Kurgan hypothesis
Encyclopedia
The Kurgan hypothesis is one of the proposals about early Indo-European origins, which postulates that the people of an archaeological "Kurgan culture" (a term grouping the Yamna
Yamna culture
The Yamna culture is a late copper age/early Bronze Age culture of the Southern Bug/Dniester/Ural region , dating to the 36th–23rd centuries BC...
, or Pit Grave, culture and its predecessors) in the Pontic steppe were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
. The term is derived from kurgan
Kurgan
Kurgan is the Turkic term for a tumulus; mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves, originating with its use in Soviet archaeology, now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology....
, a Turkic loanword in Russian for a tumulus
Tumulus
A tumulus is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, Hügelgrab or kurgans, and can be found throughout much of the world. A tumulus composed largely or entirely of stones is usually referred to as a cairn...
or burial mound.
The Kurgan model is the most widely accepted scenario of Indo-European origins. An alternative model is the Anatolian urheimat
Anatolian hypothesis
The Anatolian hypothesis is also called Renfrew's Neolithic Discontinuity Theory ; it proposes that the dispersal of Proto-Indo-Europeans originated in Neolithic Anatolia...
. Many Indo-Europeanists are agnostic on the question.
The Kurgan hypothesis was first formulated in the 1950s by Marija Gimbutas
Marija Gimbutas
Marija Gimbutas , was a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe", a term she introduced. Her works published between 1946 and 1971 introduced new views by combining traditional spadework with linguistics and mythological...
, who defined the "Kurgan culture" as composed of four successive periods, with the earliest (Kurgan I) including the Samara
Samara culture
The Samara culture was an eneolithic culture of the early 5th millennium BC at the Samara bend region of the middle Volga, discovered during archaeological excavations in 1973 near the village of Syezzheye in Russia...
and Seroglazovo
Seroglazovo culture
Seroglazovo culture is a mesolithic culture of 11th-9th millennium BC of the Caspian Lowland , from Ural River to Kuma-Manych Depression. It was discovered during the archaeological excavations near the Seroglazovka stanitsa ....
cultures of the Dnieper/Volga region in the Copper Age
Copper Age
The Chalcolithic |stone]]") period or Copper Age, also known as the Eneolithic/Æneolithic , is a phase of the Bronze Age in which the addition of tin to copper to form bronze during smelting remained yet unknown by the metallurgists of the times...
(early 4th millennium BC).
The bearers of these cultures were nomadic pastoralists
Eurasian nomads
Eurasian nomads are a large group of peoples of the Eurasian Steppe. This generic title encompasses the ethnic groups inhabiting the steppes of Central Asia, Mongolia, and Eastern Europe. They domesticated the horse, and their economy and culture emphasizes horse breeding, horse riding, and a...
, who, according to the model, by the early 3rd millennium BC expanded throughout the Pontic-Caspian steppe
Pontic-Caspian steppe
The Pontic-Caspian steppe is the vast steppeland stretching from the north of the Black Sea as far as the east of the Caspian Sea, from western Ukraine across the Southern Federal District and the Volga Federal District of Russia to western Kazakhstan,...
and into Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
.
Overview
When it was first proposed in 1956, in "The Prehistory of Eastern Europe, Part 1", Marija Gimbutas's contribution to the search for Indo-European origins was a pioneering interdisciplinary synthesis of archaeologyArchaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
and linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
. The Kurgan model of Indo-European origins identifies the Pontic-Caspian steppe
Pontic-Caspian steppe
The Pontic-Caspian steppe is the vast steppeland stretching from the north of the Black Sea as far as the east of the Caspian Sea, from western Ukraine across the Southern Federal District and the Volga Federal District of Russia to western Kazakhstan,...
as the Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
(PIE) Urheimat
Urheimat
Urheimat is a linguistic term denoting the original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language...
, and a variety of late PIE dialects are assumed to have been spoken across the region. According to this model, the Kurgan culture gradually expanded until it encompassed the entire Pontic-Caspian steppe
Pontic-Caspian steppe
The Pontic-Caspian steppe is the vast steppeland stretching from the north of the Black Sea as far as the east of the Caspian Sea, from western Ukraine across the Southern Federal District and the Volga Federal District of Russia to western Kazakhstan,...
, Kurgan IV being identified with the Pit Grave culture of around 3000 BC.
Domestication of the horse
There are a number of hypotheses on many of the key issues regarding the domestication of the horse. Although horses appeared in Paleolithic cave art as early as 30,000 BCE, these were truly wild horses and were probably hunted for meat. How and when horses became domesticated is disputed...
and later the use of early chariot
Chariot
The chariot is a type of horse carriage used in both peace and war as the chief vehicle of many ancient peoples. Ox carts, proto-chariots, were built by the Proto-Indo-Europeans and also built in Mesopotamia as early as 3000 BC. The original horse chariot was a fast, light, open, two wheeled...
s. The first strong archaeological evidence for the domestication of the horse comes from the Sredny Stog culture
Sredny Stog culture
The Sredny Stog culture dates from the 4500-3500 BC. It was situated just north of the Sea of Azov between the Dnieper and the Don...
north of the Azov Sea in Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, and would correspond to an early PIE or pre-PIE nucleus of the 5th millennium BC. The earliest known chariot was discovered at Krivoye Lake and dates to c. 2000 BC.
Subsequent expansion beyond the steppes led to hybrid, or in Gimbutas's terms "kurganized" cultures, such as the Globular Amphora culture
Globular Amphora culture
The Globular Amphora Culture , German Kugelamphoren-Kultur , ca. 3400-2800 BC, is an archaeological culture preceding the central area occupied by the Corded Ware culture. Somewhat to the south and west, it was bordered by the Baden culture. To the northeast was the Narva culture. It occupied much...
to the west. From these kurganized cultures came the immigration of proto-Greeks to the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
and the nomadic Indo-Iranian
Indo-Iranians
Indo-Iranian peoples are a linguistic group consisting of the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Dardic and Nuristani peoples; that is, speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family....
cultures to the east around 2500 BC.
