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Language as a Clue to Prehistory

"Archaeologists Found a 5,000-Year-Old Fortress [in northeast Romania] That Nature Had Hidden for Centuries". (The date is about the same as that of the Los Millares fortified city in southern Spain.)

I guess the fortress was built by the remnants of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture to protect them from Indo-European speaking marauders -- the same warriors who were conquering most of Western and North Central Europe about this time -- but it would be nice to see expert confirmation of this guess.
 
For reasons evident below, I wanted to pursue the word "man"; but that started me down a rabbit-hole.

PIE *dʰéǵʰōm means "earth" and leads to *ǵʰmṓ ("earthling", "human"). From that is derived Latin /homo/ and proto-Germanic *gumô, and English "human".
When the initial 'g' or 'h' is omitted we get the simpler PIE word *mon meaning "man." This produces *mann- in proto-Germanic and so on.

But when PIE made its transition to Satem-IE, for some reason *mon became *mongʷyós > *mangjás in proto-Balto-Slavic and *monusíyos > *manušíyas in proto-Indo-Iranian. Sanskrit forms include: मनु (mánu), मनुस् (mánus), मनुष्य (manuṣyà). (Armenian "human" is մարդ /mɑɾtʰ/ from PIE *mr̥tós which may be cognate to "mortal.")

 Manu_(Hinduism) tells me that Manu refers to the archetypal man (the first man) and that manuṣyà means the "children of Manu."

But let me get to the point, if any. Many expats here in the Kingdom are rather conversant in Thai, but I impress the autochthones by reading Thai. HOWEVER, as I always point out, while I can read Thai I certainly cannot WRITE it! There are SIX aspirated T's in the alphabet, not to mention 2 unaspirated T's -- who could remember which one to use for a given word? (And as shown below S becomes T in at least one word.) There are dozens of hard-to-distinguish vowel combinations; and a non-trivial mapping from tone marks to tones. (Since neither my auditory brain nor my vocal brain copes well with tones anyway, there was little point in memorizing this mapping.)

For example, until today I would never have guessed that มนุษย์ is the spelling of /má-nút/ "human." If we transliterate that word letter-by-letter we get MNUSY (Wiktionary: m n u ʂ y ʻ) The mark over the Y is a "silencing mark." Once the Y is silenced, the S must be silenced also -- or rather converted to a T! -- since no word ends with an S sound. (The final S is dropped even when it's part of an English word or name.)

The weird spelling (MNUSY) of มนุษย์ /má-nút/ "human" makes sense when we see that it is borrowed from मनुष्य (manuṣyà). The Sanskrit word is also borrowed into other Austric languages (Khmer, Indonesian, etc.) as well as Burmese.

Would this word be considered a "Wanderwort" or just witness to India's military domination of SE Asia for many centuries? In the latter case, I suppose this was before the conquests of the  Chola dynasty since IIUC that dynasty spoke Tamil rather than Sanskrit. Or was Sanskrit already a liturgical language from which Buddhists and Hindus were eager to borrow?
 
Military domination? More like cultural diffusion, I'm sure, like many European languages having oodles of Latin and Greek words and Korea and Japan having oodles of Chinese words.

As to having a choice of letters for each sound, that's a way of making an alphabet semi-logographic, with the choice of letters specifying the meaning. English spelling is a big mess, but it has something of that principle.
 
lpetrich said:
Military domination? More like cultural diffusion, I'm sure, like many European languages having oodles of Latin and Greek words and Korea and Japan having oodles of Chinese words.
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You don't think that the Roman military domination of Europe, or the Japanese military domination of Korea*, had anything at all to do with this "cultural diffusion"?






* Japan has had imperial/colonial ambitions on the Korean Peninsula since at least the C16th Imjin War, and most recently seized Korea as a colony in 1910, with Japanese Imperial rule ending only with their defeat in 1945.
 
