Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses

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Indo-European studies

The Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses are tentative identifications of the range of the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European language with geographical regions over given times consistent with the glottochronology of the language tree, and the culture with the archaeological cultures located at those places over those times. Identifications are made on the basis of how well, if at all, the projected migration routes and times of migration from the Urheimat fit the distribution of Indo-European languages, and how closely the sociological model of the original society reconstructed from Proto-Indo-European lexical items fits the archaeological profile.

The location and identity of the Proto-Indo-Europeans have been recurring topics in Indo-European studies since the 18th century. Many hypotheses for an Urheimat have been proposed, but none of them has gained general acceptance among the linguistic community. There is no single archaeological pattern that might correspond to a migration on an appropriate geographic scale throughout Europe. The attempt to find the Urheimat of best match has raised fundamental questions about the development, spread, and adoption of languages, the relationship of language to ethnic groups, and the correspondence of archaeologically recognizable patterns of material culture to either language or ethnicity. As Mallory (1989:143) once put it: "One does not ask 'where is the Indo-European homeland?' but rather 'where do they put it now?'"

Estimates of the time between PIE and the earliest attested texts (ca. 19th century BC; see Kültepe texts) range around 1,500 to 2,500 years, with extreme proposals diverging up to another 100% on either side:

• the 4th millennium BC (excluding the Anatolian branch) in Armenia, according to the Armenian hypothesis (proposed in the context of Glottalic theory);
• the 4th or 5th millennium BC to the east of the Caspian Sea, in the area of ancient Bactria-Sogdiana, according to Johanna Nichols' Sogdiana hypothesis;
• the 5th millennium BC (4th excluding the Anatolian branch) in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, according to the Kurgan hypothesis;
• the 6th millennium BC or later in Northern Europe according to Lothar Kilian's and, especially, Marek Zvelebil's models of a broader homeland;
• the 6th millennium BC in India, according to Koenraad Elst's Out of India model
• the 7th millennium BC in Anatolia (the 5th, in the Balkans, excluding the Anatolian branch), according to Colin Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis;
• the 7th millennium BC in Anatolia (6th excluding the Anatolian branch), according to a 2003 Bayesian analysis study;
• before the 10th millennium BC, in the Paleolithic Continuity Theory.
• 20,000 B.C-10,800 in the Mesolithic

These possibilities boil down to four competing basic models (with variations) that have academic credibility (Mallory (1997:106)), i.e.:

1. Pontic-Caspian: Chalcolithic (5th to 4th millennia BC)
2. Anatolia: Early Neolithic (7th to 5th millennia BC)
3. Baltic hypothesis: Mesolithic to Neolithic (Ertebølle to Corded Ware horizon, 6th to 3rd millennia BC)
4. Balkans: Neolithic (5th millennium BC)

Archaeology

Scheme of Indo-European migrations from ca. 4000 to 1000 BCE according to the Kurgan hypothesis. The magenta area corresponds to the assumed Urheimat (Samara culture, Sredny Stog culture). The red area corresponds to the area which may have been settled by Indo-European-speaking peoples up to ca. 2500 BCE; the orange area to 1000 BCE.

There have been many attempts to claim that particular prehistorical cultures can be identified with the PIE-speaking peoples, but all have been speculative. All attempts to identify an actual people with an unattested language depend on a sound reconstruction of that language that allows identification of cultural concepts and environmental factors which may be associated with particular cultures (such as the use of metals, agriculture vs. pastoralism, geographically distinctive plants and animals, etc).

In the 1970s, a mainstream consensus had emerged among Indo-Europeanists in favour of the "Kurgan hypothesis" placing the Indo-European homeland in the Pontic steppe of the Chalcolithic period. This was not least due to the influence of the Journal of Indo-European Studies, edited by J. P. Mallory, that focused on the ideas of Marija Gimbutas, and offered some improvements. She had created a modern variation on the traditional invasion theory (the Kurgan hypothesis, after the kurgans (burial mounds) of the Eurasian steppes) in which the Indo-Europeans were a nomadic tribe in Eastern Ukraine and Southern Russia and expanded on horseback in several waves during the 3rd millennium BCE. Their expansion coincided with the taming of the horse. Leaving archaeological signs of their presence (see battle-axe people), they subjugated the peaceful European Neolithic farmers of Gimbutas's Old Europe. As Gimbutas's beliefs evolved, she put increasing emphasis on the patriarchal, patrilinear nature of the invading culture, sharply contrasting it with the supposedly egalitarian, if not matrilinear culture of the invaded, to a point of formulating essentially feminist archaeology.