J.P. Mallory’s inconclusiveness about the westward Indo-European migrations was cited by linguist Kortlandt, to conclude that archaeological evidence is pointless beyond what can be motivated from a linguistic point of view. From the 1990s on, new archaeological evidence from Northern European prehistoric cultures resulted in new questions concerning the influence and expansion of Kurgan cultures to the west. The pan-European migrations and process of "kurganization", especially of Corded Ware culture
Corded Ware culture
The Corded Ware culture , alternatively characterized as the Battle Axe culture or Single Grave culture, is an enormous European archaeological horizon that begins in the late Neolithic , flourishes through the Copper Age and culminates in the early Bronze Age.Corded Ware culture is associated with...
s, may not have been as extensive as Gimbutas believed.
Kurgan culture
The model of a "Kurgan culture" postulates cultural similarity between the various cultures of the Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age (5th to 3rd millennia BC) Pontic-Caspian steppe to justify the identification as a single archaeological cultureArchaeological culture
An archaeological culture is a recurring assemblage of artifacts from a specific time and place, which are thought to constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society. The connection between the artifacts is based on archaeologists' understanding and interpretation and...
or cultural horizon. The eponymous construction of kurgan
Kurgan
Kurgan is the Turkic term for a tumulus; mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves, originating with its use in Soviet archaeology, now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology....
s is only one among several factors.
As always in the grouping of archaeological cultures, the dividing line between one culture and the next cannot be drawn with any accuracy and will be open to debate.
Cultures forming part of the "Kurgan horizon":
- Bug-DniesterBug-Dniester cultureBug-Dniester culture, Dniester-Bug culture was the archaeological culture that developed in the chernozem region of Moldavia and Ukraine around the Dniester and Southern Bug rivers in the Neolithic....
(6th millennium) - SamaraSamara cultureThe Samara culture was an eneolithic culture of the early 5th millennium BC at the Samara bend region of the middle Volga, discovered during archaeological excavations in 1973 near the village of Syezzheye in Russia...
(5th millennium) - KvalynskKhvalynsk cultureThe Khvalynsk culture was an Eneolithic culture of the first half of the 5th millennium BC, discovered at Khvalynsk on the Volga in Saratov Oblast, Russia. The culture also is termed the Middle Eneolithic or Developed Eneolithic or Proto-kurgan...
(5th millennium) - Sredny Stog (mid-5th to mid-4th millennia)
- Dnieper-DonetsDnieper-Donets cultureDnieper-Donets culture, ca. 5th—4th millennium BC. A neolithic culture in the area north of the Black Sea/Sea of Azov between the Dnieper and Donets River.There are parallels with the contemporaneous Samara culture...
(5th to 4th millennia) - Usatovo cultureUsatovo cultureUsatovo culture, 3500—3000 BC, an archaeological culture facing the Black sea between the mouths of the Bug River and the Danube in present-day Romania, Moldavia, and southern Ukraine....
(late 4th millennium) - Maikop-DereivkaDereivkaDereivka is an archaeological site located in the village of the same name in Kirovohrad Oblast, Ukraine, on the right bank of the Dneiper. The site dates to ca. 4500—3500 BC and is associated with the Sredny Stog culture....
(mid-4th to mid-3rd millennia) - Yamna (Pit Grave)Yamna cultureThe Yamna culture is a late copper age/early Bronze Age culture of the Southern Bug/Dniester/Ural region , dating to the 36th–23rd centuries BC...
: this is itself a varied cultural horizon. Spanning the entire Pontic-Caspian steppe from the mid-4th to the 3rd millennium BC
Gimbutas defined and introduced the term "Kurgan culture" in 1956 with the intention to introduce a "broader term" that would combine Sredny Stog II
Sredny Stog culture
The Sredny Stog culture dates from the 4500-3500 BC. It was situated just north of the Sea of Azov between the Dnieper and the Don...
, Pit-Grave and Corded ware horizons (spanning the 4th to 3rd millennia in much of Eastern and Northern Europe).
By the 1980s, it had become clear that this extended "Corded Ware-Battle Axe-Tumulus" burial complex envisaged by Gimbutas needed to be considered separately, under the heading of (3rd millennium) "Kurganization" (spread of "Kurgan elements" beyond the area of the Kurgan culture proper).
Mallory (1986, p. 308) points out that "by the mid-5th millennium BC, we already have very striking cultural similarities from the Dnieper-Donets culture in the west to the Samara culture of the middle Volga ... this is continued in the later Sredny Stog period." The "Yamna culture in all its regional variants" arose later, and may already represent diversification.
The comparison of cultural similarities of these cultures is a question of archaeology independent of hypotheses regarding the Proto-Indo-European language.
The postulate of these 5th millennium "cultural similarities" informed by archaeology are a prerequisite of the "Kurgan model" which identifies the chalcolithic (5th millennium) Pontic-Caspian steppe as the locus of Proto-Indo-European.
Stages of culture and expansion
- Kurgan I, Dnieper/Volga region, earlier half of the 4th millennium BC. Apparently evolving from cultures of the Volga basin, subgroups include the SamaraSamara cultureThe Samara culture was an eneolithic culture of the early 5th millennium BC at the Samara bend region of the middle Volga, discovered during archaeological excavations in 1973 near the village of Syezzheye in Russia...
and SeroglazovoSeroglazovo cultureSeroglazovo culture is a mesolithic culture of 11th-9th millennium BC of the Caspian Lowland , from Ural River to Kuma-Manych Depression. It was discovered during the archaeological excavations near the Seroglazovka stanitsa ....
cultures. - Kurgan II–III, latter half of the 4th millennium BC. Includes the Sredny Stog cultureSredny Stog cultureThe Sredny Stog culture dates from the 4500-3500 BC. It was situated just north of the Sea of Azov between the Dnieper and the Don...
and the Maykop cultureMaykop cultureThe Maykop culture , ca. 3700 BC—2500 BC, was a major Bronze Age archaeological culture situated in Southern Russia running from the Taman Peninsula at the Kerch Strait nearly to the modern border of Dagestan, centered approximately on the modern Republic of Adygea in the Kuban River valley...
