There is no mystery to persistence of some languages despite gene flow

50 thoughts on “There is no mystery to persistence of some languages despite gene flow”

1. I think the language comments are spot on. Re; Basque I guess I tend to think that the more likely thing is perhaps that there was some mixture that involved a lower sex bias (like Etruscans seem to have), and then some dynamic of an expansion of lineage(s) within the culture happened. But that may be implausible for people who know about the Basque y-dna phylogeny. There’s also another case like Basque in SW Europe – the Iberian language

   In both the cases of Etruscan and Basque (and Iberian and Rhaetic), I guess there’s a qualifying note that although the ancestors to their languages seem likely to have been indigenous (present) to somewhere in Europe to the west of the steppe, by the time of steppe expansion, it is not necessarily the case that they were near where they were first encountered. Etruscan has that possible relationship with Rhaetic in the Alps, and so it may be an entrant into Italy (perhaps with steppe ancestry in the EBA even)… One commentator at Eurogenes has raised a few times that as Etruscan is linked to Villanova and Villanova to Central European Urnfield, it is alternatively possible that the Etruscans were a Central European group who spread in Italy when some proto-Italic group were already there…

2. “Roman patrician clans with non-Latin origins (the Claudii were Sabines)”

   perhaps not Latin, but Italic and related. Not like Etruscan.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabines

   Am I quibbling?

3. A more recent and well documented example of that is Guarani in Paraguay, the country is fully Spanish Guarani bilingual, even though almost all Paraguayans are a mix of Spaniards and natives.
   Guarani never needed any help there to survive, but it was necessary for the State to make a strong investment to make Paraguayans Spanish speakers.

   The same thing happened in Brazil but much earlier. The language of Brazil in the 1500s and 1600s was Lingua Geral, a tupi guarani derived language. It had to be stamped out in the 1700s by Portuguese statemen influenced by the enlightenment like Pombal.

   The reason why those places became Guarani or Tupi speaking, instead of Spanish and Portuguese speaking, is that the conquerors allied themselves with the conquered ones against other surrounding tribes, receiving women as payment to seal the alliance, and becoming polygamous, so the kids of Spanish men and Guarani natives, learnt the language of Guarani women, who greatly outnumbered Spanish men.

4. Thanks for opening this topic which is becoming an ongoing saga and never-ending ‘mystery’, not less than sc. ‘Indo-European’ urheimat. Actually, here we can see the meaningless of the term ‘IE’. The goal of this comment is to determine the Etruscan potential connection with primordial Danubian civilization and consequently – to contemporary Serbs. We ask a question: Can we draw a connection between Serbs and Rascians?

   The most obvious connection between Rascians, Etruscans and Vincan civilisation is the connection of Rascian-Etruscan script with Vinca’s script. One of the key supporters is a German scientist Harold Harman. A Vinca script pioneer, prof. R. Pesic wrote and spoke about Vincan script much more in Italy than he did in Serbia. Dr Pesic proved that it shows the most resemblance to Rascian-Etruscan script and Serbian alphabet.

   Namely, among Vincan signs are 20 letters of contemporary Serbian alphabet! Resemblance is even greater to letters of Rascian-Etruscan alphabet. All Rascian letters were found among signs found within Vincan civilisation. Vinca and monuments of Rascian literacy are separated by several millennia. The congruence cannot be accidental. This problem was addressed by S.Bilbija. In his book ’Old European language and Etruscan Script’ (recently, I provided the link to his book), he managed to penetrate deep into a secret of inscripted Rascian monuments. Interpreting their texts, he was able to collect a number of words used by Rascians of Tuscany; 80% of these words, according to him are found in the Dictionary of Serbian Language published in 1818, as well as in dictionaries of other Slavic languages, while only 20% were not preserved in these dictionaries but they exist in contemporary Italian language.

   Let see some linguistic material from Bilbija’s Rascian-Etruscan Dictionary (Etr-Ser-Eng):
   Krog=Krug=Circle; Krš=Krš=Karst; Kst=Kost=Bone
   Kud=kazna=Punishment; Lik=Lik=Image
   Likusćc=Lokovati=Chortle; Mž=Muž=Husband
   Mladj=Mlad=Young; Mrud=Mrtav=Dead
   Muk=Muk=Silence; Pltu=Patiti=Pay
   Ponita=Poneta=Taken; Prnal=Prineti nesto=Bring something
   Vino=Vino= Wine; Vinik=Loza=Grapevine
   Vatra=Vatra=Fire; Vačr=Večer=Evening, Fires=Hearts
   Klen=Koleno/Rod=knee, kin; Kleva= Kolevka=cradle
   Kle=getting born, getting cradled; Klan=sin=son

   In Rascian language were found some words for which were considered, until recently, that they have Turkic origin. Such as:
   Avleši=Avlijaši=Neighbours – somebody who lives in our Avlija (yard)
   This word is directly connected to Greek word AULE and later Latin word AULA.

   Herodotus claimed that Rascian was indigenous language and the oldest European language and it can be set a hypothesis that AVLA is a native, pra-Danubian, pra-Serbian word which later got into Greek and Roman language.

   In linguistic analysis of Rascians-Etruscans there are some names of Rascian cities that sound ‘Slavophonic’. The names of Etruscan cities:
   Perusija, Vada, Rusela, Volsini, Volci, Kosa, Bieda, Cere.

   The name of the Rascian people came in several forms as read and decoded from inscripted monuments by S. Bilbija: RAS – RASI – RASE – RASE
   As adjective and something belonging to Rascians, Bilbija decoded the following (phonetic) forms: RASNAL, RASCI, RASCNJEŠI.

   Bilbija has found words like BOLJAR, LUKOMAN, SILAŠ AND KAVGAŠ, which reconstruct a model of Rascian social system. BOLJAR is a local chief and independent owner, LUKOMAN is a ‘torchbearer’ or a state official elected from BOLJAR ranks, SILAŠ holds and executive power, while KAVGAŠ is a judge the one who resolves KAVGA (quarrel) or litigation. Bilbija found the word ŽAL (sorrow) in the depiction of Boljar’s funeral. Words CENA (price) and PLAĆ (pay) were found in a purchase contract.

   The clearest example is a short inscription which is interpreted as:
   ALA ŽER SIP NEI PERUN; ‘Ala pours žer on Perun’

   The fresco depicts the mythical being ALA, which is known in Serbian mythology. It can be seen also a chaperone of Ala and three-headed God of Serbs and other Slavs: Perun.

   The problem with Rascian script is that in text all words are written as merged. Some words were written without vowels and with ligatures: short inscriptions of two or more letters.

   However, Bilbija’s interpretations finally gave sense to numerous uninterpreted Rascian words. The key was to use modern Serbian language whose vocal range includes numerous sounds that do not exist in Greek language. By its vocal range, especially sounds Ž-Š-Č-C-Ć modern Serbian language is connected to the old language, to the so called ‘barbarian’ language of indigenous population of the Balkans and Asia Minor.
   All interpretations of old Etruscan, Lycian, and Lydian texts through Greek alphabet yielded no results because Greek contained no Ž-Š-Č-C-Ć sounds. Rascian words read through Greek alphabet made no sense at all. The great problem for interpreting Etruscan texts was the letter resembling Greek letter theta: Θ. Bilbija concluded in his research that this sign ought to be read as Ž. And this letter, even morphologically, resembles Cyrillic letter Ж.
   Voice Ж is typical for native language of the language which P.Solaric in 1818 named – Pra-Serbian or Pra-Danubian language.