Her interpretation of Indo-European culture found genetic support in remains from the Neolithic culture of Scandinavia, where bone remains in Neolithic graves indicated that the megalith culture was either matrilocal or matrilineal, as the people buried in the same grave were related through the women. Likewise, there is a tradition of remaining matrilineal traditions among the Picts. A modified form of this theory by JP Mallory, dating the migrations earlier to around 4000 BCE and putting less insistence on their violent or quasi-military nature, essentially replaced the version of Gimbutas.

The Kurgan hypothesis seeks to explain the Indo-European language expansion by a succession of migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, or, more specifically and according to the revised version, to the area encompassed by the Sredny Stog culture (ca. 4500 BC). This hypothesis is compatible with the argument that the PIE homeland must have been larger, because the "Neolithic creolisation hypothesis" allows the Pontic-Caspian region to have been part of PIE territory.

The main competitor of the Kurgan hypothesis is the Anatolian hypothesis advanced by Colin Renfrew. It states that the Indo-European languages began to spread peacefully into Europe from Asia Minor from around 7000 BCE with the advance of farming (wave of advance). The expansion of agriculture from the Middle East diffused three linguistic families: Indo-European toward Europe, Dravidian toward Pakistan and India, and Afro Asiatic toward Arabia and North Africa. Essentially the same hypothesis was suggested by Cavalli-Sforza. But this theory is contradicted by the fact that ancient Anatolia is known to be inhabited by non-Indo-European people, namely the Hattians and Chalybes. Also, the spread of farming does not seem to have been a uniform process or to have been achieved everywhere by population migration.

Genetics

Further information: Kurgan hypothesis#Genetics

The accumulation of Archaeogenetic evidence which uses genetic analysis to trace migration patterns since the 1990s has also added new elements to the puzzle. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Alberto Piazza argue that Renfrew and Gimbutas reinforce rather than contradict each other. Cavalli-Sforza (2000) states that "It is clear that, genetically speaking, peoples of the Kurgan steppe descended at least in part from people of the Middle Eastern Neolithic who immigrated there from Turkey." Piazza & Cavalli-Sforza (2006) state that:

if the expansions began at 9,500 years ago from Anatolia and at 6,000 years ago from the Yamnaya culture region, then a 3,500-year period elapsed during their migration to the Volga-Don region from Anatolia, probably through the Balkans. There a completely new, mostly pastoral culture developed under the stimulus of an environment unfavorable to standard agriculture, but offering new attractive possibilities. Our hypothesis is, therefore, that Indo-European languages derived from a secondary expansion from the Yamnaya culture region after the Neolithic farmers, possibly coming from Anatolia and settled there, developing pastoral nomadism.

Wells (2002) states that "there is nothing to contradict this model, although the genetic patterns do not provide clear support either," and instead argues that the evidence is much stronger for Gimbutas' model:

while we see substantial genetic and archaeological evidence for an Indo-European migration originating in the southern Russian steppes, there is little evidence for a similarly massive Indo-European migration from the Middle East to Europe. One possibility is that, as a much earlier migration (8,000 years old, as opposed to 4,000), the genetic signals carried by Indo-European-speaking farmers may simply have dispersed over the years. There is clearly some genetic evidence for migration from the Middle East, as Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues showed, but the signal is not strong enough for us to trace the distribution of Neolithic languages throughout the entirety of Indo-European-speaking Europe.

