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The Indo-European migrations are hypothesized migrations of peoples who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and the derived Indo-European languages, which took place from around 4000 to 1000 BCE, potentially explaining how these related languages came to be spoken across a large area of Eurasia spanning from the Indian subcontinent and Iranian ...
Scheme of Indo-European migrations from c. 4000 to 1000 BC according to the Kurgan hypothesis. The purple 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 c. 2500 BC; the orange area to 1000 BC.
These migrations provide a plausible explanation for the spread of at least some of the Indo-European languages, and suggest that the alternative theories such as the Anatolian hypothesis, which places the Proto-Indo-European homeland in Neolithic Anatolia, are less likely to be correct.
In 1956 Gimbutas introduced her Kurgan hypothesis, which combined archaeological study of the distinctive Kurgan burial mounds with linguistics to unravel some problems in the study of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) speaking peoples, whom she dubbed the "Kurgans"; namely, to account for their origin and to trace their migrations into Europe.
The New York Times, noting the longstanding debate among scholars over the origins of the Indo-European language group, stated, "Anthony is not the first scholar to make the case that Proto-Indo-European came from [the steppes of southern Ukraine and Russia], but given the immense array of evidence he presents, he may be the last one who has to."
The speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language are usually believed to have originated to the north of the Black Sea (today Eastern Ukraine and Southern Russia), and from there they gradually migrated into, and spread their language by cultural diffusion to, Anatolia, Europe, and Central Asia, Iran and South Asia starting from around the end ...
On lexico-cultural dating, Proto-Indo-European cannot be earlier than 4000 BC. [14] According to Anthony and Ringe (2015) the main objection to the Anatolian hypothesis is that it requires an unrealistically early date. Most estimates date Proto-Indo-European between 4500 and 2500 BC, with the most probable date around 3700 BC.
The books of Anthony include: The Horse, the Wheel and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (2007) The Lost World Of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000 - 3500 BC (2009) A Bronze Age Landscape in the Russian Steppes: The Samara Valley Project (2016, co-editor)