Possible origins of the Hazara people of Afghanistan

Many differing theories on the origin of the Hazara people span across historians and anthropologists. The most well known theory is that they are descendants of Genghis Khan and his army. This has also been claimed by many Pakhtuns (more commonly known in English as Pashtuns) who see them as outsiders in Afghanistan and mostly regard them with contempt.

However, the theory of them descending from Genghis Khan's hordes is denied by many Hazaras. Even the current Turkic speaking population of Central Asia who are almost entirely Mongoloid by race are wrongly perceived by many to be derived from the twelfth century Mongols.

This perception is wrong. The Turkic speaking populations actually descend from Proto-Turko-Mongol nomads who migrated out of the Altai mountain region in present-day Northern China, Mongolia and South Eastern Siberia between the sixth and eleventh centuries AD.
This is where I believe the Hazaras descend from.

The Turkic people of Central Asia do share a common ancestry with modern Mongolians and the Turkic languages/dialects they speak also together belong with Mongolian inside the Altaic language family.
And as mentioned these people migrated out of the Altai mountain region as far back as the fifth and sixth centuries into modern Central Asia which is partially how the Turkic languages split away from the Mongolic languages of which Mongolian is one of.

Genghis Khan's army simply incorporated much of Central Asia into his empire during the twelfth century AD. So the common ancestry between Central Asia's Turkic population as well as their languages' distant relation to Mongolian is the source of their similarity to modern Mongolians, not Genghis Khan's military colonizations.

The main difference between Hazaras and Turkic peoples of Central Asia is that the Hazaras speak Dari, an Iranic language almost identical to Farsi.
Another but less noticeable difference is that the Hazaras are found mainly in Afghanistan as well as some in Pakistan and even fewer in Iran. The Turkic Uzbeks and Turkmens are also found in Afghanistan, but are only small minorities there and found mostly in Central Asia.

My main reasons for them descending from ancient Turkic tribes is that the Turko-Mongols were in Central Asia and modern Afghanistan for over a thousand years.
Also the Persian dialects spoken in Afghanistan were brought through conquest because since ancient times various parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan were under Persian rule starting with the Achmemenid Empire in ancient times and was reinforced during the Sassanid period in the third century AD.

The Persian language spread much throughout western Afghanistan all the way up till the Pamir Valley.
It is spoken in these areas till this day though in different dialects such as Tajik or Dari. As the ethnic map of Afghanistan pictures below, these are the areas the Hazaras inhabit in modern which would be my best explanation as to why the Hazaras speak an Iranic language today:



If the Tajiks living as far away as the remote Pamir Valley and beyond into Tajikistan are speaking Persian today, then the strongest probability of the Hazaras speaking it is due to direct contact with the Persian armies who occupied the region that they live in as the above map also shows.

But various Persian occupations of modern Afghanistan predate Genghis Khan's conquests by centuries. So there could not have been such a strong contact between Persians and Hazaras if the Hazaras came as late as the twelfth century AD.
This makes the case stronger for them being in Afghanistan at a much earlier period dating as far back as the sixth century.
Additionally, most portions of Afghanistan came under Turkic rule in the eighth century and again by Persian-Turkic Ghazvanids in the ninth century. All this happened centuries before Genghis Khan was even born.

I also want to touch more on the racial component. Though I am unable to find an accurate haplogroup map of Afghanistan or Central Asia, the appearance of Hazaras also show a closer affinity with Afghanistan and Central Asia's Turkic populations.

The Altaic peoples east of the Caspian Sea basin might be mostly or almost entirely Mongoloid, however they show significant European features in them.
It is well known that before the Altaic migrations started in the fifth and sixth centuries AD, much of Central Asia was inhabited by scattered white populations mainly of Indo-European (IE) descent though there is also the possibility of extinct peoples from the Caucasus. By white I mean white skin, light hair/eyes and Caucasian skull.

The best known Indo-European sub-races in Central Asia were the Scythians. Many tombs found in China, Mongolia and Central Asia contained these extinct IE peoples' bodies. The IE peoples migrated as far as the Tarim desert and the Altai mountain region where their graves and racially mixed descendants are still found.

