Locating Latmos, Phthir, Endymion and Selene, Malija-Athena, *Sanda(s)/Šanta-Herakles, Tarhunt-Zeus, Piḫaššašši-Pegasos, Perseus and Gorgo-Medousa, and Others

This article deals with the lower Maiandros/Maeander River region between the Mykale and the Latmos Mountains and Miletos, the border between the ‘colonial’ lands of Greek Aiolia and Ionia, and indigenous Anatolian Karia in the Iron Age (11^th-4^th century BCE). By analysing three complex groups of myths ‒ (a) that of Latmos, Phthir, Selene, Endymion, Naxos, and Malija-Athena in the Latmos Mountains, and (to a lesser extent) (b) that of Tarhunt-Zeus, Poseidon, Perseus, Gorgo-Medousa and Piḫaššašši-Pegasos in the Mykale Mountains, as well as (c) that of Maiandros, Miletos, Keladon, Kurunta/Apollo Branchideus/Ntro- Prŋida-, *Sanda(s)/Šanta-Herakles, Achilles and Menelaos ‒ it can be demonstrated that the Aiolian and Ionian Greeks successfully embedded their ancestral as well as newly created myths in the new lands which, needless to say, had their own Anatolian-Luwic religions and ‘landscape myths’.

The Greek lexicon is known for its significant proportion of words lacking a clear etymology. Previous attempts to explain these words range from the socalled “Pelasgian” hypotheses, which resort to an unattested satem Indo-European language, to Beekes’s (2010; 2014) non-Indo-European “Pre-Greek”. In this paper, we reconsider this long-disputed question, and adduce Latin and even Proto- Romance data to unveil a centum language which possibly served as the basis for borrowing in both Common Greek and, at a later date, Common Italic. We analyse several dozen difficult Greek and Italic words as borrowings from this newly identified language, for which we provide a set of phonetic laws that model its development from Proto-Indo-European. Important methodological strengths of our proposal include the systematic correspondence between Greek and Italic forms, the semantic plausibility of our etymologies, and their consistency with what is known about Proto-Indo-European word-formation patterns. Moreover, a computer implementation of these phonetic laws ensures its formal consistency and validates the chronological ordering we put forward. This is all the more important since most of our etymologies involve more than one of these phonetic laws, which is an additional confirmation of the plausibility of our proposal.

Armenian seems to have been deeply influenced both at the grammatical and lexical levels by the epichoric languages of the Armenian highlands where the ethnogenesis of the nation took place around the sixth century BCE, shortly after the first arrival of the Hayk‘ around 700BCE.1 An investigation of the hybridization processes that happened during the crystallization of Armenian should consider that the ethnogenesis that brought speakers of Indo-European to constitute one single group with Urartians or other indigenous people of the Armenian Highlands had a linguistic counterpart that was tantamount to a glottogenesis process. The raw material constituted by Proto-Armenian was restructured according to the grammatical system of non-Indo-European languages, something that can be considered an intertwining process comparable with examples closer to our perception.

...

Relations within the Iranian branch of Indo-European have traditionally been modelled by a tree that is essentially composed of binary splits into sub-and sub-subbranches. The present article will argue that this tree is rendered outdated by new data that have come to light from contemporary and ancient languages, and that it was methodologically problematic from the outset, both for reasons of the isoglosses on which it is based and for not taking into account distinctions such as shared innovations vs. shared archaisms and marked vs. unmarked language changes. Conversely, a set of non-trivial morphological innovations, particularly in the verbal system, shared by Bactrian, Parthian and some neighbouring languages appears to suggest a subbranch which I will call "Central Iranian". The second part of the paper will present a tentative reconstruction of the nominal system of Central Iranian. This reconstruction wishes to show the result one arrives at when trying to reconstruct a subbranch as strictly bottom-up as possible, i.e. using only the data from the languages under study, and avoiding to profit from Old Iranian data and from our knowledge about the protolanguages. " Central Iranian " would be closely related to Sogdian, and would share, by language contact, a number of features with Middle Persian; at the same time, Bactrian and Sogdian also share features with individual Eastern Ir. languages.

Pinault Georges-Jean. Contacts religieux et culturels des Indo-Iraniens avec la civilisation de l'Oxus. In: Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 149ᵉ année, N. 1, 2005. pp. 213-257.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3406/crai.2005.22848

www.persee.fr/doc/crai_0065-0536_2005_num_149_1_22848

Reading the scholarly literature reveals that there is a surprisingly lively debate regarding the religion of the Achaemenids. While the majority of scholars apparently assume that they adhered to a form of Zoroastrianism, a significant minority strongly opposes this view and asserts that they followed a different religion.