   One of the most significant differences between Greek and Serbian language is the amount of sounds pronounced. Greeks pronounce one third less sounds than Serbs do, and it is a sufficient argument to understand where we should begin deciphering of old Rascian, Lycian, and Lydian texts. Greeks do not have in their alphabet sounds like: LJ-NJ-DŽ-Ž-Š-Č-C-Č, especially not the archaic forms ŠĆ and ŠČ. And this was the key for the secret that international linguists were never able to find in Rascian texts.

   The mainstream is still unsure if Etruscan texts are deciphered or not. Some say – ‘we can read the text, but we do not know the meaning of words’. It is really amazing such ignorance considering that Etruscans with their arts, buildings, architecture, culture established the foundations of Western civilisation. For many years the ‘mainstream’ tried to decipher Etruscan language by comparing to about 20 other languages, including some central-African, but never tried to compare with the nearest neighbouring, Serbian language until a Polish scientist analysed and establish that the language is similar to Polish or Russian.

   There are many proofs that Etruscan civilisation is connected to Vinca. It is established by comparing language, signs, symbols, script, names, wear, way of life and beliefs, scientific knowledge, genetics and historical records. Some of them may be briefly presented in new comments.

5. My question is whether there is any pattern to whether language survives or is displaced when a group speaking a language conquers a substrate speaking a different language.

   Razib recently wrote about the Magyars and Hungarian. The Magyars conquered an area inhabited by Slavs and Germans. The Magyar ruling class was wiped out in subsequent wars but their language persisted.

   Danes invaded France and ruled the mouth of the Seine river (Normandy). They learned French. Their descendants invaded England and within a couple of centuries were speaking English (albeit bastardized).

   In Mesopotamia, Persians invaded from the Zagros, but Aramaic survived and thrived until the Arab invasions when it was displaced by Arabic.

6. This is a nice summary. Good explanation for preservation of native language.

   It is interesting that in Spain though, it seems pre-IE languages survived in most places. Unlike in Italy.

   Celtic was the main IE branch in Spain but it arrived much later in 1st millennium BC.

   I wonder if there was an indigenous IE language in Spain, like in Italy. Did Beaker folk in-plant any IE language there?

7. Before I present another few details relevant to Etruscans just to refer to the question (though, I am sure it definitely wasn’t directed at me) re the languages which survived foreign conquering.

   One example is the Bulgarian language which is actually the Serbian language. Asiatic Bulgars came in very small numbers from Asia (after spending several decades in today’s Romania) to today’s Bulgaria where indigenous Serbs lived. There were tensions between them until Bulgars accepted Christianity and adopted Serbian language which was not changed until the 18th c.AC. After that, it was slightly changed to leave an impression of different language. (Such activities are present even today, when sc. Macedonian and Bosnian languages are politically getting promoted to look like languages separate from Serbian).

   One wise man whom we know well, mentioned that sc. Romanian language, was allegedly derived from Latin. Actually, the Roman Empire ruled 16% of today’s Romania for 168 years. Local people spoke (can be seen from Ovid’s letters from his exile in Constance) one version of Serbian, they were baptised in Serbian and their medieval church frescoes were written in Serbian Cyrillic. Romanians officially belonged to the Serbian Orthodox Church until 1924 when was bought a tomos from Phanari. However, Jesuits worked in Romania for 300 years to separate Serbs from Russians and they introduced an artificial Latin-like, Latin script language in Romania, took so many youths to Paris to teach them and promote this new language.

   Roman Empire was created after hundreds of years of wars with Serbian tribes, which got the Roman citizenship and became the iron fist of the Empire and gave dozens of Roman Emperors who lived in the Roman capital Sirmium, close to Belgrade. However, although the Latin was the official language, the local people never accepted this artificial language and preserved their old language.

   The opposite example is already mentioned Hungarian language, where Magyars came to today’s Hungary where indigenous Serbs lived. Still, until, 1848, Serbs were majority in today’s Hungary. After that it was executed, with assistance from Catholic Church, strong, forced ‘hungarisation’ of Serbs.

   The similar situation was in Germany where also indigenous Serbs lived while Germans lived on the left bank of Rhine river in today’s France. There were Serbian kingdoms in today’s Germany, almost all cities were founded by Serbs and they had Serbian names (e.g. Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, etc). Prussians were Germanised in the 12th c.AC but spoke Serbian until 200 years ago when it was prohibited by law. Still, Lusitanian Serbs (today about 60 K), in spite of multiple genocides and discrimination preserved their Serbian language up to today.

   https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x47087469c910d5a5%3A0x905c25eee699fcb1!3m1!7e115!4shttps%3A%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMr20FuKW-T9p3OGPVuL2Gz7D7lTBgje4J9UEDS%3Dw234-h176-k-no!5swendish%20museum%20germany%20-%20Google%20Search!15sCgIgAQ&imagekey=!1e10!2sAF1QipOPrnHP4zRKN8JDrifISmMVP3syDBzI6kMMBElQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjOsNeAk57zAhXUzDgGHdOtBdoQoip6BAhMEAM

   All these processes are not random. Usually, newcomers accept the language of indigenous people (that was the case in today’s Greece, too) but, later, newcomers try to leave impression that they don’t have anything with their former hosts (Greeks’ case). Catholic Church, in their Imperial push toward East, is a strong force in destroying and replacing local cultures, languages and inspiring genocides against indigenous people.

8. There are few other very brief points related to Etruscans:
   • Etruscans literacy is connected to Asia Minor people who originated in Balkan
   • Same toponyms and hydronyms in Italy and Serbia (e.g. river and monasteries Rasina in Perusia, Areto and Rasa)
   • The famous artefact: Venetian Urn in Italian museum Atestino has an inscription in archaic Slavic-Serbian language. It is a PALINDROME – the inscription read and understood from both ends: from the right to left and from the left to right. From the left to right it writes: ‘ended at us’. While, read from right to left, it would tune into modern Serbian as: ‘Dream gave easy to eye’.
   • Metallurgy and metal processing – only Etruscans practiced metallurgy and iron ore was available at that time only in Toscana, they processed 10-12 K tons of ore and later these centres supplied the Roman army especially during Punic wars.
   • Etruscans produced enormous number of golden artefacts. The iron ore probably sourced from the eastern Serbia where still gold is mined.
   • Ethnology of Etruscans is typical Aryans and had great similarities with Phrygians who were originally a Thracian tribe: Brigi-Bregi-Brezani-Brdjani (highlanders)
   • One of the most important mutual goddesses of Phrygians and Rascians was Zemlja – Semela (earth in Serbian).
   • Swastika is one of Etruscan artefacts (Bolzano 2600 years ago). Swastika is the primordial symbol that, most likely, by longest was preserved among Slavs
   • Slavic/Serbian elders, according to Arabian writers, get buried together with their horses. Back in Rg Veda it was noted – ‘royal sacrifices of horses, that horses made the universe’
   • Beside horses, important place in Rascian mythology was given to lions of Neo-Hittite style which points to cultural influence of settlers from Asia Minor
   • The symbolism of wolf: the totem animal of Serbs and Lycians. Among Rascians is the she-wolf. Both, Serbs and Etruscans, believe that they originate from the same totem animal – wolf.
   • Ethnology – Etruscans wear ‘opanci’ shoes just as Serbs still do. There are not that many nations across the world that still nurture this tradition.
   • We should mention the hat of Etruscan woman (from the intro picture above) which is identical to the hat of A Serbian woman from Serbian Lika in the 19th c.AD
   • There is a chain of toponyms from Asia Minor via Adriatic coast which have the name Ras or similar. After Etruscan were expelled (this genocide is still taboo topic) toponyms containing RAS were moving toward Austria, south Germany, Suisse.
   • The great Roman historian, Titus Livius, who lived in Venetian region between old and new era defined inhabitants of Raetia as descendants of Rascians-Etruscans.
   • The term RASA was probably brought by Liburni and Veneti from Istria and Adriatic coast to Italy 1400BC, before people from Lydia came to Italy.
   • While discussing Etruscans (and some other things) there is always a part of never regretted Celtomania. Official science, would attach ‘Celt’ label to anything it was not able to define or understand: “If something was old and unknown that must be Celtic”. Official history tendentiously erases every possibility that ancestors of Serbs and Slavs have lived in ancient times. Thus, for e.g. even for the city of Serbion on river Sava in Serbia they would claim to be of Celtic origin.
   • More points may come.

