Linguistic Evidence for Cultural Exchange in Prehistoric Western Central Asia," Sino-Platonic Papers, 129 (December, 2003) Steinkeller, P. The question of MarUaSi: A Contribution to the Historical Geography of

... the Bactria-Margiana area is the immediate contact zone for steppe populations coming from the north.1 §6. Transhumance, Trickling in, Immigration of Steppe Peoples There is no need to underline that the establishment of a BMAC substrate belt has grave implications for the theory of the immigration of speakers of Indo-Iranian languages into Greater Iran and then into the Panjab. By and large, the body of words taken over into the Indo-Iranian languages in the BMAC area, necessarily by bilingualism, closes the linguistic gap between the Urals and the languages of Greater Iran and India. Uralic and Yeneseian were situated, as many IIr. loan words indicate, to the north of the steppe/taiga boundary of the (Proto-)IIr. speaking territories (§2.1.1). The individual IIr. languages are firmly attested in Greater Iran (Avestan, O.Persian, Median) as well as in the northwestern Indian subcontinent (gvedic, Middle Vedic). These materials, mentioned above (§2.1.) and some more materials relating to religion (Witzel forthc. b) indicate an early habitat of Proto-IIr. in the steppes south o