Fol 2002, p. 225: "Romanisation was total and complete by the end of the 4th century A.D. Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branch, which points to a period of common development. By adopting the wheel and the horse, they became powerful and fearsome nomads, expanding westward into Europe as well as east- and southward into India. [127], The Anatolian languages were a branch of the larger Indo-European language family. Albanian (shqip [cip] or gjuha shqipe [uha cip], meaning Albanian language) is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.4million people, primarily in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Greece, but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including Montenegro and Serbia (Presevo Valley). [176][70][177], During the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age, the cultures of Europe derived from Early European Farmers (EEF) were overwhelmed by successive invasions of Western Steppe Herders (WSHs) from the PonticCaspian steppe, who carried about 60% Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) and 40% Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) admixture. Similarly, "sell" and "wash" were borrowed in Proto-Ugric. The light is shut off when the lab is occupied, because it burns human skin and eyes. The scientific analysis swiftly discounted most of the prevailing theories. By the middle of 2017, it was apparent that the Roopkund bones belonged to three distinct groups of people. [283] The name Illyrians seems to be the name applied to a specific Illyrian tribe, which was the first to come in contact with the ancient Greeks during the Bronze Age,[284] causing the name Illyrians to be applied to all people of similar language and customs.[285]. ); a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, South Picene; and Latin itself. From these kurganized cultures came the immigration of Proto-Greeks to the Balkans and the nomadic Indo-Iranian cultures to the east around 2500BC. Were not schooled in the nuances, Reich admitted to me. [1] David Anthony has incorporated recent developments in his "revised steppe theory", which also supports a steppe origin of the Indo-European languages. (2015) also found close autosomal genetic relationship between peoples of Corded Ware culture and Sintashta culture. The Criticism of Kurgan Theory - YouTube Nature had added to the confusion, churning and fracturing the bones with rock slides and avalanches. When I visited, a technician was working on a nubbin of bone from an ancient Roman who lived in Belgium. Driven from the Ili Valley shortly afterwards by the Wusun, the Yuezhi migrated to Sogdia and then Bactria, where they are often identified with the Tokhrioi () and Asioi of Classical sources. Taken together, the Kurgan hypothesis and the Old European culture theories presented a compelling story that directly went against the prevalent image of prehistoric cultures (especially cultures that existed outside of the traditional "Cradle of Civilization" in the Fertile Crescent) as "primitive", wild, half-starved savages. It postulates that the people of a Kurgan culture in the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European . But what had happened to all these people? "[21][subnote 1], Proto-Finno-Ugric and PIE have a lexicon in common, generally related to trade, such as words for "price" and "draw, lead". [307][333] According to Kochhar there were three waves of Indo-Aryan immigration that occurred after the mature Harappan phase:[334], The Vedic Indo-Aryans started to migrate into northwestern India around 1500 BCE, as a slow diffusion during the Late Harappan period, establishing the Vedic religion during the Vedic period (c.1500500 BCE). It has been the only serious alternative for the steppe-theory, but suffers from a lack of explanatory power. [30], According to Kroonen et al. [web 31], In recent years, the concept of "indigenous Aryans" has been increasingly conflated with an "Out of India" origin of the Indo-European language family. According to Anthony, the development of the Proto-Indo-European cultures started with the introduction of cattle at the Pontic-Caspian steppes. Mushrif-Tripathy thinks that a hailstorm was probably involved in one mass death but that most people had likely just died of exposure. On the other hand, the Kurgan hypothesis claims Proto-Indo-European spread from the Pontic steppe after developing around 4500 BCE.. But the DNA of Iberian skeletons dating from this period of transformation told a different story, revealing what Reich describes as the genetic scar of a foreign invasion. Although some have proposed a common ancestor (the hypothetical Nostratic macrofamily), this is generally regarded as the result of intensive borrowing, which suggests that their homelands were located near each other. [342] In return the Wusun settled in the former territories of the Yuezhi as vassals of the Xiongnu. [70], The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare. Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo [51] These migrants had an attractive social system and good weapons, and luxury goods which marked their status and power. His preferred hypothesis is that the Roopkund B people were Armenian traders. The scientists concluded that the dead represented two populations: a group of tall Brahmans from the plains of India and a company of shorter, local porters, whose skulls were marked by years of carrying heavy loads with a tumpline looped over their heads. Cultures that Gimbutas considered as part of the "Kurgan culture": Gimbutas's original suggestion identifies four successive stages of the Kurgan culture: In other publications[21] she proposes three successive "waves" of expansion: The Kurgan hypothesis describes the initial spread of Proto-Indo-European during the 5th and 4th millennia BC. Kurgan hypothesis | Detailed Pedia Yet his passion for the place was undimmed. Even today, the Ychromosomes of almost all men of Western European ancestry have a high percentage of Yamnaya-derived genes, suggesting that violent conquest may have been widespread. People in the villages below Roopkund had their own explanation, passed down in folk songs and stories. Its long been known that, from around 2500 to 2000 B.C., major new artistic and cultural styles flourished in Western and Central Europe. Discover world-changing science. [115] The Dniepr Rapids area was the next part of the Pontic-Caspian steppes to shift to cattle-herding. Kurgan hypothesis - Wikiwand [8][web 2][9][205] According to Haak et al. [250] Some linguists, however, reject the Balto-Slavic theory, believing that Baltic and Slavic languages evolved independently from Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic respectively. [39] yet a 2021 study demonstrates that the mummies are remains of locals descending from Ancient North Eurasians and ancient Northeast Asians; meanwhile, the study suggests instead that Afanasevo migrants might have introduced Proto-Tocharian into Dzungaria during the Early Bronze Age before Tocharian languages were recorded in Buddhist texts dating to 500-1000 CE in the Tarim basin. [301][302] The similarity of some Phrygian words to Greek ones was observed by Plato in his Cratylus (410a). Now a professor at Heidelberg University, he stumbled upon a reference to the lake and the bodies as an undergraduate, in the nineteen-seventies, and was fascinated. Kurgan hypothesis - Wikiwand Such identifications attempt to be consistent with the glottochronology of the language tree and with the archaeology of those places and times. [75] According to Cunliffe, most of the expansion was clearly intrusive. Harney wrote up the findings, in a paper co-authored by twenty-seven other scientists. [web 29] Employing "lexical periodization", Alinei arrives at a timeline deeper than even that of Colin Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis. [6][7], The eastern part of the Corded Ware culture contributed to the Sintashta culture (c.21001800 BCE), where the Indo-Iranian language and culture emerged, and where the chariot was invented. The king, who liked his entertainments, took along a bevy of dancing courtesans and musicians, in violation of the ascetic traditions of the pilgrimage. However, after Karl Penka's 1883[14] rejection of non-European PIE origins, most scholars favoured a Northern European origin. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag zu mglichen lexikalischen Isoglossen", "Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia", "Archaeology and Language: Why Archaeologists Care About the Indo-European Problem", "Archaeology, Genetics, and Language in the Steppes: A Comment on Bomhard", "The Origins of Proto-Indo-European: The Caucasian Substrate Hypothesis", "An Archaeological Scenario for the 'Coming of the Greeks' ca. [1] A northern move incorporated the southern coast of Armorica. According to Mallory 1991 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFMallory1991 (help), "The origin of the Yamnaya culture is still a topic of debate," with proposals for its origins pointing to both Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog. Your Pun-Divided Attention: How the Brain Processes Wordplay. the Swat IV that co-founded the Harappan Cemetery H phase in Punjab (20001800 BCE); and the Rigvedic Indo-Aryans of Swat V that later absorbed the Cemetery H people and gave rise to the, Haak et al. Another possible group are the Cimmerians who are mostly supposed to have been related to either Iranian or Thracian speaking groups, or at least to have been ruled by an Iranian elite. The third view is that the ancestor of the Armenian language was already spoken in the area during the time when it was politically dominated first by the Hittites, and later by the Urartians. [1][2] This process started with the introduction of cattle at the Eurasian steppes around 5200 BCE, and the mobilisation of the steppe herder cultures with the introduction of wheeled wagons and horse-back riding, which led to a new kind of culture. Since the bones at the lake were not collected systematically, the finding hinted that the Mediterranean group in total might have been quite large. The Kurgan hypothesis is the most widely accepted proposal to - Reddit [75][1], The Pontic steppe is a large area of grasslands in far Eastern Europe, located north of the Black Sea, Caucasus Mountains and Caspian Sea and including parts of eastern Ukraine, southern Russia and northwest Kazakhstan. The Corded Ware culture in Middle Europe (c.3200[196] or 2,900[web 1]2450 or 2350 cal. [337] Around the beginning of the Common Era, the Vedic tradition formed one of the main constituents of the so-called "Hindu synthesis"[338], According to Christopher I. Beckwith the Wusun, an Indo-European Caucasian people of Inner Asia in antiquity, were also of Indo-Aryan origin. I hate unsolved mysteries, Fiedel told me. Archaeologist Marija Gimbutas first proposed the Ukrainian origin, known as the kurgan hypothesis, in the 1950s. [164] Evidence from Chinese records indicate the peoples of