Would History still be recognizable if there were no Indoeuropeans?

It doesn't make sense that no one in Europe would develop light skin without the Proto-Indo-Europeans. At least if we're assuming that "dark skin" means as dark sub-Saharan Africans, I think skin colour and physical features (with an obvious bias toward what we consider "white") like the Inuit and other circumpolar people (including the Sami apparently before Nordic admixture) is plausible. Even the article you posted doesn't suggest it was the proto-Indo-Europeans who spread light skin in Europe.

At the time of the pod white skin already exists, and i wasn't arguing against that. what i was talking about how. and how fast it would spread compared with otl, considering that with anothe rlanguage, the culture will also be different.

no, skin would be dark brown, not black. the other physical features like the shape of the face would be current european, just not the skin tone.
http://www.livescience.com/42838-european-hunter-gatherer-genome-sequenced.html
this is how it would look like:
hunter-gatherer.jpg
 
The Neolithic (as with the Mesolithic and Paleolithic) is always in flux, since new research comes out so often on it (and the general subject of human origins).

But even then, the article suggests that the Neolithic culture of Europeans (presumably the Proto-Indo-Europeans I keep mentioning or relatives) was associated with a change in physical appearance thanks to mutations because of their culture. But nothing to do with the proto-Indo-Europeans. So it could have evolved regardless of the Indo-Europeans, and there's no reason it couldn't have spread because of cultural reasons like the attractiveness of people with the trait.
 
Anyone game to take this slowly, step by step (as far as it is possible to us)?
Shall we start with Anthony`s Modified Kurgan theory as partly laid out by @Skallagrim ?

So let´s say the PoD is that dwellers in the Pontic steppe, who speak what we shall call for simplicity`s sake "PIE", fail to domesticate male horses. (Getting trampled in the attempt, or never coming across the idea.) This is sometime around 4000 BCE, give or take a few centuries.

What is the next recognisable divergence, if we keep butterflies to a strict causal minimum?
No Yamna expansion, I guess. How does this affect the Northern Caucasus, where IOTL Maykop developed and the first wheels were found? Can we really say: no horse breeding = no wheels here? I´m not so certain, for we still don`t know if wheels in Cucuteni-Trypillian and Uruk Mesopotamia were sooner or related or what, and how conditions were North of the Caucasus, do we?
 
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Anyone game to take this slowly, step by step (as far as it is possible to us)?
Shall we start with Anthony`s Modified Kurgan theory as partly laid out by @Skallagrim ?

So let´s say the PoD is that dwellers in the Pontic steppe, who speak what we shall call for simplicity`s sake "PIE", fail to domesticate male horses. (Getting trampled in the attempt, or never coming across the idea.) This is sometime around 4000 BCE, give or take a few centuries.

What is the next recognisable divergence, if we keep butterflies to a strict causal minimum?
No Yamna expansion, I guess. How does this affect the Northern Caucasus, where IOTL Maykop developed and the first wheels were found? Can we really say: no horse breeding = no wheels here? I´m not so certain, for we still don`t know if wheels in Cucuteni-Trypillian and Uruk Mesopotamia were sooner or related or what, and how conditions were North of the Caucasus, do we?

Might be that if we don't domesticate horses we haven't wheels at least not big wheels. Natives of Americas hadn't too wheels despite that they were on some areas pretty advanced.

Just wondering how this would affect development of Middle East and Egypt. I guess that city states era last longer, perhaps longer lasting Sumerian language.

Could Egypt ever be unified nation?
 

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Might be that if we don't domesticate horses we haven't wheels at least not big wheels. Natives of Americas hadn't too wheels despite that they were on some areas pretty advanced.

Just wondering how this would affect development of Middle East and Egypt. I guess that city states era last longer, perhaps longer lasting Sumerian language.

Could Egypt ever be unified nation?
Egypt were Afro-Asiatic speakers and the Mesopotamian Empires were Semitic speakers. Though the Mitanni, Hitites, and other Indo-European empires did have a lot of influence.
 
Might be that if we don't domesticate horses we haven't wheels at least not big wheels. Natives of Americas hadn't too wheels despite that they were on some areas pretty advanced.

Just wondering how this would affect development of Middle East and Egypt. I guess that city states era last longer, perhaps longer lasting Sumerian language.

Could Egypt ever be unified nation?
There are good chances that wheels were developed first in places where people didn`t breed horses yet (Uruk Mesopotamia), and that cross-fertilisation between horse breeding and wheels happened across the Caucasus, with the Maykop culture as an important transmitter / catalyst.

I´ll take up your idea, though, and say that wheels stay somewhat smaller. It makes more and more sense to me to say that without Yamna horse breeding, no Maykop. If nothing interesting comes from farther North, the Northern Caucasus is likely to be less of a hot spot and more of a backwater.

Still, both here and at the Eastern edge of the Cucteni-Triploye horizon, agricultural societies interact with grassland herders. Anything else that might have come from that contact during the 4000-3000 BCE period if it´s not horse breeding and the related PIE culture?
 
Might be that if we don't domesticate horses we haven't wheels at least not big wheels. Natives of Americas hadn't too wheels despite that they were on some areas pretty advanced.

Just wondering how this would affect development of Middle East and Egypt. I guess that city states era last longer, perhaps longer lasting Sumerian language.

Could Egypt ever be unified nation?
Mesopotamian urban civilization is just developing. Egypt is far away and predynastic. Let´s take it even more slowly. In the 4th millennium BCE, the changes are, if not limited to, then at least most profound in the Pontic space.
Anything else important we must take care of before 3000 BCE?
 
OK, so if Egypt was unified around 3100 BCE, this was way before wheel-and-horse combinations could have reached Egypt.
Egypt may be unified regardless of our divergence, thus.
 
@Lalli
Speaking of Egypt, here`s another thought:
If horses are not domesticated, at least not in the 4th millennium BCE, then the Egyptian domestication of the donkey is at the cutting edge of technological progress. How does this change of animals alter the 3rd millennium BCE?
(And any input on what we`ve overlooked in the 4th millennium BCE is still welcome.)
 
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