Parallel Evolution of Genes and Languages in the Caucasus Region | Molecular Biology and Evolution | Oxford Academic
The data suggested a direct origin of Caucasus male lineages from the Near East, followed by high levels of isolation, differentiation, and genetic drift in situ. Comparison of genetic and linguistic reconstructions covering the last few millennia showed striking correspondences between the topology and dates of the respective gene and language trees and with documented historical events. Overall, in the Caucasus region, unmatched levels of gene–language coevolution occurred within geographically isolated populations, probably due to its mountainous terrain.
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So once some Middle Eastern farmers settled down in the Caucasus Mountains, they did so in enclaves separated by the mountains, and lived apart from each other.

The authors estimate a North Caucasian split at 6240 BP (4290 BCE), a Northeast Caucasian (Nakh-Dagestanian) split at 5640 BP (3690 BCE), and a Northwest Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adyghean) split at 3600 BP (1650 BCE). That last one is around when Hattic starts being recorded in northern Anatolia. So that time is likely an underestimate. Journal of Caucasian Studies » Submission » Northwest Caucasian Languages and Hattic [Kuzeybatı Kafkas Dilleri ve Hattice] finds Hattic, Abkhaz-Abaza, Adyghe-Kabardian, and Ubykh to be roughly equidistant from each other. So if NWC speakers dispersed around 2500 - 2000 BCE, that is plenty of time for some of them to wind up in N Anatolia.

Scaling the other times with that factor gives 5,000 - 3,000 BCE for NEC and 6,000 - 4,000 BCE for NC, about what one finds for Kartvelian (South Caucasian) and the domestication of grapes.
 
lpetrich said:
Military domination? More like cultural diffusion, I'm sure, like many European languages having oodles of Latin and Greek words and Korea and Japan having oodles of Chinese words.
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Yes, the  Greater India article explains it pretty well. I'll blame my emphasis on "military" on my amateur guide at Angkor Wat and his explanation for the engravings of Indian war chariots. 8-)

lpetrich said:
As to having a choice of letters for each sound, that's a way of making an alphabet semi-logographic, with the choice of letters specifying the meaning. English spelling is a big mess, but it has something of that principle.
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It's the sheer NUMBER of Thai letters that provides the difficulty. 44 consonants compared with 21 in English (26 - |{a,e,i,o,u}|).
(Two of the "standard" 44 are almost* obsolete; but there are 2 symbols used as consonants omitted from the standard 44. 44-2+2==44. *-The 2 consonants obsolete in Central Thailand are still used, though rarely, in the North!)
English has 5 vowel symbols; Thai has 19. Sure, English has combos (EA, OU, AI etc.) but Thai has vowel combos also; when those are counted Thai has over 30 vowels!

Thai is MISSING six of English's consonant phonemes, yet still has a bewildering number of consonant symbols. Among alveolar plosives and nasals (T,D,N) English has just three distinct letters; Thai has TEN. (Or even more if we include the S's which become T's at the end of syllables, or the liquids which become Ns.) This large number is NOT due to offering choice of consonant tone class: both N's are Low Class; both Ds, both unaspirated Ts and none of the aspirated Ts are Middle Class.

The Thai alphabet (like most of the alphabets of SE Asia) is derived from the Devanagari alphabet, whose letters' ornate curves are even more complex than the Thai letters! Devanagari can be traced back to Brahmi script ...
 
Back to kinship terninology, here is a very detailed paper by George Peter Murdock, who wrote the one that I'd earlier mentioned: Kin Term Patterns and Their Distribution on JSTOR

These are the patterns that are symmetric relative to the sexes:
  • A Dravidian EY
  • B European S
  • C Yoruba ey
  • D Algonquian Ey
  • E Kordofanian s
  • F Southern Bantu s:ey o:s -- s:eY o:s -- s:Ey o:s
  • G East Polynesian s:ey o:S
  • H Quechuan s:S o:S
  • K Carolinian s:s o:s
  • L Siouan s:EY, o:EY
  • M Caddoan s:EY o:S
  • N Malagasy s:s o:S
  • O Jivaran s:S o:s
  • Q Yukian eY
  • T s:EY o:s
  • X s:ey o:EY
There are also several asymmetric ones, like P Voltaic: "elder brother", "younger brother", "sister".