These descendants are hybrids of the migrating Turko-Mongols mixing with the ancient white populations of Central Asia and that is why many of them have light hair and eyes.
This trait is commonly found in the Hazaras. The Hazara child pictured below is just another example of this:


I believe that this influence in the Hazaras are a direct result of ancient contact and mixing between IE tribes and Turko-Mongols. These IE sub-races were extinct far before the twelfth century, so the possibility of Mongols picking up this gene at that time would be close to impossible. I would not believe that these traits were a result of Hazaras mixing with whiter populations of Afghanistan such as the Nuristanis. Not on a large scale anyway. Otherwise we'd see plenty of or even most Nuristanis today with Mongoloid features.

Many Mongols also have this feature too since the IE Scythians had a strong presence in Mongolia as seen in this Mongolian girl pictured below:




This is most likely an isolated area in Mongolia. Most of the Mongolian population even today remains mostly isolated so it's likely those Mongolians with traces of IE genes did not mix with other Mongol tribes.
But such a trait save for the blond hair is quite common amongst the Hazara population as well as Central Asian Turkic peoples. Massive race mixing should have occurred in Central Asia to have these significant white traits till present day amongst mainly Mongoloid populations.

By the twelfth century, there was absolutely nothing left of Central Asia's white populations as far as I can tell save for their living descendants who are mostly Mongoloid.
So for Hazaras to be of twelfth century Mongolian descent and living in a multi-ethnic country like Afghanistan while still showing signs of white features, the Mongolian hordes would had to have been mixing with white populations. But the problem is the whites of Central Asia were extinct by then so where did they pick up these white genes?

My most reasonable explanation is that they did not descend from Genghis Khan's army. They may share a common origin with the Mongolians going back more than a thousand years- like Central Asian Turks, but definitely did not descend from them.

The word Hazir means a thousand in Persian similar to Hazar in Urdu. This is also referred to Genghis Khan's army of one thousand. If this was root for the name for Hazara, it is most likely that they served in Genghis Khan's army. Most of Central Asia was under Mongol rule in the twelfth century and had Turkic populations serving their armed forces, so the probability of the Hazaras serving in Genghis Khan's army is most likely.

Central Asia was the heartland of more pure breed IE racial types as opposed to the Iranian plateau or the Indus Valley in Pakistan where Iranics and Indo-Aryans were already mixing with native Elamites, Dravidians and others; thus altering their gene pools.
Only isolated areas of Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan show more pure breed IE sub-races.

Even this haplogroup map shows the IE haplogroup R and it's subclades at close to zero levels in the Mongolian population whereas Central Asian populations still have much larger traces of it.
Again, where did Hazaras suddenly pick up such a significant trace of IE genes in their gene pool if they descend from Genghis Khan's army?

Though there might have been a Mongolic language found in a few Hazara tribes towards Herat, this particular tribe may have picked it up as opposed to the rest of the Hazara population.
Mongolian influence may have occurred on the Hazaras but it also occurred on other populations such as the Pakhtuns as pointed out in this article. There are also Pakhtuns who exhibit Mongoloid influence in their physical appearance, though not that very many.

Even the light skinned and light haired Mongolians probably have these genes due to being isolated from the rest of the Mongolian population. Mongolia is a very sparsely populated country of nomads even today and has an extremely low birthrate, another sign of less race mixing.

In this post I want to conclude my belief that the most likely origins of the Hazaras are in the earlier waves of Turkic nomads who spread throughout much of Central Asia and dispersed much of it's white population and assimilating the remainders into their own race. They do not descend from Mongolian armies that came later in the twelfth century, much after the first Altaic migrations started and probably even ended. Due to Persian influence over Afghanistan prior to the Mongol invasions, the Hazara adopted the Persian language and eventually developed their own dialect.

If Uzbeks, Turkmens, Kazakhs can live in Central Asia for over a thousand years and show more European influence in their gene pool than the Mongolians do, then why can't Hazaras who live on the other side of the Mongolians with the Turkic people separating them by thousands of miles.