High concentrations of Mesolithic or late Paleolithic Y-DNA haplogroups of types R1b (typically well above 35%) and I (up to 25%), are thought to derive ultimately of the robust Eurasiatic Cro Magnoid Homo sapiens of the Aurignacian culture, and the subsequent gracile leptodolichomorphous people of the Gravettian culture that entered Europe from the Middle East 20,000 to 25,000 years ago, respectively. Small Neolithic additions have been connected to occurrences of haplogroups J2, G, F and E3b1a (which are believed to have originated in Anatolia, the latter haplogroup in Northeastern Africa), although such a position has been challenged as simplistic. Haplogroup R1a1, whose lineage is thought to have originated in the Eurasian Steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas, is associated with the Kurgan culture, as well as with the postglacial Ahrensburg culture that might have spread the gene originally. On the other hand Dupuy and his colleagues proposed Ahrensburg culture to have brought Haplogroup Hg P*(xR1a) or R1b (Y-DNA) to the population and stressed genetic similarity with Germany. Ornella Semino et al. propose a postglacial spread of the R1a1 gene during the Late Glacial Maximum, subsequently magnified by the expansion of the Kurgan culture into Europe and eastward. R1a1 is most prevalent in Poland, Russia, and Ukraine and is also observed in Pakistan, India and central Asia. Wells suggests the origin, distribution and age of R1a1 points to an ancient migration, possibly corresponding to the spread by the Kurgan people in their expansion across the Eurasian steppe around 3000 BC. R1a1 is largely confined east of the Vistula and drops considerably to the west: R1a1 measurements read 6.2% to Germans (a 4X drop to Czechs and Slovakians reading 26,7%) and 3.7% to Dutch. The spread of Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup R1a1 has also been associated with the spread of the Indo-European languages, as well as a later, more regional spread associated with the Slavic expansions. The mutations that characterize haplogroup R1a occurred ~10,000 years bp. Its defining mutation (M17) occurred about 10,000 to 14,000 years ago.

Out of 10 human male remains assigned to the Andronovo horizon from the Krasnoyarsk region, 9 possessed the R1a Y-chromosome haplogroup and one C haplogroup (xC3). mtDNA haplogroups of nine individuals assigned to the same Andronovo horizon and region were as follows: U4 (2 individuals), U2e, U5a1, Z, T1, T4, H, and K2b.

90% of the Bronze Age period mtDNA haplogroups were of west Eurasian origin and the study determined that at least 60% of the individuals overall (out of the 26 Bronze and Iron Age human remains' samples of the study that could be tested) had light hair and blue or green eyes.

A 2004 study also established that during the Bronze Age/Iron Age period, the majority of the population of Kazakhstan (part of the Andronovo culture during Bronze Age), was of west Eurasian origin (with mtDNA haplogroups such as U, H, HV, T, I and W), and that prior to the 13th-7th century BCE, all Kazakh samples belonged to European lineages.

Other hypotheses

Using stochastic models to evaluate the presence/absence of different words across Indo-European, Gray & Atkinson (2003) yielded that the origin of Indo-European goes back about 8500 years, the first split being that of Hittite from the rest (Indo-Hittite hypothesis). However, the procedure to infer from the lifespan of some words upon the lifespan of a language remains at least questionable. Moreover, the idiosyncratic outcome of e.g. the Albanian language must raise severe doubts about both the method and the data. Besides, there are a lot of lexicostatistical (and some glottochronological) attempts before and after G&A with quite other results

A scenario that could reconcile Renfrew's beliefs with the Kurgan hypothesis is that Indo-European migrations are somehow related to the submersion of the northeastern part of the Black Sea around 5600 BC: while a splinter group who became the proto-Hittite speakers moved into northeastern Anatolia around 7000 BC, the remaining population went north, evolving into the Kurgan culture, while others may have escaped far to the northeast (Tocharians) and the southeast (Indo-Iranians). While the time-frame of this scenario is consistent with Renfrew, it is incompatible with his core assumption that Indo-European spread with the advance of agriculture.

