Which group of people actually spoke the Avestan language before it was limited to liturgy purposes?

I'm just curious since I've looked around the internet looking for answers, but I can't seen to find any.

I'm reading Gimbutas' Civilization of the Goddess and I'm confused whether or not her thesis (not the Kurgan hypothesis, I mean her beliefs about the nature of Neolithic societies, religion, etc.) is accepted. I find the evidence she presents convincing (though it may be outdated) and seems to agree with Robert Drews that settlements before at least Yamnaya/Corded Ware/Bell Beaker only had ditches as defenses against wild animals suggesting a more peaceful way of life. I was wondering what everyone here thinks and what sources are available on this topic, including ones which address this issue only tangentially or which include more up to date archaeological information. Thanks!

Abstract

The Caucasus and surrounding areas, with their rich metal resources, became a crucible of the Bronze Age^(1) and the birthplace of the earliest steppe pastoralist societies^(2). Yet, despite this region having a large influence on the subsequent development of Europe and Asia, questions remain regarding its hunter-gatherer past and its formation of expansionist mobile steppe societies^(3)^(,)^(4)^(,)^(5). Here we present new genome-wide data for 131 individuals from 38 archaeological sites spanning 6,000 years. We find a strong genetic differentiation between populations north and south of the Caucasus mountains during the Mesolithic, with Eastern hunter-gatherer ancestry^(4)^(,)^(6) in the north, and a distinct Caucasus hunter-gatherer ancestry^(7)with increasing East Anatolian farmer admixture in the south. During the subsequent Eneolithic period, we observe the formation of the characteristic West Eurasian steppe ancestry and heightened interaction between the mountain and steppe regions, facilitated by technological developments of the Maykop cultural complex^(8). By contrast, the peak of pastoralist activities and territorial expansions during the Early and Middle Bronze Age is characterized by long-term genetic stability. The Late Bronze Age marks another period of gene flow from multiple distinct sources that coincides with a decline of steppe cultures, followed by a transformation and absorption of the steppe ancestry into highland populations.

Paper Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08113-5

The Yamnaya were characterized by the horse and bronze. However, about 2,000 years after the Yamnaya started migrating around, iron was discovered and produced in appreciable quantities. However, this discovery didn't come with a demographic takeover like the way bronze did.

Why is this?

How are they seen as in different IE pantheons? Especially Vedic?

I was looking into Norse mythology and where Odin got his name from, as he has a lot of the traits of the classic sky father but lacks many others, such as not necessarily being god of the sky. After watching Crecganford's video on Odin, IIRC the hypothesis he proposes, which I agree with, is that Odin absorbed the first man, Norse mythology's "manu," much like how Zeus absorbed the storm god Perkwunos.

Looking at other pantheons, it is similarly difficult to make out a clear connection from what little we know. How is Zalmoxis related to Dyeus phter, if he even is? Where is the sky father in Hittite mythology? And how is Phrygian Sabazios related linguistically? What about Armenian?

Could it be something like happened in Slavic mythology (from what I read) where Deiwos was given the name, "Rod," but staying mostly the same. And I would really love to know as much as possible about Dacian myth as it seems to me to be not particularly IE at all other than faint connections to Dionysus or whatnot.

Jatts have unusually high steppe for South Asia(35% Steppe MBLA), could they be Indo-Scythian descendants?

They were also considered lower castes by Brahmins for a long time, common for traditional Indian societies to designate many foreign Non-Vedic groups.

i have been looking around the wikipedia and wiktionary pages about PIE for a bit now and i have noticed a pattern, that being [uH, iH, Hu, iH], these H sounds that couldn’t be identified in the reconstructions on these sites, could it be y, ɯ? i say that based on a reconstruction of proto uralic second person pronoun being tȣ̈, with ȣ̈ being an unknown frontal vowel, if it’s a connection or a loan idk, am i on to something? is there some reconstruction like this that i can read about?

There is a passage in The Odyssey that describes the Palace of Antinoo and talks about its bronze doors with details carved in silver and gold. Why are these people from the Bronze Age of Europe called that if at that time they already knew how to work gold and silver?

Back when I used twitter I had an interaction with a guy who made the claim that Germanic, Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranic form a clade, which he based on increased level of shared hunter-gatherer ancestry in the proto-cultures of these respective groups. I was a little surprised to hear this, because in the vast majority of constructed Indo-European internal phylogenies I come across, Germanic generally places closest to Italo-Celtic, with balto-slavic as an outgroup, and then followed by Indo-Iranic as an even further outgroup from the former four families. My first question is as to whether his interpretation is more "correct" or if my understanding of it is the more accepted view.

Moving from that, he then said that all these respective families ultimately spawned from the Corded Ware. I asked him how the other Indo-European languages fit into this framework, and he said that Greek, Albanian and Armenian are direct descendants of the Yamnaya via the catacomb culture, which migrated into the Balkans and Caucasus respectively after the Corded Ware re-migrated back onto the Steppe and pushed these older Indo-European cultures out. I myself am not as educated in the research that has been published on the genetics or archaeology on these ancient cultures, so I was wondering if his interpretation is fairly accurate understanding of what has been discovered so far, or if what he is saying is left-field.

In full truthfulness I may also be misattributing his words, because I am only recalling this interaction from about nine months ago, and as I have admitted, I am not that savvy at remembering the names that archaeologists are giving these ancient peoples.

Charles Anthon said that the name Artemis derives from an Old Persian word Art, Arta, Arte, but that word, according to him, means "great, excellent".

The Old Persian Arta, which shares a meaning with Ṛta, does not mean those things. I vaguely remember finding a source that says the words come from a root which means great and excellent, but I lost the source when my other phone broke.

Can anyone help me verify if Artemis is indeed connected to the Zoroastrian and Hindu concepts and provide sources? Thank you!

I hear claims from usually from Nationalist from a certain group (don't want to break rule 3 or 2) that it's they're only claimed to be Iranic or IE because of Euro or Iranic centrism. And that it'd be dumb to claim these people as IE or Iranic because they didn't "leave behind a written language or manuscript" to claim that. I was wondering how true are these arguments and what is the evidence that we know of that the Scythians at least the OG Scythians like Tomyris for example are of mostly IE stock and likely spoken a derivative of IE.

They are native to western Nepal and Indian states like Uttarakhand, himachal and Kashmir(some say this name iteslf comes from Khas). Their religious practices are distinct in many ways from the Vedic counterparts. In Nepal their Kul Deuta(clan god) is called Masto who is like a formless spirit and comes into the vision of Shamans. they are also mentioned in the Mahabharat. [I only know this much]