of the northern CaucasusCaucasusThe Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
. Stone circleStone circleA stone circle is a monument of standing stones arranged in a circle. Such monuments have been constructed across the world throughout history for many different reasons....
s, early two-wheeled chariotChariotThe chariot is a type of horse carriage used in both peace and war as the chief vehicle of many ancient peoples. Ox carts, proto-chariots, were built by the Proto-Indo-Europeans and also built in Mesopotamia as early as 3000 BC. The original horse chariot was a fast, light, open, two wheeled...
s, anthropomorphic stone stelae of deities. - Kurgan IV or Pit Grave culture, first half of the 3rd millennium BC, encompassing the entire steppe region from the UralUral RiverThe Ural or Jayıq/Zhayyq , known as Yaik before 1775, is a river flowing through Russia and Kazakhstan. It arises in the southern Ural Mountains and ends at the Caspian Sea. Its total length is 1,511 mi making it the third longest river in Europe after the Volga and the Danube...
to RomaniaRomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
.
There were proposed to be three successive "waves" of expansion:-
- Wave 1, predating Kurgan I, expansion from the lower Volga to the Dnieper, leading to coexistence of Kurgan I and the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture. Repercussions of the migrations extend as far as the BalkansBalkansThe Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
and along the DanubeDanubeThe Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
to the VinčaVinca cultureThe Vinča culture is a Neolithic archaeological culture in Southeastern Europe, dated to the period 5500–4500 BCE. Named for its type site, Vinča-Belo Brdo, a large tell settlement discovered by Serbian archaeologist Miloje Vasić in 1908, it represents the material remains of a prehistoric society...
culture in SerbiaSerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
and LengyelLengyel cultureThe Lengyel culture, is an archaeological culture of the European Neolithic, centered on the Middle Danube in Central Europe. It flourished during ca...
culture in HungaryHungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
. - Wave 2, mid 4th millennium BC, originating in the Maykop cultureMaykop cultureThe Maykop culture , ca. 3700 BC—2500 BC, was a major Bronze Age archaeological culture situated in Southern Russia running from the Taman Peninsula at the Kerch Strait nearly to the modern border of Dagestan, centered approximately on the modern Republic of Adygea in the Kuban River valley...
and resulting in advances of "kurganized" hybrid cultures into northern Europe around 3000 BC (Globular Amphora cultureGlobular Amphora cultureThe Globular Amphora Culture , German Kugelamphoren-Kultur , ca. 3400-2800 BC, is an archaeological culture preceding the central area occupied by the Corded Ware culture. Somewhat to the south and west, it was bordered by the Baden culture. To the northeast was the Narva culture. It occupied much...
, Baden cultureBaden cultureBaden culture, ca 3600 BC-ca 2800 BC, an eneolithic culture found in central Europe. It is known from Moravia, Hungary, Slovakia and Eastern Austria...
, and ultimately Corded Ware cultureCorded Ware cultureThe Corded Ware culture , alternatively characterized as the Battle Axe culture or Single Grave culture, is an enormous European archaeological horizon that begins in the late Neolithic , flourishes through the Copper Age and culminates in the early Bronze Age.Corded Ware culture is associated with...
). According to Gimbutas this corresponds to the first intrusion of Indo-European languages into western and northern Europe. - Wave 3, 3000–2800 BC, expansion of the Pit Grave culture beyond the steppes, with the appearance of the characteristic pit graves as far as the areas of modern RomaniaRomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, BulgariaBulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
and eastern HungaryHungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, coincident with the end of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture (c.2750 BC).
Secondary Urheimat
The "kurganized" Globular Amphora cultureGlobular Amphora culture
The Globular Amphora Culture , German Kugelamphoren-Kultur , ca. 3400-2800 BC, is an archaeological culture preceding the central area occupied by the Corded Ware culture. Somewhat to the south and west, it was bordered by the Baden culture. To the northeast was the Narva culture. It occupied much...
in Europe is proposed as a "secondary Urheimat" of PIE, the culture separating into the Bell-Beaker culture
Beaker culture
The Bell-Beaker culture , ca. 2400 – 1800 BC, is the term for a widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age...
and Corded Ware culture
Corded Ware culture
The Corded Ware culture , alternatively characterized as the Battle Axe culture or Single Grave culture, is an enormous European archaeological horizon that begins in the late Neolithic , flourishes through the Copper Age and culminates in the early Bronze Age.Corded Ware culture is associated with...
around 2300 BC. This ultimately resulted in the European IE families of Italic
Italic languages
The Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European language family. It includes the Romance languages derived from Latin , and a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, and Latin.In the past various definitions of "Italic" have prevailed...
, Celtic
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...
and Germanic languages
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
, and other, partly extinct, language groups of the Balkans and central Europe, possibly including the proto-Mycenaean
Mycenaean Greece
Mycenaean Greece was a cultural period of Bronze Age Greece taking its name from the archaeological site of Mycenae in northeastern Argolis, in the Peloponnese of southern Greece. Athens, Pylos, Thebes, and Tiryns are also important Mycenaean sites...
invasion of Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
.
Timeline
- 4500–4000: Early PIE. Sredny StogSredny Stog cultureThe Sredny Stog culture dates from the 4500-3500 BC. It was situated just north of the Sea of Azov between the Dnieper and the Don...
, Dnieper-DonetsDnieper-Donets cultureDnieper-Donets culture, ca. 5th—4th millennium BC. A neolithic culture in the area north of the Black Sea/Sea of Azov between the Dnieper and Donets River.There are parallels with the contemporaneous Samara culture...
and SamaraSamara cultureThe Samara culture was an eneolithic culture of the early 5th millennium BC at the Samara bend region of the middle Volga, discovered during archaeological excavations in 1973 near the village of Syezzheye in Russia...
cultures, domestication of the horseDomestication of the horseThere are a number of hypotheses on many of the key issues regarding the domestication of the horse. Although horses appeared in Paleolithic cave art as early as 30,000 BCE, these were truly wild horses and were probably hunted for meat. How and when horses became domesticated is disputed...
