Editing Proto-Indo-Europeans (section)

==Urheimat hypotheses==
{{Main|Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses}}
{{See also|Indo-European migrations}}
[[File:Indo-European migrations.jpg|thumb|300px| Scheme of Indo-European language dispersals from c.&nbsp;4000 to 1000 BC according to the widely held [[Kurgan hypothesis]].<br>– Center: Steppe cultures<br>1 (black): Anatolian languages (archaic PIE)<br>2 (black): Afanasievo culture (early PIE)<br>3 (black) Yamnaya culture expansion (Pontic-Caspian steppe, [[Danubian Plain (Bulgaria)|Danube Valley]]) (late PIE)<br>4A (black): Western Corded Ware<br>4B-C (blue & dark blue): Bell Beaker; adopted by Indo-European speakers<br>5A-B (red): Eastern Corded ware<br>5C (red): Sintashta (proto-Indo-Iranian)<br>6 (magenta): Andronovo<br>7A (purple): Indo-Aryans (Mittani)<br>7B (purple): Indo-Aryans (India)<br>[NN] (dark yellow): proto-Balto-Slavic<br>8 (grey): Greek<br>9 (yellow):Iranians<br>– [not drawn]: Armenian, expanding from western steppe]]

According to some archaeologists, PIE speakers cannot be assumed to have been a single, identifiable people or tribe, but were a group of loosely-related populations that were ancestral to the later, still partially prehistoric, [[Bronze Age]] Indo-Europeans. This is believed especially by those archaeologists who posit an original homeland of vast extent and immense time depth. However, this belief is not shared by most linguists, because proto-languages, like all languages before modern transport and communication, occupied small geographical areas over a limited time span, and were spoken by a set of close-knit communities– a tribe in the broad sense.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Aikio|first1=Ante|title=An essay on Saami ethnolinguistic prehistory|journal=Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne|date=2012|issue=266, ''A Linguistic Map of Prehistoric Northern Europe''|pages=93f., 98|url=http://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust266/sust266_aikio.pdf|access-date=31 July 2017|publisher=[[Finno-Ugrian Society]]|location=Helsinki, Finland}}</ref>

Researchers have put forward a great variety of proposed locations for the first speakers of Proto-Indo-European. Few of these hypotheses have survived scrutiny by academic specialists in Indo-European studies sufficiently well to be included in modern academic debate.{{sfn|Mallory|1991|p={{page needed|date=September 2021}}}}

===Pontic-Caspian steppe hypothesis===

The Kurgan (or Steppe) hypothesis was first formulated by [[Otto Schrader (philologist)|Otto Schrader]] (1883) and [[V. Gordon Childe]] (1926),<ref>{{Cite book|last=Renfrew|first=Colin|title=Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins|date=1990|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-38675-3 |pages=37–38}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Jones-Bley|first=Karlene|date=2008|title=Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, November 3–4, 2006|journal=Historiographia Linguistica|volume=35|issue=3|pages=465–467|doi=10.1075/hl.35.3.15koe|issn=0302-5160}}</ref> and was later systematized by [[Marija Gimbutas]] from 1956 onwards. The name originates from the ''[[kurgan]]s'' (burial mounds) of the Eurasian steppes. The hypothesis suggests that the Indo-Europeans, a [[patriarchal]], [[patrilinear]], and [[nomad]]ic culture of the [[Pontic–Caspian steppe]] (which is now part northeastern [[Bulgaria]] and southeastern [[Romania]], through [[Moldova]], and southern and eastern [[Ukraine]], through the [[North Caucasus|northern Caucasus]] of [[southern Russia]], and into the [[lower Volga region]] of western [[Kazakhstan]]), expanded into the area through several waves of migration during the 3rd millennium BCE, coinciding with the [[Domestication of the horse|taming of the horse]]. Leaving archaeological signs of their presence (see [[Corded Ware culture]]), they subjugated the supposedly peaceful, egalitarian, and [[matrilinear]] European neolithic farmers of Gimbutas' [[Old Europe (archaeology)|Old Europe]]. A modified form of this theory, by [[J. P. Mallory]], which dates the migrations to an earlier time (to around 3500 BCE), and puts less insistence upon their violent or quasi-military nature, remains the most widely accepted theory of the Proto-Indo-European expansion.{{refn|group=note|See:
* Mallory: "The Kurgan solution is attractive and has been accepted by many archaeologists and linguists, in part or total. It is the solution one encounters in the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and the ''Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Larousse''."{{sfn|Mallory|1989|p=185}}
* Strazny: "The single most popular proposal is the Pontic steppes (see the Kurgan hypothesis)..."{{sfn|Strazny|2000|p=163}}}}