While this seems possible to me, it does not seem very likely. This hypothesis assumes not only that the Achaemenids belonged to a different religion that shared many similarities with Zoroastrianism (one we have never heard of, however), but also that this religion became increasingly Zoroastrian over time. After all, although the sources from the 6th century B.C. are still vague, I cannot understand how anyone can claim that it wasn't Zoroastrianism by the 4th century.

So my question is: Why does this theory (namely, that the Achaemenids were not Zoroastrians) still seem to be quite popular? What problems does this theory solve, and how does this theory address the obvious problems it itself raises? The last point, in particular, is almost never addressed, which is really weird.

• The Problem of Armenian Origins in the Light of Recent Archaeogenetic Data
• Authors: Armen Petrosyan^1,2 and Aram Palyan²
•  View Affiliations
• Publisher: Brepols Publishers
• Publication: Matenadaran: Medieval and Early Modern Armenian Studies (MEMAS), Volume 2, Issue 1, Jun 2025, p. 71 - 96
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1484/J.MEMAS.5.152567

Abstract

The article presents the latest archaeogenetic data on the basis of which one of the most major problems of the history of Armenia—the origins and formation of the Armenian people—is examined. According to these data, regardless of the localisation of the early Indo-European (Indo-Hittite) Urheimat, the late Indo-European homeland was formed in the steppe and forest-steppe regions of Eastern Europe, from the Volga to the Dniester basins. It was from there that all the present Indo-European languages originated. Archaeogenetic data convincingly prove a migration of people across the Caucasus from the East European steppes to the South Caucasus and the Armenian Highland starting from the mid-third millennium BC. Those migrants and their descendants created the Trialeti-Vanadzor, Sevan-Artsakh, Van-Urmia, and Lchashen-Metsamor cultures of the Middle, Late Bronze, and Iron Ages. Even at the end of the kingdom of Urartu (seventh–sixth centuries BC), the local population in the territory of modern Armenia (the land Etiuni of Urartian sources) still had a significant steppe patrilineal DNA (75%). Armenian should have been the language of the creators of those cultures, and archaeogenetic data testify in favour of the Etiuni hypothesis of the origin of the Armenians.

•  Indo-European “Black” Youth Fraternities, Mythological Twins, and Foundation of Cities
• By: Armen Petrosyan¹
•  View Affiliations
• Publisher: Brepols Publishers
• Publication: Matenadaran: Medieval and Early Modern Armenian Studies (MEMAS), Volume 3, Issue 1, Jan 2026, p. 53 - 69
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1484/J.MEMAS.5.156833
•  Previous Article
•  Table of Contents
•  Next Article 

Abstract

In the distant past of the Indo-Europeans, fraternities of young warriors can be identified. Under the guidance of adult mentors, they lived for several years in the outskirts of the tribe’s territory, hunting, plundering, and imitating wolf behaviour. Only after that, undergoing an initiation ritual, could the young men become full members of the tribe, marry, and own property. These brotherhoods played a key role in the spread of the Indo-Europeans throughout Eurasia. Their raids and conquests of new territories led to the establishment of settlements and the resettlement of new groups of people there. A distinctive feature of the young warriors of the brotherhoods was their association with black or dark colour. In some traditions, the youths themselves, or their mythological incarnations, were called by the Indo-European root \h2reh1mo-, meaning “black/dark colour”. The article examines Indo-European myths or legends about the founding of cities by twins or twin-like characters, who can be considered mythological personifications of members of those brotherhoods. In Armenian epics, such characters establish capital cities or centres of epic tradition. For example, according to the ethnogonic tradition, the patriarch Ar(a)mayis builds the first Armenian capital, Armawir. In the Vipasank‘, King Eruand builds the second Armenian capital, Eruandašat. In the War of Taron, Demetr and Gisanē build the city of Višap. In the Daredevils of Sasun, Sanasar and Baghdasar build the city of Sasun. The names Ar(a)mayis and Armawir are derived from *h2reh1mo-, and Sanasar and Baghdasar build their city on a “Black Mountain”. These legends have parallels in Indo-European traditions. In Mahabharata, the five Pandava brothers, two of whom are twins, build their city of Indraprastha. One of the legendary brothers, founders of Prussia, establishes the cult centre Romowe. The legend of the founding of Rome is especially close to Armenian mythology. Remarkably, the names Romowe and Rome (Rōma) can be traced back to an ablaut form of *h2reh1mo-*. The presence of Indian, Armenian, Baltic, and Roman parallels indicates the general Indo-European character of this mythologem (seemingly, with the exception of Anatolian tradition).