The Centum-Satem distinction

One common way of subdividing the Indo-European languages is into Centum and Satem languages, a distinction called an isogloss in linguistics that is formally based on the word for the number one hundred in each group's proto-languages, and roughly corresponding to the Western and Eastern branches of the Indo-European languages respectively, although the existence of multiple, overlapping isoglosses (i.e. groups of languages classified by some particular lingustic trait) leaves some doubt concerning the exact alignment of the Centum-Satem isogloss with their place in the linguistic family tree. The usefulness of these classifications is particularly disputed for Armenian, the extinct Anatolian languages (e.g. the Hittite language), and the extinct Tocharian language of the Tarim basin of Asia, where the break from Proto-Indo-European is particularly basal, or where there is a plausible possibility of Centumization after the main Centum-Satem split. There is no consensus among linguists regarding the extent to which Indo-European isoglosses reflect differing substrate influences on a common proto-language, or are instead merely random divergences between language families that accumulate over time and are passed on to successor languages in a manner similar to genetic mutations.

Further information: Centum Satem isogloss

Statem Dialects

Indo-Iranian homeland

The Proto-Indo-Iranians are widely identified with the bearers of the Andronovo horizon of the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia BC, with the various languages of the Indo-Iranian language family starting to differentiate from Proto-Indo-Iranian around 2000 BCE.

There are three language families within the Indo-Iranian language family that derived from the Proto-Indo-Iranian language: the Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, and other Indo-European languages of South Asia; the Iranian languages (e.g. the Persian language, Kurdish language and Pashto) of West Asia and Central Asia; and the Nuristani languages spoken in eastern Afghanistan.

The Indo-Aryan languages are all descendants of the Sanskrit language, which it at least as old as 1500 BCE, where Indo-Aryan linguistic features were historically attested by the Hittites in the Mittani language of Western Iran, and was a single Old Aryan language as recently as the 4th century BCE, when it was standardized in written form. Some scholars associate the Cemetery H culture of the Northern Indus River Valley (specifically Western Punjab) ca. 1900 BCE with the original Indo-Aryan population of South Asia. The community that originally spoke the Sanskrit language is also called the Vedic civiliation after their semi-legendary account of their community found in Hindu scriptures called the Vedas during the Vedic period from ca. 1700 BCE to ca. 320 BCE. The archaeological cultures in South Asia described as Black and Red Ware (10th century BCE) and the later Painted Gray Ware (starting ca. 900 BCE) and subsequently the Northern Black Polished Ware (ca. 500 BCE) are all commonly associated with the Sanskrit language speaking Indo-Aryans during the Vedic period.

The Iranian languages split into Eastern and Western branches in what are known as the Middle Iranian languages around the 4th century BCE. The Iranian Avestan language of Zoroastrian scripture is committed to writing at about this point but was in existence and historically attested long before a script was devised for it. The Median language was the language of the Median empire of western and central Iran (ca. 700–559 BC). The language of the Scythian people of Central Asia who interactions with the Greeks in 512 BCE were attested by Herodotus ca. 440 BCE, was also an Iranian language.

There is some dispute over whether the Dardic languages, spoken in northern Pakistan, eastern Afghanistan, and the Indian region of Jammu and Kashmir, most prominently the Kashmiri language are Indo-Aryan, Iranian or part of the Nurustani languages. This issue of classification is clouded by the nationalistic implications of such a classification for the political affiliations of the contested Kashmir region of South Asia, and by the fact that the Dardic languages are spoken in an area that borders the region where each of the other Indo-Iranian language families is spoken.

Approximate extent of the Corded Ware horizon with adjacent 3rd millennium cultures (after EIEC).

Balto-Slavic homeland

The Balto-Slavic homeland largely corresponds to the historical distribution of Baltic and Slavic, Proto-Baltic likely emerging in the eastern parts of the Corded Ware horizon. The Slavic languages experience a major expansion starting around the 6th century CE, in some cases supplanting earlier Indo-European languages in the region to which they expanded.

The Slavic homeland likely corresponds to the distribution of the oldest recognisably-Slavic hydronyms, found in northern and western Ukraine and southern Belarus.

Balkans dialects

Further information: Paleo-Balkans languages and Balkan linguistics

The following languages are reported to have been spoken on the Balkan Peninsula by Ancient Greek and Roman writers: Ancient Greek, Ancient Macedonian, Dacian, Illyrian, Liburnian, Messapic, Paeonian, Phrygian, Thracian, and Venetic

The history of the Daco-Thracian/Thraco-Illyrian dialects of the Balkans is obscure, in part, because the written record of these languages is fragmentary. One of these languages may have been the language that evolved into the modern Albanian language.