(Wave 1). - 4000–3500: The Pit Grave culture (a.k.a. yamna culture), the prototypical kurganKurganKurgan is the Turkic term for a tumulus; mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves, originating with its use in Soviet archaeology, now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology....
builders, emerges in the steppe, and the Maykop cultureMaykop cultureThe Maykop culture , ca. 3700 BC—2500 BC, was a major Bronze Age archaeological culture situated in Southern Russia running from the Taman Peninsula at the Kerch Strait nearly to the modern border of Dagestan, centered approximately on the modern Republic of Adygea in the Kuban River valley...
in the northern CaucasusCaucasusThe Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
. Indo-HittiteIndo-HittiteIn Indo-European linguistics, the term Indo-Hittite refers to Sturtevant's 1926 hypothesis that the Anatolian languages may have split off the Proto-Indo-European language considerably earlier than the separation of the remaining Indo-European languages...
models postulate the separation of Proto-AnatolianAnatolian languagesThe Anatolian languages comprise a group of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language.-Origins:...
before this time. - 3500–3000: Middle PIE. The Pit Grave culture is at its peak, representing the classical reconstructed Proto-Indo-European societyProto-Indo-European societyProto-Indo-European refers to the single ancestor language common to all Indo-European languages. It is therefore a linguistic concept, not an ethnic, social or cultural one, so there is no direct evidence of the nature of Proto-Indo-European 'society'. Much depends on the unsettled Indo-European...
with stone idols, early two-wheeled proto-chariots, predominantly practicing animal husbandryAnimal husbandryAnimal husbandry is the agricultural practice of breeding and raising livestock.- History :Animal husbandry has been practiced for thousands of years, since the first domestication of animals....
in permanent settlements protected by hillforts, subsisting on agriculture, and fishing along rivers. Contact of the Pit Grave culture with late Neolithic EuropeNeolithic EuropeNeolithic Europe refers to a prehistoric period in which Neolithic technology was present in Europe. This corresponds roughly to a time between 7000 BC and c. 1700 BC...
cultures results in the "kurganized" Globular AmphoraGlobular Amphora cultureThe Globular Amphora Culture , German Kugelamphoren-Kultur , ca. 3400-2800 BC, is an archaeological culture preceding the central area occupied by the Corded Ware culture. Somewhat to the south and west, it was bordered by the Baden culture. To the northeast was the Narva culture. It occupied much...
and BadenBaden cultureBaden culture, ca 3600 BC-ca 2800 BC, an eneolithic culture found in central Europe. It is known from Moravia, Hungary, Slovakia and Eastern Austria...
cultures (Wave 2). The Maykop culture shows the earliest evidence of the beginning Bronze AgeBronze AgeThe Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
, and Bronze weapons and artifacts are introduced to Pit Grave territory. Probable early Satemization. - 3000–2500: Late PIE. The Pit Grave culture extends over the entire Pontic steppe (Wave 3). The Corded Ware cultureCorded Ware cultureThe Corded Ware culture , alternatively characterized as the Battle Axe culture or Single Grave culture, is an enormous European archaeological horizon that begins in the late Neolithic , flourishes through the Copper Age and culminates in the early Bronze Age.Corded Ware culture is associated with...
extends from the Rhine to the Volga, corresponding to the latest phase of Indo-European unity, the vast "kurganized" area disintegrating into various independent languages and cultures, still in loose contact enabling the spread of technology and early loans between the groups, except for the Anatolian and Tocharian branches, which are already isolated from these processes. The Centum-SatemCentum-Satem isoglossThe centum-satem division is an isogloss of the Indo-European language family, related to the different evolution of the three dorsal consonant rows of the mainstream reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European:...
break is probably complete, but the phonetic trends of Satemization remain active.
Genetics
.jpg)
Haplogroup
In the study of molecular evolution, a haplogroup is a group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor having the same single nucleotide polymorphism mutation in both haplotypes. Because a haplogroup consists of similar haplotypes, this is what makes it possible to predict a haplogroup...
R1a1 defined by the M17 (SNP
Single nucleotide polymorphism
A single-nucleotide polymorphism is a DNA sequence variation occurring when a single nucleotide — A, T, C or G — in the genome differs between members of a biological species or paired chromosomes in an individual...
marker) of the Y chromosome
Y chromosome
The Y chromosome is one of the two sex-determining chromosomes in most mammals, including humans. In mammals, it contains the gene SRY, which triggers testis development if present. The human Y chromosome is composed of about 60 million base pairs...
(see:http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nrg/journal/v4/n8/full/nrg1124_fs.html&filetype=pdf for nomenclature) is associated by some researchers with the Kurgan culture. The haplogroup R1a1 is "currently found in central and western Asia, Pakistan, India, and in Slavic populations of Eastern Europe", but it is rare in most countries of Western Europe (e.g. France, or some parts of Great Britain) (see http://www.roperld.com/YBiallelicHaplogroups.htm http://mbe.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/7/1008). However, 23.6% of Norwegians, 18.4% of Swedes, 16.5% of Danes, 11% of Saami
Sami people
The Sami people, also spelled Sámi, or Saami, are the arctic indigenous people inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Kola Peninsula of Russia, and the border area between south and middle Sweden and Norway. The Sámi are Europe’s northernmost...
share this lineage (http://www.oxfordancestors.com/papers/mtDNA04%20Saami.pdf). Investigations suggest the Hg R1a1 gene expanded from the Dnieper-Don Valley, between 13,000 and 7600 years ago, and was linked to the reindeer hunters of the Ahrensburg culture
Ahrensburg culture
The Ahrensburg culture was a late Upper Paleolithic culture during the Younger Dryas, the last spell of cold at the end of the Weichsel glaciation. The culture is named after village of Ahrensburg, northeast of Hamburg in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein where wooden arrow shafts and clubs...
that started from the Dnieper valley in Ukraine and reached Scandinavia 12,000 years ago. Alternatively, it has been suggested that R1a1 arrived in southern Scandinavia during the time of the Corded Ware culture
Corded Ware culture
The Corded Ware culture , alternatively characterized as the Battle Axe culture or Single Grave culture, is an enormous European archaeological horizon that begins in the late Neolithic , flourishes through the Copper Age and culminates in the early Bronze Age.Corded Ware culture is associated with...