===Armenian highland hypothesis===

The [[Armenian hypothesis]], based on the [[glottalic theory]], suggests that the Proto-Indo-European language was spoken during the [[4th millennium BC]] in the [[Armenian Highland]]. This [[Indo-Hittite]] model does not include the [[Anatolian languages]] in its scenario. The phonological peculiarities of PIE proposed in the glottalic theory would be best preserved in the [[Armenian language]] and the [[Germanic languages]], the former assuming the role of the dialect which remained ''in situ'', implied to be particularly archaic in spite of its late attestation. [[Proto-Greek]] would be practically equivalent to [[Mycenean Greek]] and would date to the 17th century BC, closely associating Greek migration to Greece with the [[Indo-Aryan migration]] to India at about the same time (viz., Indo-European expansion at the transition to the [[Late Bronze Age]], including the possibility of Indo-European [[Kassites]]). The Armenian hypothesis argues for the latest possible date of Proto-Indo-European (''sans'' Anatolian), a full millennium later than the mainstream [[Kurgan hypothesis]]. In this, it figures as an opposite to the [[Anatolian hypothesis]], in spite of the geographical proximity of the respective ''Urheimaten'' suggested, diverging from the time-frame suggested there by a full three millennia.<ref>T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov (March 1990) "The Early History of Indo-European Languages", ''Scientific American''.</ref><ref>I.M. Diakonoff (1984) ''The Prehistory of the Armenian People''.</ref>

===Anatolian hypothesis===
The [[Anatolian hypothesis]], notably advocated by [[Colin Renfrew]] from the 1980s onwards, proposes that the Indo-European languages spread peacefully into Europe from [[Anatolia]] from around 7000 BC with the [[Neolithic Revolution]]'s advance of farming (''wave of advance''). The culture of the Indo-Europeans as inferred by linguistic reconstruction raises difficulties for this theory, since early neolithic cultures lacked the horse, the wheel, and metal – terms for all of which are securely reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. Renfrew dismisses this argument, comparing such reconstructions to a theory that the presence of the word "[[café]]" in all modern Romance languages implies that the ancient Romans had cafés too.

Another argument, made by proponents of the steppe [[Urheimat]] (such as David Anthony) against Renfrew, points to the fact that ancient Anatolia is known to have been inhabited in the 2nd millennium BC by non-Indo-European-speaking peoples, namely the [[Hattians]] (perhaps North [[Languages of the Caucasus|Caucasian]]-speaking), the [[Chalybes]] (language unknown), and the [[Hurrians]] ([[Hurro-Urartian languages|Hurro-Urartian]]).

Following the publication of several studies on [[ancient DNA]] in 2015, [[Colin Renfrew]] subsequently acknowledged the important role of migrations of populations speaking one or several Indo-European languages from the [[Pontic–Caspian steppe]] towards [[Northwestern Europe]], noting that the DNA evidence from ancient skeletons "had completely rejuvenated Maria Gimbutas' kurgan hypothesis."<ref>Renfrew, Colin (2017) "[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmv3J55bdZc Marija Redivia : DNA and Indo-European origins]" (''The Oriental Institute lecture series : Marija Gimbutas memorial lecture'', Chicago. November 8, 2017, see timestamp 11:14).</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1= Pellard|first1= Thomas|last2= Sagart|first2= Laurent|last3= Jacques|first3= Guillaume|date= 2018|title= L'indo-européen n'est pas un mythe|journal= Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris|volume= 113|issue= 1|pages= 79–102|doi= 10.2143/BSL.113.1.3285465|s2cid= 171874630}}</ref>