Mysterious Indo-European homeland may have been in the steppes of Ukraine and Russia
乌俄大草原或许是印欧人的神秘故乡
What do you call a male sibling? If you speak English, he is your “brother.” Greek? Call him “phrater.” Sanskrit, Latin, Old Irish? “Bhrater,” “frater,” or “brathir,” respectively.
你如何称呼与你同父母的男性呢？如果用英语，他就是你的“brother”。在希腊语里，他就叫“phrater”。而在梵语、拉丁语、古爱尔兰语里，他分别是“bhrater”、“frater”、“brathir”。
Ever since the mid-17th century, scholars have noted such similarities among the so-called Indo-European languages, which span the world and number more than 400 if dialects are included. Researchers agree that they can probably all be traced back to one ancestral language, called Proto-Indo-European (PIE). But for nearly 20 years, scholars have debated vehemently when and where PIE arose.
自17世纪中叶起，学者们已注意到所谓“印欧系”各语言之间，有着诸如此类的相似性。印欧语系横跨全世界，算上方言的话，包括了超过400多种语言。研究者认为，这些语言都可追溯到同一始祖语言——原始印欧语（PIE）。然而关于原始印欧语在何时何地出现，学者们已经激烈争论了近20年。
Two long-awaited studies, one described online this week in a preprint and another scheduled for publication later this month, have now used different methods to support one leading hypothesis: that PIE was first spoken by pastoral herders who lived in the vast steppe lands north of the Black Sea beginning about 6000 years ago. One study points out that these steppe land herders have left their genetic mark on most Europeans living today.
如今，有两份众人期待已久的研究报告，其中一份本周已在网上发布了预印本，而另一份则安排在本月稍晚时出版，通过不同方法，两份报告都支持了一个主流假说：最先使用原始印欧语的，是6000年前生活在黑海以北大草原的畜牧群体。其中一份研究指出，在今天大多数欧洲人身上均能找到这些草原牧民的遗传标记。
The studies’ conclusions emerge from state-of-the-art ancient DNA and linguistic analyses, but the debate over PIE’s origins is likely to continue. A rival hypothesis—that early farmers living in Anatolia (modern Turkey) about 8000 years ago were the original PIE speakers—is not ruled out by the new analyses, most agree.
这两份研究的结论，得自于最新技术下的古DNA研究以及语言学分析，不过有关原始印欧语起源的争论大约还得继续下去。大多数研究者同意，另一个与之竞争的假说——认为距今8000余年前生活在安纳托利亚（今土耳其）的早期农耕者，才是原始印欧语的最初使用者——并未被新的分析成果所排除。
Although the steppe hypothesis has now received a major boost, “I would not say the Anatolian hypothesis has been killed,” says Carles Lalueza-Fox, a geneticist at PompeuFabra University in Barcelona, Spain, who participated in neither of the new studies.
尽管如今草原假说得到了较多的支持【译注：草原假说又称库尔干假说】，卡勒斯·拉鲁扎－福克斯表示：”我不认为安纳托利亚假说已经寿终正寝。”他是西班牙巴塞罗那庞贝法布拉大学的一名遗传学家，未参与上述两项新研究。
Up until the 1980s, variations of the steppe hypothesis held sway among most linguists and archaeologists tracking down Indo-European’s birthplace. Then in 1987, archaeologist Colin Renfrew of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom proposed that PIE spread with farming from its origins in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, moving west into Europe and east further into Asia; over time the languages continued to spread and diversify into the many Indo-European languages we know today.
直到80年代，各种版本的草原假说深深影响着寻找印欧语发源地的多数语言学家和考古学家。之后在1987年，英国剑桥大学考古学家科林·伦弗鲁提出，原始印欧语是从其发源地中东新月沃地（Fertile Crescent）出发，伴随着农业扩张，向西传播至欧洲，向东传播远至亚洲。随着时间推移，印欧语持续四处传播，分化成了今天我们所知的诸多印欧语系语言。
Traditional linguists, meanwhile, painstakingly reconstructed PIE by extrapolating back from modern languages and ancient writings. (Listen to a short fable spoken in PIE here.) They disdained Renfrew’s idea of an Anatolian homeland, arguing for example that the languages were still too similar to have begun diverging 8000 years ago.