.
Ornella Semino et al. (see http://hpgl.stanford.edu/publications/Science_2000_v290_p1155.pdf) 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 Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
.
Recent genetic studies seem to confirm a west Eurasian origin for most of the Y-DNA haplogroup R1a1 likely linked to early Indo-European populations. Remains of the Andronovo culture
Andronovo culture
The Andronovo culture, is a collection of similar local Bronze Age cultures that flourished ca. 21200–1400 BCE in western Siberia and the west Asiatic steppe. It is probably better termed an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon...
horizon (strongly supposed to be culturally Indo-Iranian
Indo-Iranians
Indo-Iranian peoples are a linguistic group consisting of the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Dardic and Nuristani peoples; that is, speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family....
) of south Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
were found to be 90% of west Eurasian origin during the Bronze Age and associated almost exclusively with haplogroup R1a1 (and 77% overall, in the Bronze/Iron Age timeframe). The DNA testing also indicated a high prevalence of people with characteristics such as blue (or green) eyes, fair skin and light hair, implying even more an origin close to Europe for this population (see http://www.springerlink.com/content/4462755368m322k8/). Remains in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
of the Bronze/Iron Age timeframe, also of the Andronovo culture horizon, were also mostly of west Eurasian stock (see http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1691686).
Several 4600 year-old human remains at a Corded Ware site in Eulau
Naumburg
Naumburg is a town in Germany, on the Saale River. It is in the district Burgenlandkreis in the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. It is approximately southwest of Leipzig, south-southwest of Halle, and north-northeast of Jena....
, Germany, were also found to belong to haplogroup R1a1 (see http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/11/17/0807592105.abstract).
These elements tend to strongly support the Kurgan hypothesis.
Another marker that closely corresponds to Kurgan migrations is distribution of blood group B allele, mapped by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza is an Italian population geneticist born in Genoa, who has been a professor at Stanford University since 1970 .-Books:...
. The distribution of blood group B allele in Europe matches the proposed map of Kurgan Culture, and Haplogroup R1a1 (YDNA) distribution.
One difficulty in interpreting the genetic evidence lies in the fact that, according to the mainstream archaeological view, there were likely not one but two separate waves of westbound expansion of foreign cultures throughout Europe. The first wave was associated with the advent of farming; it brought the so-called "Neolithic package" to the Southeastern Europe circa 6500 BCE, and eventually reached the Baltic circa 5000 BCE. It is represented in the archaeological record as the Linear Pottery culture
Linear Pottery culture
The Linear Pottery culture is a major archaeological horizon of the European Neolithic, flourishing ca. 5500–4500 BC.It is abbreviated as LBK , is also known as the Linear Band Ware, Linear Ware, Linear Ceramics or Incised Ware culture, and falls within the Danubian I culture of V...
. Its origins are well established by various means to be located in Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
, more specifically, the area near the present-day Turkish-Syrian border. The Kurgan hypothesis posits that a distinct wave of expansion occurred roughly 2 to 3 millennia later, with its origin some 1000 km to the north. An alternative theory, the Anatolian hypothesis
Anatolian hypothesis
The Anatolian hypothesis is also called Renfrew's Neolithic Discontinuity Theory ; it proposes that the dispersal of Proto-Indo-Europeans originated in Neolithic Anatolia...
, conflates the two events, thus pushing back the origin of the proto-Indo-European language to the 7th millennium BCE.
Kortlandt's revision
Frederik KortlandtFrederik Kortlandt
Frederik Herman Henri Kortlandt is a professor of descriptive and comparative linguistics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is an expert on Baltic and Slavic languages, the Indo-European languages in general, and Proto-Indo-European, though he has also published studies of languages in...
(comparative linguistics, University of Leiden) in 1989 proposed a revision of the Kurgan model. He states the main objection which can be raised against Gimbutas' scheme (e.g., 1985: 198) is that it starts from the archaeological evidence and looks for a linguistic interpretation.
Starting from the linguistic evidence and trying to fit the pieces into a coherent whole, he arrives at the following picture: The territory of the Sredny Stog culture
Sredny Stog culture
The Sredny Stog culture dates from the 4500-3500 BC. It was situated just north of the Sea of Azov between the Dnieper and the Don...
in the eastern Ukraine he calls the most convincing candidate for the original Indo-European homeland. The Indo-Europeans who remained after the migrations to the west, east and south (as described by ) became speakers of Balto-Slavic, while the speakers of the other satem languages would have to be assigned to the Pit Grave horizon, and the western Indo-Europeans to the Corded Ware horizon. Returning to the Balts and the Slavs, their ancestors should be correlated to the Middle Dnieper culture. Then, following Mallory (197f) and assuming the origin of this culture to be sought in the Sredny Stog, Yamnaya and Late Tripolye cultures, he proposes the course of these events corresponds with the development of a satem language which was drawn into the western Indo-European sphere of influence.
According to Kortlandt, there seems to be a general tendency to date proto-languages farther back in time than is warranted by the linguistic evidence. However, if Indo-Hittite and Indo-European could be correlated with the beginning and the end of the Sredny Stog culture respectively, he states that the linguistic evidence from the overall Indo-European family does not lead us beyond Gimbutas' secondary homeland, so that the Khvalynsk culture
Khvalynsk culture
The Khvalynsk culture was an Eneolithic culture of the first half of the 5th millennium BC, discovered at Khvalynsk on the Volga in Saratov Oblast, Russia. The culture also is termed the Middle Eneolithic or Developed Eneolithic or Proto-kurgan...
on the middle Volga and the Maykop culture
Maykop culture
The Maykop culture , ca. 3700 BC—2500 BC, was a major Bronze Age archaeological culture situated in Southern Russia running from the Taman Peninsula at the Kerch Strait nearly to the modern border of Dagestan, centered approximately on the modern Republic of Adygea in the Kuban River valley...
in the northern Caucasus cannot be identified with the Indo-Europeans. Any proposal which goes beyond the Sredny Stog culture must start from the possible affinities of Indo-European with other language families. Taken into account a supposed typological similarity of Proto-Indo-European to the North-West Caucasian languages and assuming this similarity can be attributed to areal factors, Kortlandt thinks of Indo-European as a branch of "Uralo-Altaic" which was transformed under the influence of a Caucasian substratum
Substratum
In linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and superstratum...
