Mallory (1997) agrees that there is solid evidence in both European and Asiatic stocks for Proto-Indo-European cereals, as well as the agricultural t… - James Patrick Mallory

It is not easy to make a simple appeal to the Andronovo culture to resolve all the issues of Indo-Iranian origins... When the archaeological evidence becomes so opaque then our only refuge... is probability and a little intuition.

While a good case can be made for an expansion of Pontic-Caspian pastoralists onto the Asiatic steppe, and perhaps also into the belt of central Asian urban centres (Parpola 1988), it is still difficult to demonstrate movements from the steppe into the historical seats of the Indo-Aryans and the Iranians of Iran itself.

The problem here, of course, is that over time we have come to know more and more and that our earlier, simpler and more alluring narratives of Indo-European origins and dispersals are all falling victim to our increasing knowledge. We have obviously moved on from the time when Nikolai Merpert first published his analyses of the role of the steppelands within the context of the Indo-European homeland but it is evident that we still have a very long way to go.