与此同时，传统语言学家则从现代语言和古代文字材料回推，煞费苦心地重建原始印欧语（点击此处收听一小段以原始印欧语讲述的传说故事）。他们鄙视伦弗鲁的安纳托利亚起源观点，他们的论证理由之一是，印欧诸语言迄今仍太过相似，因而还不可能从8000年前就开始分化了。【译注：这一论证基于某些语言学家的这样一个假设：语言分化程度随时间而提高，当两支语言分开五六千年以上时，其词汇上的同源关系就难以辨认了，分开一万年时，即便综合其他语言学特性，同源关系也难以辨认。】
【图一】
从右往左分别是：安纳托利亚语族，吐火罗语族，亚美尼亚语族，希腊语族，阿尔巴尼亚语族，印度-伊朗语族，波罗的-斯拉夫语族，日尔曼语族，意大利语族，凯尔特语族
More than 400 Indo-European languages diverged from a common ancestral tongue; the earliest ones (top right), Anatolian and Tocharian, arose in today’s Turkey and China, respectively.
超过400种印欧语系内的语言从一种共同的始祖语言分化而出；最早的两支（右侧顶部），安纳托利亚语族和吐火罗语族分别出现在今天的土耳其和中国。
But many archaeologists noted that genetic and archaeological studies did indeed suggest massive ancient migrations from the Middle East into Europe that could have brought PIE and sparked such language diversification. In 2003, evolutionary biologists Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland in New Zealand used computational methods from evolutionary biology to track words as they changed over time, and concluded that the Anatolian hypothesis was right. But steppe supporters remained unconvinced, even after Gray’s team published a confirming analysis in Science in 2012.
但是很多考古学家注意到，遗传学和考古学研究证实了，由中东至欧洲的古代大规模迁徙确实发生过，这一迁徙可能令原始印欧语随之传播并促进其分化。2003年，新西兰奥克兰大学进化生物学家拉塞尔·格雷和昆廷·阿特金森使用进化生物学所发展出的计算技术，跟踪对比了词汇随时间推移而发生的变化，并断定安纳托利亚假说是正确的。但是，尽管格雷的团队2012年在《科学》杂志上发表了确认这一判断的分析，仍未能说服草原假说的支持者。
Fans of the steppe hypothesis are now hailing a genetics study that used ancient DNA from 69 Europeans who lived between 8000 and 3000 years ago to genetically track ancient population movements.
草原假说的支持者们如今正在为一项遗传学研究而欢呼雀跃，该研究利用了生活在3000至8000年前的69个古代欧洲人的DNA样本，从遗传学上追踪了古代人群的迁移活动。
The work, now posted on the bioRxiv preprint server, was done by a large team led by geneticists David Reich and Iosif Lazaridis of Harvard Medical School in Boston and Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide in Australia.
这项研究由三位遗传学家——波士顿哈佛医学院的大卫·赖克、约瑟夫·拉扎里迪斯和澳大利亚阿德莱德大学的沃尔夫冈·哈克——所领导的一个庞大研究团队承担，其结果已公布在bioRxiv的预印本服务器上。
Among the team’s samples were nine ancient individuals—six males, two females, and a child of undetermined sex—from the Yamnaya culture north of the Black Sea in today’s Russia. Beginning about 6000 years ago, these steppe people herded cattle and other animals, buried their dead in earthen mounds called kurgans, and may have created some of the first wheeled vehicles. (Many linguists think PIE already had a word for “wheel.”)
该团队所使用的基因样本中，有9份古代个体样本采自黑海北岸今俄罗斯境内的颜那亚（Yamnaya）文化群体，其中包括6个男性、2个女性和一个无法确定性别的儿童。大约从6000年前开始，这群草原居民畜养牛群和其他动物，把族人的遗骸埋葬在被称为库尔干（kurgans）的土丘中，而且可能已制造出一些最早期的有轮车辆（许多语言学家认为原始印欧语中已有表示“车轮”的单词）。
The team also retrieved ancient DNA from four skeletons from the later Corded Ware culture of central Europe, known for the distinctive pottery for which they are named (see photo above), as well as their dairy farming skills. Archaeologists had noted similarities among these cultures, especially in their emphasis on cattle herding.