.
Such events would be supported by archaeological evidence and locate the earliest formative phase of Pre-Indo-European north of the Caspian Sea in the 7th millennium (cf. Mallory 1989: 192f.), essentially in agreement with Gimbutas’ theory.
Invasionist vs. diffusionist scenarios
It is important to understand that the expansion of proto-Indo-European people in accordance with the Kurgan hypothesis did not constitute the initial peopling of the affected regions. Many of the affected regions were populated by anatomically modern humans for several tens of thousands of years (or at least since the end of the last Ice AgeIce age
An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...
circa 12,000 BC).
However, most cultures affected by the Indo-European expansion either were displaced or wiped out, or had to adopt or "hybridize" with the Kurgan culture. This is most evident in the languages. By 1500 CE, the only non-Indo-European language still spoken in all of Western or Central Europe south of the Baltic was the Basque language
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
. Of the non-Indo-European languages spoken in Europe that went extinct during the last four millennia, only a handful are known; these include the Iberian language
Iberian language
The Iberian language was the language of a people identified by Greek and Roman sources who lived in the eastern and southeastern regions of the Iberian peninsula. The ancient Iberians can be identified as a rather nebulous local culture between the 7th and 1st century BC...
, the Aquitanian language
Aquitanian language
The Aquitanian language was spoken in ancient Aquitaine before the Roman conquest and, probably much later, until the Early Middle Ages....
(related to Basque), the Etruscan language
Etruscan language
The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...
and its relatives, and some mostly-undeciphered languages attested in a few inscriptions (most notably the Eteocretan language
Eteocretan language
The Minoan language was spoken in ancient Crete before it was replaced with the language of the mainland; the relationship between Minoan and Greek is unknown. While attempts have been made to connect it to other languages, Minoan must be considered unclassified until a linguistic affiliation can...
used in Linear A
Linear A
Linear A is one of two scripts used in ancient Crete before Mycenaean Greek Linear B; Cretan hieroglyphs is the second script. In Minoan times, before the Mycenaean Greek dominion, Linear A was the official script for the palaces and religious activities, and hieroglyphs were mainly used on seals....
inscriptions; also the Eteocypriot language and North Picene language
North Picene language
The North Picene language is a hypothetical construct based on four inscriptions of the Italian Iron Age from the Pesaro region of northeast Italy. The total number of words is about 60...
).
Gimbutas believed that the expansions of the Kurgan culture were a series of essentially hostile, military incursions where a new warrior culture imposed itself on the peaceful, matriarchal
Matriarchy
A matriarchy is a society in which females, especially mothers, have the central roles of political leadership and moral authority. It is also sometimes called a gynocratic or gynocentric society....
cultures of "Old Europe", replacing it with a patriarchal
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
warrior
Warrior
A warrior is a person skilled in combat or warfare, especially within the context of a tribal or clan-based society that recognizes a separate warrior class.-Warrior classes in tribal culture:...
society, a process visible in the appearance of fortified settlements and hillforts and the graves of warrior-chieftains:
- "The process of Indo-Europeanization was a cultural, not a physical, transformation. It must be understood as a military victory in terms of successfully imposing a new administrative system, language, and religion upon the indigenous groups."
In her later life, Gimbutas increasingly emphasized the violent nature of this transition from the Mediterranean cult of the Mother Goddess
Mother goddess
Mother goddess is a term used to refer to a goddess who represents motherhood, fertility, creation or embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother.Many different goddesses have...
to a patriarchal society and the worship of the warlike Thunderer (Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
, Dyaus), to a point of essentially formulating feminist archaeology
Feminist archaeology
Feminist archaeology employs a feminist perspective in interpreting past societies. It often focuses on gender, but also considers gender in tandem with other factors, such as sexuality, race, or class. Feminist archaeology has critiqued the uncritical application of modern, Western norms and...
. Many scholars who accept the general scenario of Indo-European migrations proposed, maintain that the transition was likely much more gradual and peaceful than suggested by Gimbutas. The migrations were certainly not a sudden, concerted military operation, but the expansion of disconnected tribes and cultures, spanning many generations. To what degree the indigenous cultures were peacefully amalgamated or violently displaced remains a matter of controversy among supporters of the Kurgan hypothesis.
JP Mallory
JP Mallory
James Patrick Mallory is an Irish-American archaeologist and Indo-Europeanist. Mallory is a professor at the Queen's University, Belfast.-Biography:...
(in 1989) accepted the Kurgan hypothesis as the de-facto standard theory of Indo-European origins, but he recognizes valid criticism of Gimbutas' radical scenario of military invasion:
One might at first imagine that the economy of argument involved with the Kurgan solution should oblige us to accept it outright. But critics do exist and their objections can be summarized quite simply – almost all of the arguments for invasion and cultural transformations are far better explained without reference to Kurgan expansions, and most of the evidence so far presented is either totally contradicted by other evidence or is the result of gross misinterpretation of the cultural history of Eastern, Central, and Northern Europe."
Criticisms and qualifications
Language does not equal material culture
Linguists argue linguistic expansion does not imply "kurganization" of material cultures, and hold extrapolating current linguistic developments to the past to be precarious (for instance deflexionDeflexion (linguistics)
Deflexion is a linguistic process related to inflectional languages. All members of the Indo-European language family belong to these kinds of languages and are subject to some degree of deflexional change. The process is typified by the degeneration of the inflectional structure of a language...
should be excluded for being a Western European non-representative linguistic process), to conclude a separation between Centum and Satem
Centum-Satem isogloss
The centum-satem division is an isogloss of the Indo-European language family, related to the different evolution of the three dorsal consonant rows of the mainstream reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European:...
in the fourth millennium is appropriate but does not imply a different stance on the material cultures involved.
