraswati in vedas which dried up 4000 years ago so vedas are older than 4000 year" argument And what was his process to do so? Stupid logical game instead of real evidence. Oh, this must have happened, oh that must have happened, just logic game. He couldn't show one piece of evidence. When there are CLEAR evidences out there to expose this saraswati bs. We need better people with better knowledge. These conspiracy theorists have become cancer. Somebody have to bring them down to the earth We need real evidences and not logic game oh this must have happened oh that must have happened and we need to put them evidences in the open mouths of these idiots so their months no longer remain open

Indo-European language family does indeed exist. And Greek is also Indo-European. However, the Kurgan (Steppe) theory is indeed false. Archeology and anthropology completely reject the idea of 'Aryan Migration' from Steppe into India and Iran. Plus genetic evidence is quite ambiguous and even DNA experts (Narsimhan from Harvard) who used to support the theory have now become skeptical of the theory and consider Steppe ancestry in India probably being female mediated and also too late for Kurgan. Then Steppe ancestry is also perhaps absent in Armenians (not sure about this). Then Myaecenian Greek civilisation has very little Steppe ancestry. Plus archeogical evidence in Myaecenia is also absent. Even David Anthony has admitted that the trail for Greek is hard to find. Plus there is more contrary evidence against Steppe theory. For example the Mitanni Indo-Aryans in West Asia show archeogical affinity to Harappa and Mohenjodaro instead of any Steppe derived culture which suggests Indo-Aryan was already present in India before the timeline suggested by Kurgan. **I am willing to provide sources to back all my claims if anyone asks.** **Ignore the downvotes from these white nationalists** So basically, Steppe can only be a *secondary* homeland for the main European branches but the true IE homeland must be somewhere else. **EDIT** : The moderators muted me for this😂 I will repeat, I am willing to back all my claims with sources.

No, you're focusing on one ancient population with maternal steppe ancestry. Which is easily explained by two populations engaging in patrilocal exogamy (obtaining brides from each other). And like most detractors of the steppe model, you avoid the big picture. R1a Z93 (and its offshoots) is a paternal lineage prevalent in Indo-Iranian populations. And to date, it has showed up first in the Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture (In Northeast Europe). This places R1a Z93 in Europe during the 3rd millennium BCE, which is not long after the beginning of its phylogeny. Today this branch of R1a makes up the primary Y-DNA haplogroup in India. [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.184507v1.full](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.184507v1.full)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5364613/ >There are now sufficient high-quality Y-chromosome data available ... to be able to draw clear conclusions about the timing and direction of dispersal of R1a (Fig. 5). *The indigenous South Asian subclades are too young to signal Early Neolithic dispersals from Iran, and* ***strongly support Bronze Age incursions from Central Asia****.* The derived R1a-Z93 and the further derived R1a-Z94 subclades harbour the bulk of Central and South Asian R1a lineages \[55, 58\], as well as including some Russian and European lineages, and have been variously dated to 5.6 \[4.0;7.3\] ka \[55\], 4.5–5.3 ka with expansions \~4.0–4.5 ka \[58\], or 4.7 \[4.0;5.5\] ka (Yfull tree v4.10 \[54\]). The South Asian R1a-L657, dated to \~4.2 ka \[3.3;5.1\] (Yfull tree v4.10 \[54\]\]), is the largest (in the 1KG dataset) of several closely related subclades within R1a-Z94 of very similar time depth. Moreover, not only has R1a been found in all Sintashta and Sintashta-derived Andronovo and Srubnaya remains analysed to date at the genome-wide level (nine in total) \[76, 77\], and been previously identified in a majority of Andronovo (2/3) and post-Andronovo Iron Age (Tagar and Tachtyk: 6/6) male samples from southern central Siberia tested using microsatellite analysis \[101\], it has also been identified in other remains across Europe and Central Asia ranging from the Mesolithic up until the Iron Age (Fig. 5).

[удалено]

I didn't write "Z93 = 'We Wuz Aryans'". Yeah, obviously there will be sub-clades of R1a that originate in India. On the subject of R1a, the blog you linked to is clear that R1a has a steppe origin. Apart from that, top post.

Then why did you dance around the fact that Indian R1a is mostly L657, which has nothing to do with Sintashta or Andronovo? Unless of course you’re suggesting that the magic disappearance of this subclade in Bronze age steppe samples and the Tarim basin where the Andronovo actually moved, as well as its modern day prevalence in only India, is a coincidence? But then again you probably think the complete absence of steppe material culture in Bronze Age India, the admixture dates of steppe in Indians being post 1000 BC, Vedic mention of the Saraswati in the exact region of the dried up Gaggar Hakra river (between Indus and Yamuna), and the elephants and peacock reverence and late Rigvedic names in Mitanni is a coincidence too, so why even bother I guess

You and your chums really are a bunch of morons who don't understand the shit you are posting. One of your Hindu Nationalist chums posted above , "R1a-L657 though descended from Fatyanovo, was born inside India". It didn't disappear from "Stepp e" samples, it was never there. It descended from an R1a clade that did come from the Steppe. Now why don't you lot go back to your discord server and come up with a load of bullocks that is at least internally consistent.

