Balkan hypothesis

Time - Early Neolithic, about 5000 BC. e. The hypothesis suggests the existence of a fairly closely located contact zone of the Indo-European languages ​​with the Uralic or North Caucasian, postulated by some linguistic models. From the point of view of archeology, this is an area of ​​the culture of linear ribbon ceramics (abbreviated as KLLK) ^[1] , which is widespread in the vast area of ​​Europe from the Atlantic coast to Ukraine and demonstrates amazing homogeneity, which could indicate the presence of a linguistic community. Over time, in the Podunavye and the Balkans, more and more later cultural elements are noted, which are restored for the Indo-European proto-language by the 4th millennium BC. e.

This hypothesis suits those linguists who are adherents of the principle of the “center of gravity” ^[2] , according to which the center of linguistic dispersion is located in the area where the greatest linguistic diversity is noted, while the peripheral regions are characterized by maximum uniformity. This principle was applied in determining the origin of many language families, for example, Atabasque, Numiysk, Salish, etc. With regard to the problem of the Indo-European ancestral home, this principle led to the conclusion that the center of linguistic dispersion should have been located somewhere in Southeastern Europe, since the largest number of Indo-European language groups are represented in this area.

V.A. Alekshin considers the carriers of the agricultural culture of linear tape ceramics, which arose in the middle of the fifth millennium BC, to be the most ancient Indo-Europeans. e. in Central Europe ^[1] .

B.V. Gornung (1963, 1964) placed the center of the Indo-European origin a little to the south - the middle and lower reaches of the Danube and the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula ^[1] .

This hypothesis with a wider range (including Northern Europe) was proposed by Meyer (Meyer, 1948) ^[3] based on the Indo-European toponymy of this region, its environmental characteristics (beech, bee, bear, beaver), but archaeologically it was based on the culture of cord ceramics and neither the chronologically nor genetically earlier culture of linear-ribbon ceramics ( CLLC ) associated with it. However, such a range of PIE was too extensive and the origin of the cord ceramics culture in Northern Europe is problematic, while the most ancient KLLK variants gravitate towards the Podunavu.

The Central European-Balkan hypothesis was broadly supported by Krai (1957, 1962, 1968), who dated - 1500 BC. e., that is, when the allocation of Indo-European languages ​​is fixed by written sources.

A supporter of this hypothesis was P. Bosch-Gimper (1968), who considered Central Europe to be the territory on which the core of ethnic groups formed in the Neolithic (presumably in the 5th millennium BC), of which in the 3rd millennium BC e. Separate Indo-European peoples emerged whose cultural development determines the Bronze (II millennium BC) and the Iron (I millennium BC) European centuries. The archaeological equivalent of the PIE culture, according to Bosch-Gimper, is the Danube culture, which, being guided by the general opinion, includes KLLK, Ressen culture, band-and-tape ceramics, KNK, Lendiel-Tisza culture.

A supporter of this hypothesis was the Italian linguist J. Devoto, a specialist in Indo-European studies ^[4] , who combined an archaeological and linguistic approach. Devoto drew attention to the fact that the Indo-European practice is characterized by a different character at the corresponding time stages of its development. He singled out the phase of primitive agriculture (expressed by the culture of KLLK ), noting already at this phase the “tendency toward expansion”. The phase of productive agriculture is associated with the Jordanemül culture, which also has a “tendency toward expansion”. The transition to military organization among the Indo-Europeans in archaeological terms is associated with the culture of battle axes and KShK. In the Unetic culture, Devoto saw a continuation of the Indo-European tradition towards the extensive use of the territory. In the puddle culture of the Iron Age of Europe, he saw the last stage in the prehistoric evolution of Indo-European culture in Europe. That is, Devoto justifies his localization of the ancestral home of the Indo-European chain of cultures in which there is supposedly a continuity of a genetic nature, from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. Devato's great contribution is the comparative dictionary of Indo-European words, among which are the terms characterizing quality and quantity; movement, physiological functions and diseases; meteorological observations and calendar system; religious system; family structure, tribe, military organization and economy; transport, house-building, fauna and flora, cattle breeding and agriculture. However, all of the above did not stop Devoto from considering the Indo-European CFLK.