There are also theories that the Hazara descend from Chagatai Turks who lived more towards China. The Chagatai Turks were partially derived from the Tocharians, the lost IE people who settled in the Tarim desert in China and who's descendants amongst the Turkic Uighurs are very much visible today. I do not find that a very much credible theory either, though I do not rule it out.

Still, that theory is much more probable than Hazaras descending from Genghis Khan's army.

Racial affinity vs linguistic affinity

Most people including many anthropologists and linguists have assumed linkages between races on the basis of common linguistics. It's not only that, but racial similarities between certain ethnic groups usually goes ignored because the languages they speak are much more distantly related or in some cases not related at all. While such assumptions are understandable, they are not always correct.

In this post examples of common racial affinity can be compared to common linguistic affinity.
Let me compare two separate races which are unrelated but at the same time speak languages that are closely related to one another. Below is a picture of a Turkish person from Anatolia:


People from Turkey speak Turkish which belongs to the Western Oghuz Turkic subfamily of languages.
Compare this Turkish man to the Uzbek individual below and notice the vast racial difference between the two:


While racially they may seem very distinct (and perhaps culturally too), the languages they speak are still in fairly close proximity.
Though a separate language of it's own from Turkish, the Uzbek language is still closely related to Turkish, both belonging to the Turkic family of languages inside the larger Altaic language family. The chart below maps out the Altaic family, though not very accurately: (click on image to enlarge)


After looking at the chart, compare the Uzbek man pictured above to this Mongolian man pictured below:

His closer resemblance to the Mongolian points to a closer racial affinity between Central Asian Turkic speaking peoples and Mongolians. This is despite Central Asian Turks speaking languages/dialects very similar to that of people from Turkey and Azerbaijan. Most people from Turkey and Azerbaijan look nothing like Central Asian Turks in terms of skull structure and are racially unrelated to them, though there is some Central Asian genetic influence in the Turkish and Azerbaijani populations.

While comparing the racial similarity between the Uzbek to the Mongolian, the vast distinct relationships between their languages should be observed.
Mongolian belongs to the Mongolic branch of Altaic languages as the chart above shows. Neither Mongolian or any other Mongolic languages have common intelligibility with the Turkic language aside from perhaps common cognates.

This is an example of races/ethnic groups having common racial affinity (Central Asian Turks to Mongolians) while the languages they speak are very distant from their close racial relatives languages to those languages of peoples who have racially very little or nothing in common with them (Turks from Central Asia to Turkic speaking peoples from Azerbaijan and Turkey).

There are many reasons for such cases to occur. It really depends on the circumstances of each case. At many times language shift occurs by one ethnic group to a language related to their own or at many times unrelated to their own. When it goes on for generations, the ethnic group eventually evolves the language(s) it picked up into a dialect of it's on and then later on into a completely separate language.

Such happened in the case for Turkey and Azerbaijan when Oghuz Turkic armies came from Central Asia and colonized Anatolia and the Caucasus. They also left genetic imprints, but not significant enough to be noticed by general observations. Very few people from Turkey and Azerbaijan show Turko-Mongol ancestry, but it doesn't mean it's not there.

The infamous Turkish singer Mustapha Yildizdogan is perhaps the best example of Oghuz genetic influence in Turkey.
A good way to catch Oghuz Turkic imprints in the two countries is to find distributions of Haplogroup Q on their maps.

Another example of this is comparisons between Indo-European speaking populations of Southern Central Asia and the Middle East to East European populations.
The closest racial relatives of Eastern European peoples are actually situated in South Central Asia and the Middle East, not in Western Europe. Strong evidence in their common origins are found in their related languages as well as some similar features, but most strongly in the common Haplogroup R1A that they belong to.

Western Europeans also carry this haplogroup, but I believe it was mainly due to mixing with Eastern Europeans.
While many Indo-European (IE) speaking peoples of Asia are related to Eastern Europeans going back thousands of years, the languages they speak are very distantly related to the languages of Eastern Europeans. Most Eastern Europeans save for Romanians speak Balto-Slavic languages, while most IE speakers in Southern Central Asia and the Middle East speak Indo-Iranic languages.

