... while we see substantial genetic and archaeological evidence for an
Indo-European migration originating in the southern Russian steppes,
there is little evidence for a similarly massive Indo-European migration
from the Middle East to Europe. One possibility is that, as a much
earlier migration (8,000 years old, as opposed to 4,000), the genetic
signals carried by Indo-European-speaking farmers may simply have
dispersed over the years. There is clearly some genetic evidence for
migration from the Middle East, as Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues
showed, but the signal is not strong enough for us to trace the
distribution of Neolithic languages throughout the entirety of Indo-
European-speaking Europe.[73]
Southern archaic PIE-homeland hypothesis
Varying ideas have been proposed regarding the location of archaic PIE,
including the Eurasian/Eastern European steppe, the Caucasus to the
south, or a mixed origin derived from both regions.
Armenian hypothesis
Main article: Armenian hypothesis
See also: Indo-European migrations
Gamkrelidze and Ivanov held that the Urheimat was south of the
Caucasus, specifically, "within eastern Anatolia, the southern Caucasus
and northern Mesopotamia" in the 5th to 4th millennia BCE.[74] Their
proposal was based on a disputed theory of glottal consonants in PIE.
According to Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, PIE words for material culture
objects imply contact with more advanced peoples to the south, the
existence of Semitic loan-words in PIE, Kartvelian (Georgian)
borrowings from PIE, some contact with Sumerian, Elamite and others.
However, given that the glottalic theory never caught on and there was
little archaeological support, the Gamkrelidze and Ivanov theory did not