Central Asia as far west as the Parthian Empire were under the sway of the Yuezhi. Late PIE is related to the Yamnaya culture and expansion, from which all IE-languages except the Anatolian languages and Tocharian descend. "the Afanasievo herders of the AltaiSayan region in southern Siberia (31502750BC), who in turn have close genetic ties with the Yamnaya (35002500BC) of the PonticCaspian steppe located 3,000km to the west"- before being recorded in 5001000 CE's Buddhist scriptures. Because carbon-14 dating is difficult to interpret for the period between 1650 and 1950, the deaths could have occurred anytime during that span, but with a slightly higher probability in the eighteenth century. Not only did the mystery of Roopkund appear to be solved; it also seemed that the local tales of Nanda Devis wrath had originated in an actual event. [181] Danish archaeologist Kristian Kristiansen said he is "increasingly convinced there must have been a kind of genocide. The 2009 Ethnologue estimates a total of about 439 Indo-European languages and dialects, about half of these (221) belonging to the Indo-Aryan subbranch based in South Asia. [45] The Corded Ware culture in Middle Europe (third millennium BCE),[web 1] which arose in the contact zone east of the Carpathian mountains, materialized with a massive migration from the Eurasian steppes to Central Europe,[8][web 2][9] probably played a central role in the spread of the pre-Germanic and pre-Balto-Slavic dialects. [86], The proto-Indo-Europeans, i.e. [1] The Maykop culture shows the earliest evidence of the beginning Bronze Age, and bronze weapons and artifacts are introduced to the Yamnaya horizon. [28], The Yamnaya horizon was an adaptation to a climate change that occurred between 3500 and 3000 BCE, in which the steppes became drier and cooler. The closest match was with people from the Greek island of Crete. Both researchers caution against reading too much into genetic evidence alone. I never heard a word, not a hint of a story, no folktale or anything, Sax told me. [166][167] According to Anthony, the Yamnaya culture originated in the Don-Volga area at ca. The lands of the Anatolian peoples were successively invaded by a number of peoples and empires at high frequency: the Phrygians, Bithynians, the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks, the Galatian Celts, Romans and the Oghuz Turks. Though the migration theory is still defended by many modern historians, most archaeologists have abandoned the migration hypothesis regarding the origin of the Phrygians due to a lack substantial archaeological evidence, with the migration theory resting only on the accounts of Herodotus and Xanthus. Most researchers associate the Andronovo horizon with early Indo-Iranian languages, though it may have overlapped the early Uralic-speaking area at its northern fringe. Although Corded Ware is presumed to be largely derived from the Yamnaya culture, most Corded Ware males carried R1a Y-DNA, while males of the Yamnaya primarily carried R1b-M269. Kurgan hypothesis - Wikipedia In Pavel S. Avetisyan, Yervand H. Grekyan (eds. And then there was the stubborn fact that the Roopkund B people ate a diet more consistent with the Mediterranean than with India. (2015) Anthony, together with Lazaridis, Haak, Patterson, and Reich, notes that the mass migration of Yamnaya people to northern Europe shows that "the languages could have been introduced simply by strength of numbers: via major migration in which both sexes participated. David Anthony's The Horse, the Wheel and Language describes his "revised steppe theory". It is the solution one encounters in the, Jones et al. Many other social and cultural forces were at play. The origins of Italo-Celtic, Germanic and Balto-Slavic have often been associated with the spread of the Corded Ware horizon and the Bell Beakers, but the specifics remain unsolved. [59] Similarly, according to Marija Gimbutas, the Corded Ware culture, after migrating to Scandinavia, synthesized with the Funnelbeaker culture, giving birth to the Proto-Germanic language. The people of that time are best described as proto-Thracians, which later developed in the Iron Age into Danubian-Carpathian Geto-Dacians as well as Thracians of the eastern Balkan Peninsula. Knowledge awaits. It makes zero sense that a party of male and female Greek islanders would be participating in a Hindu pilgrimage around 1700 or 1800. The remains were found in burial mounds, or kurgans (from which the theory takes its name), in modern-day Ukraine. [web 4] The Indo-European family includes most of the major current languages of Europe, of the Iranian plateau, of the northern half of the Indian Subcontinent, and of Sri Lanka, with kindred languages also formerly spoken in parts of ancient Anatolia and of Central Asia. According to this model, the Kurgan culture gradually expanded to the entire PonticCaspian steppe, Kurgan IV being identified with the Yamnaya culture of around 3000BC. Sure enough, the analysis of Roopkund bone collagen revealed that, in the last ten or so years of their lives, the Roopkund A people ate a varied C3 and C4 diet, typical for much of India; Roopkund B ate a mostly C3 diet, typical of the Mediterranean. Research by Haak et al. The term is derived from kurgan (), a Turkic loanword in Russian for a tumulus or burial mound. In this scenario, an enclave of migrants to India never admixed with South Asians, and retained their genetic heritage. The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory, Kurgan model, or steppe theory) is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and parts of Asia. [131] According to Anthony, if it separated from Proto-Indo-European, it likely did so between 4500 and 3500 BCE. Archeologists have tended to explain this development as the result of cultural diffusion: people adopted innovations in pottery, metalworking, and weaponry from their geographic neighbors, along with new burial customs and religious beliefs. A number of alternative theories have been proposed, most notably the Anatolian hypothesis and the Armenian hypothesis. (2015) envision a migration of both males and females from the Yamnaya horizon through western Ukraine and Poland into Germany. 