研究团队还从中欧地区属于晚期绳纹器（Corded Ware）文化的四具骨骸中提取了古DNA，该文化以其独具特色并因此得名的陶器（见图2）和发达的乳业技术而闻名。考古学家业已指出这些文化之间的相似性，特别是在重视养牛业这一点上。
【图2】
The creators of the Corded Ware culture, named after this intricate pottery, may have spoken an Indo-European language derived from one spoken by herders from the East.
绳纹器文化以其复杂的陶器而得名，该文化的创造者们可能讲一种从东部牧民语言衍化而来的印欧语。
The team focused on sections of DNA that they suspected would provide markers for past population movements and identified nearly 400,000 DNA positions across the genome in each individual. They used new techniques to zero in on the key positions in the nuclear DNA, allowing them to analyze twice as many ancient nuclear DNA samples from Europe and Asia as previously reported in the entire literature.
研究团队将注意力集中在一些DNA片段上，他们猜测其中包含了能够揭示过去人口迁移的标记，并在每一个体样本的基因组上识别了将近40万个基因位置。研究者借助新技术校正了核DNA上的关键点位，从而得以分析来自古代欧亚的大量核DNA样本，数量两倍于之前所有文献报告过的总数。
The comparison of the two cultures’ DNA showed that the four Corded Ware people could trace an astonishing three-quarters of their ancestry to the Yamnaya. That suggests a massive migration of Yamnaya people from their steppe homeland into central Europe about 4500 years ago, one that could have spread an early form of the Indo-European language, the team concludes. Thus the paper for the first time links two far-flung material cultures to specific genetic signatures and to each other—and suggests, the team says, that they spoke a form of Indo-European.
通过比对两种文化的DNA，发现四个绳纹器人样本中，有高达3/4的血统可以追溯到颜那亚人。研究团队的结论是，这一证据说明了，大约在4500年前，大量颜那亚人从他们的草原故土迁入中欧，并可能将一种早期形态的印欧语传播了出去。这份报告首次将两个相距甚远的物质文化通过明确的基因标识联系在了一起。同时，研究团队还指出，两个人群使用的都是某种印欧语言。
The Corded Ware culture soon spread across north and central Europe, extending as far as today’s Scandinavia. So the “steppe ancestry,” as the authors of the preprint call it, is found in most present-day Europeans, who can trace their ancestry back to both the Corded Ware people and the earlier Yamnaya. The work thus adds to genetic findings from last fall showing that the genetic makeup of today’s Europeans is more complicated than anyone expected.
绳纹器文化迅速扩散到整个北部和中部欧洲，最远到达今天的斯堪的纳维亚地区。所以预印本作者所说的“草原血统”，在当今大部分欧洲人身上都能找到，他们可以循系谱上溯到绳纹器人和更早的颜那亚人。这项工作因而补充了去年秋天的遗传学研究成果，揭示了当今欧洲人的基因构成比大家预计的要复杂得多。
The results are a “smoking gun” that an ancient migration into Europe from the steppe occurred, says Pontus Skoglund, an ancient DNA specialist who is now working in Reich’s lab but was not a co-author on the paper. (Although the paper is publicly available on a preprint server, it is not yet published, and the authors declined to discuss their work until it’s published.) The paper “levels the playing field between the steppe hypothesis and the Anatolian hypothesis by showing that the spread of farming was not the only large migration into Europe,”Skoglund says.
古DNA专家蓬图斯·斯科格隆目前在赖克实验室工作，但并未参与编写上述研究报告，他说上述研究成果为古代草原牧民入欧大迁徙提供了“确凿证据”。（尽管该报告已经在预印本服务器上公开，但尚未出版，编者们拒绝在正式出版前讨论他们的研究成果。）如斯科格隆所说，这一报告“显示了农业扩张并非唯一一次进入欧洲的大迁徙，从而拉平了草原假说与安纳托利亚假说之间的竞争局面。”
The second new paper to address PIE’s origin, in press at Language and due to be published online during the last week of February, uses linguistic data to focus on when PIE arose. A team led by University of California, Berkeley, linguists Andrew Garrett and Will Chang employed the language database and evolutionary methods previously used by Gray to create a family tree of the Indo-European languages from their first origins in PIE.