9. At the mere mention above by walter of Guarani transmission via alliances of the Spanish with locals in order to figuratively speaking, get the wives, I’ll mention again my pet hypothesis that Indo-European expansion was in part driven by (together with the wagons and stuff), wife deficit among IE cultures due to a favouring of maternal care against / even selective infanticide against daughters, which was in turn due to stronger desire for sons to manage the herds. Despite all these cultures involved probably being patrilocal and patrilineal, this may have been a difference between them. This could’ve been then at some point as a motivation for males with some steppe ancestry (and likely IE speaking) to enter EEF descended cultures.

   And one difference of these early IE cultures with the analogous Spanish in the Americas is that they would have lost consciousness of their steppe linked past much more quickly, due to no writing to preserve histories, no tradition of history rather than myths, no ongoing long distance links (as there were to Spain) and that all they’d know from experience would be the general homogenization of the European ancestry pool. Spanish descended peoples in the Americas remained conscious of a history of a Spanish nation and a separate, persisting, Spanish society which they aspired to be part of, and hence the sort of caste-like systems in Latin America, to maintain lineages with cultural currency and cultural prestige in Spanish metropole. But with much less written history, much less ongoing long distance trade, that sort of thing would collapse or never be established in the steppe-EEF encounter (myths would be reinterpreted, etc).

   At the same time, probably some attraction for the opposite phenomena in SE-Central Europe, where we see male y is often integrated but it seems quite likely that many of those cultures spoke IE. Local males there often would have had access to relatively technologically advanced weapons and leadership of relatively large populations, and a tradition of patrilocality (as we see more or less all over Europe, even for instance in the early Vinca culture it is inferred via isotopes). But perhaps it was still attractive to marry into a young, expanding culture with access to large amounts of male cousins (for help with fighting) who all spoke an almost undifferentiated language and had a closely related set of myths (compared to a preceding local situation of greater diversity, where EEF languages might well have been diverging since the Early Neolithic, with possibly also the introduction of some HG languages to the mix).

10. Polygyny is possible in this era of course; albeit so far we don’t have any evidence of brothers or sisters who are of similar age who are related through only the father, or of cousins who are related only through a grandfather. Analysis of relationships has tended to come back indicating monogamy. For instsance – https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0241278 – “The buried individuals represent four to six generations of two family groups, one nuclear family at the Alburg cemetery, and one seemingly more extended at Irlbach. While likely monogamous, they practiced exogamy, as six out of eight non-locals are women. Maternal genetic diversity is high with 23 different mitochondrial haplotypes from 34 individuals, whereas all males belong to one single Y-chromosome haplogroup without any detectable contribution from Y-chromosomes typical of the farmers who had been the sole inhabitants of the region hundreds of years before.”. The paper on Germany’s Lech Valley also has some fairly extensive sampling of a cemetary over time and finds nothing indicating polygamy – https://www.pnas.org/content/114/38/10083 .

    However this does require large family cemetaries, so it’s possible that these existed and we just have bad luck and so we haven’t found them. But it’s not like we’re getting immediate indications that these relationship patterns existed so it wouldn’t suggest that this was common or persistent. (May have been more frequent in some founding events though?).

    (The only likely burials that we find that indicate polygyny that I think we have detected are still the brothers detected in the Koszyce Globular Amphora Massacre, as far as I can remember).

    Possibly if we can find large cemetaries of burials that are close in time, which also happen to be from the Beaker/CWC Period, and we can then use some of these methods for identifying haplotype chunks, we might be able to really clarify if patterns of relationships that indicate polygyny existed by looking more exhaustively to map the relationships between all participents rather than hoping for the luck of finding obviously related cousins who are only linked through a grandfather, siblings linked only through a father, etc. It’s definitely an increasingly testable idea.

11. “We have precedence” *precedents*

12. The general theme isn’t that much of a mystery but the specifics are always interesting. Maybe we’ll never know what happened in specific cases even in more general terms but there are a few general sorts of possibilities and it’ll be interesting to see what might be going on.

    There’s the dissertation “Population genetic analysis of Neolithic to Bronze Age human remains from Trentino-Alto Adige (Northern Italy)” (direct link removed because I think it ate up my other post but easy to find and thanks to Carlos at indoeuropean eu for referencing it in his great, ancient DNA datasheet) I haven’t really gone through that seems to show a BA population from Trentino-Alto Adige/Sudtirol with some apparent steppe ancestry compared to the CA but at least some continuity in local Y-DNA. So the more specific kind of scenario Matt brought up seems plausible, with a population from the relative northeast, perhaps even relatively rich in G2a at first, imposing its language further south over IE-speaking populations. To my knowledge, Rhaetic and Etruscan are considered to be very closely related so any potential split probably isn’t that old either, whatever exact migrations (or lack of migrations) happened. But maybe something else is the case, like the survival in two close-by regions of a more widely-spoken pre-IE language, geographically split relatively recently by migrating IE speakers. Or maybe you had very Y-DNA-mixed groups almost from the “get-go”, even with a huge slant towards R1b like the historical Etruscans we see so far and the Basques, with some steppe ancestry, where for whatever social reasons the non-IE language ended up dominating, like your supposition about the Basque case.

    Clarifying that sort of thing further would be cool. As has been brought up a bunch on here in IE-related posts, we have the opposite example so far in the Balkans where originally seemingly non-IE/steppe lineages seem to expand quite a bit within IE-speaking groups.

    @Sam

    You have Lusitanian that hasn’t been considered Celtic, in a strict sense at least, by some linguists. Not sure what the common opinion about it currently is though and, even if “western IE but not strictly Celtic or Italic”, when it’s been argued to have intruded into Iberia specifically, whether Beaker or due to later BA movements.

13. It would be much easier to have a discussion if the confusing and meaningless term ‘Indo-European’ is not used. It could be used its equivalent (according to DA) – Yamnaya language. In this case it would be visible how many conclusions are simply absurd. (It reminds me of one overhyped panel discussion about artificial intelligence when one contributor said to others – would you be also so excited if we, instead of the term ‘artificial intelligence’, use the term ‘computer program’?).

    So, re Etruscan alphabet, it should be clearly mentioned that Greek alphabet was NOT a source of Etruscan (and subsequently Latin, as wiki says) because, simply, Etruscan alphabet is older than Greek (the other point is that Greeks did not get their alphabet from Phoenicians than from indigenous people in today’s Greece).