S: siblings distinguished by sex, s: not distinguished
E: elder siblings
Y: younger siblings
s: the same sex as the one speaking
o: the opposite sex

In my earlier posts, I'd lumped together gendered terms with the same root. Thus, English "brother", "sister" is capital S and Spanish "hermano", "hermana" is small s.
 
Here is a modified version of the notation used by GPM.

The closest relatives (parents, siblings, children): Pa, Fa, Mo / Sb, Br, Si / Ch, So, Da

They start from the self or ego, ths FaMo is the paternal grandmother, the father's mother.

Grandparents:
  • A: PaFa, PaMo
  • B: PaPa
  • C: FaFa, FaMo, MoFa, MoMo
  • D: PaFa, FaMo, MoMo
  • E: grandparents ~ parents
  • F: FaPa, MoPa
  • N: FaFa, MoFa, PaMo
There are some variants that distinguish grandparents by the sex of the speaker.

Some words for grandparents are composed from other lexical resources. The English words are paralleled by German Großvater, Großmutter, French grand-père, grand-mère, and similar words elsewhere. The Swedish words farfar, farmor, morfar, mormor: "father-father", "father-mother", "mother-father", "mother-mother".

Others are lexically separate, with some having gendered single roots like Latin avus, avia, Italian nonno/a, and Spanish abuelo/a, and some having multiple roots, like Russian ded, baba.
 
Grandchildren:
  • A ChCh
  • B ChSo, ChDa
  • C lgrandchildren ~ grandparents (!)
  • D SoSo, SoDa, DaSo, DaDa
  • K grandchildren ~ children
  • M SoCh, DaCh
  • R SoCh, DaSo, DaDa
and variants that depend on the sex of the speaker. Not listed: SoSo, SoDa, DaCh.

Words for grandchildren are formed in ways analogous to words for grandparents, including like English (French petit-fils, petite-fille "little son, daughter"), words for "son-son", "son-daughter", "daughter-son", "daughter-daughter", and lexically-separate roots, usually single and gendered, like Latin nepos, neptis, Italian nipote (both sexes), Spanish nieto/a, and Russian vnuk, vnuchka. An odd one is Hindi SoSo potā, SoDa potī, DaSo nātī, DaDa nātin - son's children and daughter's children have one root each, which is then gendered.
 
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Here, El means elder, Yo means younger.

Uncles:
  • A FaBr ~ Fa, MoBr
  • B FaBr, MoBr
  • C FaElBr, FaYoBr, MoBr
  • D PaBr
  • E uncle ~ father
  • K FaElBr, FaYoBr, MoElBr, MoYoBr
  • L PAElBr, PaYoBr
and variants that depend on the sex of the speaker.

Aunts:
  • A FaSi, MoSi
  • B MoSi ~ Mo, FaSi
  • C PaSi
  • D aunt ~ mother
  • E FaSi, MoElSi, MoYoSi
  • K PAElSi, PaYoSi
  • L FaElSi, FaYoSi, MoElSi, MoYoSi
and variants that depend on the sex of the speaker.

Uncles and aunts usually have separate roots, as parents do, but there is an exception: Ancient Greek theios, theia, which became the Modern Greek words, and was also borrowed in the late Roman Empire, becoming the Italian and Iberian words: Italian zio/a, Spanish tio/a, etc.

Words for these relatives are sometimes derived from words for parents and grandparents. FaBr in Latin is patruus < PIE *pHtruwyos < PIE *pHter "father" and a derivational suffix. MoSi in Latin is mâtertera, from mâter "mother" and a suffix for contrasting. But MoBr is avunculus < avus "grandfather": "little grandfather", and FaSi is amita, probably from a baby-talk word for mother.