Renfrew's linguistic timedepth
While the Kurgan scenario is widely accepted as one of the leading answers to the question of Indo-European origins, it is still a speculative model and not normative. The main alternative suggestion is the theory of Colin Renfrew and Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, postulating an Anatolian Urheimat, that the spread of the Indo-European languages is a result of the spread of agricultureAgriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
. This belief implies a significantly older age of the Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
, 9,000 years as opposed to 6,000, and finds less support among traditional linguists than the Kurgan theory. An argument against the Anatolian Urheimat is that PIE contains words that many interpret as specifically related to cattle-breeding and horse-riding devices invented not earlier than the 5th millennium BC by nomadic tribes in Asian steppes. Notably, many Indo-European languages have similar words meaning axle, for example, Latin axis, Lithuanian ašis, Russian os' , and Sanskrit ákṣa. (In some, a similar root is used for the word armpit: eaxl in Old English, axilla in Latin, and kaksa in Sanskrit.) All these are linked to the PIE root ak's-. The reconstructed PIE root i̯eu-g- gives rise to German joch, Hittite iukan, and Sanskrit yugá(m), all meaning yoke
Yoke
A yoke is a wooden beam, normally used between a pair of oxen or other animals to enable them to pull together on a load when working in pairs, as oxen usually do; some yokes are fitted to individual animals. There are several types of yoke, used in different cultures, and for different types of oxen...
. Words wheel and cart/wagon/chariot take one of two common forms, thought to be linked with two PIE roots: the root kvel- becomes hvel (wheel) in Old Icelandic, kolo (wheel, circle) in Old Church Slavonic, kyklo (wheel, circle) in Greek, cakka/cakra (wheel) in Pali
Páli
- External links :* *...
and Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, and kukäl (wagon, chariot) in Tocharian
Tocharian languages
Tocharian or Tokharian is an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family. The name is taken from the people known to the Greeks as the Tocharians . These are sometimes identified with the Yuezhi and the Kushans. The term Tokharistan usually refers to 1st millennium Bactria, which the...
A. The root ret(h)- becomes rad (wheel) in Old High German, rota (wheel) in Latin, rãtas (wheel) in Lithuanian, and ratha (wagon, chariot) in Sanskrit. In another example, the PIE root selp- is proposed as an origin for English salve, Ancient Greek elpos (butter or fat), Tocharian ṣälyp (grease, ointment), and Sanskrit serpis (butter). This connection is significant, because, according to one theory, butter
Butter
Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. It is generally used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking applications, such as baking, sauce making, and pan frying...
originated among nomadic people of Euro-Asiatic plains in or before the 4th millennium BCE. (Butter was known to Ancient Greeks and Romans, but it was unpopular there, and contemporary authors consistently refer to it as a food of northern barbarians. At the time it was commonly used for medicinal purposes, explaining the eventual connection to the word 'salve'.)
Others dispute those interpretations and the method of 'linguistic palaeontology' on which they are based. It is also difficult to correlate the geographical distribution of the Indo-European branches with the advance of agriculture.
A 2003 computational analysis by Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson at the University of Auckland, using a Bayesian statistical model
Bayesian statistics
Bayesian statistics is that subset of the entire field of statistics in which the evidence about the true state of the world is expressed in terms of degrees of belief or, more specifically, Bayesian probabilities...
, produced a date of c. 8th millennium BC, which is more consistent with Renfrew's Anatolian model than the Kurgan theory. Their result has been criticized because of its reliance on glottochronology
Glottochronology
Glottochronology is that part of lexicostatistics dealing with the chronological relationship between languages....
, a method rejected by many linguists.
Occurrence of horse riding in Europe
Renfrew (1999: 268) holds that on the European scene mounted warriors appear only as late as the turn of the second-first millennia BC and these could in no case have been "Gimbutas's Kurgan warriors" predating the facts by some 2,000 years. Mallory (1989, p136) enumerates linguistic evidence pointing to PIE period employment of horses in paired draught, something that would not have been possible before the invention of the spoked wheel and chariot, normally dated after about 2500 BC.According to Krell (1998), Gimbutas' homeland theory is completely incompatible with the linguistic evidence. Krell compiles lists of items of flora, fauna, economy, and technology that archaeology has accounted for in the Kurgan culture and compares it with lists of the same categories as reconstructed by traditional historical-Indo-European linguistics. Krell finds major discrepancies between the two, and underlines the fact that we cannot presume that the reconstructed term for 'horse', for example, referred to the domesticated equid in the protoperiod just because it did in later times. It could originally have referred to a wild equid, a possibility that would "undermine the mainstay of Gimbutas's arguments that the Kurgan culture first domesticated the horse and used this new technology to spread to surrounding areas,"
Pastoralism vs. agriculture
There are several distinct modes of food acquisition in ancient human history. The oldest is the hunter-gatherer mode. In the NeolithicNeolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...
era, people first appear to have cultivated existing plants, and then developed domesticated breeds of plants and animals for food production and other utilitarian purposes (e.g. fiber for clothing). Some Neolithic era and subsequent cultures were sedentary and grew crops. Other Neolithic era and subsequent cultures were pastoral, i.e. they herded domesticated animals as a food source. Tensions between the neighboring herder civilizations and farmer civilizations are documented as far back as written history extends to the Sumerians , and continued into the 19th century in much of the world (e.g. the Indian Wars of the 19th century United States).
Nomadic pastoralism
Nomadic pastoralism
Nomadic pastoralism is a form of agriculture where livestock are herded in order to find fresh pastures on which to graze following an irregular pattern of movement - in contrast with transhumance where seasonal pastures are fix. The herded livestock may include cattle, yaks, sheep, goats,...
(i.e. nomadic herder civilizations) arose shortly after the development of farming in the Neolithic revolution , possibly through either demic expansion of farming populations with domesticated plants and animals into areas where local environments would not sustain settled farming that abandoned sedentary farming but not domesticated animals, or through cultural diffusion of the tending of domesticated animals to pre-existing hunter-gatherer populations.