    But also, wiki says that Etruscan is closely related to the Raetic language (allegedly, both non-IE) but further, they say, that Raetic language is closely related to Illyrian language (which is IE)! It would be interesting to ask if the original Greek was Indo-European or not? It is also said that Etruscan (and Raetic) were influenced by neighbouring Indo-European languages but they don’t say which one.

    The Basque language remains a ‘mystery’, because it is still impossible to explain by using sc. ‘Indo-European’ framework and various gymnastics are used to overcome this. It is similar when talking about the diffusion of IE in Europe where, after ‘patron-client’ and ‘host-guest’ we have ‘the most eligible Yamnaya bachelors in demand by Vinca mums’. No one can explain how ‘Indo-European’ nomads enforced the language to people who 2500 before them had the First Industrial revolution. It would be similar, if one rural African tribe comes to Silicon Valley and enforce to locals their computer terminology.

14. About Basques, it seems there were sister languages around them, back in Julius Caesar’s days. The Aquitanian and Iberian languages covered a good part of today’s Spain and France. It shrank century after century giving ground to Latin languages to today’s situation.

    So, what happened? For both Tuscany and Aquitani, my guess is these parts of Europe were more densely populated and organized. Like the Normans millennia later, some Indo-Europeans integrated the elites of European farmers. They probably became the trading link between these proto-civilizations and their Indo-European cousins. They helped integrate more Indo-Europeans into these populations, as traders, craftsman, mercenaries and maybe even farmers (my guess is Indo-European pastoralist techniques helped to use the land further up in the Pyrenees and Alpes).

    After centuries, there’s not much difference between Latins and Etruscans, but the early prestige of Etruscan civilization made its language survive all the way to Roman Empire.

15. @Matt “Etruscan has that possible relationship with Rhaetic in the Alps, and so it may be an entrant into Italy (perhaps with steppe ancestry in the EBA even)… One commentator at Eurogenes has raised a few times that as Etruscan is linked to Villanova and Villanova to Central European Urnfield, it is alternatively possible that the Etruscans were a Central European group who spread in Italy when some proto-Italic group were already there…”

    This has been my working hypothesis. Etruscans are less differentiated than I’d expect even for this hypothesis, however. It is really a pity that we don’t have more integration with Bronze Age samples in this study because that seems to have been where the action was.

16. @MT

    Etruscans were actually Serbs.

    Who knew?

    Except you, of course.

17. @iffen Serbs gotta serb. You are not going to get anywhere with irony or sarcasm. Dude’s immune to that.

    Me I just scroll when I see his name. The signal noise ratio is just too low.

18. Can anyone say what is the meaning of the term ‘Etruscan’, because these people called themselves Raseni?

    https://www.google.com/search?q=rasina+umria&rlz=1C1GCEA_enAU802AU802&oq=rasina+umria&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i13i30l2.4488j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

    https://www.google.com/search?q=rasina+serbia&rlz=1C1GCEA_enAU802AU802&ei=OnZSYfeGK9aa4-EPsf-awAo&oq=rasina+serbia&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyCAguEIAEEJMCOgkIABCwAxANEB46BQgAEIAEOgUILhCABDoHCC4QgAQQCjoGCAAQFhAeOgkIABDJAxAWEB5KBQhAEgExSgQIQRgBUMc2WNxBYKpGaAFwAHgAgAHtAYgBhgmSAQUwLjMuM5gBAKABAcgBAsABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz&ved=0ahUKEwj3i6WkyKDzAhVWzTgGHbG_BqgQ4dUDCA4&uact=5

19. As if on cue.

20. The following link may (or may not) help to those who are trying to find out the meaning of ‘Etruscan’.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver_of_Piacenza

    There is only one another group (as far as I know) which practiced (and still practice) the augury/divination/sorcery using the liver.
    Another hint is a Greek name for physician/doctor.

    Frustrated Voltaire Montezuma aka happy Gilmore and a neo-Ustasha, who usually do not have any knowledge to say anything about anything, can also give it a try. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. (I don’t really understand what they are actually doing here).

    In one of previous comment I mentioned similarities of shoes:

    https://www.google.com/search?q=la+bella+donna+etrusca+shoes+picture&rlz=1C1GCEA_enAU802AU802&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=1PDuZgXYI3wdMM%252CEsqcaajmeN9fmM%252C_%253BRuD7gtmKYsgHIM%252COpHIC7UyKT1vlM%252C_%253B6iny9QsX9STn7M%252COpHIC7UyKT1vlM%252C_%253B9lCOy6uHhpVUiM%252COpHIC7UyKT1vlM%252C_%253B36GFjHW1Z3hJ4M%252COpHIC7UyKT1vlM%252C_%253BtQoraVzSau-pXM%252CooqmJ42PAPyI3M%252C_%253BnIxIsbMNAtZk5M%252CY3LC7-P0myzYRM%252C_%253BJY-qDHh_I9vVJM%252COpHIC7UyKT1vlM%252C_%253BiNiufU0Vkj74jM%252COpHIC7UyKT1vlM%252C_%253BOc9Jc7vvJkjsGM%252CY3LC7-P0myzYRM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kQIVh4mi960WbsqiX4L6n5U7X-xkQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqoZTk0qDzAhWjzTgGHTbkC9QQ9QF6BAgPEAE#imgrc=1PDuZgXYI3wdMM

    https://www.google.com/search?q=srpska+narodna+nosnja+slike&tbm=isch&hl=en&chips=q:srpska+narodna+nosnja+slike,online_chips:serbian+folk+costume:ZkUETLsANDA%3D,online_chips:sumadijska+nosnja:UZECG6X5jSc%3D&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiey_es0KDzAhX3oUsFHdx0AnAQ4lYoBHoECAEQGw&biw=1730&bih=881#imgrc=tezxGlZKNSYmmM

21. In one of previous comments was mentioned the similarity btw Etruscan and ‘Luwian’ alphabet and texts. S. Bilbija, who deciphered Etruscan texts, also deciphered the text on the so-called Xanthos Obelisk. There were attempts to shift the date of its carving in the stone from the 8th c.BC to the 4.c.BC, and to assign these texts to Greeks because they got their literacy in the 6th c.BC and came to Lydia in the 4th c.BC (i.e. after Alexander). However, it was obvious that Greeks did not have some of these letters in their alphabet and this attempt of texts appropriation failed.

    Because I write texts in 3 languages some of the following paragraphs (to be faster) were translated by Google translate. Sometimes, some gioreaders notice grammar mistakes but, I believe that they are enough comprehensive, and I often try, when I have time, to make improvements with additional editing. Nevertheless, we always can expect (as above) some grains of wisdom from the dumb and dumber.

    So, in the town of Sirbin, as Strabo calls it and as it was actually called, and the Greeks renamed it to Xanthos, in the province of Lydia, Asia Minor, a Serbian code from the eighth century BC was found carved on a large stone. The Code is engraved in Serbian, so that it can be read without much effort.

    In Lydia, Alexander the Great found a special situation. There were no Persian crews in the numerous cities of Lydia. Although Lydia has been included in the Persian Empire since the time of Cyrus the Great, it retained its special arrangement and its old laws.

