Barbarossa

Who were the ancient inhabitants of Europe before the Indo-European migration?
What do we know about them?
Were they Mongoloid or Caucasian in appearance?
Are there any loan words left from their languages?

Also, I heard a claim that the Etruscans may have been one of those peoples who weren't of Indo-European kin and language. What are your thoughts on that?

I've only read about neolithic sites built by Indo-Europeans and only the cave drawings of the paleolithic were made by those ancient inhabitants, as far as I know.

Fantasus

Neanderthalers. Since then 2modern" humans came, and why should they not largely be the ancestors of todays european, with some additional contribution and mix of later arrivals?
If languages may have been replaced it is not the same as to say "populations" were so. But then groups may have migrated from some parts of Europe to other parts, a larger proportion from areas now below sealevels. Some groups may possibly have contributed little to todays populations - genetically. but i see little reason the bulk of the ancestors of todays Europeans did not live there for millenia - tens of millenia.

Midas

I dunno about all Europe, but many of us, with exceptions of course, are more or less like our Neolithic ancestors. The Indo-Europeans were not that huge in numbers to wipe out the native populations.

I can tell you for example about Greece. The J2 and E1b haplogroups, together with the rest of the minor neolithic ones are still today the most dominant, while the R1a/b haplogroups brought by the Proto-Indo-European speakers are about 25-27%. It means that even the classical Greeks were less "Indo-European" genetically and more close to the neolithic populations like the Minoans and people of Pre-Indo-European Anatolia. The language itself is a goldmine of pre-Indo-European words, that consist however a minority in total.

Then you can also have a look at Scandinavia, where populations were living before the Indo-European ones. There you will also find words that are remnants of a pre-Indo-European population, especially hydronyms e.g "Vänern".

Barbarossa

If the Indo-Europeans were a minority among the native population of Europe, how come Indo-European languages came to dominate the whole continent (apart from Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian and Basque)?

Afrasiyab

Is there any information about which Indo-European peoples (tribes, clans etc) arrived in the European continent? The continent is huge. It's not a town. How can we be sure of it?

Midas

Because, they became the ruling class...It is not absolute that the ruling class makes its language dominant (e.g Bulgars), but it happens. Indo-Europeans brought innovations in many ways, especially in the military since they domesticated the horse, so it was not difficult to conquer in many cases the pastoral societies of neolithic Europe.

Midas

Of course there is no information in form of written records. The information we have is strictly archeological and linguistic. These data can tell you approximately where Celts, Italics, Germanic etc people migrated.

Afrasiyab

It's not always true that a people that speak an Indo-European language is Indo-European, and, as a matter of fact, what Indo-European is all about started as a linguistic classification rather than a genetic or kinship ordination. Humans can learn any language spoken in the world. So linguistic data concerning the issue are not a very reliable source to come to conclusions. What do you think?

Louise C

How do you know those languages came from anywhere else and weren't here already?

Midas

That is exactly what I meant in my first posts. Just because you speak an Indo-European language it doesn't give you full IE ancestry. Only partial or not at all (see Africa where in some countries French is the official language). Linguistics are only giving a clue on how proto-Indo-Europeans moved and how the dialects/languages were spread. We know that Indo-Iranians moved towards Asia, but they are only partial ancestors or Indians and Pakistanis.