Schmidt (1975) called the Central European area a pan-Indo-European, based on the spread of ancient European hydronymy. Gudeno later showed that the area of ​​IE of hydronymy coincides with the distribution area of ​​the funnel-shaped cup culture (CEC). The latter suggested Gudeno WAYS to revise the concept of Gimbutas. Later this hypothesis was supported by V. A. Safronov as an integral part of the concept of the four ancestral homelands of the great Indo-Europeans.

The time of this hypothesis is generally consistent with most chronological models of the Indo-European language. The hypothesis does not run into difficulties associated with the presence of non-Indo-European peoples since the earliest written sources, since there is reason to assume the presence of a non-Indo-European substrate in Central Europe and the Balkans. The hypothesis is convenient for bringing migration flows in line with the dialectic connections of Indo-European languages.

The first drawback of the hypothesis ^[2] is that it cannot describe the Indo-European languages ​​of Asia and generally unsatisfactorily reflects the progress of the Indo-European peoples east of the Dnieper, unless it includes fragments of other hypotheses, which will also be unreasonable for chronological and archaeological reasons.

The second drawback of the hypothesis ^[2] - although the hypothesis is convenient for most of Northern and Western Europe, it does not work (does not explain anything) regarding the Danube or Balkan cultures. That is, the hypothesis is completely incompatible with the Anatolian hypothesis , which in itself is problematic, since it excludes the most significant arguments of the Anatolian hypothesis, namely, the cultural and linguistic ties of Anatolia and the Balkans.

The concept of Bosch-Gimpera was criticized by M. Gimbutas ^[2] , who several years earlier supported the idea of ​​PIE attribution of KLLK, and in his new theory just considers everything non-Indo-European that Bosch-Gimper considers Indo-European. Disintegration of the Neolithic cultures of the Danube by the 3rd millennium BC e., according to Bosch-Gimper, the allocation of Indo-European languages, Gimbutas considers the traces of the invasion of the Indo-Europeans from Eastern Europe, which split the non-Indo-European civilizations of Europe.

The hypothesis was criticized by V.G. Child , who first came to the conclusion that the culture of burials with ocher is the archaeological equivalent for the Pontic ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans and who was the first (1926) to defend the hypothesis about the ancestral home of IE in the southwestern part of the southern Russian steppes. The thesis (of Childa on the localization of IE of the ancestral homeland in the southern Russian steppes was substantiated in the work of Sulimirsky, who, on the basis of the stratigraphy of the Yaskovitsky and South Polish mounds, identified two chronological groups, united by ritual continuity, containing KShK ceramics (cord ceramics cultures) and pit ceramics) ») And made a conclusion about the genetic continuity of both groups and about the origin of KSK cups from ancient pit ceramics, after which he postulated KSK migrations from the Black Sea to the steppe areas of Tsen Europe (Sulimirsky, 1933 and 1968). Later (Child supported the idea that “the ovoid vessels of the pit culture are a good prototype from which Saxoturing, Jutland and other types of cord goblets can come” (Child 1950, p. 144), and also made a preliminary conclusion that the various versions of the CWC, “which may have been the forerunners of the Celts, Teutons, and Slavs, are an offshoot of the people who carry the culture of ocher burials” (Child 1950, p. 140), pointing out that “the people of the Pontic steppes were only the eastern wing of the loose continuum of mobile shepherd societies, between which fruitful interaction was demonstrated, although the direction can be disputed. It is possible, for example, to assert that the rulers buried in Aladzha and mine tombs appeared from our steppe people and are responsible for spreading Indo-European languages ​​- Hittite and Greek ”(Child 1950, p. 140).

The drawback of the findings of J. Devoto is that he did not prove the genetic connection between the culture of KLLK and the culture of Jordansmühl, or KLLK and KShK. There is no direct genetic continuity between the Jordansmühl culture and KSC. Without this, the chain of archaeological cultures that he proposed was simply a mechanical selection on the principle of the existence of a “tendency toward expansion”.

• Indo-Ural hypothesis
• Indo-Hittite hypothesis
• Pre-Indo-European substrate
• Praindo-Europeans
• Indo-Europeans
• Pra-Indo-European language
• Indo-European languages
• Theory of Exodus from India
• Indo-European languages
• Pre-Indo-European substrate
• Ancestral homeland # Ancestral homeland of the Indo-European language family
• Anatolian hypothesis
• Arctic hypothesis
• Gamkrelidze - Ivanov hypothesis
• Kurgan hypothesis
• Theory of Paleolithic Continuity