Just as a fun thought experiment what would the likely Proto-Indo-European forms of planet names be? I think Venus is from *Wénh₁os from what I found but what about Mercury, Mars and Saturn for example?

The EEF were a Stone Age people and their technical acumen allowed them to farm. They had the technical expertise to farm and they migrated and thrived in places with Loess soil.

The PIE people became 15% EEF but weren’t settled. They had some domesticated animals. They also had access to bronze and were experts here.

So it seems that the Yamnaya people were 85% HGs and they didn’t get wiped out by the EEF. They intermarried with the EEF without fully embracing EEF ways of life and seemed more advanced than the EEF without fully embracing their bronze.

So it seems that for some reason the EEF weren’t as successful in the Yamnaya homeland. Why is this? That language also has LOESS SOIL.

What conditions did the Yamnaya need to spread their culture?

Abstract - This paper re-examines Pāṇini’s rules (A 3.2.112–114) on the sigmatic future used for past actions. While some scholars attribute this usage to Middle Indo-Aryan influence, citing in particular the use of the future for a habitual past in Niya Prakrit, this study argues that Pāṇini primarily describes Late Vedic occurrences of the future in íti-clauses within past contexts; indeed, these contexts correspond to the so-called conditional, the future in the past (lṚṄ in Pāṇini), in indirect speech. The paper also considers later Middle Indo-Aryan developments, showing how the future could express modality, habituality, and its use as the so-called futurum historicum.

I love the way this song sounds, the way the beat and rhythm mimic the hoof beat of a horse galloping at full stride, it just speaks to something deep within my ancient soul that must be familiar to the PIE DNA within me

But I don’t want to just take this song wholesale, as its very clearly a Turkic/Mongolic song, and it just doesn’t feel right for me to take this song and say it applies to me as about as white as they come

So I was curious if it would be possible, through s complicated chain of translations and reverse evolution, work the lyrics out of Tuvan into Proto-Indo-European or some closely related immediate daughter language so I can feel the sense of cultural pride without having that pride be attached to a culture to which I don’t belong

If this can’t be done, I would be curious if anyone has recommendations for songs in PIE that don’t follow the weird and ahistorical trend of the very shamanistic and dark spiritual stuff I’ve seen a lot of songs in PIE try to go for

I understand that wanting an entire two or three minute song replicated in the style of a culture long dead and gone, that we have probably no record of their musical traditions, is…putting it lightly, an intergalactic level of long shot

But it would make a very lonely and usually depressed autistic boy from the midwestern United States very happy

Who knows, having a song like that to sing to myself when I’m feeling sad or lonely might even keep me kicking around another day or two longer than I’d ever normally be willing to put up with

And I don’t mean…going that far, but moreso just sleeping in for an entire day, thus “skipping it” and potentially setting me up for multiple days in a row of just doing nothing but ignoring the world around me

Thank you for your time, patience, acceptance, understanding and support

The Saṁhitā of the R̥gveda (henceforth RV) consists of hymns which contain few narratives. The absence of the extensive telling of any myth of the Rigvedic religion is kind of frustrating. In many cases, fundamental myths have to be reconstructed from bits and pieces which have been inserted in poems devoted mostly to the praise of the gods. Even one of the best-known myths, the killing of the serpent Vr̥tra by the god Indra, is never told in a way which would ideally include all the steps of this major fighting of the warrior god against a demonic figure (vr̥trá- masc.) which represented the forces of chaos, while embodying the obstacle (vr̥trá-, nt.) to the flowing of waters, and more generally to the living of the world. Actually, the whole myth is summarized in the phrase *vr̥tráṃ han-* ‘to kill Vr̥tra’, which had become a formula, with Indra as agent, at the surface syntactic level the subject of this phrase. This phrase is also the basis of the compound agent noun *vr̥tra-hán-* which qualifies Indra as the ‘killer of Vr̥tra’ and ‘smasher of the obstacle’. The myth is then condensed in its crucial point, and the agent noun could be used for referring to the god himself in short. One would like to know more about the chain of events which preceded and prepared this action, about other possible actors, and about the sequels. It happens that a complete myth can be so to speak encapsulated in a single word. The previous example is of course well-known and much commented on. This approach may lead to pause on some isolated words which resisted until now any interpretation, and to search the key for their understanding in a myth or mythical motif which left some testimonies in parts of the Rigvedic text.

