Origin of PIE

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Where did Proto-Indo-European Language (PIE) originate?  Some assert the origin is (farmers in) Anatonia, which is in present-day Turkey. David Reich of Harvard University proposed Yamnaya nomadic herders of steppes somewhere in present-day Ukraine.  Reich now (on Feb 5, 2025; see (3) below) proposes people in both Anatolia and Ukraine arose from Caucasus-Lower Volga (CLV) who migrated (west to) Ukraine and (south to) Anatonia around the same time. All (1), (2) and (3) are locked behind paywall.

(1) How one language family took over the world: ancient DNA traces its spread
Millennia-old genomes suggest Indo–European tongues originated from the Caucasus mountain region.
By Ewen Callaway, How One Language Family Took over the World: Ancient DNA Traces its Spread; Millennia-old genomes suggest Indo–European tongues originated from the Caucasus mountain region. nATURE,
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00382-y
https://www.facebook.com/story.p ... 7421189729&_rdr
("Based on this evidence, the researchers [Reich] think that the earliest Indo-European languages were spoken by people living in the Caucasus–Lower Volga, who then carried them to Anatolia and to the Black Sea steppe, where the Yamnaya [Reich held on to his 2015 findings: Yamnaya, not Anatolia] and their descendants spread them still further")

Note: For Tracer dye, see dye tracing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dye_tracing


(2) Carl Zimmer, Ancient DNA Points to Origins of Indo-European Language; A new study claims to have identified the first speakers of Indo-European language, which gave rise to English, Sanskrit and hundreds of others. New York Times, Feb 5, 2025.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/ ... ient-human-dna.html
https://city.udn.com/2976/7216153

Note:
(a) "The oldest Indo-European writing, dating back 3,700 years, is in an extinct language called Hittite, which was spoken only in Anatolia"
(i) Hittites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittites
(section 1 Etymology: Biblical Hittites; "The Hittite state was formed from many small polities in North-Central Anatolia, at the banks of the Kızılırmak River, during the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1900–1650 BC)")
, whose language was Hittite language/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittite_language
(ii) "The CLV people lived about 7,000 years ago in a region stretching from the Volga River in the north to the Caucasus Mountains in the south. They most likely fished and hunted for much of their food [but did not herd]."
(A) Volga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga
("is the longest river in Europe * * * and [emptying] into the Caspian Sea"/ section 1 Name)
(B) Caucasus Mountains
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasus_Mountains
("Stretching between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, they are surrounded by the Caucasus region and are home to Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe at 5,642 metres (18,510 ft) above sea level.   The Caucasus Mountains include the Greater Caucasus in the north and the Lesser Caucasus in the south")


(3) Lazaridis Z et al (David Reich is the last author), The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans. Nature, 639: 132-142 (Mar _ , 2025; online publication Feb 5, 2025).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08531-5
https://www.researchgate.net/pub ... _the_Indo-Europeans


(4)
(a) Yamnaya culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamnaya_culture
("It was discovered by Vasily Gorodtsov following his archaeological excavations near the Donets River in 1901–1903. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: Я́мная (romanization: yamnaya) is a Russian adjective that means 'related to pits (yama)', as these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers")
(b) Bojan Pancevski, The Ancient Horsemen Who Created the Modern World; New DNA research shows that half the human beings alive today are descended from the Yamnaya, who lived in Ukraine 5,000 years ago. Wall Street Journal, Mar 8, 3025, at page C4 (every Saturday, section C is Review)
("These ancient people did not call themselves Yamnaya. The name was coined by archaeologists from the Russian word yama, meaning 'pit,' because they buried important people in pits beneath mounds known as kurgans. They were also likely the first people to ride horses and wheeled carts, technologies that allowed them to conquer the European steppes. * * * Traces of Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes plague, were found in Yamnaya remains, suggesting that they may have developed immunity to the disease and carried it as an unintended 'biological weapon' that decimated rival groups")

Note: This WSJ article is fundamentally wrong, not just about the new finding (it did not say what is new), and about horse-riding, and "conquer" (spreading of PIE may not be accomplished through conquest) also. Besides, without stirrups invented in China, humans can not ride horses hand-free.
(i) For horse-riding, I wish to remind you of an article I introduced back then, from Ludovic Orlando based in France:
Widespread horse-based mobility arose around 2200 BCE in Eurasia. Nature, 631: 819 (July _, 2024)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07597-5
The conclusion of this paper was that spreading of the modern-day horse (and completely replacing different local horses that had lived at various places) occurred 800 (3000 - 2200) years AFTER Yamnaya moved in (Discussion: "the horse genomic make-up remained entirely local in central Europe and in the Carpathian and Transylvanian Basins until the end of the third millennium BCE. This timeline post-dates the period of steppe contact in the Carpathian and Transylvanian Basins starting around 4500 BCE10, as well as the migrations potentially spreading proto-Indo-European languages into Europe with the Yamnaya phenomenon about 3000 BCE").

, which Nature later (Aug 23, 2024) summarized as news: Ancient Equine Genomes Reveal Dawn of Horse Domestication.
(ii) Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes plague or black death, is trivialized by most biologists as the cause of the propagation of Proto-Indo-European Language (PIE); and immunity against this bacteria is a fantasy, as patients, left untreated, died in 48 hours (pneumonic) to a week in (septicemic), giving no time for adaptive immunity (involving B or T cells) to develop.