Curiously, MoBr and FaSi survived in other parts of the late Roman Empire, becoming borrowed as the English words, and being inherited as French oncle, tante.

Swedish has farbror, faster, morbror, moster "father-brother", "father-sister", "mother-brother", "mother-sister".
 
Nephews and nieces. I've found gender-neutral term nibling - Wiktionary, the free dictionary for them, and I will use it.

Grandparents, uncles, and aunts are divided into paternal and maternal ones, for fathers' and mothers' parents, brothers, and sisters, and likewise, niblings are divided into fraternal and sororal ones, for brothers' and sisters' children.

  • A BrCh ~ Ch, SiCh
  • B BrCh ~ Ch, SiSo, SiDa
  • C BrCh, SiCh
  • D SbCh
  • E niblings ~ one's children
  • F SbSo, SbDa
  • G BrSo, BrDa, SiSo, SiDa
  • K ElBrCh, YoBrCh, SiCh
  • L ElBrCh, YoBrCh, ElSiCh, YoSiCh
  • M BrCh, SiSo, SiDa
  • N BrSo, BrDa, SiCh
English nephew, niece are borrowed from Old French, in turn from Latin nepôs "grandson, nephew", neptis "granddaughter, niece". Replaced Old English nefa "nephew, grandson", nift "niece, granddaughter". Both are from PIE *nepôts, *neptih2 -- the same root with gendering.

Polish has BrSo bratanek, BrDa bratanica, SiSo siostrzeniec, SiDa siostrzenica, derived from words for siblings, with derivational suffixes and gendering.

Swedish has borrowings nevö, niece, alongside brorson, brordotter, systerson, systerdotter "brother-son", "brother-daughter", "sister-son", "sister-daughter".
 
Cousins. Children of siblings of parents.  Kinship terminology Parallel ones are for same-sex parent siblings (FaFa, MoMo), and cross ones are for opposite-sex parent siblings (FaMo, MoFa). Strictly speaking, these are first cousins, with second and later cousins sharing farther-back ancestors.

  • A Hawaiian: cousins ~ siblings
  • B Iroquois: parallel cousins ~ siblings, cross cousins their own terms
  • C Eskimo: cousins their own terms
  • D Omaha: like Iroquois, but with MoBrSo ~ MoBr, MoBrDa ~ Mo
  • E: Crow: like Iroquois, but with FaSiDa ~ FaSi, FaSiSo ~ Fa
  • F: Descriptive: all cousins distinguished with descriptive terms
  • G: Sudanese: all cousins distinguished with non-descriptive terms

George Peter Murdock concluded his paper by discussing terms for siblings-in-law; spouse's siblings and sibling's spouses (Sp: spouse, Hu: husband, Wi: wife).
  • A: sibling-in-law
  • B: brother-in-law, sister-in-law
  • E: in-laws are called by terms for genetic relatives, like cousins
  • J: Differentiated
  • K: Strongly differentiated
  • M: WiBr, WiSi, HuBr, HuSi, BrWi, SiHu
  • N: SpSb, SbSp
  • Na: SpSb, BrWi, SiHu
  • Nb: WiSb, HuSb, SpSb
  • Nc: WiSb, HuSb, BrWi, SiHu
  • P: SpBr, SpSi, BrWi, SiHu
Also terms for relative age and for the sex of the speaker.
 
For uncles and aunts, I've found pibling - Wiktionary, the free dictionary ("parent sibling") and auncle - Wiktionary, the free dictionary ("aunt-uncle") though they are very new terms. "Auncle" - pronounced like "awncle" or "ahncle" or "anncle"? BTW, "aunt" is pronounced both "annt" and "ahnt".

BTW, Isaac Asimov once wrote a story, "Dreamworld", which uses one of these pronunciations for a horrible pun, one inspired by certain 1950's monster movies.

