Kurgan hypothesis

The Kurgan hypothesis of the ancestral homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans implies the gradual spread of the “ Kurgan culture ”, which eventually covered all the Black Sea steppes . Subsequent expansion beyond the steppe zone led to the emergence of mixed cultures, such as the culture of spherical amphoras in the west, nomadic Indo-Iranian cultures in the east and the relocation of proto-Greeks to the Balkans around 2500 BC. e. Domestication of the horse and later use of carts made the kurgan culture mobile and expanded it to the entire region of the “pit culture”. In the Kurgan hypothesis, it is believed that all the Black Sea steppes were the ancestral home of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and spoke the late dialects of the Pre-Indo-European language throughout the region. The area on the Volga marked on the map as ? Urheimat denotes the location of the earliest traces of horse breeding ( Samara culture , but see the Middle Stog culture ), and possibly refers to the core of the early proto-Indo-Europeans or proto-proto-Indo-Europeans in the V millennium BC. e. .

Gimbutas Version

The initial assumption Gimbutas identifies four stages of the development of the barrow culture and three waves of distribution.

• Kurgan I , Dnieper / Volga region , first half of the 4th millennium BC e. Obviously, it came from the cultures of the Volga basin, subgroups included the Samara culture and the culture of Seroglazovo .
• Barrow II — III , second half of the fourth millennium BC e. . Includes Srednestogovskaya culture in the Azov Sea and Maikop culture in the North Caucasus. Stone circles , early two-wheeled carts, anthropomorphic stone steles or idols.
• Barrow IV or pit culture , the first half of the III millennium BC e. covers the entire steppe region from the Ural River to Romania .

• The first wave , preceding the stage of Kurgan I , expansion from the Volga to the Dnieper, which led to the coexistence of the Kurgan I culture and the Kukuteni culture ( Tripoli culture ). Reflections of this migration spread to the Balkans and along the Danube to the Vinca and Lendiel cultures in Hungary .
• II wave , mid IV millennium BC e. , which began in the Maikop culture and later gave rise to the Kurganized mixed cultures in northern Europe around 3000 BC. e. ( culture of spherical amphoras , Baden culture and, of course, the culture of cord ceramics ). According to Gimbutas, this was the first appearance of Indo-European languages ​​in western and northern Europe.
• III wave , 3000 - 2800 BC e. , the spread of pit culture beyond the steppe, with the advent of characteristic graves in the territory of modern Romania , Bulgaria and eastern Hungary .

Cortlandt Version

Frederick Cortlandt proposed a revision of the mound hypothesis ^[4] . He put forward the main objection that can be raised against the Gimbutas scheme (for example, 1985: 198), namely that it comes from archaeological data and does not seek linguistic interpretations. Proceeding from linguistic data and trying to put their pieces together, he got the following picture: the Indo-Europeans who remained after migrating to the west, east and south (as described by J. Mallory ^[5] ) became the ancestors of the Baltic Slavs, at that time as carriers of other satematized languages, one can identify with the Yamnaya culture , and Western Indo-Europeans with the culture of cord ceramics . Modern genetic research contradicts this construction of Cortland, since it is the representatives of the satem group that are descendants of the cord ceramics culture . Returning to the Balts and Slavs, their ancestors can be identified with the Middle Dnieper culture . Then, following Mallory (pp197f) and implying the native land of this culture in the south, in Sredny Rig, the Yamnaya and Late Tripoli culture , he suggested that these events corresponded with the development of the language of the Satem group, which invaded the sphere of influence of Western Indo-Europeans.

