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The Proto-Indo-European homeland, with migrations outward at about 4200 BCE (1), 3300 BCE (2), and 3000 BCE (3a and 3b). A tree diagram (inset) shows the pre-Germanic split as unresolved. Modified from Anthony (2013).
Source publication
Archaeological evidence and linguistic evidence converge in support of an origin of Indo-European languages on the Pontic-Caspian steppes around 4,000 years BCE. The evidence is so strong that arguments in support of other hypotheses should be reexamined.
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... contrast, the Pontic-Caspian homeland can be accommodated to the known relationships between the IE daughter branches because migrations are archaeologically documented to have occurred out of the Pontic-Caspian steppes into neighboring regions in the sequence and direction (Figure 2) that are demanded by the oldest three branchings of the IE tree ( Ringe et al. 2002, p. 90). Pre-Anatolian separated to the west, into southeastern Europe, about 4200-4000 BCE with the Suvorovo migration, the first archaeologically visible migration out of the steppes (Bicbaev 2010). ...
Context 2
... social mechanism caused non-IE speakers to shift to IE languages? Archaeological evidence suggests at least three phases of migration out of the Pontic-Caspian steppes between 4200 and 3300 BCE (Figure 2), each with its own circumstances and dynamics. A fine-grained sociolinguistic explanation of language shift should be linked to the local conditions affecting each of these movements: the first that carried Pre-Anatolian into southeastern Europe about 4200-4000 BCE, coinciding with the Suvorovo-to-Cernavoda I migration and the sudden end of the tell cultures of Old Europe; the second that carried Pre-Tocharian into the western Altai Mountains about 3300 BCE, coinciding with the Yamnaya-to-Afanasievo migration and the beginning of pastoralism in the western Altai; and the third, a complex series of movements that dispersed a cluster of late PIE dialects westward, up the Danube and into the Carpathian Basin about 3100-2800 BCE with the Yamnaya-to-Hungary migration and, also about 3300 BCE, around the northern side of the Carpathians into southeastern Poland with the Usatovo/Tripolye C2 expansion, which could have carried IE dialects into the region that gave birth to the Corded Ware horizon (Furholt 2003). ...
Citations
... It is also important to determine the linguistic cradle of Proto-Indo-European, which may also be the basis for the topogeny of the Slavs, but scientists do not agree on this. However, perhaps the most acceptable by academics is the steppe theory, which places the original homeland of PIE in the Pontic-Caspian steppe around 4000 BC (see Mallory & Adams [2006]; Anthony [2007]; Pereltsvaig & Lewis [2015]; Anthony & Ringe [2015]; Haak et al. [2015]). It was developed by Marija Gimbutas, who announced the barrow hypothesis. ...
In recent years, the theories of linguists, historians, anthropologists and archaeologists have begun to verify archaeogenetic research, and population genetics and paleolinguistics based on analyzes of ancient DNA and the periods and times of migration of individual populations, including the Proto-Slavic, determined on their basis, have become fields whose voice begins to decide in ethnogenetic matters. Paleolinguists date the rise of the Slavs on the Danube and the Vistula to thousands of years BC, and geneticists began to recognize fossil remains from R1a in this area from the 3rd millennium BC. In this study, I briefly review the most important views of paleo-linguists, such as Marco Alinei, Frederik Kortlandt, or Petr Jandáček, who, despite coming from different countries, cooperate with other universities, speak with one voice on the ancient origin of the Slavs, at the same time recognizing the Proto-Slavic language as the most similar to PIE cores.
... Interpretations of how the aDNA record relates to Indo-European languages have so far drawn predominantly on earlier proposals for the phylogeny and chronology of this language family that are based on one particular hypothesis of Indo-European origins, namely the Steppe hypothesis (5,12). Those interpretations have in turn largely been claimed to support that hypothesis. ...
... The first citations are general methodological doubts and challenges on the validity of linguistic paleontology in general. The later ones focus on Indo-European, and particularly on wheeled transport, since prominent supporters of the Steppe hypothesis rely on this heavily, notably the Indo-European linguist Don Ringe, and the archaeologist David Anthony (65,5). ...
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The origins of the Indo-European language family are hotly disputed. Bayesian phylogenetic analyses of core vocabulary have produced conflicting results, with some supporting a farming expansion out of Anatolia ~9000 years before present (yr B.P.), while others support a spread with horse-based pastoralism out of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe ~6000 yr B.P. Here we present an extensive database of Indo-European core vocabulary that eliminates past inconsistencies in cognate coding. Ancestry-enabled phylogenetic analysis of this dataset indicates that few ancient languages are direct ancestors of modern clades and produces a root age of ~8120 yr B.P. for the family. Although this date is not consistent with the Steppe hypothesis, it does not rule out an initial homeland south of the Caucasus, with a subsequent branch northward onto the steppe and then across Europe. We reconcile this hybrid hypothesis with recently published ancient DNA evidence from the steppe and the northern Fertile Crescent.
