Editing Proto-Indo-Europeans (section)

===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}}}}