Two IE phylogenies, three PIE migrations, and four kinds of steppe pastoralism

This paper defends and elaborates a Pontic-Caspian steppe homeland for PIE dated broadly between 4500-2500 BC. First I criticize the Bouckaert et al. phylogeny, rooted in Anatolia, published in Science in August 2012. Then I describe archaeological evidence for three migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppes into neighboring regions, dated to 4500-2500 bc, that parallel the sequence and direction of movements for the first three branches in the Ringe phylogeny (Ringe, Warnow and Taylor 2002) of the Indo-European languages: 1. Anatolian, 2. Tocharian, and 3. a complex split that separated Italic, Celtic, and perhaps Germanic (Germanic could be rooted in two places in their phylogeny). These three apparent prehistoric movements out of the Pontic-Caspian steppes match the directions expected for the first three splits in the Ringe phylogeny, and the directions of later movements are plausible given the Ringe sequence and the known later locations of the daughter branches. Adapted from the source document