According to Frederick Cortlandt, there is a general tendency to date proto-languages ​​earlier in time than this is confirmed by linguistic data. However, if Indo-Hittites and Indo-Europeans can be correlated with the beginning and end of the Middle Rig culture, then, he objects, linguistic data for the entire Indo-European language family do not take us beyond the secondary ancestral home (according to Gimbutas), and cultures such as the Hvalyn on the middle The Volga and Maykop in the North Caucasus cannot be identified with the Indo-Europeans. Any suggestion that goes beyond the culture of the Middle Rig should begin with the possible similarity of the Indo-European family of languages ​​with other language families. Given the typological similarity of the Pra-Indo-European language with the North-West Caucasian languages ​​and implying that this similarity may be due to local factors, Frederick Kortlandt considers the Indo-European family a branch of the Ural-Altai, transformed by the influence of the Caucasian substrate. This view is consistent with archaeological data and has the earliest ancestors of native speakers of the pre-Indo-European language north of the Caspian Sea in the seventh millennium BC. e. (cf. Mallory 1989: 192f.), which does not contradict the Gimbutas theory.

• 4500-4000 : Early PIE . Cultures of the Middle Rig , Dnieper-Donets and Samara , domestication of a horse ( I wave ).
• 4000 —3500: Pit culture , prototype mounds, and Maikop culture in the North Caucasus . Indo-Hittite models postulated the separation of proto-Anatolians until this time.
• 3500-3000: Average PIE . Pit culture, as its peak, is a classic reconstructed Praindo-European society , with stone idols , early two-wheeled carts, dominant cattle breeding , but with permanent settlements and hillforts along rivers, existing due to crop production and fishing. The contact of the pit burial culture with the cultures of the late Neolithic Europe led to the emergence of "kurganizovannye" cultures of spherical amphoras and Baden ( II wave ). Maykop culture is the earliest known site of the beginning of the Bronze Age , and bronze weapons and artifacts appear on the territory of the pit culture. Presumably early satemization .
• 3000 - 2500: Late PIE . The pit culture spreads throughout the Black Sea steppe ( III wave ). The culture of cord ceramics extends from the Rhine to the Volga , which corresponds to the late stage of the Indo-European community, during which the entire “Kurganized” region broke up into independent languages ​​and cultures, which remained, however, in contact, which ensured the spread of technology and early intergroup borrowings, excluding Anatolian and Tokhar a branch that has been isolated from these processes. The emergence of the isoglosses of the cantum satem supposedly interrupted them, but the phonetic tendencies of satemization remained active.
• 2500-2000: The conversion of local dialects into proto-languages ​​is completed. They spoke Proto-Greek in the Balkans, and Proto-Indo-Iranian in the Andronovo culture north of the Caspian. The Bronze Age reached Central Europe with a bell-shaped cup culture , probably composed by various Kentum dialects. Tarim mummies , possibly, belong to the Proto-Char culture.
• 2000-1500: Catacomb culture north of the Black Sea . A chariot was invented, which led to the split and rapid spread of Iranians and Indo-Aryans from the Bactrian-Margian archaeological complex to Central Asia , northern India , Iran and eastern Anatolia . Proto-Anatolians split into Hittites and Luvs . The Proto-Celts of the Unetitsa culture had developed metalworking.
• 1500-1000: The Northern Bronze Age distinguished the Proto-Germans , and (pra) the Protokelts . In Central Europe, the cultures of the funeral urn fields and the Hallstatt culture , which began the Iron Age, arose. Migration of proto- Italians to the Italian peninsula ( Stela Bagnolo ). Addition of Rigveda hymns and the rise of Vedic civilization in the Punjab region. Mycenaean civilization is the beginning of the Greek dark era .
• 1000 BC e. - 500 BC e. : Celtic languages ​​are distributed throughout Central and Western Europe. Proto-Germans . Homer and the beginning of classical antiquity . Vedic civilization gives rise to Mahajanapadam . Zarathustra creates the Gatu , the rise of the Achaemenid empire , succeeding Elam and Babylon . Separation of the Proto-Italian language into the Osko-Umbrian languages and Latin-Faliscan languages . The development of the Greek and ancient Italian alphabets. In southern Europe, various Paleobalkan languages ​​are spoken, supplanting the indigenous Mediterranean languages . Anatolian languages ​​are dying out .

The haplogroup R1a1 is found in central and western Asia , in India, and in the Slavic, Baltic, and Estonian populations of Eastern Europe, but is practically not present in most countries of Western Europe (see [2] [3] ). However, 23.6% of Norwegians, 18.4% of Swedes, 16.5% of Danes, 11% of Sami have this genetic marker ^[6] .