The demic diffusion
Demic diffusion
Demic diffusion is a demographic term referring to a migratory model developed by Cavalli-Sforza, that consists of population diffusion into and across an area previously uninhabited by that group, possibly, but not necessarily, displacing, replacing, or intermixing with a pre-existing population...
model would support an Anatolian origin for Indo-European, as the domesticated species associated with Indo-European societies has its origins in the Near East and Anatolia . In this view, the Kurgans are themselves descendants of Anatolian farmers who would have spoken a proto-Indo-European language and replaced earlier hunter-gatherer populations, prior to serving as a source for many branches of the Indo-European language family.
A cultural diffusion model, in contrast, in which Kurgans speaking their own language acquired domesticated herd animals from Anatolia and domesticated horses, then conquered the non-Indo-European speaking Anatolians, would favor a Kurgan hypothesis.
Kathrin Krell (1998) finds that the terms found in the reconstructed Indo-European language are not compatible with the cultural level of the Kurgans. Krell holds that the Indo-Europeans had agriculture whereas the Kurgan people were "just at a pastoral stage" and hence might not have had sedentary agricultural terms in their language, despite the fact that such terms are part of a Prot-Indo-European core vocabulary.
Krell (1998), "Gimbutas' Kurgans-PIE homeland hypothesis: a linguistic critique", points out that the Proto-Indo-European had an agricultural vocabulary and not merely a pastoral one. As for technology, there are plausible reconstructions suggesting knowledge of navigation, a technology quite atypical of Gimbutas' Kurgan society. Krell concludes that Gimbutas seems to first establish a Kurgan hypothesis, based on purely archaeological observations, and then proceeds to create a picture of the PIE homeland and subsequent dispersal which fits neatly over her archaeological findings. The problem is that in order to do this, she has had to be rather selective in her use of linguistic data, as well as in her interpretation of that data.
Further expansion during the Bronze Age
The Kurgan hypothesis describes the initial spread of Proto-Indo-European during the 5th and 4th millennia BC.The question of further Indo-Europeanization of Central and Western Europe, Central Asia and Northern India during the Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
is beyond its scope, and far more uncertain than the events of the Neolithic and the Copper Age. The specifics of the Indo-Europeanization of Central and Western Europe during the 3rd to 2nd millennia (Corded Ware horizon) and Central Asia (Andronovo culture
Andronovo culture
The Andronovo culture, is a collection of similar local Bronze Age cultures that flourished ca. 21200–1400 BCE in western Siberia and the west Asiatic steppe. It is probably better termed an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon...
) are nevertheless subject to some controversy.
Europe
The European Funnelbeaker and Corded Ware cultures have been described as showing intrusive elements linked to Indo-Europeanization, but recent archaeological studies have described them in terms of local continuity, which has led some archaeologists to declare the Kurgan hypothesis "obsolete".However, it is generally held unrealistic to believe that a proto-historic people can be assigned to any particular group on basis of archaeological material alone.
The Corded Ware culture has always been important in locating Indo-European origins. The German archaeologist Alexander Häusler was an important proponent of archeologists that searched for homeland evidence here. He sharply criticised Gimbutas' concept of 'a' Kurgan culture that mixes several distinct cultures like the pit-grave culture. Häusler's criticism mostly stemmed from a distinctive lack of archeological evidence until 1950 from what was then the East Bloc, from which time on plenty of evidence for Gimbutas's Kurgan hypothesis was discovered for decades. He was unable to link Corded Ware to the Indo-Europeans of the Balkans, Greece or Anatolia, and neither to the Indo-Europeans in Asia. Nevertheless, establishing the correct relationship between the Corded Ware and Pontic-Caspian regions is still considered essential to solving the entire homeland problem.
Central Asia
See also
- TumulusTumulusA tumulus is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, Hügelgrab or kurgans, and can be found throughout much of the world. A tumulus composed largely or entirely of stones is usually referred to as a cairn...
- Yamna cultureYamna cultureThe Yamna culture is a late copper age/early Bronze Age culture of the Southern Bug/Dniester/Ural region , dating to the 36th–23rd centuries BC...
- Ukrainian stone stela
- Domestication of the horseDomestication of the horseThere are a number of hypotheses on many of the key issues regarding the domestication of the horse. Although horses appeared in Paleolithic cave art as early as 30,000 BCE, these were truly wild horses and were probably hunted for meat. How and when horses became domesticated is disputed...
- Animal sacrificeAnimal sacrificeAnimal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practised by many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature...
- AshvamedhaAshvamedhaThe Ashvamedha was one of the most important royal rituals of Vedic religion, described in detail in the Yajurveda...
- Shaft tombShaft tombA shaft tomb or shaft grave is a type of burial structure formed from a deep and narrow shaft sunk into natural rock. Burials were then placed at the bottom...
- Late Glacial Maximum
Competing hypotheses
- Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypothesesProto-Indo-European Urheimat hypothesesThe Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses are designed to explain the origins of the Proto-Indo-European language and the people. The identity of the Proto-Indo-Europeans has been a recurring topic in Indo-European studies since the 19th century. Many hypotheses for an Urheimat have been...
- Armenian hypothesisArmenian hypothesisThe Armenian hypothesis of the Proto-Indo-European Urheimat, based on the Glottalic theory suggests that the Proto-Indo-European language was spoken during the 4th millennium BC in the Armenian Highland or Aryan Highland. It is an Indo-Hittite model and does not include the Anatolian languages in...
- Anatolian hypothesisAnatolian hypothesisThe Anatolian hypothesis is also called Renfrew's Neolithic Discontinuity Theory ; it proposes that the dispersal of Proto-Indo-Europeans originated in Neolithic Anatolia...
- Out of India theoryOut of India theoryThe Out of India theory is the proposition that the Indo-European language family originated in the Indian subcontinent and spread to the remainder of the Indo-European region through a series of migrations...
- Paleolithic Continuity TheoryPaleolithic Continuity TheoryThe Paleolithic Continuity Theory , since 2010 relabelled as the Paleolithic Continuity Paradigm , is a hypothesis suggesting that the Proto-Indo-European language can be traced back to the Upper Paleolithic, several millennia earlier than the Chalcolithic or at the most Neolithic estimates in other...
- Armenian hypothesis