The Indo-Iranic language family is divided into Iranic languages, Dardic languages, Indo-Aryan languages and a few individual languages of the family belonging to no subbranch said to be spoken in the remote mountain regions of Northern Pakistan and Eastern Afghanistan.
Click here to view a full chart of the Indo-Iranic language family.

At the same time, there are plenty of peoples in the region who speak IE languages (mostly Indo-Iranic) but are not of IE descent and of different origins.
However, these non-IE origin peoples of Southern and Central Asia speak languages closely related to those who are of IE descent. I will cover examples of these, but first I'd like to compare between IE peoples in Asia to their distant Eastern European relatives.

Two Pakhtun (also spelled Pashtun) individuals from Northern Pakistan:



The majority of Pakhtuns do not display similar characteristics to East Europeans but a large and significant minority of them do.
Compare the faces of those Pakhtuns to that of this Belorussian man:


The Kalash of the Chitral Valley in Northern Pakistan can also be comparable to Slavs since they absorbed the least non-IE genes and lived mostly in isolation:


Here is a picture of two Tajik girls from the northernmost of Afghanistan:


The strong resemblance between these various Indo-Iranic peoples towards Eastern Europeans is not coincidental. These people are distantly related to Eastern Europeans. At the same time, while the languages spoken by these people are related to the Balto-Slavic languages, it is a very distant relationship. Even amongst each other as well as themselves, the Baltic and Slavic languages are barely understandable towards one another's speakers.

The same can be said for Indo-Aryan, Dardic, Iranic and other languages within the Indo-Iranic family. Some of these languages such as Farsi and Bengali have even lost the gender distinction trait very commonly found in Indo-European.

Despite the distant linguistic relationship between these IE peoples in Europe and Asia, they are genetically closer to each other than they are to other IE speaking people in Europe as well as IE speakers Asia who are not of IE descent.
Examples of IE speakers in Asia of non-Indo-European descent are the Sinhalese people or the Bengali people. Though some people in these ethnic groups are of original Indo-Aryan stock, the vast majority of these populations are Indo-Aryan mostly by language. This is due to Sanskrit speakers spreading throughout the subcontinent and few of their remaining descendants can be found amongst these ethnic groups.

Typical Sinhalese people:


This is another of many examples where we have distantly related peoples and languages but sometimes at closer linguistic affinity with non-related races.

Another and more obvious example is the Finnish peoples genetic relationship to other Germanic populations but their linguistic affinity with other Uralic populations, most of whom are of non-Germanic and non-IE descent.

This Finnish girl looks mostly indistinguishable from an average Scandinavian or any Northern European for that matter:


The language she speaks (Finnish) is unrelated to the Germanic languages of Scandinavia or any Indo-European language.
Finnish is a Uralic language that originates in the Ural mountain region in Siberia alongside other Uralic languages, most of which has speakers racially/genetically unrelated to the majority of Finns.

The Finnish girl has no linguistic affinity to most other Europeans, unlike the two Sinhalese people pictured above who speak, Sinhalese, an Indo-Aryan language which belongs to the same Indo-European family as most of Europe's languages.
But at the same time those Sinhalese people have no affinity towards Europeans racially, whereas the Finnish girl is more or less the exact same race as other northern and western Europeans.

There are some Finns who display higher Uralic and Siberian genetic influence (higher cheek bones, wider eyes etc.), however the majority of them don't.
Below are pictures of Komi people. They are a Uralic people, mainly of non-European stock, but speak a language closely related to Finnish:

Here is another group of Komis. These ones show more Europid influence in them:


The Komis live in the Russian Federation. It is important to note that many peoples of the Russian Federation including Slavic, Finnic and Turkic peoples have large inputs of Scandinavian admixture in their gene pools.
The northwestern parts of the modern Russian Federation was home to various Scandinavian peoples before they became assimilated mostly by migrating Slavs as well as Turkic tribes.