• By: Lene Melheim
• Publication: Gendering the Nordic Past , pp 39-51
• Publisher: Brepols Publishers
• Publication Date: January 2025
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1484/M.WOP-EB.5.144353

Namely one (1):

Primitive Irish *oinas

Proto Brythonic *ʉn

Gaulish *oino*

Pictish *onno*

All from PC *oinos

What's going on here? Is the proto Brythonic just very late PB after the apocope that we see in PI occurred? Is this not clashing heavily with the (largely agreeable) Proto Insular Celtic? Not to mention clashing with the idea of Pictish as Brythonic, though obviously that's less surprising.

I'm aware of the idea that Primitive Irish represents a very archaic variant for formal purposes, but I wasn't of the belief that that's very widely accepted anymore, since 6th century syncope and apocope seem to be a widely spread phenomenon. Is our textbook Proto Brythonic just post 6th century? Dialectal northern english *yan*, presumably from something related to Cumbric if not Cumbric itself, seems to show some strong innovations as well.

I just found out about the R1A and R1B haplogroups and how they help us understand the Indo European lineage. However, these two genes don’t encompass all Indo European people, leaving out the Balkan and Anatolian branches.

Where do these people fit into the puzzle? Did Greeks show up before or after the R1A haplogroup? Is there a specific gene we use to identify them? What about other populations like the Hittites and Balkan people?

Abstract: "The spread of early farming communities first reached Britain c. 4000 BCE, ultimately displacing or assimilating local foragers. Two millennia later, another wave of migration, associated with the Bell Beaker culture, again transformed the genetic and socio-cultural landscape of Britain. Southwestern England is rich in prehistoric burial monuments, some dating from the Early Neolithic, many of which later saw reuse during the Bell Beaker and Bronze Age periods. We analysed the genomes of 30 individuals dated between c. 3800 and 1400 BCE from 12 sites in southwestern England and identified a sharp genetic shift between c. 3000 and 2500 BCE. All individuals predating ~ 3100 BCE were genetically similar to European Neolithic farmers, whilst those after ~ 2550 BCE genetically resembled people associated with the Bell Beaker culture in Britain. At three sites, Bronze Age individuals were buried in monuments originally constructed more than a millennium earlier by genetically distinct Neolithic communities. Lacking clear cultural or biological links to the original builders and users of these monuments, this second wave of burial activity may reflect an attempt by incoming or later groups to anchor themselves within established landscapes and invoke the symbolic authority of earlier burial places. This study provides the first systematic regional ancient genomic transect of southwestern Britain across the Neolithic–Bronze Age transition, an archaeologically rich region previously understudied from a population genomic perspective."

I was researching the Kusunda isolate located in India and I came to notice that some words looked a bit similar to PIE roots. I've selected some words here to show off similarities between the two languages. This is mostly based on initial consonant and vowel parings and is not focused on actual sound correspondents between the two languages.

Sources:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Kusunda_word_list

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusunda_language#Proto-language

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Proto-Indo-European_lemmas

Proto-Indo-European mak- (stomach)

Proto-Kusunda: a-mat (stomach)

Proto-Indo-European: néh₂s (nose)

Proto-Kusunda: i-nau (nose)

Proto-Indo-European: dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s (tongue)

Proto-Kusunda: u-dziŋ (tongue)

Proto-Indo-European: ní (down) or Proto-Indo-European: ní-ih₂

Proto-Kusunda: a-ma (below)

Proto-Indo-European: átta (father)

Proto-Kusunda: a/u-ta (mouth)

Proto-Indo-European: bʰew- (to blow)

Kusunda: bʰorlo-q-n̩ (to boil)

Proto-Indo-European: dóru (tree)

Kusunda: doma (a kind of tree)

Proto-Indo-European: dʰeygʷ- (to dig)

Kusunda: duga, dugə (ground, floor)

Proto-Indo-European: dʰeǵʰ-, dʰéǵʰōm (earth)

Kusunda: dum (soil, sand, earth)