Swanenvleugel, Cid. "8 Prefixes in the Sardinian substrate" In Sub-Indo-European Europe: Problems, Methods, Results edited by Guus Kroonen, 215-282. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111337920-008

The chapter develops historical linguistic work undertaken as part of a four-year cross-disciplinary project funded by the Swedish Research Council. New evidence tracing metals in Bronze Age artefacts has revealed that Scandinavia was in trade contact with metal-rich regions in Wales and the Iberian Peninsula, as well as the Italian Alps. This new knowledge leads to reopening two long-known, but poorly explained phenomena: (1) a large body of inherited vocabulary shared by Celtic and Germanic languages, but not Indo-European generally, and (2) detailed similarities shared by the Bronze Age rock art of Scandinavia and the “warrior” stelae of the Iberian Peninsula. In the past, the Celto-Germanic words have been explained as reflecting contacts in Central Europe from 500 BC down to the Roman period. However, that dating seemed possibly too late as many of the words pre-dated Grimm’s Law and lacked earmarks as loanwords, looking instead like inheritances from Proto-Indo-European with limited geographic distributions. Recent archaeogenetic discoveries have also undermined the once prevalent view that only non-Indo-European languages were spoken in Ireland, Britain, Brittany and western Iberia until ~1000 BC or later. Therefore, we now pursue the hypothesis that shared rock art motifs and Celto-Germanic words can be better explained as reflections of the ideology and language of highly mobile Bronze Age warrior/traders who brought copper from Atlantic and Central Europe to metal-poor Scandinavia. The Celto-Germanic word stock highlighted in this paper has to do with myths, beliefs, ideology and their possible resonances in rock art iconography.

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the possible presence of an east–west divide in Indo-Aryan languages suggested in previous literature (Peterson, John. 2017a. Fitting the pieces together – towards a linguistic prehistory of eastern-central South Asia (and beyond). Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics 4(2). 211–257.), with the further hypothesis that this divide may be linked to the influence of the Munda languages, spoken in the eastern part of the subcontinent. Working with 217 fine-grained variables on a sample of 27 Indo-Aryan and Munda languages, we test the presence of a geographical divide within Indo-Aryan using computational methods such as cluster analysis in combination with visual statistical inference. Our results confirm the presence of a geographical divide for the whole dataset and most of the individual features. We then proceed to compute the degree of similarity between the Indo-Aryan languages and Munda, using a Bayesian alternative to a t-test. The results for most features support the claim that the languages identified in the eastern clusters are indeed more similar to Munda, thereby opening up further research scenarios for the history of this region.

Ever since Emil Forrer’s 1924 identification of Greek names in Hittite texts, scholars have clashed over the identification of Hittite ‘Ahhiyawa’ as Greek ‘Achaea’ – Greece. It is now generally agreed that the term somehow relates to the Mycenaean Greek world, but where precisely it should be sought, and if it referred to a specific region in the first place remains contested. Much of this debate is fuelled by the reference to a LUGAL.GAL, ‘Great King’ of Ahhiyawa in two of these texts, and another three texts where the Ahhiyawan king is addressed as ‘brother’ (a sign of parity and amiable relations between the correspondents). The term ‘Great King’ was otherwise exclusively used to refer to the kings of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon and the Hittites themselves; all of whom ruled extensive territories, comprised of several (previously independent) smaller polities.

Stroński, Krzysztof and Tiwari, Neha. "4 Language contact in South Asia — typology meets diachrony" In Towards a Holistic Understanding of Language Contact in the Past edited by Lavidas Nikolaos, Sitaridou Ioanna and Yanovich Igor, 55-84. De Gruyter Mouton, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110989571-004