    They had an alliance of 23 cities, among which the city of Sirbin (today’s Xanthos) was the capital and largest of the cities. The people of Lydia were first known as Solimi, and then as Termili after a part of the Cretans, which Sarpedon brought from Crete and settled in Lydia. Sarpedon also founded the city of Miletus as a settlement of the Cretan city of Miletus.

    The old Code of Lydia, which was carved in a stone obelisk in the town of Sirbin, dates from the VIII century BC, was found and was in the Serbian language and script. Lycian texts were collected at the end of the 19th century by the Austrian professor Ernst Kalinka. The interpretation of the text in Greek and other languages did not give results, and it was read in its entirety by S.Bilbija, with the interpretation of the ancient Serbian language and the alphabet from Lydia and Lycia. Bilbija first interpreted and published his decipherment of the text on the north side of the monument, according to a transcript by Ernst Kalinka (p. 44 of Kalinka’s book), with 34 statements that Bilbija interpreted it using similarities with the Serbian language.

    This working material was published in the collection “Catena Mundi”, where the statements are presented in the form of provisions of the code, grouped according to the topics covered, with the side mark of the monument and row number for each of the provisions.

    The complete text of this monument, which contains 232 provisions, was shaped, adapted and supplemented by the comments of prof. Djordjevic.

    The provisions are classified into 16 groups, according to their content, and each of them bears the mark of the side of the world and the order on the obelisk. These groups (chapters of the Code) are:

    (1) On state management – the task of the state; (2) Humanitarian duties of the state; (3) Freedom of occupation and work; (4) Customs and laws; (5) Selection and characteristics of the leader; (6) Duties of fighters; (7) About the enemy and his actions; (8) Wise sayings and advice; (9) Ancestors’ advice to farmers; (10) Tips for gold ore diggers; (11) Medical advice; (12) Criminal offenses, proceedings and penalties; (13) Education of children; (14) On food and its preparation; (15) About food and how to eat; (16) Carved should be read, remembered, performed.
    Each Chapter includes several specific provisions….

    https://www.google.com/search?q=xanthos+obelisk+pictures&rlz=1C1GCEA_enAU802AU802&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=5h2Jy34nIoUydM%252CGY3OMOWex2P0QM%252C_%253B5JS1eMSSIGm0FM%252Csh0IV4MpKgASYM%252C_%253BFUtqkz1qG4dYNM%252CvmWDQFNOojTNXM%252C_%253BJbW3y9xbMnB9VM%252Ci8I7stzZF-56RM%252C_%253BwwzTHqL37FVfsM%252ChE88i8RlVj0rnM%252C_%253B2s1oncnl8HaKwM%252CX9AcqbI4PdrNmM%252C_%253B6Ly7Vh1OSvwFWM%252C7vHYJu5LbR20gM%252C_%253BbY6jIYjyHeNavM%252C9aSybKuKnaxw7M%252C_%253BK4sc-n5NIkxqcM%252ChE88i8RlVj0rnM%252C_%253B7z7EmHgvLzV9vM%252C3P33nYJDbhLGMM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kQ7k3Xi4Hf-Zs488X9ZfeVt5WcOGA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwitkr7clqHzAhWYXSsKHRBcCdUQ9QF6BAgREAE#imgrc=mYbQ81p2O0opSM

22. Here are my issues with this paper:

    The entire genetic profile of Italy was not 100% Etruscan/Italic from North to South. We already see so-called outliers and IA Greeks that create a cline between these southern sources and Etruscans/Italics.

    Balkans_IA already plots on top of modern Tuscany to Sicily/South Italy, on the PCA. Where are they considered in all of this? They’re right across the Adriatic sea, they were a part of the Empire. There’s a lot of historic and prehistoric migrations.

    Local-population resurgence was not considered or explored, when in fact it was considered by Stanford and Harvard.

    Given all of these points, I fail to see how modeling Italians as basically replaced by Eastern Mediterraneans and Lombards/Goths is a sound model.

23. @ohwilleke, it could well be you that I remember it from, and not on Eurogenes!

    @Jovialis, yes, a two-way model here is clearly inadequate even using the Erturia Imperial that are quite richer in EEF/”West Med” than the Rome Imperial set.

    On PCA: https://imgur.com/a/fQPwj7x

    The real cline of the Italian provinces “points” away from Rome Imperial/Erturia Imperial towards somewhere between France and the Basques (so something like early medieval Iberians/Southern France), while a cline between Roman Italy and Germans is more like the present-day Balkan cline, but really not quite like any existing cline.

    The best fit I get between Erturia Imperial and DEU_MA for Tuscany today is something like their model; 80% Erturia Imperial and 20% DEU_MA. But when I look at the clines it’s pretty wrong, albeit the 80% Erturia Imperial and 20% DEU_MA *is* closer than what we see for the Rome Imperial+DEU_MA model (63%+37%), which is just really bad. As an individual population I can see why Tuscany passes qpAdm that way, but if we consider North Italy and assume that an explanation for the whole cline should be mostly uniform, the “German+Late Antiquity)” explanation fails. North Italians are mainly more French/North Spanish-like than their Central Italian and Southern counterparts (or even Balkan-like, minus the Slavic drift) rather than more German-like and that needs an explanation one way or another.

    (@Forgetful, I’m just using the old ETR004 sample for now here until this paper’s data become available through G25 on their genotypes, but thanks for the link).

    More samples will be needed from north and south and from a wider time-span to really start to get a really good model of the population change in this period.

24. @Matt

    After reading the pre-print, Olalde et al. 2021 I would expect a similar model like Balkans_IA for IA Italy to be considered, based on history. I think the big shift in the genetic profile of the Italics, and Etruscans happened after the incorporation of Magna Graecia. The Roman unification of Italy probably acted as a conduit for Aegean_IA ancestry to spread throughout the peninsula, before Rome’s boarders even expanded out of Italy. Thus I think a model like (C.Italian_IA + Aegean_IA) would be appropriate, as was Balkan_IA for the Classical Balkans, (Slovenian_IA + Aegean_IA). Afterwards, (C.Italian_IA + Aegean_IA) should be compared with subsequent populations that could have augmented the population, i.e. Lombards, Eastern Med, etc. I think it would show that the augmentation was not a impactful as the Max Planck Institute paper is proposing.

    In the PCA for Olalde et al. 2021, you can see that Sicily/S.Italy and Tuscany go along this C.Italian_IA and Aegean_IA axis, but pulled slightly east. How much could also be brought upon by genetic drift?

    But also, we need to see what Bronze Age Southern Italy was like, and prior. Because they could have been Aegean-like, prior to the arrival of the colonial Greeks in the south. Which would push the genetic cline even further back.

25. @ Milan Todorovic

    You have filled this dicussion with pseduo-scientific notions in complete contrast to the study you just published. When are you going to stop?

    @ Matt

    The samples in G25 are incomplete for northern Italy to be able with G25 to draw definitive conclusions. Northern Italy forms the largest cluster in Italy and also the one with the greatest internal differences. Emilians and Romagnoli are completely missing in G25, and there is only one Ligurian from Western Liguria. These samples are mostly from Raveane 2019, where northern Italy is over-represented by alpine and pre-alpine areas, also with some outliers from German and Slavic language minorities, and under-represented by the Po Valley, which is the most populated area in northern Italy. Raveane 2019 study released only a small portion of the samples (the Piedmontese and Swiss Italian samples are from older studies). There is no gap between the Tuscans and the Emilians, Romagnoli and even Ligurians, but there is a continuum, as shown by much more accurate PCAs not based on G25.

