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Originally posted by Last Conformist
It's not well established that the speakers of PIE lived in SE Russia. It's the most widely accepted hypothesis, and I personally happen to favour it, but it's certainly not well established.
I'd furthermore like to express doubt we know their skin colour. Somewhere on the pink/brown spectrum characteristic of western Eurasia is more than likely, but to know for certain you'd need perserved skin or DNA that you could securely connect to the PIE-speakers.
It's not well established that the speakers of PIE lived in SE Russia. It's the most widely accepted hypothesis, and I personally happen to favour it, but it's certainly not well established.
I'd furthermore like to express doubt we know their skin colour. Somewhere on the pink/brown spectrum characteristic of western Eurasia is more than likely, but to know for certain you'd need perserved skin or DNA that you could securely connect to the PIE-speakers.
The Anatolia hypothesis has been discredited, it was based on a mostly incorect notion popularized by an earlier generation historical geneticists that the paleolithic people were overrun by neolithic farmers thanks to the laters larger population. The cultural features indicated by the language and the plant and animal names in proto-Indo-European indicates that they were the Kurgan culture of SW Russia.
If those mummified remains white people found in NW China were the ancestors of the Tocharians, an Indo-European people, as is widely beleived, then yes, the Indo-Europeans WERE white.
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