... Anthony & Ringe 2015;Cassidy et al. 2016;Damgaard et al. 2018;Olalde et al. 2018; Narasimhan et al. 2019). In other words, genome-wide sequencing of aDNA has provided support for the Steppe Hypothesis of the Indo-European homeland(Allentoft et al. 2015;Haak et al. 2015;Anthony & Brown 2017; Kristiansen et al. 2017), at least as far as the later or post-Anatolian stage of Proto-Indo-European is concerned(Damgaard et al. 2018; ...
This book examines the impact of ancient DNA research and scientific evidence on our understanding of the emergence of Indo-European languages in prehistory. Offering cutting-edge contributions from an international team of scholars, it considers the driving forces behind the Indo-European migrations during the 3rd and 2nd millenia BC. The volume explores the rise of the world's first pastoral nomads the Yamnaya Culture in the Russian Pontic steppe including their social organization, expansions, and the transition from nomadism to semi-sedentism when entering Europe. It also traces the chariot conquest in the late Bronze Age and its impact on the expansion of the Indo-Iranian languages into Central Asia. In the final section, the volumes consider the development of hierarchical societies and the origins of slavery. A landmark synthesis of recent, exciting discoveries, the book also includes an extensive theoretical discussion regarding the integration of linguistics, genetics, and archaeology, and the importance of interdisciplinary research in the study of ancient migration.
... (2) during the third millennium BC, mass migrations originating in the Pontic-Caspian steppe introduced early Indo-European speech to extensive regionsfrom the Siberian Altai in the east, to Ireland and Britain in the west (Anthony & Ringe 2015;Cassidy et al. 2016;. In other words, genome-wide sequencing of aDNA has provided support for the Steppe Hypothesis of the Indo-European homeland , at least as far as the later or post-Anatolian stage of Proto-Indo-European is concerned Lazaridis 2018). ...
This book examines the impact of ancient DNA research and scientific evidence on our understanding of the emergence of Indo-European languages in prehistory. Offering cutting-edge contributions from an international team of scholars, it considers the driving forces behind the Indo-European migrations during the 3rd and 2nd millenia BC. The volume explores the rise of the world's first pastoral nomads the Yamnaya Culture in the Russian Pontic steppe including their social organization, expansions, and the transition from nomadism to semi-sedentism when entering Europe. It also traces the chariot conquest in the late Bronze Age and its impact on the expansion of the Indo-Iranian languages into Central Asia. In the final section, the volumes consider the development of hierarchical societies and the origins of slavery. A landmark synthesis of recent, exciting discoveries, the book also includes an extensive theoretical discussion regarding the integration of linguistics, genetics, and archaeology, and the importance of interdisciplinary research in the study of ancient migration.
... (2) during the third millennium BC, mass migrations originating in the Pontic-Caspian steppe introduced early Indo-European speech to extensive regionsfrom the Siberian Altai in the east, to Ireland and Britain in the west (Anthony & Ringe 2015;Cassidy et al. 2016;. In other words, genome-wide sequencing of aDNA has provided support for the Steppe Hypothesis of the Indo-European homeland , at least as far as the later or post-Anatolian stage of Proto-Indo-European is concerned Lazaridis 2018). ...
This book examines the impact of ancient DNA research and scientific evidence on our understanding of the emergence of Indo-European languages in prehistory. Offering cutting-edge contributions from an international team of scholars, it considers the driving forces behind the Indo-European migrations during the 3rd and 2nd millenia BC. The volume explores the rise of the world's first pastoral nomads the Yamnaya Culture in the Russian Pontic steppe including their social organization, expansions, and the transition from nomadism to semi-sedentism when entering Europe. It also traces the chariot conquest in the late Bronze Age and its impact on the expansion of the Indo-Iranian languages into Central Asia. In the final section, the volumes consider the development of hierarchical societies and the origins of slavery. A landmark synthesis of recent, exciting discoveries, the book also includes an extensive theoretical discussion regarding the integration of linguistics, genetics, and archaeology, and the importance of interdisciplinary research in the study of ancient migration.
... Aspects of this debate have been intensified by recent ancient genomic evidence. The massive genetic impact of the expansion of early Bronze Age Yamnaya steppe pastoralists across Europe (Allentoft et al., 2015;Haak et al., 2015), circa 3,000 BCE, certainly lends support to the former theory in relation to Indo-European language spread (Anthony and Ringe, 2015). However, the inclusion of domestic horses in that package is now open to question given the timing of the genetic spread of the modern lineage of domestic horses (DOM2) across the same territory, which was up to a 1000 years later (Librado et al., 2021). ...