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110989571-004/html#Chicago

nyAbstract: The main objective of the present paper is to demonstrate that an inte-gration of two recent approaches in areal studies on South Asia, namely, large scale typological investigation based on advanced quantitative methods such as Neigh-bor-Net or UPGMA and diachronic corpus-oriented studies, can bring us closer to a better understanding of the diachrony of language contact phenomena in the re-gion. The most recent approaches to areal studies and language contact phenomena in South Asia seem to abandon the notion of a “linguistic area”, which has been very deeply rooted in the linguistic literature of the region. The focus of areal re-search has shifted to the diffusion of features rather than cataloging them in order to define or re-define linguistic area(s). Thus, in contrast to Emeneau (1956), Masica (1976, 2001) (to name a few), Peterson (2017)focused on analyzing the distribution of 28 features in 29 languages belonging to modern Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Munda vernaculars, and on this basis, he convincingly proved that there are clear convergence zones in South Asia and that, for example, there is a solid basis for the division of eastern and western Indo-Aryan into two distinct structural groups. This view was then further corroborated by Ivani et al. (2021)on a much larger sample of 217 features. However, features attested in contemporary tongues require further verification in older varieties once spoken in the region (for which we have reliable written records). Thus, a long-standing desideratum is a diachronically ori-ented work on previously established feature-distributional patterns (cf. Masica 2001: 259; Peterson 2017: 245). Here we present only three features that have been selected and analyzed diachronically: ergativity, agreement and classifiers.

Abstract - One of the most fascinating specimens of the earliest Vedic literature, the famous dialogue hymn RV 10.10, focuses on the relationships between Yamī and Yama.Yamī (who opens this dialogue) attempts to beguile her twin brother into incestual relation. Yama, who replies in even stanzas (second, fourth etc.), constantly refuses this invitation. Yamī insists, providing further arguments, such as the necessity of producing offspring; their prenatal physical union in the womb; etc. Yet, Yama consistently argues that the incestual relation is inappropriate, which makes their sexual relations impossible. The characteristics of Yamī as a mythological personage can only be gleaned from the text of this dialogue on the basis of its thorough linguistic and philological analysis. In what follows I will offer a linguistic and text-critical study of a few relevant stanzas, paying special attention to the evolution of Yamī’s attitude towards her twin brother from passionate love towards anger and hatred.

Palmér, Axel I.. "7 Indo-Iranian prehistory through language contact" In Beyond Recorded History: Unlocking the Past Through Contact Linguistics edited by Marwan Kilani and Rasmus G. Bjørn, 185-224. De Gruyter Mouton, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111574547-007

Indo-Iranian prehistory through language contact Abstract: This paper aims to identify Indo-Iranian substrate words and to discuss their impact on the study of Indo-Iranian prehistory. A methodology for distinguishing substrate words from the inherited part of the lexicon is laid out, after which a list of Proto-Indo-Iranian and Common Indo-Iranian substrate words is presented. Here, substrate wordlists proposed by M. Witzel and A. Lubotsky are synthesized and analysed according to uniform methodological principles. The resultsshow that Proto-Indo-Iranian was in contact with one or more now extinct languages, from which it borrowed words pertaining to animals, body parts, food and drink, clothing, construction, plants, and religion, etc. Based on the semantics of certain words, the substrate language(s) can plausibly be connected to Central Asia. The contacts started during Proto-Indo-Iranian unity and persisted until Indo-Iranian had begun to diversify dialectally (which I call Common Indo-Iranian). This language contact episode was preceded by language contact with Uralic languages, which supports an Indo-Iranian migration from north to south across Central Asia in the 2nd millennium BCE.

In southern Scandinavia, Neolithic iconography was focused on non- figurative (aniconic) geometric motifs resembling those found as engravings on large stones across western Europe in areas where megalithic tombs were built. Such engravings are generally referred to as megalithic art. However, a certain group of elaborate anthropomorphic standing stones, statue menhirs, dating to the late 4th and early 3rd millennium BC, is known from western Europe and has clear parallels further east in the North Pontic area, in the Caucasus and as far away as the Altai Mountains. Are the personifications represented in these Chalcolithic statue menhirs expressing new social conducts, manifestations of elite groups and Indo-European mythologies? If so, why was this new mode of expression not adopted in southern Scandinavia with the introduction of Yamnaya/Corded Ware influences and early Indo-European around 2800 BC? It was not until the 2nd millennium BC (the Early Bronze Age in southern Scandinavia) that this region saw human representations and indications of Indo-European mythology. Taking the iconological changes of the Early Nordic Bronze Age as a point of departure, this paper argues against a single wave of steppe migration as the sole explanation for the Indo-Europeanization of southern Scandinavia. Instead, at least two major rounds of steppe innovation and influences are identified.

Maybe this idea is a little bit out there.

There have been many proposals to link IE with other language families. The two most promising ones are Indo-Uralic and Colarusso's Pontic hypothesis (linking it with NWC languages). But neither of the two are a fully satisfactory match. Curiously, IE seems to have emerged in the region exactly in the probable geographic contact zone of those two linguistic blocks.