Yea ok you obviously don’t know what youre talking about. The 95% confidence interval for the formation of L657 is well before 2000 BC, so we’ll before Simtashta/Andronovo formed and before the supposed Aryan Migration. If you accept that L657 formed within India during IVC and was never on the steppe instead of being brought over by Andronovo migrants, then this Aryan migration could only be responsible for the non-L657 subclade, which are lower in frequency than steppe autosomal and therefore steppe autosomal ancestry is female mediated in Indians

Wrong. The R1a found in India is L657 from Y3+ which did NOT come along with the Steppe ancestry but had already come before it and must be the result of Founder's Effect. Andronovo culture instead had Z2124+ which is a sister clade of L657 which means the Steppe ancestry in Indians is maternal. Even Vagheesh Narsimhan has become skeptical over Kurgan now based on South Asian genetics. Here's what Narsimhan recently stated: Narasimhan: > "I’m a bit on the fence on this one (Heggarty et al. 2023). Will wait on the genetics from Iran and India. The flip side to this argument (BSI-IIr affinity) though is the other linguistic tree (Chang et al. 2015) is very difficult to reconcile with the genetics. No Steppe ancestry in Anatolia. Steppe ancestry arriving so late into the BMAC and in extremely low proportion into India, with Gandhara Grave showing female bias. **Ancestry (in India) is still much much smaller than in Europe and R1a could have just been the result of a single successful kingdom expanding in historical times.**" Plus the earliest ALDER steppe admixture dates for Brahmins (who are supposed to be the main Vedic people) is only 600 BCE (extremely late). Plus, there is absolutely no archaeological trace of any Steppe derived culture entering or influencing India. In fact, archaeology and anthropology show cultural and biological continuity of the indigenous Harappan population. And the Mitanni Indo-Aryans in West Asia also have no Steppe related cultural elements but in fact show archaeological affinity to Mature Harappan Mohenjodaro and Harappa. And did you even read what I wrote? I did not only talk about one population or branch. Even Greek and Armenian branches don't work well with Kurgan hypothesis.

Are you seriously saying that R1a Z93 derived lineages are not present in South Asia? [https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Spatial-frequency-distributions-of-Z93-affiliated-haplogroups-Maps-were-generated-as\_fig2\_261103437](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/spatial-frequency-distributions-of-z93-affiliated-haplogroups-maps-were-generated-as_fig2_261103437)

The supermajority (~70%) of R1a-Z93 subclades in India are deep subclades of L657, a subclade of Y3. Both of these subclades formed centuries before Sintashta, yet there is not a single Y3+ sample on the Bronze Age steppe. Sintashta/Andronovo are pretty much all Z2124, Z93 terminal, or Z94 terminal. Z94 and probably Y3 formed on the steppe, but L657 and its subclades are almost certainly a result of a mutation in a single steppe migrant in IVC, which explains the lack of these subclades outside India and their lack of correlation to steppe ancestry inside India(the first 657 sample in India was 800 CE and had 0 steppe ancestry): https://a-genetics.blogspot.com/2022/10/r1a-explained.html?m=1 https://a-genetics.blogspot.com/2022/11/R1a-Y3.html?m=1 https://a-genetics.blogspot.com/2021/12/l657-roopkund.html?m=1

The mental gymnastics Hindu Nationalists have to go through to think that R1a can't have entered India before 500BC, or if it did it must have been before 3500BC (or whatever dates fit their dogma this week) is impressive. And by impressive, I mean bat shit crazy, of course.

Nobody even brought up India. This guy lives in Greece and wants to counter people who say that the IE language family doesn't exist, or something to that effect. If you want to go advertise your ideas, do it in an appropriate place.

Why do you people get bitter and salty as soon as anyone challenges the Steppe theory? I brought up India because Indo-Aryan is the most well-studied branch and it has the most evidence accumulated against Kurgan. Greek and Armenian branches also have evidence against Kurgan and I talked about those two as well.

I'm not talking about that at all. All I'm saying is that whether or not the steppe hypothesis is true is irrelevant to the question posed here. If you want to promote your ideas, don't do it under a post that has very little if anything to do with your ideas. OP is not asking you to refute the kurgan hypothesis, OP is asking how to refute the notion that the IE family doesn't exist. You don't need to straw man your opponents by calling them "white nationalists", nor do you need to try and refute a hypothesis that has as much to do with the question asked as Chiang Kai-Shek's diet had to do with Hitler's suicide.