Map, left: General scheme of Indo-European migrations from ca. 4000 to 1000 BCE according to the Kurgan hypothesis (not based on Anthony's book). The book explores the origins of Indo-European languages (now spoken by three billion people) in the context of the domestication of the horse and invention of the wheel in the Eurasian Grass-Steppe of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands. The relevant archaeological evidence for the early origins and spread of the Indo-European languages is examined, giving support to a version of the Kurgan hypothesis. A key insight is that early expansions . . .  [more]  (See Hour 4, Block D, Nicholas Wade, NYT, on The Tangled Roots of English)
From: The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (ISBN 0-691-05887-3) is a 2007 book by David W. Anthony, which won the Society for American Archaeology's 2010 Book Award.
..  ..  ..
From Icelanders to Sri Lankans, some 3 billion people speak the more than 400 languages and dialects that belong to the Indo-European family. Two fresh studies — one of ancient human DNA, the other a newly constructed genealogical ‘tree’ of languages — point to the steppes of Ukraine and Russia as the origin of this major language family, rekindling a long-standing debate.
Scholars have long recognized an Indo-European language group that includes Germanic, Slavic and Romance languages as well as classical Sanskrit and other languages of the south Asian subcontinent. Yet the origins of this family of tongues are mired in controversy.
Some researchers hold that an early Indo-European language was spread by Middle Eastern farmers around 8,000–9,500 years ago (see ‘Steppe in time’). This ‘Anatolian hypothesis’ is supported by well-documented migrations into Europe, where agriculturalists replaced or interbred with the existing hunter-gatherers. In 2012, a team led by evolutionary biologist Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland in New Zealand produced a family tree of Indo-European tongues that also pointed to an Anatolian origin more than 8,000 years ago.
A competing theory posits that the languages emerged on the Eurasian steppe some 5,000–6,000 years ago, when the domestication of horses and invention of wheeled transport would have allowed herders there to rapidly expand their range. Proponents of the ‘steppe hypothesis’ note that linguistic reconstructions of a proto-Indo-European tongue include words associated with wheeled vehicles, which were not invented until long after Middle Eastern farmers had reached Europe. “Most linguists have signed up to the steppe hypothesis,” says Paul Heggarty, a linguist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
One knock against the theory was a lack of compelling evidence for a large-scale migration from the Eurasian steppe at this time.  A study of ancient human DNA posted to the bioRxiv.org preprint server on 10 February now plugs that gap (W. Haak et al. http://doi.org/z9d; 2015). A team led by David Reich, an evolutionary and population geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, . . .   [more]
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 1, Block A: Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re:  The United States must resist a return to spheres of interest in the international system  Great power competition has returned. Or rather, it has reminded us that it was always lurking in the background. This is not a minor development in international affairs, but it need not mean the end of the world order as we know it.   The real impact of the return of great power competition will depend on how the United States responds to these changes. America needs to recognize its central role in maintaining the present liberal international order and muster the will to use its still formidable power and influence to support that order against its inevitable challengers.  Competition in international affairs is natural. Great powers by their very nature seek regional dominance and spheres of influence. They do so in the first instance because . . . [more]
The question for the United States, and its allies in Asia and Europe, is whether we should tolerate a return to sphere of influence behavior among regional powers that are not seeking security but are in search of status, powers that are acting less out of fear than out of ambition. This question, in the end, is not about idealism, our commitment to a “rules-based” international order, or our principled opposition to territorial aggression. Yes, there are important principles at stake: neighbors shouldn’t invade their neighbors to seize their territory. But before we get to issues of principle, we need to understand how such behavior affects the world in terms of basic stability.  (1 of 2)
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 1, Block B: Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: The United States must resist a return to spheres of interest in the international system (2 of 2)
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 1, Block C: Graeme Wood , The Atlantic, in re:  GLOBAL: “What ISIS Really Wants: The Response”: Graeme Wood has a survey of reactions to his widely-read Atlantic cover story, “What ISIS Really Wants,” from think tanks to jihadist Twitter. He writes that some from inside ISIS were “delighted that I had taken their ideology seriously.”  (1 of 2)
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 1, Block D: Graeme Wood , The Atlantic, in re:  GLOBAL: “What ISIS Really Wants: The Response”: Graeme Wood has a survey of reactions to his widely-read Atlantic cover story, “What ISIS Really Wants,” from think tanks to jihadist Twitter. He writes that some from inside ISIS were “delighted that I had taken their ideology seriously.”  (2 of 2)
Hour Two
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 2, Block A: Jerry Hendrix, Center for a New American Security. in re:  Avoiding Trivia: A Strategy for Sustainment and Fiscal Security (www.cnas.org)   Overall, Dr. Hendrix recommends a more clear-eyed strategy that seeks to avoid trivia and address the U.S.' current weaknesses in order to . . .  (1 of 2)
(For info on some US military developments, check:  http://www.cnas.org/research/us-defense-policy-and-military-operations/2...)