The Phrygian, Macedonian, and Greek proto-languages likely also originate in the Balkans. Proto-Armenian may also be Balkans (Greco-Phrygian) derived, or at least strongly influenced by a Phrygian substrate. The Phrygian influence on [pre-]Proto-Armenian would date to about the 7th century BC, in the context of the declining kingdom of Urartu.

Centum dialects

Further information: Beaker culture, Old European hydronymy, and Centum Satem isogloss

Celtic homeland

The Proto-Celtic homeland is usually located in the Early Iron Age Hallstatt culture of northern Austria. There is a broad consensus that the center of the La Tène culture lay on the northwest edges of the Hallstatt culture. Pre-La Tène (6th to 5th century BC) Celtic expansions reached Great Britain and Ireland (Insular Celtic) and Gaul. La Tène groups expanded in the 4th century BC to Hispania, the Po Valley, the Balkans, and even as far as Galatia in Asia Minor, in the course of several major migrations.

Germanic homeland

Pre-Roman Iron Age culture(s) associated with Proto-Germanic, c. 500 BC. The red area represents the Nordic Bronze Age, and the magenta area represents the Jastorf culture.

Pre-Germanic cultures were the bearers of the Nordic Bronze Age. Proto-Germanic proper is hypothesized by some to have developed in the Jastorf culture of the Pre-Roman Iron Age.

Italic homeland

Candidates for the first introduction of Proto-Italic speakers to Italy are the Terramare culture (1500 BC) or the Villanovan culture (1100 BC), although the latter is now usually identified with the non-Italic (indeed, non-Indo-European) Etruscan civilisation. Both are culturally derived from or strongly influenced by the Urnfield culture and its predecessor, the Tumulus culture of Central Europe (1600 BC), so that the latter is a likely candidate for the homeland of an Italo-Celtic proto-language or dialect continuum.

The Romance languages are all derivative of Latin, a member of this Indo-European language subfamily, which was the common language of the Western Roman Empire that had its roots in Italic dialect spoken in and around the capital, Rome, until the empire collapsed in the 5th century CE.

See also

• Anatolian hypothesis
• Armenian hypothesis
• Bronze Age Europe
• Indo-European studies
• Neolithic Europe
• Old European culture
• Proto-Indo-European language
• Proto-Indo-Europeans
• Urheimat

References

• Linguistics and Ideology in the Study of Language by E. F. K. Koerner, University of Ottawa On linguistics and the search for the original Indo-European homeland
• Mallory, J.P. (1989), In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth, London: Thames & Hudson .
• Mallory, James P. (1997), "The homelands of the Indo-Europeans", in Blench, Roger; Spriggs, Matthew, Archaeology and Language, I: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations, London: Routledge, ISBN 0415117607 .* Anthony, David W. (2007). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-05887-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=rOG5VcYxhiEC&dq. 
• Atkinson, Quentin; Geoff Nicholls, David Welch, Russell Gray (2005) From words to dates: water into wine, mathemagic or phylogenetic inference? Transactions of the Philological Society, 103 (2):193–219.
• Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca (2000). Genes, peoples, and languages. Farrar Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-86547-529-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=PhBjQgAACAAJ. 
• Mallory, J.P. (1989). In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth. London: Thames & Hudson 
• Mallory, James P. (1997). "The homelands of the Indo-Europeans". In Blench, Roger; Spriggs, Matthew. Archaeology and Language. I: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations. London: Routledge 
• Piazza, Alberto; Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi (2006). "Diffusion of genes and languages in human evolution". Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Evolution of Language. pp. 255–266. http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/piazza06evolang.html. 
• Wells, Spencer; Read, Mark (2002). The journey of man: a genetic odyssey. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-11532-0. http://books.google.com/books?id=WAsKm-_zu5sC&lpg=PA168. 

External links

• Indo-European family tree, showing Indo-European languages and sub branches
• Image of Indo-European migrations from the Armenian Highlands