Today Scandinavian features are most commonly found in these areas. The examples provided above are few of many cases when comparing racial and linguistic affinity between various peoples across the world. Any questions or misunderstanding should be posted in the comments section and I will try to answer them as best as I can or clear misconceptions.

The Hunza of Pakistan and ancient Proto-Balkan-Caucasian peoples

In the past two years I had been reading many theories about the existence of a proposed family of Dene'-Caucasian languages.
Many theories of Proto-Caucasian (Caucasian as in people of the Caucasus see my other post) peoples and languages being spoken across Europe prior to the Indo-European migration which is believed to have occurred sometime during the fourth millennium BC onwards.

Prior to this time period in human history, little has been known about Europe until new research emerged about the possibility of Proto-Caucasian languages being amongst the many diverse language families spoken in the region of which may have been survived by Basque.

Many recent hypothesis suggest Proto-Caucasians languages and peoples populating areas of Europe. Certain linguistic theories have also linked the Burushaski language of hypothetical Caucasian families that also include Basque.
These hypothesis, though not proven lead me to a theory of my own. Despite lack of genetic evidence to support it and being doubtful of genetic results since most DNA tests on the Hunza populations seem show them to be related to the rest of Pakistan. I theorized that for the Basque and other extinct Caucasian languages to be spoken in Europe, a mass set of migrations must have taken place.

Thousands of years before the rise of the ancient Indo-Europeans, Proto-Caucasian tribes left their original homeland and moved westward and possibly southward since there are theories that the Sumerian language may be related to modern Caucasian languages.

But amongst these Proto-Caucasian migrations, a tribe or small set of tribes somehow ended up moving eastward. There are many cases of small populations migrating in opposite directions of the larger family, such as the case of the Tocharians who are said to be a Proto-Celtic tribe ending up in the Chinese desert instead of going along with the rest of the Indo-European migration.

If an established link is found between Basque and modern Caucasian languages as well as Burushaski and Ibero-Caucasian, then my theory is that the Hunza were a lost ancient Proto-Caucasian tribe that settled in Pakistan many hundred perhaps thousands of years prior to Indo-European domination in most of Eurasia.

Perhaps the Hunza are not descendants of these people as per most of the genetic evidence, but the language they speak may have come through a Proto-Balkan-Caucasian tribe that settled in Pakistan.

The Hunza are amongst the fairest people in Pakistan and bear a closer physical resemblance to Caucasian and European populations than to most Pakistani populations despite being closely related genetically; hence they might not be related to the people of the Caucasus genetically, but rather a people who inherited a Proto-Caucasian language due to nomadic settlements.

Or the alternate scenario could be that the Proto-Caucasians are the ancestors of the Hunza and absorbed outside genes as race mixing occurred.

Random migrations in ancient times may have led these Caucasians to enter the Indus Valley many thousands of years ago.
Only further research will reveal what the world was like prior to massive expansions and dominance of the speakers of many language families today, primarily Altaic and Indo-European.

"Dark-skinned" immigrants targetted in Russia

Frequently we hear of racist attacks against Central Asian and Caucasian (Caucasian as in people from the Caucasus) immigrants in the Russian Federation.

Alot of the times reports from agencies and newspapers state that these people are targeted because of their Asiatic looks or their "dark looks."
The first statement is more or less true since the modern-day inhabitants of Central Asia are predominantly Mongoloid, save for a few pockets of European migrants/settlers and Tajiks who seem to be predominantly Caucasoid (Caucasoid in this case refers to skull type).

The second statement is somewhat absurd and ignorant. Aside from many Tajiks, the people of Central Asia and the Caucasus are far from being "dark-skinned" people. Most of the Central Asian immigrants are Mongoloid typically with yellow skin. The immigrants from the Caucasus are predominantly white people ("white" in this case refers to physical appearance) and are indistinguishable from the average European population most of the time.

Below are pictures of Azerbaijanis. Can any "dark looks" be found in them?




Most of Caucasian peoples culture, linguistics and genetics differ from the Europeans, but in appearance, the vast majority of them except for a few mixed ones are as white as Europeans, with a huge percentage having blond hair, blue eyes. Others have red, brown hair with green eyes or blue eyes.
Where are the "dark looks?"