Genetic studies of 26 remains of representatives of the barrow culture revealed that they have the haplogroup R1a1-M17, and also had fair skin and eye color ^[7] .

According to this hypothesis, the reconstructed linguistic data confirm that the Indo-Europeans were riders using piercing weapons, could easily cross large spaces and did this in Central Europe in the fifth or fourth millennium BC. e. At the technological and cultural level, the Kurgan peoples were at the level of shepherding. Having examined this equation, Renfrew found that equipped warriors appeared in Europe only at the turn of the second or first millennium BC. e., what could not happen if the mound hypothesis is true and the Indo-Europeans appeared there 3000 years earlier.

On a linguistic basis, the hypothesis was severely attacked by Catherine Krell (1998), who found a large discrepancy between the terms found in the reconstructed Indo-European language and the cultural level established by the excavation of the mounds. For example, Krell found that Indo-Europeans had agriculture, while the Kurgan peoples were only shepherds. However, at present, archeology has denied this. There were others, such as Mallory and Schmitt, who also criticized the Gimbutas hypothesis ^[8] .

The mound, as an element of the funeral rite, arose in the Middle Stog culture , and was later borrowed by carriers of other cultures. It is also likely that the custom to sprinkle the dead with ocher and string ornamentation of ceramics were also borrowed from Sredny Rig ^[9] . The expansion of the Sredniy Rig tribes from the Ukrainian steppes to the Balkans and the emergence of a number of derivative cultures here, such as Cernavoda , Jezero , Baden culture, was preceded by the expansion of the Yamnaya tribes here for at least 1000 years ^[10] .

L.S. Klein criticizes the hypothesis, noting that Gimbutas placed in its original “kurgan culture” about twelve cultures of Russia and Ukraine ( Repin , Khvalyn , Pit , North Caucasus , several catacomb, etc.): the basis is the burial of the dead under the barrow. But then, according to Klein, this becomes an argument for reckoning and a number of cultures of Central Europe ( culture of funnel-shaped cups , culture of cord ceramics , etc.), which Gimbutas, in the opinion of the scientist, adhered to, taking all of them out of his “mound” culture, which simply contradicts the chronology. ^[eleven]

• Adams, Douglas Quentin - Linguist
• Kristiansen, Christian - Archaeologist
• Mallory, James Patrick - Linguist
• Haack, Wolfgang - a geneticist
• Anthony David - Archaeologist

• Pit culture
• Ukrainian stone steles
• Domestication of a horse , Tarpan
• Prehistoric Central Asia
• Indo-Ural hypothesis
• Praindo-Europeans
• Indo-Hittite hypothesis
• Pre-Indo-European substrate
• Praindo-Europeans
• Indo-Europeans
• Indo-Ural hypothesis # See also
• Pra-Indo-European language
• Indo-European languages
• Indo-Ural hypothesis
• 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
• Balkan hypothesis
• Theory of Paleolithic Continuity

Alternative hypotheses

• Ancestral home
• Theory of Exodus from India
• Anatolian hypothesis
• Armenian hypothesis
• The Neolithic Creolization Hypothesis
• Arctic hypothesis

• Dexter, AR and Jones-Bley, K. (eds). 1997. The Kurgan Culture and the Indo-Europeanization of Europe: Selected Articles From 1952 to 1993 . Institute for the Study of Man. Washingdon, DC. ISBN 0-941694-56-9 .
• Gray, RD and Atkinson, QD 2003. Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin. Nature . 426: 435-439
• Mallory, JP and Adams, DQ 1997 (eds). 1997. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture . Fitzroy Dearborn division of Taylor & Francis, London. ISBN 1-884964-98-2 .
• Mallory, JP 1989. In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archeology and Myth . Thames & Hudson, London. ISBN 0-500-27616-1 .
• DG Zanotti, The Evidence for Kurgan Wave One As Reflected By the Distribution of 'Old Europe' Gold Pendants , JIES 10 (1982), 223–234.