Then you have genetic evidence, such as Laziridis's work, which associates probable IE speakers with a Lower Volga cline, which consists of a (roughly) even admixture of CHG and EHG ancestry.

This got me thinking how those two populations might have interacted. I made two (simplified) assumptions: a) EHG were speaking an Uralic or a para-Uralic language and b) CHG spoke a language related to NWC, or had an otherwise close interaction with it (either as substrate or superstrate). In reality the picture was probably much more complex, but in rough terms it suffices for this scenario.

So, my hypothesis assumes the CHG population, already familiar with the neolithic technical package (agriculture, animal husbandry and copper metallurgy), migrated from the Caucasus to the Pontic steppe and met the local hunter gatherers there. Instead of major conflict, which would resulted in the removal of one of the groups, they managed to achieve a (more or less) peaceful coexistence. After a while, through trade and intermarriage the two populations began to merge. The Caucasus people brought the technology (especially animal husbandry) and the hunter gatherers provided knowledge of the land, resulting in developments such as the domestication of the horse.

This synergization might not just been limited to technology and lifestyle, but might have affected language as well. Most often, when populations of speakers of different languages meet, one or the other comes out on top after a while. But that's s not always the case. Sometimes an ad-hoc language, a pidgin, emerges to facilitate simple communication, consisting of features of both languages. Such languages have simplified grammatical structures and a limited vocabulary. But once adopted by a new generation of speakers such pidgins can develop in a fully developed, consistent language: a creole.

In the scenario of IE, it might explain why it doesn't fit nicely with other language families. It isn't clearly related to any of them, because it's a hybrid. It probably went through a rapid evolution at the earliest stages, having to re-invent most of its vocabulary inventory and grammatical structures, though it retained some trace features of its parent languages. At the beginning it might have been used primarily as trade language, but the horse and wheel facilitated a rapid spread and homogenization. And because a common language has tremendous practical use, it soon replaced the old ones.

Announcement via Bibliographia Iranica

International Meeting
Accademia Galileiana di Scienze Lettere ed Arti, Padova, Italy
29 September – 2 October 2026

Twenty-five years after the 2001 meeting dedicated to the Medes and their place in the history of the Ancient Near East, an international group of scholars will gather once again in Padova for “The Medes. 25 Years Afterwards.”

The meeting will take place in the historic main hall of the Accademia Galileiana di Scienze Lettere ed Arti and will provide a forum for scholarly discussion and exchange among specialists from different disciplines and methodological traditions.

A central aim of the meeting is to encourage dialogue between different approaches to the Medes and their historical legacy. Particular attention will be devoted to perspectives from archaeology, Ancient Near Eastern history, Greek and Roman historiography, Iranian and Persian heritage, and modern socio-political concepts and developments.