Consulting Wiktionary yet again, Thai has for piblings PaElBr lung, PaElSi bpâa, FaYoSb aa, MoYoSb náa - the gender-distinct one is the older of Pa and PaSb. Grandparents: FaFa bpùu, FaMo yâa, MoFa gǒng, MoMo yaai. Parents: Fa pɔ̂ɔ, Mo mɛ̂ɛ, Siblings and younger: ElSb pîi, YoSb nɔ́ɔng, Ch lûuk, SbCh, ChCh lǎan (like in Proto-Indo-European, where *nepot- meant both).

So one's older relatives are named with separate gendered roots while the younger ones aren't, though one can add chaai "male" or sǎao "female" to the words for them.
 
Turning to in-laws, I notice that that phrase comes from marriage being a legally-recognized relationship, thus the "in law" part. French uses beau-, belle- "pretty, nice".

Latin cognâtus means "related", and it became the word for brother-in-law in several Romance languages.

Dutch has zwager, German Schwager, and Swedish svåger all from Proto-Germanic *swêguraz < PIE *swekuros "father-in-law". Words for sister-in-law are German Schwägerin and Swedish svägerska, gendered versions, and for parents-in-law and children-in-law, words for parents and children are added onto these words.

Latin has lêvir for brother-in-law < PIE *dayh2wer-, glôs for sister-in-law < PIE *glh2ows-, socer for father-in-law < PIE *swekuros, and socrus (u-stem) for mother-in-law < PIE *swekruh2.

Some 6,000 - 5,000 years ago, some early PIE speakers invented the feminine gender, with suffixes like -eh2 > -â, -ih2 > -î, and less commonly, -uh2 > -û, and *swekuros was made feminine with *-uh2. More typically, *nepots was made feminine with *-ih2.
 
In the aunt/uncle formulae I didn't see the Thai usage. Three binary attributes give 2×2×2 = 8 cases
{Older, Younger} × {Sister, Brother} of × {Mother, Father}​
but Thai makes do with just 4 words: The only gender identified is that of the older sibling:
Older {Sister, Brother} of Parent --> /bpâa/, /lung/​
or
Younger Sibling of × {Mother, Father} --> /náa/, /aa/​
or (archaic)
Younger Brother of Father --> /aao/​
All five terms are shown at Wiktionary as descended directly from proto-Tai.

Thai has 1-syllable words for child, grandchild, gt grandchild, gt-gt grandchild, and (allegedly) gt-gt-gt grandchild and gt-gt-gt-gt grandchild
/lûuk/, /lǎan/, /lěen/, /lʉ̂ʉ/, /lʉ̂ʉp/, /lʉ̂ʉt/​
When a sibling relationship is mentioned in English we learn the gender immediately but must query for relative age. Thai is the opposite; the two words for sibling being /pîi/ (older) and /nɔ́ɔng/ (younger).
A 1st cousin is /lûuk pîi lûuk nɔ́ɔng/ (lit. child sibling child sibling). This should allow 4-syllable phrases for complicated cousinships. My wife was the 2nd cousin 1x removed of a prominent woman who lived 17 km away, so was her /lěen pîi lǎan nɔ́ɔng/.

My wife never suspected they were related; I figured it out after asking father-in-law why he had gone to the funeral of the woman's father. With the relatively low rural mobility there were lots of distant cousinships, but everyone looked baffled when I explained how easy it was to render something like "2nd cousin 1x removed" with just four syllables. At least two people answered with "Yeah, we have a word for that. She's 'not a relative'!"
 
I've thought of a phonetic transcription of English that is easy to typeset:

Vowels: a, e, i, o, u, ä, ë, ï, ô, û (double dots are not German-style umlauts)

Consonants: y, w, l, r, n, m, ng, t, d, p, b, k, g, th, dh, f, v, s, z, sh, zh, h (ng is one sound, th unvoiced)

Vowel demos: father: fadhr - mother: mëdhr - cat: kät - cot: köt - cut: kët - kite: kait - coat: kout - kit: kït - coot: kut - bit: bït - beat, beet: bit - foot: füt - food: fud - dog: dög - dug: dëg - dig: dïg - bite: bait - bout: baut