Even the Russian Neo-Nazis who target them, use the term "black" for the immigrants. The whole truth is that the "black" label is applied to people of non-European ethnicity which includes Chinese and other eastern Asian immigrants of non-European origins.

Being a blond-haired, blue eyed Lezghin or Azerbaijani makes no difference to the Neo-Nazi attackers.

Azerbaijani musicians:


Azerbaijani soldier:


Either the media misinterprets this "black" term or out of ignorance leads people to believe that anyone originating outside of Europe is always "dark"/non-white.
A lot of reports also claim that immigrants are prey to attacks due to their non-Slavic appearance.

This is a true statement as well. Though Slavic peoples, Western Europeans and Caucasians are of the same skin complexion, their facial structure generally gives out their racial identity or at least a clue of it.

But the main point is that the people of the Caucasus are predominantly white just as Slavic peoples and other Europeans.
The darker Caucasians are a result of mixing with darker invaders in the Caucasus such as Arabs and Persians.

To label all the Caucasians as "black" or "dark" on the basis of a handful is absurd. By the same contrast, Caucasians could also label Russians as "black" because of Russians like Alexander Pushkin.

Some more Azerbaijanis. Their appearance matches that of most other peoples of the Caucasus:

Is Persia Iran?

For a long time many people used to think of Persian and Iranian to be of the same meaning. But now with the age of the Internet and free flow of information, most people know this to be completely false. For Persian to be the same is Iranian would be like saying Punjabi is an equivalent for Pakistani.

Like Pakistan, Iran is a multilingual country with Persians constituting a little over half the population.
Many people also believe that Persia is an ancient name of Iran. The reason why the name Iran was not used before is because the modern state of Iran was not established before 1935.

Prior to that Iran's Fars province was known as Persia, but the other provinces of Iran home to the various non-Persian populations are not Persia.
It's accurate to say that Persia is not really an ancient equivalent of Iran, but rather a province of Iran; hence Persian history is a part of Iranian history now that Persia is a province of Iran.

Though the name Persia was used in Western terminology, it has it's roots in present-day Iran. The name is said to be derived from the word "Fars" or better the Fars province of Iran. This word sometimes pronounced as Pars (also used to refer to Zoroastrians in Pakistan "Parsi") hence the word "Persia" developed. The word Persia does not refer to the entire Iran. It specifically refers to the Fars province.
Fars=Persian person. Farsi=Persian language. Iranian=Person from Iran be it Kurd, Azeri, Baloch, Fars/Persian etc. Fars province of Iran=Persia.

There was a paragraph I found on http://www.iraninfo.dk/multimedia-videos/videodirectlink-70.html (the site no longer seems to exist) which I wanted to share:

Fars is one of the 30 provinces of Iran. It is in the south of the country and its center is Shiraz. It has an area of 122,400 km². In 1996, this province had a population of 3.8 million people, of which 56.7% were registered as urban dwellers, 41.0% villagers, and 1.4% nomad tribes. Nominally, F?rs is the original homeland of the Persian people. The native name of the Persian language is Farsi or Parsi. Persia and Persian both derive from the Hellenized form ?????? Persis of the root word P?rs. The Old Persian word was P?rs?. Fars province was originally called Pars after the Persians(pronounced Pars in Persian) which settled there. After the Arab conquest of Iran it was renamed Fars. A branch of the Indo-Iranians migrated to Fars in the second millennium BC. The ancient Persians became the rulers of a large empire under the Achaemenid Empire in the sixth century BC. The ruins of Persepolis and Pasargadae , two of the four capitals of the Achaemenid Empire, are located in Fars. The Achaemenid Empire was defeated by Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC. The Seleucid Empire was defeated by the Parthians in 238 BC. The city of Shiraz is located in Fars.

Iranian vs Iranic

Though usually the language family of Iranic is often referred to as "Iranian" even by the scholars, Iranic is actually the correct term for the language family and peoples.