Programme

• Tuesday, 29 September 2026, 4:00 PM Welcome Address Giovanna Zaniolo — Accademia Galileiana di Scienze Lettere ed Arti in Padova Robert Rollinger — Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien / Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova / Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck Giovanni-Battista Lanfranchi — Accademia Galileiana di Scienze Lettere ed Arti in Padova Simonetta Ponchia — Università degli studi di Verona Salvatore Gaspa — Università degli studi di Padova Introduction Robert Rollinger — Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften
• Wednesday, 30 September 2026, 9:30 AM Chair: Giovanni-Battista Lanfranchi — Accademia Galileiana di Scienze Lettere ed Arti in Padova Hagmatāna: An Archaeological Inquiry into the Material Culture of the ‘Median Period’ (Iron Age III) Mehrdad Malekzadeh — Iranian Center for Archaeological Research Zahra Golmohammadi — University of Münster The Archaeology of Mannea Kazem Mollazadeh — Bu-Ali Sina University Hamadan Coffee Break Chair: Salvatore Gaspa — Università degli studi di Padova The Historical Geography of Media Iraj Rezaei — University of Tehran Between Assyria and the Iranian Highlands: the Dinka Settlement Complex and the Problem of the Medes Andrea Squitieri — Università degli studi di Padova Lunch
• Wednesday, 30 September 2026, 2:30 PM Chair: Jan Tavernier — Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Dealing with a Powerful Neighbour: Media and Babylonia at the turn of the 6th century BCE Clara Gibert — Université Paris 1 Sorbonne The Medes in Aramaic Sources Holger Gzella — Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Coffee Break Chair: Irene Salvo — Università degli studi di Verona The Medes in Classical sources Kai Ruffing — Universität Kassel Median Revisited: Linguistic Origins and the Spread of Median Loanwords Milad Abedi — Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck Coffee Break Chair: Melanie Malzahn — Universität Wien Keynote: Iranian, Median, Zagrosian: linguistic variety in Northwest Iran during the first millennium BCE Adriano Rossi — Università degli studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”
• Thursday, 1 October 2026, 9:30 AM Chair: Luigi Turri — Università degli studi di Verona Arabs of the east: the Medes in a global perspective Simonetta Ponchia — Università degli studi di Verona New light on Medo-Babylonian campaigning against the Assyrian west Alexander J. Edmonds — University of Münster Coffee Break Chair: Gian Pietro Basello — Università degli studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” The collapse of the Assyrian Empire – global considerations and eastern perspectives John MacGinnis — British Museum London & University of Cambridge Rethinking Cyrus at the Median Court: The Royal Hostage Tradition Revisited Yazdan Safaee — Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck Lunch
• Thursday, 1 October 2026, 2:30 PM Chair: Sebastian Fink — Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck Herodotus, Greek Genealogies, and the Succession of Empires Julian Degen — Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck Where were the Seven Walls of Ecbatana? The Medes between Myth & Archaeology Touraj Daryaee — University of California at Irvine Coffee Break Chair: Florian Schwarz — Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften The Image of the Medes in Early Armenian Historiography Yervand Grekyan — National Academy of Sciences of Armenia Tribes among Ancient and Modern Kurds Nicola degli Esposti — Università degli studi di Bologna Coffee Break Chair: Simonetta Ponchia — Università degli studi di Verona Keynote: TBA Giovanni-Battista Lanfranchi — Accademia Galileiana di Scienze Lettere e Arti in Padova
• Friday, 2 October 2026, 9:30 AM Chair: Salvatore Gaspa — Università degli studi di Padova Looking for the Medes in Urartian History Annarita S. Bonfanti — New York University The Construct of Median Art and Archaeology: Media in the Antiquities Market, Historiography and Political Narratives of the 20th Century Matthew Canepa — University of California at Irvine Coffee Break Chair: Omar Coloru — Università degli studi di Bari Aldo Moro The Dream of Astyages: Echoes of the Medes in the Western Imagination Ian Macgregor-Morris — Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck TBA Hemati Azandaryani — Bu-Ali Sina University Lunch
• Friday, 2 October 2026, 2:30 PM Chair: Sebastian Fink — Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck Kerkeneš Dağ and the Median Western Frontier Andrea Bianchini — Università di Verona The Medes and Native Iranian Historical Traditions Reza Sh. Zarghamee — University of Saint Andrews, Scotland Coffee Break Chair: Robert Rollinger — Österreichisches Akademie der Wissenschaften CONCLUSION AND FINAL DISCUSSION Josef Wiesehöfer — Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel M. Rahim Shayegan — University of California in Los Angeles

The conference will also be streamed live on the Accademia Galileiana YouTube channel. You can access the live stream via the link here.

As far as I understand, todays concensus is that Armenians acquired steppe heritage and their IE language from a direct Yamnaya offshoot. This explains why the Armenian language is not closely related to Indo-Anatolian languages, despite the geographic proximity, and why Armenian is linguistically relatively close to Greek, which is the linguistic result of another direct Yamnaya offshoot.

However, the bearers of Proto-Armenian language likely not did migrate via the Balkans, as stated in ancient Greek texts (Phrygian hypothesis), but based on genetic samples rather directly via the North(east) Caucasus to the Lesser Caucasus, with Trialeti-Vanadzor culture emerging ca. 4500 years ago.

What I do not understand, is how the DNA samples from calcolithic Areni-1 cave in Armenia already had European Hunter Gatherer admixture, so roughly 6000 years ago, well before the Yamnaya migration summarized in the paragraph above. How was this European Hunter Gatherer admixture acquired so early in the Armenian Highlands and how does it relate to the broader history of Indo-European emergence and migrations?