    In Italy, there are no such high percentages of Germanic Y-DNA that would support such a shift. The part of the Etruscan legacy is based on few samples and is the weakest of the study, although it is obvious that compared to the Etruscans there was a shift, it’s still too early to draw conclusions though.

    On PCA: https://i.imgur.com/XFv3jzg.jpg

26. @Walter:
    What impresses me is that he has the time and determination to keep going. A for effort, to be sure.

27. @Jovialis

    You can check the kind of general model I used in the previous post about this study using a preliminary datasheet of the new Etruscans and the previous Etruscans+Italics among others, which doesn’t disagree with much of what you’re saying.

    I will strongly disagree with you though and say that the Balkans_IA we have so far clearly doesn’t plot “on top of modern Tuscany to Sicily/South Italy”, they’ll clearly more EEF-rich on average and lack the stronger combined WHG and CHG+Levant_N-rich inputs modern Italy has in comparison (plus, even if that were the case it’d make central Italy mostly IA Balkan with nothing else in it!), but I think you do have a good point about Balkan-like admixture in Italy, considering both historical contacts (pre, during and after the empire) and the fact that the Adriatic Proto-Villanovan individual appears more Balkan than Etruscan/Italic-like. In fact _some_ though obviously nost most of the individuals in the Imperial dataset also look like they might be straight up Balkan (or Aegean) like to me rather than being Italic-Near Eastern mixes or Balkan-Italic-Near Eastern mixes

    Briefly in what I personally can see there so far in that kind of process and you can check things yourself if you want with that datasheet:

    – Using Italic and south Balkan sources doesn’t give decent distances for central Italy. I’ll give an important disclaimer here since there are obvious disputes: Matt might be able to give a better answer for what we can consider such in a technical way, I approach it more empirically in the general sense I get in Vahaduo/R with other populations and the medievals that start approaching them. I think around ~1% seems good
    – Adding the IA CEU samples from the new paper that are plausibly Celtic improves things a little bit but the Italic/Etruscan gets eaten up
    – Adding Adriatic/north Balkan sources, Tuscany starts approaching something more plausible but the overall distances still aren’t that good, especially for the rest of central Italy
    – Adding modern Armenian since we lack decent cover for the later more northern part of the Near East and BA Levant to represent the two ends of the Near Eastern cline of the individuals we see appearing during the Imperial period (and some earlier too), the distance now becomes great and you don’t even necessarily need any Germanic-related input though a small amount must exist. You simply can’t avoid this kind of admixture on some level in this kind of model and in fact, if you use a 2-way Italic + X (reductive, imo) model, that kind of Near Eastern like ancestry is the one that works best by far with current samples. Central Italy comes out about equal parts Italic/Etruscan-like and north Balkan/Adriatic-like with some Celtic and Greek like input and an amount of Near Eastern-like admixture about equivalent to the combined Celtic+Greek.
    – If I remove the north Balkan/Adriatic-like after this, the distance is still basically modern like but the Near Eastern and Celtic+Greek like inputs increase a bit to bring ancient Italics to the modern central Italian position.

    Apart from IA samples from the Aegean, Anatolia, the whole of north Italy etc. we also need more IA samples from both sides of the Adriatic because it looks like they might have an underrated role to play in Italy. One relatively outlying Etruscan had that kind of input and the Proto-Villanovan Adriatic sample looks like fresh off the Balkan side of the Adriatic, as I mentioned.

    A couple other interesting things I notice in that kind of mdoel: with the same model, south Italians get a decent amount of south Balkan-like input, even more than their Italic-like one at the very south (Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Molise, Campania) which might not be surprising considering the Messapian, Albanian and Greek input during various periods.

    Eastern Sicily gets much more south Balkan/Greek like input while west Sicily gets a lot more combined western/Italic+Celtic-like and Levantine+North African (not included in that datasheet but I used the Taforalt sample to represent the last one). This corresponds well to the overall distribution of Phoenician/Punic vs Greek influence on the island as well as the relative strength of the Arabic and much more long-term Byzantine Greek linguistic survival in Val Demone later on, as well as the probably southwestern European connected stronger Beaker presence in the west of the island compared to the east. Weird if just a coincidence.

    By the way, the model in the Danube limes paper I also think was a bit reductive. I guess it can be hard to get a working model in qpAdm so they had to make do with what they could and it’s interesting that they got some two-way working models there for the modern Balkans even with some awkward sources at times but I feel that you need something more Near Eastern-like as in Italy to model them, on top of the Iron Age Balkan and the early Slavic ancestry. To repeat one point from above, since it’s been discussed a lot, specifically Germanic-like ancestry in Italy doesn’t actually seem needed at all after all that to me, though a small amount must exist. But the papers naturally have less room to play around like this and consider these sorts of different intepretations so it might make sense why they wrote what they wrote.

    The two areas actually seem to resemble each other in that way, requiring a good amount of Iron Age like ancestry but also more northern and southern/eastern inputs compared to the IA to bring them to their current position (Balkans overall more “northeast”, Italy overall more “southeast”). We see non-Basque Iberia presenting a similar case compared to the IA and I think France will turn out similar overall. In general, with the ancient DNA, to me it looks like the Roman empire brought a decent amount of eastern, i.e. Balkan and Near Eastern like ancestry towards the rest of the Roman empire and its actual impact in all areas might be assessed better in the future.

28. “requiring a good amount of Iron Age like ancestry but also more northern and southern/eastern inputs compared to the IA to bring them to their current position”

    And to mention something obvious, this is probably the situation almost everywhere in west Eurasia. Even if a population looks quite similar to moderns in the LBA to EIA, it doesn’t mean you should try to explain everything in absolutely local terms so there’s no need to try to that much, even if the extra admixture doesn’t seem that great or looks very similar to what already existed there. It’s just that things aren’t as dramatic as in the pre-BA period where very different populations come together. And so far I’d say no place that has been sampled decently is exactly modern-like, even by that period.

29. @ Matt

    The samples in G25 are incomplete for northern Italy to be able with G25 to draw definitive conclusions. Northern Italy forms the largest cluster in Italy and also the one with the greatest internal differences. Emilians and Romagnoli are completely missing in G25, and there is only one Ligurian from Western Liguria. These samples are mostly from Raveane 2019, where northern Italy is over-represented by alpine and pre-alpine areas, also with some outliers from German and Slavic language minorities, and under-represented by the Po Valley, which is the most populated area in northern Italy. Raveane 2019 study released only a small portion of the samples (the Piedmontese and Swiss Italian samples are from older studies). There is no gap between the Tuscans and the Emilians, Romagnoli and even Ligurians, but there is a continuum, as shown by much more accurate PCAs not based on G25.

    In Italy, there are no such high percentages of Germanic Y-DNA that would support such a shift. The part of the Etruscan legacy is based on few samples and is the weakest of the study, although it is obvious that compared to the Etruscans there was a shift, it’s still too early to draw conclusions though.

    On PCA: https://i.imgur.com/XFv3jzg.jpg

30. @Otanes: Don’t encourage him

31. @Walter, partially in Otanes’ defence here, by this point I think it’s hard to think we have evidence that there is any comment that would not do so. (Maintaining stony silence in response is probably the best bet, though would look rather strange to anyone peering in on these discussions!).

