When Genetics Goes Berserk and Linguistics Goes Extinct

 

When Genetics Goes Berserk and Linguistics Goes Extinct

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Someone just sent me the following tweet by a person calling himself thehindumapper:

https://x.com/thehindumapper

My new model map on the PIE homeland in NW Iran, based on Heggarty et al. 2023.

6:12 PM . Apr 12, 2025

I was honestly a bit surprised. I am not on twitter and do not know who this “thehindumapper” is, but I have a feeling I have been sent countless tweets from this person in the past; and, although I am not sure if this is really so, I have a feeling this is the pen-name (or twitter-name or whatever it is called) of some person (whose name I cannot remember) who has been in contact with me many times in the past on my landline phone. And I have always had the impression (reinforced perhaps by his twitter-name – but then we do know that the most anti-Hindu AIT supporting people on twitter sport very Vedic-sounding twitter-names) that this person is an intelligent person and is not inimical to the OIT. But this tweet (not being on twitter, I cannot testify how far this tweet fits in with his usual other tweets before this) shows him to be neither an intelligent person nor a friend of the OIT.

Before this, there have been countless examples of bakwas in the social media with self-styled experts expounding so-called “genetic” evidence for their theories (whether Steppe-AIT or Caucasian-AIT or OIT) which seems to have no connection with the linguistic data or evidence at all. It is as if they are describing the genetics-demonstrated migrations of some DNA haplogroups named “Indo-European” (having nothing to do with Indo-European languages as such) from some geographical location which could be described as the PIE Homeland (again, having nothing to do with Indo-European languages as such).

This tweet, and the map accompanying it, seems to belong to that same category. The map claims to show “the PIE homeland in NW Iran, based on Heggarty et al. 2023”. As per this map, the different PIE groups started migrating from a “PIE Homeland” in NW Iran, around or after 6000 BCE. It shows:

1. “Anau Culture” (with the epithet “Druhyus?”) migrating eastwards from NW Iran by 5200 BCE.

2. Another simultaneous more-southern-route eastward migration is of “Proto-Indo-Iranians” migrating to Mehrgarh in 5100 BCE.

This group then diverges into “Proto-Indo-Aryans” and “Proto-Iranian” groups migrating into the Punjab area, while another group (titled “Yadus-Turvasus”) migrates southeastwards into what seems to be MP-Rajasthan.

From the Punjab, (“After the Dasarajna Battle”, the map tells us), “Early Iranians’ migrate westwards into Iran!

3. A group, “Proto-Europeans”, moves northwards into the “Khvalynsk Culture” around 4900 BCE.

From there, a major section moves westwards into the “Corded Ware Culture” in Europe by 3000 BCE.

One group (“Proto-Tocharians”) moves back east (from the “Corded Ware Culture”) into Sintashta by 2000 BCE, later moving further eastwards into the historical area of the Tocharians in eastern Central Asia.  

4. Anatolians move westwards into Turkey (Anatolia) around 4000 BCE. Along with them are the ancestors of the Proto-Greeks, Daco-Thracians and Illyrians (Albanians), who later move further west into SE Europe.

 

A more insane depiction of IE migrations than the above could not be imagined.

1. To begin with, it cannot be” based on Heggarty et al. 2023” as it misleadingly claims. Neither does Heggarty talk about Druhyus, Anus and the Dasarajna battle, nor does he postulate this eastward route from NW Iran of “Proto-Indo-Iranians” shown in this map. Heggarty clearly tells us:

"Our results do not directly identify by which route Indo-Iranic spread eastward, so it remains possible that this branch spread through the steppe and Central Asia, looping north around the Caspian Sea (Fig. 1D). Recent interpretations of aDNA argue for this (49, 52), but some aspects of their scenario are not easy to reconcile with our linguistic findings."

 

2. If thehindumapper thinks he is incorporating the Anu-Druhyu paradigm into his map, he fails very badly in doing so:

The Druhyus did not migrate from NW Iran northeastwards into Central Asia, they migrated northwestwards from the Punjab into Afghanistan and then from Afghanistan into Central Asia. And these Druhyus consisted of Proto-Tocharians, Proto-Anatolians and “Proto-Europeans”.

Further, the Anus who migrated from the Punjab westwards after the Dasarajna Battle included the Proto-Greeks, Daco-Thracians and Illyrians (Albanians) who shared a close Late PIE linguistic heritage with both Indo-Aryans and Iranians (and particularly the Iranians). This ridiculous map shows no connections at all between these different branches: from its “NW Iran homeland”, the Proto-Greeks, Daco-Thracians and Illyrians (Albanians) move out westwards, and the Indo-Aryans and Iranians move out eastwards, with no mutual interactions!

 

3. But, as pointed out in the very beginning, the most idiotic part of this whole map is that Linguistic data seems to have zero value in its construction.  

As Witzel pointed out correctly, based on the linguistic evidence: “The date of dispersal of the earliest, western IE languages […] can be estimated in the early third millennium BCE. Further dates can be supplied by a study of important cultural features such as the common IE reconstructed word for copper/bronze, or the vocabulary connected with the heavy oxen-drawn wagon […] They point to the end of the fourth or the beginning of the third millennium as a date ad quem, or rather post quem for the last stage of commonly shared PIE” (WITZEL 2005:370).

But this map has the different branches completely separating from each other in completely opposite directions well before 5500 BCE.

Apparently, Linguistics has zero value in any study of Indo-European origins!