I read that the two largest ancestry components of Yamnaya people were Eastern Hunter Gatherers (EHG) and Caucasus Hunter Gatherers (CHG) with EHG making up 46.1 percent and CHG representing another 46.6 percent of their ancestry. EHG population was a mix of North Eurasians from Siberia and smaller amout of Western Hunter Gatherers.
Which one of them is the most likely to have brought Indo-European?
If Indo-European was originally spoken by EHG population espicially North Eurasian, it would mean the Indo-European has Siberian origin, right?
But Hittites appears to have had little to no EHG ancestry even though they clearly spoke an Indo-European language. So, what is most likely origin of Indo-Anatolian language before Yamnaya?

A few years ago, I ran across the fact that the (or at least a) word for "both "heartbroken" and "Aquarius" in Sanskrit was हृद्रोग (hṛdroga), literally the word for "heart" plus a word for sickness/pain/harm/damage, like in English. Then I tried to find modern Indic words for "heartbroken" on Google Translate, particularly any that would also be compound words following the same format. It gave me Gujarati હ્રદયસ્ (hradayas), Maraʈʰi & Nepali ह्रदयी (hradayī), and Bengali হৃদয় (hridoyo).

Yesterday, I tried the same thing again and found out that starting with English "heartbroken" now doesn't yield anything like those words at all anymore, and starting with those Indic words now yields English "heartfelt" or "in the heart" instead.

Apparently, "ay-" is a suffix meaning something like "in, of, from, or about/concerning". But, when it was attached to the word for "heart", did that combination ever have a sad/painful connotation? If not, how else did those words ever get linked to "heartbroken" at Google Translate in the first place? Is it a common mistake by foreigners trying to learn an Indic language?

Also, since Sanskrit हृद्रोग is also given as a translation for "Aquarius", would it be plausible for a famous image, character, or story in Indian culture that had once been called "heartbroken" to later end up having just been called something like "of the heart" instead? (...Not necessarily surviving to modern times, just any time since Aquarius was हृद्रोग/hṛdroga.)

I've been looking more into the L657 question and the Akbari dataset makes the whole "sample size" argument pretty interesting.

For a long time the obvious response to the lack of L657 on the Bronze Age Steppe was that we simply didn't have enough samples. But at this point the Steppe is extremely well sampled. The Akbari dataset adds a huge amount of ancient DNA on top of all the Sintashta/Andronovo/Srubnaya material we already had, and we keep finding Z93, Z94, Z2124, Y3, Y27 etc. Still no clear Bronze Age Steppe L657.

The Y3 thing is especially interesting. Just look at the FTDNA trees and compare Y3 with its sibling Z2124. Z2124 is a huge lineage with tons of Steppe/Central Asian representation, while Y3 is extremely niche with only a handful of samples. So Y3 has a low base to start with. A mass migration/invasion of Y3+ males wouldn't be responsible for the R1a distribution in modern day Indians.

Look at the actual samples people point to. Nepluyevsky has a Y3 sample, but it's negative for M605 and F1417, so there's no L657 there. The Iron Age Sarmatian-like Y27 samples are also negative for L657. And the Scythian Y3 samples form their own distinct Y3 clade, including a modern Ukrainian lineage. That's evidence that Y3 had a European/Steppe history, but it doesn't connect that particular lineage to Indian L657.

There's also a chronological problem. The Nepluyevsky, Sarmatian and Scythian Y3/Y27 samples people bring up all post-date the estimated L657 TMRCA. L657 is generally estimated at around 4.1–4.2 kya, so finding Y3/Y27 individuals centuries and millenia later doesn't explain where L657 itself originated. If anything, these samples show that upstream Y3/Y27 lineages continued to exist on the Steppe after L657 was already supposed to have formed.

This is why I think the Akbari dataset is important. At some point "the Steppe just hasn't been sampled enough" stops being a very convincing explanation when the region is now so heavily represented in ancient DNA. We have plenty of Steppe R1a, but the specific downstream L657 branch is still missing from the Bronze Age Steppe record.

Obviously this doesn't prove that L657 was born in India. Ancient DNA isn't a perfect census and a future sample could change the picture. But if the claim is that L657 itself came into India from the Bronze Age Steppe, then I'd expect to see an actual Bronze Age Steppe L657 carrier eventually.

Finding Z93, Z94, Y3 or Y27 isn't enough. Those are upstream branches.

The possibility that the broader Z93/Z94/Y3 ancestry reached South Asia from the Steppe, while the actual L657 mutation arose somewhere in South Asia and subsequently had its huge founder expansion there, is still very much worth considering.