    @Forgetful and @Jovialis, not to pile on, mostly agree with Forgetful’s conclusion here on trying to explain the Roman period and post-Roman with Aegean_IA+Italy_IA, but I’m sure things will be along either way to say what happened and we’ll know what the Aegean genepool in IA and then Classical and Hellenistic Eras looked like. As always dense samplesets that capture times of big changes will be needed to really sort out what happens. It looks like the change happens very rapidly in Erturia around 0 AD, so just lots of stuff from Italy around 300 BCE to 100 AD (and probably even earlier considering Greek colonies in Italy – one a side note it’s fascinating how the Greek colony samples from Spain basically maintain the same character even though on sample is RC dated to 500 BCE and another to 250 BCE, if RC dated accurately).

    It’s still baking my noodle how the models I’m trying for the present day Italian cline don’t really seem to be accepting any of the French Iron Age samples with Rome_Imperial when I try to force two way models involving Rome_Imperial… Yet when I try to do a regression to estimate the two ends of the Rome_Imperial->modern day cline (through post-Imperial), then the Ghost that represents the PostImperial shift, is best fit as more of less present day French from the Paris Basin region or the Occitanie region. E.g. as here – https://imgur.com/a/FErjSx9 . Seems a bit of a puzzle to me really.

    …

    On a slightly separate topic, it does seem a bit to me like the Roman Empire is kind of a totally weird thing in history in how it has this urban character that seeming barely impacts Europe to the line North of the Alps. It just contrasts a lot with the paper on East Asian impact to Japan post-Yayoi (although that may be overestimated). Perhaps the Roman Empire was just *too* urbanized to make a big impact over time in the north, once the flows of population from the southern rural that renewed the cities were gone.

    If Rome had been just a little bit more rural in character, a bit more of a conventional agrarian civilization, then maybe Europe today would genetically look a lot more compressed around Southern and Central Italy…

32. So, the official strategy is – the stone silence. I wander if the D&D duo also will comply. In addition, one additional stage (probably as 1.a) should be added in already obsolete Arthur’s adage – all truth passes through three stages – first, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

    There are hundreds of assertions presented in this and OT, from Virgil up to the above mentioned stone, which is not silent. The most of readers, if not all, probably never heard about some of them. Some are easily verifiable, some are verifiable by the basic logic or by adding 2+2, some could be found by patiently going through the literature, some would be obvious if self-evident history falsifications are abandoned. Anyone, if he/she wishes, can find one doubtless incorrectness and crash my credibility. Only some psychologists can explain such desire to practice Arthur’s 1st stage (now plus M’s 1.a) with a zero contribution to any sensible discussion.

    Instead, we see densely populated Balkan as genetically uninhabited area, ‘early Slavics’ without a single historical evidence of their migration, ‘ancient’ Albanians who first stepped on Balkan soil in 1043 AC (plus previous 200 years on Sicily and before that in Caucasus and S.Arabia), overhearing the question if Alexander and his Macedonians were Greeks or not, what’s happened overnight with Illyrians, Dalmatians, Tribals, Moesians, Thracians, Dacians, Dardanians, Pannonians, Pelasgians, etc. It is not surprising why none in this context could answer the meaning of ‘Europe’. Regarding Etruscans, the founders of Western civilisation (according to Western scholars), it is not a coincidence that they were a mystery for decades and centuries. It is not because of their genetics than because of the origins of their culture. Because we have enduring genetic ping-pong and not one word about their culture which is only interesting. But, as we can see, the mystery show must go on.

    Well, I still consider this blog to be intellectual. I see that my comments are carefully read even in a stony silence. I hope that some will learn something, and I do not need any appreciation for my efforts to present tips of icebergs in my comments. I am not here to socialize and make friends (this would fail even with a Passion-ate music (&Latin) lover Gio, where, for his (non-eventuated) commenting departure, I posted a requiem). When the above duo becomes an orchestra, here will not be a place for me. So, let see D&D duo in a full (commenting) action:

    https://www.google.com/search?q=dumb+and+dumber+pictures&rlz=1C1GCEA_enAU802AU802&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=QKSES5Vw34yPEM%252CYB0INUYF9w7YIM%252C_%253B3K-BAyGjcg4PAM%252C3OUWXE-NCfiNzM%252C_%253BLJaH7m1grZNqiM%252CbNh-gQFTa6F5qM%252C_%253Bb57De11_ps1WVM%252CxrD1LAWC2HrvZM%252C_%253BoOF4h45cbqQ5nM%252C-7pzTum5JGNELM%252C_%253BGVSikY9P_6rKIM%252CO0p_KJ-UmLRCQM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kT-0tJ6Pdy2B84UAKHbXJQVtgJJpg&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwiAxrai6aLzAhVoRPEDHRF5C_4Q_B16BAg3EAE#imgrc=GVSikY9P_6rKIM

33. @Matt: Shtum.

34. So, it is announced a stone-faced, in stone engraved, Indo-Germanischer/shtumshmok alliance. The original DDes sent an invite to the ‘1.a’ to jointly make a triple DDD because the superlative is missing? I am curious to see this. It is also interesting to see redirected anti-Semitism, forwarded to maybe only nation where AS did not exist. The nation, which gave the name to the mountain peaks where 10 commandments were obtained from the God, from which was watched the promised land and who gave a refuge to people returning from Babylonian captivity and not accepted in Jerusalem. Yep, the same people who engraved in stone the text from previous comment. The memory and gratitude on the last one was probably somewhere still stronger than ‘no one seen’, ‘no one noticed’ ‘early Slavic’ migration falsification (1st minute only):

35. Oh FFS.

    There’s a lot of interesting commenters here (like Matt) that get buried by the chauvinistic junk being spammed here. Is there a way we can hide certain commenters so I don’t have to waste my time accidentally reading their nonsense?

36. The Argonaut is back? Ready to join the orchestra? I haven’t seen any his contribution here on anything. Maybe the meaning of the term ‘Etruscan’? For the beginning he should first learn the meaning of the term ‘chauvinistic’. Didn’t you catch the ‘1.a’ shmok rule or it is needed to be drawn for you? Read the lips from the stone-faced Malcom in the middle – shtum!

    The Argonaut is back? Ready to join the orchestra? I haven’t seen any his contribution here on anything. Maybe the meaning of the term ‘Etruscan’? For the beginning he should first learn the meaning of the term ‘chauvinistic’. Didn’t you catch the ‘1.a’ shmok rule or it is needed to be drawn for you? Read the lips from the stone-faced Malcom in the middle – shtum!

    https://www.google.com/search?q=dumb+and+dumber+pictures&rlz=1C1GCEA_enAU802AU802&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=QKSES5Vw34yPEM%252CYB0INUYF9w7YIM%252C_%253B3K-BAyGjcg4PAM%252C3OUWXE-NCfiNzM%252C_%253BLJaH7m1grZNqiM%252CbNh-gQFTa6F5qM%252C_%253Bb57De11_ps1WVM%252CxrD1LAWC2HrvZM%252C_%253BoOF4h45cbqQ5nM%252C-7pzTum5JGNELM%252C_%253BGVSikY9P_6rKIM%252CO0p_KJ-UmLRCQM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kT-0tJ6Pdy2B84UAKHbXJQVtgJJpg&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwiAxrai6aLzAhVoRPEDHRF5C_4Q_B16BAg3EAE#imgrc=akcBZmiZCDMKiM&imgdii=YDJNGO5oVVWXFM

37. I have always appreciated Milan’s quixotic struggle, but it does detract from the comment thread when half the text is made up of tangential essays on ancient Serbs. Surely even you can see this, Milan?

