The Indo-Europeanisation of Europe
Indo-European languages are spoken by about 95% population of present day Europe. The dominance of Indo-European languages in Europe is greater than in the Indian subcontinent where about 80% population speaks Indo-European, though in absolute numbers, the subcontinent tilts the scales in its favour. In my last post, I had argued for an alternative model of Indo-European language spread in Europe via the Near East and SE Europe. This was strongly objected to by our friend Ashish whose reasoning was that the utter dominance of Indo-European languages in Europe could only have come about through the massive genetic turnover that was brought about in Europe through incursion of steppe groups in the 3rd millennium BCE via Yamnaya and Corded Ware cultures. By contrast, my model does not have such evidence at the genetic level (for now). Is this objection valid ? Let us ponder upon it. As I said, and as is visible from the above map (taken from wikipedia), Indo-European languages domina...