Report:   CNAS Defense Strategies and Assessments Program, the report argues that the United States has strayed from its historic and cultural approach to the world, leaving behind its traditional maritime-focused, technologically innovative, free-trade based strategy. He further argues the U.S. has replaced these tenets  with entanglements in foreign land-based operations, over regulation, and profligate deficit spending – and has seen the country’s position in the world commensurately downgraded.
The Defense Strategies and Assessments Program will examine the range of strategic investment choices and opportunities available to preserve American military dominance in the face of emerging security challenges. We will consider the evolving future security environment, alternative concepts of operations and force structure, and mine past security paradigms for lessons applicable to current challenges. The Defense Strategies and Assessments Program will propose pragmatic recommendations, within realistic fiscal and political constraints, to preserve the United States' role as a military leader in the world.
This program will include analysis of wargaming, history, force structures and their strategic implications, service roles and missions, high/low platform mix, logistics and enablers, and the evolution of the precision-guided weapons regime.  The 20YY Warfare Initiative will specifically focus on how emerging technologies will shape the future of warfare.  The CNAS Defense Strategies and Assessments Team includes:  Dr. Jerry Hendrix – Senior Fellow and Director   Paul Scharre – Fellow and Director, 20YY Warfare Initiative   Kelley Sayler – Research Associate
20YY Warfare is an ambitious, multi-year project to examine how emerging technologies will shape the future of warfare. Rapid advances in unmanned systems, robotics, data processing, autonomy, networking, and other enabling technologies have the potential to spur an entirely new warfighting regime. State and non-state actors alike will seek to exploit these and other new technologies, many of which are driven by commercial sector innovation in information technology. The U.S. military will need to develop new concepts of operation, doctrine, training, policies, and organizational structures to exploit these technologies and stay ahead in the emerging warfighting regime. These developments may occur in the next decade or later, hence “20YY.”
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 2, Block B: Jerry Hendrix, Center for a New American Security. in re:  Avoiding Trivia: A Strategy for Sustainment and Fiscal Security (www.cnas.org)   Overall, Dr. Hendrix recommends a more clear eyed strategy that seeks to avoid trivia and address the U.S.' current weaknesses in order to . . .  (2 of 2)
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 2, Block C: Dr. David H Grinspoon, Astrobiology chair, Library of Congress; astrobiology curator, Denver Museum of Nature & Science, in re: Ceres  Planet you've probably never heard of . . .  
It originally was called a planet, then later an asteroid and now it's called a ... Its name is Ceres (pronounced like series) and you'll likely be ...
 Dwarf Planet Ceres: A Weird World of Ice Volcanoes, Mud Oceans
 NASA's Dawn spacecraft is set to begin orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres next month, and a new series of simulations indicate that it may find a ...

NASA's Dawn probe captures the best shots yet of the asteroid ...  The Weather Network  (1 of 2)
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 2, Block D: Dr. David H Grinspoon, Astrobiology chair, Library of Congress; astrobiology curator, Denver Museum of Nature & Science, in re: Ceres  Planet you've probably never heard of . . .  
It originally was called a planet, then later an asteroid and now it's called a ... Its name is Ceres (pronounced like series) and you'll likely be ...
 Dwarf Planet Ceres: A Weird World of Ice Volcanoes, Mud Oceans
 NASA's Dawn spacecraft is set to begin orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres next month, and a new series of simulations indicate that it may find a ...