Consonant demos: yet - wet - let - bet - pet - met - net - get - set - bed - dead: ded - shed - thin: thïn - then: dhîn - singer: singr - finger: finggr - choke: tshouk - joke: dzhouk - chip: tshïp - ship: shïp - sip: sïp - zip: zïp - tip: tïp - dip: dïp - nip: nïp - pip: pïp - wit: wït - bit: bït - pit: pït - fit: fït - tit: tït - nit: nït - kit: kït - fit: fït - sit: sït - zit: zït - shit: shït - chit: tshït - beet, beat: bit - peat: pit - feet: fit - meet: mit - teat: tit - neat: nit - seat: sit - cheat: tshit

Here is my attempt at a phonetic transcription of the English language, General-American dialect: hir ïz mai atîmpt ät ei founétïk tränskrîpshën ëv dhë íngglïsh léinggwîdzh, dzhînërël-ëmérikên dáialekt.

Hat: accented double dot.
 
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Here's a recent paper suggesting that the Huns (or a politically relevant part of their elites it is likely the Huns were a multilingual confederacy before even entering Europe) spoke a Yeniseian language.

The Yeniseian language family is represented by a single extant language, Ket, with an estimated number of active speakers between 50 and 200 according to various estimates (the ethnic Ket population is around 1000 but most speak primarily Russian), but it is known to have been more widespread at the beginning of Russian eastward expansion around 1600, and there are some suggestions that it functioned a a substrate to various Turkic and Mongolic languages of the Cis-Baikal region, and possibly to Tocharian.

It is also one of the hottest contenders for belonging to a Trans-Beringian macro-family, in the form of the Na-Déne–Yeniseian theory. And I'm saying this as someone who's generally critical of most proposed macro-families.

Here's the paper https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-968X.12321

And a possibly somewhat more accessible summary: https://archaeologymag.com/2025/06/european-huns-had-ancient-siberian-roots/
 
There are wild(?) conjectures connecting the Huns to Scandinavia, perhaps as a result of Gothic warriors mingling with Hunnic warriors. Here's a recent paper on that theory.

Here are some even wilder(?) musings claiming
... the archaeological record indicates a significant change in religious practices occurring in Scandinavia in the 5th Century AD. The dramatic alterations in artifact assemblages and burial practices strongly point to a change “coming from the south around 450 or a little earlier” (Brandt, p.30) a people who would have a significant impact on all aspects of life in Scandinavia – and yet it goes unnoticed in the standard texts.
This period in time marked the beginning of a change in the centers of power to Gamla Uppsala and Southeastern Bornholm. The thesis of the present study is that these changes were initiated by the arrival of Uldin / Odin and his mixed Ostrogoth / Herul and Hun / Alanic forces who established new dynasties and brought with them the unmistakable Y chromosome DNA signatures of Central Asia.
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Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla, particularly the Ynglinga saga, portrays Odin as a historical, albeit legendary, king of the Swedes. The saga also mentions Odin having a son named Sigi, who is said to have become the king of the Huns. IIUC, some of Snorri's writings show Odin as coming from Asia and bringing a new religion to Scandinavia. Odin may even be cognate to Uldin, Attila's predecessor. I don't think Odin/Wodan cognacy rules this out -- couldn't there be some conflation?

A pdf of "Scandinavia and the Huns: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Migration Era" is on-line and free
... the introduction of the caftan as the distinct male warrior-dress in Scandinavia from the late fifth century has recently been ascribed to direct Asiatic influence on Scandinavia (Mannering 2006:197f). ... it has been argued that the type of saddle known from the chiefly burials at Vendel and Ho¨ gom in Sweden was brought to Europe by the Huns and the Avars (Engstro¨ m 1997:248f).
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@Swammerdami apparently there is a Icelandic saga that claims an Asiatic origin of the Norse some 20 generations prior to the earliest historically tangible Kings. I'll see if I can dig up details. It's something like that mentioned?
 
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