> it's that the PIE-speaking Yamnaya swept in from the caucuses and slaughtered mostly everyone (especially men) except the Basques. It's not pretty, but that's the way it was.
That's a pretty categorical statement of fact.
There are other ways for a population to undergo big shifts in genetic makeup. For example 95% of Europeans can consume lactose (drink milk) but this arose from a localized genetic mutation around 3 or 4 thousand BCE. There was no violent conquest by milk drinkers running amock exterminating non-milk drinkers required for milk drinkers to dominate the population.
I believe proto-Indo-European speakers are credited with domesticating the horse? This must have been a huge advance for humankind - suddenly a person does not have to consume their own calories to travel. The guy with the horse is going to leave the pedestrians in the dust in any competition for hunting, fishing, herding, etc. Maybe the existing women fancied their chances more with the horse people and were keen to hook up with guys who could guarantee food for their children? Assuming a patriarchical culture, then interbreeding will generally involve a male from the more desirable culture and not the other way around.
Maybe there was a huge imbalance in the gender ratio in favour of men in the initial groups of the PIE speakers who expanded into western Europe, so that even peaceful interbreeding would result in a lop-sided blended population.
I'm not actually proposing any of these as counter-theories - I'm just saying the effects you highlight regarding the genetic markers could be caused in other ways than violent conquest. Re. the fashion for "pots not people" theories - it's possible to swing too far the other way and deny a role for any cultural diffusion.
One can add epicycles indefinitely to patch up any theory, but there comes a point where we have to accept that the weight of evidence favors some simpler and more general new approach.
The idea that the PIEs would develop all the advanced technology you mention and use it all for some kind of nonviolent mate-attracting display --- and that this mate-attracting thing worked so well that pre-existing Y lineages went extinct --- and that the people going extinct just passively let it happen --- well, it defies plausibility. All the historical, ethnographic, archaeological, and generic evidence points in one direction. This grasping at straws to defend the non-violence hypothesis is exactly the annoying tendency that makes a lot of modern history unreadably annoying.
So if all the ancient peoples were violent raiders and pillagers- who, exactly, did they raid and pillage?
I mean, to sustain the way of life of a pillaging horde you need a large number of pacifist suckers who choose to stay put and cultivate the land. Otherwise, the horde can't sustain itself. If the raiders end up exterminating their source of sustenance, they'll just die out, themselves. Same goes for smaller groups of course.
Or is the idea that it was the cattle herders and farmers who kept killing each other, unlike in historic times? How far back in prehistory did all this happen, and why was it so different than what we see throughout history, where organised societies focused on farming and trade were the wide majority, and bandit hordes focused on killing others and nicking their stuff the minority, of the population?
It doesn't just defy plausibility, it defies the actual evidence. We're lucky enough to have an example in the historical record where technologies like the wheel and domestication of the horse were introduced (mostly) peacefully to a cultural context of foragers almost but not entirely unlike Old Europe - and (needless to say) we do not see the sort of Y-haplotype replacement that shows up in the molecular-level data. So the PIE expansion must have involved a lot more conflict than we might guess absent that evidence!
What evidence? How can you identify the expansion of PIE with this Y-haplotype replacement?
I'm genuinely curious. Like I said, my amature interest in more in PIE from the perspective of historical linguistics but I'd love to know of any evidence linking the expansion of PIE with archeology or genetics.
I'm not trying to patch up any theory nor am I grasping at any straws.
You've taken a very absolutist stance by presenting it as a categorical fact that the PIE speakers achieved genetic dominance through extermination. But you find it "annoying" when you're challenged despite the theory not being universally accepted.
I'm peripherally interested in the subject - more historical linguistics really - so I presented some alternatives by which the genetic effects you describe could have occurred.
> All the historical, ethnographic, archaeological, and generic evidence points in one direction.
Could you provide references to this evidence? Because I can't see how historical evidence would prove something about pre-history? And as far as I'm aware, there is only very speculative identification of any archaeological features with the spread of PIE. Simularly with the PIE culture - outside of historical linguistics - there is no widely accepted archaelogy to confirm anything about their culture.
There is more modern clear evidence in favor of violence. Faroe Islands! Genetically Men all viking descendants, while almost 99% of the women's lineage comes from Celtic/Gaelic background.
Basically the island was settled by people navigating from Denmark, stoping in England or Ireland, killing and pillaging the local population, and kidnaping the women and bringing them to the island.....
That's a pretty categorical statement of fact.
There are other ways for a population to undergo big shifts in genetic makeup. For example 95% of Europeans can consume lactose (drink milk) but this arose from a localized genetic mutation around 3 or 4 thousand BCE. There was no violent conquest by milk drinkers running amock exterminating non-milk drinkers required for milk drinkers to dominate the population.
I believe proto-Indo-European speakers are credited with domesticating the horse? This must have been a huge advance for humankind - suddenly a person does not have to consume their own calories to travel. The guy with the horse is going to leave the pedestrians in the dust in any competition for hunting, fishing, herding, etc. Maybe the existing women fancied their chances more with the horse people and were keen to hook up with guys who could guarantee food for their children? Assuming a patriarchical culture, then interbreeding will generally involve a male from the more desirable culture and not the other way around.
Maybe there was a huge imbalance in the gender ratio in favour of men in the initial groups of the PIE speakers who expanded into western Europe, so that even peaceful interbreeding would result in a lop-sided blended population.
I'm not actually proposing any of these as counter-theories - I'm just saying the effects you highlight regarding the genetic markers could be caused in other ways than violent conquest. Re. the fashion for "pots not people" theories - it's possible to swing too far the other way and deny a role for any cultural diffusion.