NASA's Dawn probe captures the best shots yet of the asteroid ...  The Weather Network  (2 of 2)
Hour Three
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 3, Block A:  Aaron Task, Yahoo Finance, in re:  U.S. Growth in 2014 Looking Less Robust
The U.S. economy cooled in the final months of 2014, a return to the moderate growth that has marked much of the recovery.  Economists React   “In one line: A correction after third-quarter strength; nothing to worry about. The structure of the revisions is better than we expected, with most of the hit coming in a big downshift in inventory accumulation, to $88.4 billion from $113.1 billion. We were always suspicious of the initial estimate, which was very hard to square with the monthly data. The downward revision accounts for more than the entire GDP revision, subtracting 0.7 percentage point from growth.” –Ian Shepherdson, Pantheon Macroeconomics
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 3, Block B:  Liz Peek, The Fiscal Times & Fox, in re:   It looks like Scott Walker has bumped Chris Christie out of the 2016 presidential race. Jeb Bush is luring moderate Republican backers (like Woody Johnson) away from Christie, and the New Jersey governor has sustained some self-inflicted wounds. But Walker may be delivering the coup de grace, by besting the New Jersey governor at his own game. Both Republicans are blue-state governors who inherited and tackled sizeable budget deficits by rolling back the power of public employee unions.
Unfortunately for Christie, New Jersey’s finances are once again in crisis, and it could get ugly.
Christie delivered his budget address yesterday, in the shadow of a judge’s ruling that blocked the governor’s effort to cut promised contributions to the state’s pension fund. As a sizeable deficit looms, Christie announced (prematurely as it turns out) an accord with the state’s teachers’ union that will revise the pension obligations. The head of the union denied a deal had been struck, setting the stage for a major brawl that will surely undercut Mr. Christie’s bragging rights as someone able to “work across the aisle.” It will also afford him ample opportunity for the kind of bullying behavior that has dulled his popularity. [more]
Related: New Jersey Court Slaps Down Christie Plan on Pension Contributions
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 3, Block C:    Gregory Copley, StrategicStudies director; GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs; & author, UnCivilization, in re: Yemen’s Crisis Takes on a New Strategic Dimension .   Analysis. From GIS sources in the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen may once again be in the process of polarizing back to a two-state situation, and could, in fact, polarize partially back to pre-1967 times when the what was “South Yemen” was a patchwork of independent states. The present instability in the Yemen Republic has already been caused by both the Houthi Shi’a rebels in the north, and the jihadist Sunnis, particularly in what was South Yemen. 
Pres. Abd al-Rab Mansour al-Hadi’s ostensible resignation from office in Sana’a on January 23, 2015, made under duress from Houthi Shi’a militia who captured the capital, was rescinded on February 21, 2015, by the President, who had escaped from house arrest in the capital, and had moved back to his home base, Aden, in South Yemen. 
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 3, Block D: Henry Miller, Hoover & Forbes.com, in re: "Desperately Seeking a Leader for the FDA."  
Hour Four
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 4, Block A: Reva Bhalla, Stratfor, in re:  Within the past two weeks, a temporary deal to keep Greece in the eurozone was reached in Brussels, a cease-fire roadmap was agreed to in Minsk, and Iranian negotiators advanced a potential nuclear deal in Geneva. Squadrons of diplomats have forestalled one geopolitical crisis after another. Yet it would be premature, even reckless, to assume that the fault lines defining these issues are effectively stable. Understanding how these crises are inextricably linked is the first step toward assessing when and where the next flare-up is likely to occur.
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 4, Block B: Bud Weinstein, Cox School of Business, SMU. in re: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Weinstein-U-S-energy-abundance-achieved-despite-6090409.php
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 4, Block C: Josh Rogin, Bloomberg,  in re: Senators Challenge Obama with New Iran Bill  A bipartisan group of senators introduced new legislation Friday afternoon to mandate Congressional review of any nuclear deal the Obama administration strikes with Iran. It's the latest effort by Congress to assert some kind of oversight of the administration’s efforts. [more]
Friday  27 February 2015 / Hour 4, Block D: Nicholas Wade, NYT, in re:  The Tangled Roots of English  The precursor to many modern languages, including English, was probably spread by force, not farming.