Proto-Indo-European: kʷetwóres (four)

Proto-Germanic: fedwōr (kʷ to p change influenced by pénkʷe)

Kusunda: piːəgu (four)

Proto-Indo-European: pénkʷe (five)

Kusunda: pãgo (five)

Proto-Indo-European: tréyes (three)

Kusunda: dahat (three)

Proto-Indo-European: prew- (to jump)

Kusunda: bəmlu, bamlo (frog)

Kusunda: gʰãs (grass) 

Note: Not related as it’s a borrowing from Nepali and then there from Sanskrit घास

Proto-Indo-European: de, do (to)

Kusunda: hũtu (far)

Note: possibly compounded with a derivative coming from -de, -do

Proto-Indo-European: meh₂- (mom, to nurse)

Kusunda: məi

Note: most likely a babble word

Proto-Indo-European: menegʰ-, monogʰos. (many, sufficient)

Kusunda: mənni, məni (many)

Note: Possibly borrowed from English, ‘many’ is also noted as a possible European substrate wanderwort/word in Finno-Ugric and in many IE branches.

I built a software program to explore the possible connection between the Sumerian language and Indo-European. Analyzing the similarity matrix between words.

{Observation one: Sumerian -Vowel + R ending -> Germanic vowel + L}

 kur <--> holm [63.61%]-- kur: mountain, mountain range. OE- holm: raising island

 diGir <--> tungol [73.55%]-- diGir: god (Lewis, 215). OE tungol: star, planet, constellation (The Old-Engli.sh Dictionary)

hur <--> hol [92.00%]-- hur: hole . OE hol: hollow, hole, cave.

 bur <--> bolla [58.53%]-- bur: (stone) bowl, vessel (Foxvog, 9). OE bolla: bowl, cup, pot, beaker, measure (The Old-Engli.sh Dictionary)

bUr <--> bAl [87.89%]-- bUr: to glow, shine (Foxvog, 10). ON bAl: fire, bonfire, flame…(Byok, 280).

{Observation two: Metathesis with Sumerian words beginning with SI}

sIl <--> slItan [58.74%] -- sil: …to split, cleave, divide, breach, to tear or rip..(Foxvog, 45). OE Slitan: to slit, tear, rend, shiver. (The Old-Engli.sh Dictionary).

sikil <--> skin [58.33%]-- sikil: to be pure, clean.. .Skin: clear, bright, manifest (Wright, 162).

 simug <--> smith [58.25%]--  Simug: smith (Foxvog, 46). Smiþ: handicraftsman, smith, blacksmith, armorer, carpenter, worker in metals or in wood (The Old-Engli.sh Dictionary).

 siki <--> skæp [51.49%]-- siki: wool.. (Foxvog, 46). OE- skeap: sheep (The Old-Engli.sh Dictionary)

silim <--> sliumo [65.94%]-- Silim: be well, health.. good condition (Foxvog, 46). OHG Silim: quickly, suddenly(Wright, 162). Could have a similar etymological history as OE cwic: “living, alive, animate”. To ME “quick”: to be fast, speedily (p.quick.etymonline).

{Observation three: connection between words that began with H in Sumerian, and words that began with SK in proto Indo European}

 hal <--> halba [100.00%] -- hal: to divide (Lewis, 217). OS- halba: half (etymonline.com)

har <--> hring [45.93%] -- har: ring…spiral (Foxvog, 24). OE hring: ring (Atherton, 311).

Germanic halba is believe to derived from Proto-Indo-European root \skel.*

Old German hring and the modern English "ring" are assume to derived from Proto-Indo-European root sker.

First of all, apologies for my English and for being in the platform by the first time. I am a history lover beggining to study about ancient history and I am interested in understanding better the proto indo European society, cause of its great relevance in the studies of Greek, Roman, Indian, Celtic, Germanic etc. societies. I have read Coulanges book and I was really interested in his analysis of a proto indo European religion, but I would like to know if there are any connections between his theory and modern theories envolving Kurgan, Yamna, kóryos, etc. I know that many things in Coulanges work are outdated, I personally don't like his model of gens--->fratria---->tribu----->city, but on the other hand the part of the text showing the religion of the fire, the dead etc. is really convincing (at least, he seems to do what linguists try to do whith proto indo European idiom), but I really wanted to learn more about how this is seen nowadays by the historians. Maybe I didn't manage to express myself very well but thanks