Proto-Indo-Anatolian, the “Anatolian split” and the “Anatolian trek”: a comparative linguistic perspective

Abstract

Since the so-called “Ancient DNA Revolution” of the past decade, which has yielded many new insights into the genetic prehistory of Europe and large parts of Asia, it can no longer be doubted that the Indo-European languages spoken in Europe and Central and South Asia were brought there from the late fourth millennium BCE onward by population groups from the Pontic–Caspian steppes who had belonged to the archaeologically defined Yamnaya culture.1 We may therefore assume that the population groups bearing the Yamnaya culture can practically be equated with the speakers of Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European languages of Europe and Asia, and that the spread of the Indo-European language family is a direct consequence of these migrations of Yamnaya individuals into Europe and Asia.