For over a decade there has been general, but not universal, consensus that the earliest known evidence for horse husbandry was at Eneolithic Botai, Kazakhstan, circa 3,500 BCE. Recent ancient genomic analyses, however, indicate that Botai is not the source of modern domestic horse stock (DOM2 lineage), but is instead related to the Przewalski clade of horses. DOM2 appears to instead to have emerged in early Bronze Age (mid 3rd Mill. BCE) in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, and spread quickly replacing other horse lineages after approximately 2,000 BCE. Whilst the specific evidence for earlier husbandry at Botai is not diminished by this evidence, it has broken the consensus regarding the early stages of horse domestication, with some now viewing it as a later event. This paper argues that domestication is rarely an event, but instead a process that is ongoing. The case is made for a “prey pathway” initial phase of domestication in multiple localities during the Eneolithic, which was based around local subsistence pastoralist niche construction. This took different forms due to the presence or absence of ruminant domestic stock in the Eastern European or Central Asian steppes, respectively. Whilst “push” factors likely played a part in the development of horse specialist pastoralism at Botai, it is suggested that “pull” factors accelerated the spread of DOM2 lineages, replacing others, in the later Bronze Age. The DOM2 spread was principally driven, not by local subsistence needs, but wider social, economic and military desirability of equestrianism. The long-term process of horse domestication continues in modernity with major breed changes caused first by the post-medieval agricultural revolution and, more currently, the desire for sporting achievement.
... IE Languages. The origin and spread of IE languages across Europe is of considerable interest, and two main hypotheses have been proposed: the Anatolian hypothesis, according to which IE languages originated in Anatolia and then spread to Europe along with agriculture, beginning ~8-9.5 kya (71) and the steppe hypothesis, according to which IE languages originated in the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas and then spread to Europe as a consequence of the domestication of horses and the development of wheeled carts and wagons, beginning ~5.5-6.5 kya (72,73). ...
Nearly 20 y ago, Jared Diamond and Peter Bellwood reviewed the evidence for the associated spread of farming and large language families by the demographic expansions of farmers. Since then, advances in obtaining and analyzing genomic data from modern and ancient populations have transformed our knowledge of human dispersals during the Holocene. Here, we provide an overview of Holocene dispersals in the light of genomic evidence and conclude that they have a complex history. Even when there is a demonstrated connection between a demographic expansion of people, the spread of agriculture, and the spread of a particular language family, the outcome in the results of contact between expanding and resident groups is highly variable. Further research is needed to identify the factors and social circumstances that have influenced this variation and complex history.
... The evidence is so strong that arguments in support of other hypotheses should be reexamined. 59 Recently, linguists have applied statistical techniques and massive computing power to the comparative analysis of hundreds of words in all known Indo-European languages, and have come up with startling results. In 2003, the biologist and historical linguist Russell D. Gray and the linguist Quentin Atkinson at the University of Auckland wrote: ...
... Рис.1. Distribution zone of early Bronze Age findings of flint arrowheads in Moldova, Ukraine, and Romania . ...
Aim: The following article considers a new theory for resolving the longstanding problem of identifying the geographic and temporal origin of Indo-Europeans. All existing theories provided thus far for the origin of Indo-Europeans suffer from one common error: the approaches presuppose an economic deterministic model for understanding historical transformation. However, Indo-Europeans were a community circumscribed by common language, therefore culture seems a more proper domain for analysis of origins than does an economic approach.
Methodology:The Indo-European population as a bounded community, however, is circumscribed by its common cultural formation, that of language. In this paper, we present an alternative theory for the emergence of Indo-Europeans and situate this origin in time and place. We rely on the Weberian hypothesis of a spiritual axial shift spurring an early prehistoric cultural transformation. By synthesizing historical linguistic and archaeological evidence, the approach offered below aims to the solve problems corresponding to a vulgar materialism’s economic deterministic approach to Indo-European origin.
Results: This paper proposes that the proper basis for analysis of cultural origins of Indo-Europeans resides at the level of spiritual production. A shortcoming of traditional archaeological formulations is its reliance on materialist models for spiritual and cultural concerns.
Research implications: By shifting the methodological and theoretical framing of the problem, this paper seeks to bypass the perpetual circling of the problem by proponents of the materialist mode
... To address how various ancient cultural zones emerged and sustained themselves, we must go back at least 50,000 years. There is substantial literature on cultural evolution during this period in both archeology (Bellwood, 2004) and linguistics (Anthony & Ringe, 2015). A recent computerized analysis of This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. ...
Cultural psychology-the research field focusing on the mutual constitution of culture and the mind-has made great strides by documenting robust cultural variations in how people think, feel, and act. The cumulative evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that Westerners are independent, whereas those in the rest of the world are interdependent. Although this research traditionally examined North Americans and East Asians, recent research has extended this literature to other non-Western regions. We review this emerging research and describe four distinct forms of interdependence in four non-Western cultural zones. Specifically, interdependence is promoted through (a) conflict avoidance (dominant in much of East Asia), (b) self-assertion for ingroup protection (dominant in Arab regions), (c) expression of emotions that promote interpersonal resonance (dominant in Latin America), and (d) argumentation for conflict resolution (dominant in South Asia). Furthermore, we propose that the Modern West adopted the existing signature features of interdependence in the neighboring cultural zones (notably, self-assertion, emotional expression, and argumentation) and redefined the psychological function and social meaning of these features; instead of promoting interdependence, they became means to achieve independence. This theoretical integration suggests that cultural variation in basic psychological processes emerged over the last several 1,000 years under the influence of ecology, migration, and intergroup relations. The current effort underscores the need to globalize psychological science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
