I refer to the question of chris W. In my opinion the place of russian samples (Tver) was deceptive, due to the Karelian immigration into Tver oblast in the 1600-century.

thanks.

In 5th c there were Western Slavic languages and Eastern Slavic languages. There were significant difference between them. Slovenia was settled from Poland and Slovenian is similar to Western Slavic languages, Bulgaria was settled from Ukraine and it is more similar to Eastern Slavic languages.

From genetics we know that Slavs occupied huge areas in Central Europe in Bronze Age, just read Underhill at al 2009. The oldest and most diverse R1a is in Oder-Vistula area, this was most probable Slavic homeland.

N1c in Balts is very old, it is not Finnic or Scandinavian. This is their major haplogroup. R1a is younger than that among Slavs and most probable came from Slavs.

Greeks understand Homer, so their language has not changed much. Old established languages do not change fast.

Also its uniformity makes me think that it was spoken in a small area before the 6th century CE. Its diversification into Slavic languages only began after the 6th century CE as a result of the Slavic expansion.

As for Greek, until the spread of Koine Greek beginning from the Hellenistic period, there were many divergent dialects of Greek, some of which we can classify as different languages.

As for the similarities between Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit, they were pretty insignificant compared to the similarities between the dialects of Proto-Slavic in the 7th century CE. There is a reason why Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit are classified as different languages by linguistic scholars.

In short, it is implausible to think that Proto-Slavic was so uniform for so many millennia. It is clear that it is a pretty recent language (most probably from the 1st millennium BCE).

There is significant difference. Western Slavs and Southern Slavs do not have N1c which is dominant among Balts, they are not mixed with Balts. Kashubian group in Northern Poland for example is 68.8% R1a and 0%N1c. Only Northern Eastern Slavs are mixed with Balts. Balts are also heavily mixed with Slavs. I think R1a there is mainly Slavic. Slavs have much higher Southern European component in Admixture analysis which comes from Neolithic farmers. Slavs took up farming much earlier and therefore they are more populous than Balts who remained at hunter-gather stage.

There is strange non-IE substratum in Baltic languages which is absent in Slavic and therefore I don’t believe in Balto-Slavic unity. They were separate in the beginning and then by close contacts linguistic and genetic convergence had taken place. I agree with Polako.

Don’t see problem with uniformity of Proto-Slavic. Dialects converge and diverge, then converge again etc. Some languages change very slowly. See Greek, not much change in 3000 years. See how close Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit were. If Slavs were homogeneous why should their languages change much? Homogenous communities preserve languages, only when they mix their languages do change fast. Western Europe is a different story, there was a language shift there and probably several times.

I am not sure about Andronovo, depends on where Indo-Iranian ethnogenesis took place. I think it could’ve been in Central Asia, BCMA maybe. I don’t believe in mixing genes and cultures without language change.

But that hypothesis is probably much more accepted as true than for instance the Altaic hypothesis.

Those who do not accept common Proto-Balto-Slavic estimate Proto-Slavic to originate at 3000-2000 B.C., so it fits Corded Ware expansion as Proto-Slavic very well.

But it doesn’t explain the uniformity of Proto-Slavic well into the period Slavs first appeared in the historical record in the 6th century CE.

If Slavs and Balts were separate populations genetically, and this is suggested by Polako’s post, then there is no point in talking about Balto-Slavic linguistic unity, it has to be rejected.

I have another hypothesis: Slavs separated from Balts in the transitional period between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age at the earliest from the western part of the Balto-Slavic homeland and then advanced further west mingling with the western folks they encountered. Balts, on the other hand, haven’t moved much west after their separation from Slavs. This and the relative isolation of Balts after their separation from Slavs may explain the eastern position of Balts in genetic tests. In paternal haplogroups Balts aren’t so different from Slavs in the prevalence of R1a. If Andronovo is Indo-Iranian, then the high frequency of R1a may be a characteristic of the hypothetical Proto-Satem (the hypothetical common ancestor of Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian)-speaking population.

Those who do not accept common Proto-Balto-Slavic estimate Proto-Slavic to originate at 3000-2000 B.C., so it fits Corded Ware expansion as Proto-Slavic very well.

If Slavs and Balts were separate populations genetically, and this is suggested by Polako’s post, then there is no point in talking about Balto-Slavic linguistic unity, it has to be rejected.

As the expanded territory in question was very probably sparsely populated, Slavic farmers, when expanding in what is now Russia, may have experienced a temporary period of significant (perhaps exponential in many places) population growth (in which they may temporarily have gone beyond the Malthusian limit) until significantly populating large swaths of the European part of what is now Russia.

Similar temporary periods of significant population growth happened in the sparsely populated parts of the New World during the early colonization by Europeans (in exponential proportions in many places).

or in anywhere else in the world, indeed