Here's why:
-Iranian most accurately today refers to a citizen of Iran. This includes non-Iranic speaking peoples as well such as the Semitic speaking Arabs in the Khuzestan province south of Iran or the Turkic speaking Azeris and Torkomans in the North Eastern and North Western parts of the country.

-The Pashtuns while never having been historically native to Iran, but rather Afghanistan and Pakistan, so they are Iranic, but not Iranian.

-When referring to the Turkic language family, Turkic is specifically used and never Turkish which is an individual language and does not refer to the language family.

-The same is used when referring to Germanic languages. They are not referred to as "German" but as Germanic.

-The same is used when referring to the Italic language family whereas the word Italian refers specifically to the language.

-Likewise, Iranic is the most correct term to refer to a set of languages which are also spoken outside of Iran in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and other parts of the Caucasus.

Now there might be no such language as "Iranian" but the fact is Iranian is a native of Iran, weather an Iranic speaker or not. To refer to Iranic speaking peoples as Iranian is essentially declaring them citizens of Iran.

The people of Uzbekistan are Turkic, but they are not Turkish, otherwise they would be from Turkey.

The same way Iranic peoples are not necessarily indigenous to Iran and should not be called "Iranian."
Alot of people, including Iranians are slowly coming to terms with the difference between the two words.

The Indo-European language family.

(click on above image to enlarge)

Being the largest family on Earth, the Indo-European (IE) language family has brought fascination and confusion to many people interested in this family.

A huge misconception that has spread over the decades (most likely propelled by Indian chauvinists) is that Sanskrit is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language from which arose the modern-day IE family of languages.

In reality, nobody knows the name of the PIE language. While Sanskrit is one of the most ancient IE languages spoken and the first known IE language to use a writing system, it is not the PIE.

Sanskrit is derived from Proto-Indo-Aryan, which in turn is derived from the Proto-Indo-Iranic language.
Sanskrit is the parent of all modern Indo-Aryan languages such as Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu/Undri etc.

Another fact most people interested in the IE family are unaware of is that the closest living language to PIE according to linguists is Lithuanian. This is because unlike most IE languages of today, Lithuanian stayed mostly the same and changed very little grammatically.

According to a friend of mine who has a masters degree in linguistics, the closest language to PIE was Hittite, a language spoken in Anatolia, present-day Turkey.

Another widespread misconception promoted by Indian pseudo-scientists is that the IE family started in present-day India and spread out from there.
This is known as the "out of India theory," but only accepted by Indians and rejected elsewhere worldwide.

The IE family is actually traced back to it's early beginnings in the Black Sea region. Some linguists and historians claim that the PIE language can be traced back specifically to Southern Ukrainian regions of which many have been submerged by the Black Sea.
However, what is agreed upon by linguists and historians is that the IE family did start somewhere around the Black Sea region.

My best guess is the IE family was spoken in areas today submerged under the Black Sea.

From there the ancestors of most modern-day IE speaking peoples spread to the most Eastern and Western corners of Eurasia. Over time and geography, their languages slowly started to drift apart and slowly evolved into the modern-day IE languages as we know them today.

Depending on their geography, IE languages borrowed vocabulary from languages near them.
As an example, the IE languages spoken in Iran and Pakistan have a lot of Arabic and Turkic words in their vocabulary. This is due to their close proximity to Arab and Turkic speaking areas.

The furthermost east the ancient IE speaking peoples reached was the Altay mountain region and the Xiang province in present-day China.

According to a documentary I saw on the Tocharians, the Centum languages in the IE family are differentiated from Satem languages because Centum languages use certain suffixation and sounds that are absent in Satem languages.

The IE peoples that went westward evolved into modern-day Europeans. Most IE speaking peoples (not all) share common Haplogroups R1A and R1B

At one time ancient Indo-Europeans spanned throughout most of Central Asia but were later destroyed and/or assimilated by nomadic waves of Turanian peoples spreading out of the Altay mountain region.

A lot is to be learned about the PIE language and it's early successors. So far linguists have been able to reconstruct certain words based on modern IE languages and older ones such as Latin, Greek and Sanskrit.

But until they do, it would be wrong to assume anything and elevate it to "fact" without proof or even evidence.