第二份关于探寻原始印欧语起源地的新报告，已发表在Language杂志上，并准备于二月份最后一周在网上公布，该报告运用语言学数据来研究原始印欧语出现的时间。加州大学伯克利分校的语言学家安德鲁·加勒特和威尔·张所领导的团队使用了语言学数据库以及之前格雷使用过的进化生物学计算方法，构建了以原始印欧语为起点的印欧语系家族树。
But in certain cases, Garrett and Chang’s group declared that one language was directly ancestral to another and put that into their tree as a certainty. For example, they assumed that Latin was directly ancestral to Romance languages such as Spanish, French, and Italian—something that many but not all linguists agree on—and that Vedic Sanskrit was directly ancestral to the Indo-Aryan languages spoken on the Indian subcontinent.
但在某些实例中，加勒特和张领导的团队宣称某种语言为另一语言的直接先祖，并确切地将其安置在树状图中。例如他们认为拉丁语是罗曼语族（如西班牙语、法语和意大利语）的直接先祖（许多但并非所有语言学家赞同这一点），而吠陀梵语则是在印度次大陆盛行的印度-雅利安语支的直接先祖。
These constraints transformed the results from what Gray’s team has published: Garrett, Chang, and their colleagues found that the origins of PIE were about 6000 years ago, consistent with the steppe hypothesis but not the Anatolian, because the farming migration out of the Middle East was 8000 years ago. Once the original PIE speakers began to sweep out of the steppes about 4500 years ago, their languages spread and diversified, Garrett’s team says.
这些限定改变了格雷团队的研究报告所引出的结论：加勒特和张以及他们的同事发现，原始印欧语大致起源于6000年前，这与草原假说一致，而与安纳托利亚假说不符——因为走出中东的农业迁移发生在8000年前。加勒特团队认为，在约4500年前，使用最初原始印欧语的人群开始从草原向外迁徙，他们的语言也随之传播并分化。
But many supporters of the Anatolian hypothesis remain staunchly unconvinced. Paul Heggarty, a linguist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, questions Garrett’s methods, arguing that, for example, linguists cannot be sure if the Latin attested to in written documents really was the direct ancestor of later Romance languages, rather than some dialect of Latin for which no record remains. Even small differences in the true ancestral language, Heggarty insists, could throw off the timing estimates.
但是许多安纳托利亚假说的支持者依然坚持己见，德国莱比锡的马克斯·普朗克进化人类学研究所的语言学家保罗·赫加蒂质疑了加勒特的研究方法。例如，他认为语言学家无法确定，后来的罗曼语族的直接先祖，是由书写文档所见证的拉丁语，还是某种无文字记录留存的拉丁方言。赫加蒂坚称，即使在真正先祖语言的判定上仅有细微差异，也可使时间推算工作前功尽弃。
As for the Reich paper, many archaeologists and linguists praise the data on ancient migrations. But they challenge what they see as its speculative link to language. The movement out of the steppes, Renfrew says, “may be a secondary migration into central Europe 3000 to 4000 years later than the spread of farmers, which first brought Indo-European speech to Europe.”
至于赖克的那篇论文，许多考古学家和语言学家高度评价了其有关古代迁徙的数据资料，但他们质疑这些数据和语言传播的联系只是猜测性的。对于来自草原的大迁徙，伦弗鲁声称：“也许进入中欧的第二次大迁徙比农业扩张晚了3000到4000年，而第一次大迁徙已经将印欧语言带进了欧洲。”
If so, the Yamnaya steppe people would not have spoken PIE but an already derived Indo-European tongue ancestral to today’s Balto-Slavic languages such as Russian and Polish, Heggarty says. He adds that the wording of the Reich paper is “misleading.”
赫加蒂说，如果是这样的话，那么颜那亚的草原居民说的就不是原始印欧语，而是一种已从原始印欧语中分化出来的印欧语言——也就是今日俄语、波兰语之类波罗的-斯拉夫语族的先祖语言。他认为赖克论文中的措辞具有“误导性”。
Indeed, in a lengthy discussion in the paper’s Supplementary Information section, Reich and colleagues do concede that “the ultimate question of the Proto-Indo-European homeland is unresolved by our data.” They suggest that more ancient DNA, especially from points east of the steppes, may finally tie our linguistic history with our genes.
实际上，在论文补充信息部分的一段冗长讨论中，赖克和他同事的确承认：“我们的数据并未彻底解决PIE起源地这一终极问题。”他们认为，如果能收集到更多古DNA，特别是来自草原东部边界的DNA的话，也许最终能够把基因与语言演变史联系起来。
翻译：@Ulula_Ali_Reis
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