1531 BCE per the short chronology), and established a dynasty based in Dur-Kurigalzu. The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory, Kurgan model, or steppe theory) is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and parts of Asia. According to Narasimhan et al. The existence of PIE was first postulated in the 18th century by Sir William Jones, who observed the similarities between Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Latin. "[126] See Suvorovo culture and Ezero culture for details. (2015) shows that the people of the Sintashta culture are genetically related to those of the Corded Ware culture.[70]. The Armenian language was first put into writing in 406 or 407AD when a priest known as Mesrop developed an Armenian alphabet. The existence of PIE was first postulated in the 18th century by Sir William Jones, who observed the similarities between Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Latin. Together with the archaeological and linguistic evidence, the genetic data tipped the scales heavily in favor of the kurgan hypothesis. The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local Bronze Age Indo-Iranian cultures that flourished c.1800900 BCE in western Siberia and the west Asiatic steppe. It's a straightforward, compelling idea. [50][note 2], Indo-European languages probably spread through language shifts. Without written words, language transmission at the time would have depended largely on face-to-face contact, he says, suggesting the PIE speakers swept well across Europe and Asia. "[97], Damgaard et al. Knowledge of them comes chiefly from the linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics. Cleaning up the hygiene hypothesis | PNAS The spread to Cape Breton and Patagonia occurred in modern times. After the Yuezhi were defeated by the Xiongnu, in the 2nd century BCE, a small group, known as the Little Yuezhi, fled to the south, later spawning the Jie people who dominated the Later Zhao until their complete extermination by Ran Min in the WeiJie war. J. P. Mallory (in 1989) accepted the Kurgan hypothesis as the de facto standard theory of Indo-European origins, but he distinguished it from an implied "radical" scenario of military invasion. This page was last edited on 13 April 2023, at 06:30. The term is derived from the Turkic word kurgan (), meaning tumulus or burial mound. Almost none of the skeletons were intact, and it was impossible to tell which bones belonged together or where they had originally lain. Tom Higham, who performed the analysis, concluded that the victims had perished in a single event and had died instantaneously within hours of one another. Meanwhile, a team of bioarcheologists and paleopathologists noted the presence of two distinct groups: there were rugged, tall people with long heads and also some medium height, lightly built, round headed people, who displayed a curious shallow groove across the vault of the skull. [3] The area east of the Carpathian mountains formed a contact zone between the expanding Yamnaya culture and the northern European farmer cultures. Another view is that the Armenian people came to speak an Indo-European language after originally speaking a Caucasian language. [47], David Anthony, in his "revised Steppe hypothesis",[60] conjectures that the spread of the Indo-European languages probably did not happen through "chain-type folk migrations", but by the introduction of these languages by ritual and political elites, which were emulated by large groups of people,[61][note 3] a process which he calls "elite recruitment". [29], In the 2000s, Alberto Piazza and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza tried to align the Anatolian hypothesis with the steppe theory. It was the Roopkund B group, a mixture of men and women unrelated to one another, that confounded everyone. In Iberia during this time, the local type of Y chromosome was replaced by an entirely different type. Perhaps this was hallowed ground, an open-air cemetery, or a place where victims of an epidemic were dumped to prevent contagion. Exhausted and feverish, Sax barely made it back to Wan with his companions, and spent ten days recovering in his guides stone hut. In the case of the Illyrian elements a Romance intermediary is inevitable as long as Illyrian was probably extinct in the 2nd century A.D.". 3400 and 3200 BCE. [240] By the later La Tne period (c.450 BCE up to the Roman conquest), this Celtic culture had expanded by diffusion or migration to the British Isles (Insular Celts), France and The Low Countries (Gauls), Bohemia, Poland and much of Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula (Celtiberians, Celtici and Gallaeci) and Italy (Golaseccans, Lepontii, Ligures and Cisalpine Gauls)[241] and, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BCE, as far east as central Anatolia (Galatians).