38. Thanks, Marco. Please have a look the title of this thread. All my comments are directly related to the topic including the Virigl’s OT excerption. All ‘tangential’ essays are related to Etruscan language (have a look the first and third comment, for example). I provide proofs that Etruscan and Serbian languages/alphabets have the same origins. I could not see anyone denying this. Not even proof is required. In one comment I answered a question thrown at anyone if there is an example that any language survived foreign conquering. There was no any objection on my answer. In the context of the Etruscan language I made my assertion related to IE and non-IE languages because there is confusion which involves Basque and other languages. Proponents of sc. IE are agitated because they cannot answer the basic questions about its origins, its diffusion and its connection to Rg Veda and Sanskrit.

    There is arrogance and ignorance related to Vinca civilisation. I think that none of commenters knows if Etruscan texts are deciphered or not. What we are talking about? I presented one example (with a link to free book) where Etruscan texts were deciphered, and I provided many examples where this alphabet and language is similar to Serbian. I also provided the example of Xanthos Obelisk, which text is almost identical to Etruscan (who allegedly originated in this area before coming to Italy in several waves) the same methodology was used for its decoding. I could not see any other opinion or proof that this is not correct. There is customary here to regularly cite some groups, tribes, people (including Yamnaya), etc, who are coming from nowhere with already formed languages for which we don’t know where they came from.

    So, the disruptors on duty, who never contribute anything, started their usual distractions. I could not see that anyone found any major (nor minor) incorrectness regarding to Etruscans (Raseni) in my comments. Some tried patronizing to keep a stone face. I am also a bit concerned, seeing that this blog is coming close to triple DDD+ rating (if D’Argonaut’s with Oh Golden FF(lee)S application is accepted; ‘+’ is for the stony-faced who is still reconsidering his options). I should not apologize for some others’ lack of knowledge and no contributions to this ‘mysterious’ topic. Let see if anyone can object some of my assertions or ask questions and additional explanations or just simply express that he does not believe in some claims without providing own proofs. But, it is not possible until someone follows falsified history even it is in a contradiction with a common sense and get frustrated because cannot answer my basic logical questions.

    It is indicative that none (so far) could provide any explanation for the term ‘Etruscan’ what is the first thing under this title. If you think that I should be more conformist and play Dumb or Dumber that US elections were 100% fair and transparent, I can spare the readers of my explanation if they are not interested to know and if you promise me that will be at least one explanation of their name (I will not object even if it comes from wiki). If there is, however, any fault on my side (I accept this impossible possibility), let’s bury the hatchet and declare the stony silence forever with a less known version of the following song – Shtum Nights.

39. @Jason – I used to read Milan. But now I do like I do for all spam. Just keep going as soon as I see the name. It’s a few seconds out of my life but I’m not going to let it bother me.

40. I guess I really hurt him.

    Milan: You need to chill out.

    Brevity is the soul of wit.

    If you posted less, your contributions would be appreciated more.

41. I guess, I have really devoted readership here. Despite saying that they avoid reading my comments, skipping them and finding their happiness in this, they actually carefully read them. Why is that? Maybe because of ‘non-dry’ writing but more likely because of the enormous amount of information packed in my comments. This information cannot be found easily somewhere else because the ‘mainstream’ suppresses them, similarly to alternative information about covid or about regularity of US elections. And, a few readers persistently try to convince me (actually themselves) that any mentioning of election irregularities is ‘baseless’. It is not strange that the self-styled guardians of the general public mental health are constantly attempting to provocate me and impose my banning.

    If one skims my comments here, he can see that the first comment is almost a scientific paper. The third comment is a bullet-pointed pack of information and one of these points I expanded into a comment about Obelisk with a text similar to Etruscan. Someone could use all this to write a book (either non-fiction or fiction). I do write more about topics I know well, and I do not comment on topics where my knowledge is on wiki level. It is interesting that none found any incorrect or at least, illogical information in my comments. Only triple D people could conduct ad hominem attacks instead of ad rem. The first two questions under the above title should be – are the Etruscan language/text/alphabet deciphered or not and what is the meaning of the term ‘Etruscan’. Both questions, remain unanswered. If someone feel intimidated (he shouldn’t be) by the amount of information I provided and did not answer previous questions because of this, next time I will give them 2-3 days advantage before I post my comment. Specifically:

    >Voltaire (“I wholly disapprove of what you say—and will defend to the death your right to say it”) – No, you did not hurt me at all. On the contrary, it was funny this attempt of conspiracy, but it could be more successful if Navajo was used instead of Yiddish. Just simply, some people and some groups know for shame, some don’t. I hope you and all others have heard what Bibi said. In one sentence he confirmed one half of my writings. It wasn’t his private opinion, he was definitely informed by knowledgeable rabbis not to mention ‘early Slavic migration’ crap. If you have a spare time you can study where Moses got his tables and watched the promised land, who were David and Goliath, who Samson and Delilah and present this knowledge to all of us. Also, are you happy with my answer (comment #2) about surviving languages?

    >Rosco – you are probably joking about ‘pseudo-history’. The best examples are the mainstream’s ‘Slavic migration’ without single evidence, so as sc. ‘Indo-European’ fairy tale which is contrary to common sense. Hope, Razib will open the PH topic to discuss more extensively.

    >Sweeny – I am sorry to waste few precious seconds of your life. What’s happened that you stopped reading my comments (between us, I don’t trust you)? I did not change anything in my style. Maybe, when I answered your question about Romanian/Bulgarian genetics/languages? You did not come back after that, I assume you have accepted my answer and stored somewhere in your grey matter. I was always grateful to people from whom I learnt something in the past. This also include all of you guys. You have taught me something and pushed the envelope of my knowledge about the human nature. Thank you! Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

42. A serb’s gotta serb.

    No. we don’t even bother to skim. We just see Milan’s name and keep scrolling.

43. He has made the comment section all but unreadable for me. I often skip the entire comment section when I see his name.

44. milan, you do need to chill out. i cut you extra slack because i find your alternative chronology amusing. but don’t abuse my indulgence. stop overwhelming the comments with long expositions on stuff other people can barely understand.

45. On topic, the poster child for the persistence of language despite gene flow would have to be Vanuatu.

46. @Marco, there is something of a Quixote flavour to the combination of truculence and intended grandiloquence; “What say you, Sir Argonaut!? I, a knight of the Old Vinca, challenge you to courtly battle!”. (“Quixotic is a Serbian word!”?)

47. @ Matt – As I recall, a key plot point was that Alonso Quixano had lost his mind. Or as we would probably say now, he had become mentally ill.

48. Matt, thanks for the humor. I laughed.

49. Pre indo european italian culture and language must have been very seductive to those IE dudes. No wonder the Romans were arch patriarchal and warlike, they had to fight against Etruscan “decadence” or be swallowed up by it. Ha these old Romans really do seem “Russian”(mentally).

    Interestingly it seems like something similar happened in medieval Iberia. Many Hispano-Romans ended up converting partially or completely to the culture of the Arabs. However there was always a group that rejected Islam and the Arab language. Inevitably they had to become very warlike in order to resist Islam.

50. @ Milan – You may have confused me with someone else. I never asked any “question about Romanian/Bulgarian genetics/languages”. I don’t even know when that came up because I stopped reading you early. You seemed to have an unshakeable faith that I didn’t share and that seemed very unlikely to be true, like creationism or alien abduction.

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