Indo-European migrations
The Indo-European migrations are hypothesized migrations of peoples who spoke Proto-Indo-European and the derived Indo-European languages, which took place from around 4000 to 1000 BCE, potentially explaining how these related languages came to be spoken across a large area of Eurasia, spanning from the Indian subcontinent and Iranian plateau to Atlantic Europe.
While these early languages and their speakers are prehistoric, a synthesis of linguistics, archaeology, anthropology and genetics has established the existence of Proto-Indo-European and the spread of its daughter dialects through migrations of large populations of its speakers, as well as the recruitment of new speakers through emulation of conquering elites. Comparative linguistics describes the similarities between various languages governed by laws of systematic change, which allow the reconstruction of ancestral speech. Archaeology traces the spread of artifacts, habitations, and burial sites presumed to be created by speakers of Proto-Indo-European in several stages, from their hypothesized Proto-Indo-European homeland to their diaspora throughout Western Europe, Central Asian, and South Asia, with incursions into East Asia. Recent genetic research, including paleogenetics, has increasingly delineated the kinship groups involved in this movement.
According to the widely held Kurgan hypothesis, or renewed Steppe hypothesis, the oldest Indo-European migration split from the earliest proto-Indo-European speech community inhabiting the Volga basin, and produced the Anatolian languages. The second-oldest branch, Tocharian, was spoken in the Tarim Basin, after splitting from early PIE spoken on the eastern Pontic steppe. The late PIE culture, within the Yamnaya horizon on the Pontic–Caspian steppe around 3000 BCE, then branched to produce the bulk of the Indo-European languages through migrations to the west and southeast.
Fundamentals
Linguistics
, Greek, and other Paleo-Balkan languages had their core in the Balkans after the Indo-European migrations in the region. Proto-Celtic and Proto-Italic may have developed from Indo-European languages coming from Central Europe to Western Europe after the 3rd millennium BCE Yamnaya migrations into the Danube Valley, while Proto-Germanic and Proto-Balto-Slavic may have developed east of the Carpathian Mountains, in present-day Ukraine, moving north and spreading with the Corded Ware culture in Middle Europe.The Proto-Indo-Iranian language and culture probably emerged within the Sintashta culture, at the eastern border of the Abashevo culture, which in turn developed from the Corded Ware-related Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture. The Sintashta culture grew into the Andronovo culture, the two first phases being the Fedorovo Andronovo culture and Alakul Andronovo culture. Indo-Aryans moved into the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex and spread to the Levant, northern India. The Iranian languages spread back throughout the steppes with the Scyths, and into Ancient Iran with the Medes, Parthians and Persians from.
Alternative theories include Colin Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis. It suggests a much earlier date for the Indo-European languages, proposing an origin in Anatolia and an initial spread with the earliest farmers who migrated to Europe.
Also, the Armenian hypothesis proposes that the Urheimat of the Indo-European language was south of the Caucasus. While the Armenian hypothesis has been criticized on archeological and chronological grounds, recent genetic research has revived debate.
Indo-European languages
The Dutch scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted extensive similarities between various European languages, Sanskrit, and Persian. Over a century later, after learning Sanskrit in India, Sir William Jones detected systematic correspondences; he described them in his Third Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatic Society in 1786, concluding that all these languages originated from the same source. From his initial intuitions there developed the hypothesis of an Indo-European language family consisting of several hundred related languages and dialects. The 2009 Ethnologue estimates a total of about 439 Indo-European languages and dialects, about half of these belonging to the Indo-Aryan sub-branch based in Southern Asian subregion. The Indo-European family includes most major current languages of Europe, of the Iranian plateau, of the northern half of the Indian Subcontinent, and of Sri Lanka, with kindred languages also formerly spoken in parts of ancient Anatolia and Central Asia. With written attestations appearing from the Bronze Age in the form of the Anatolian languages and Mycenaean Greek, the Indo-European family is significant in historical linguistics as possessing the second-longest recorded history, after the Afroasiatic family.Almost 3 billion native speakers use Indo-European languages, making it by far the largest language family. Many of the 20 world languages with the largest numbers of native speakers are Indo-European. Approximately 60% of all Indo-European language speakers globally speak an Indo-Iranian language, making it the largest branch of the Indo-European language family by number of speakers.
Development of the Indo-European languages
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the linguistic reconstruction of a common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, as spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans after the split-off of Anatolian and Tocharian. PIE was the first proposed proto-language to be widely accepted by linguists. Far more work has gone into reconstructing it than any other proto-language and it is by far the most well-understood of all proto-languages of its age. During the 19th century, the vast majority of linguistic work was devoted to reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European or its daughter proto-languages such as Proto-Germanic, and most of the current techniques of historical linguistics were developed as a result.Scholars estimate that PIE may have been spoken as a single language around 3500 BCE, though estimates by different authorities can vary by more than a millennium. The most popular hypothesis for the origin and spread of the language is the Kurgan hypothesis, which postulates an origin in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of Eastern Europe.
The existence of PIE was first postulated in the 18th century by Sir William Jones, who observed the similarities between Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Latin. By the early 20th century, well-defined descriptions of PIE had been developed that are still accepted today. The largest developments of the 20th century have been the discovery of Anatolian and Tocharian languages and the acceptance of the laryngeal theory. The Anatolian languages have also spurred a major re-evaluation of theories concerning the development of various shared Indo-European language features and the extent to which these features were present in PIE itself.
PIE is thought to have had a complex system of morphology that included inflections, and ablaut. Nouns used a sophisticated system of declension and verbs used a similarly sophisticated system of conjugation.
Pre-Proto-Indo-European
Relationships to other language families, including the Uralic languages, have been proposed but remain controversial. There is no written evidence of Proto-Indo-European, so all knowledge of the language is derived by reconstruction from later languages using linguistic techniques such as the comparative method and the method of internal reconstruction. Most linguists recognize there is a limit to linguistic reconstruction, and that reconstructing an ancestral language to Proto-Indo-European might not be possible.The Indo-Hittite hypothesis postulates a common predecessor which both the Anatolian languages and the other Indo-European languages came from, called Proto-Indo-Hittite. Although PIE logically had predecessors, the Indo-Hittite hypothesis is not widely accepted, and there is little to suggest that it is possible to reconstruct a Proto-Indo-Hittite stage that differs substantially from what is already reconstructed for PIE.
Frederik Kortlandt postulates a shared common ancestor of Indo-European and Uralic, Proto-Indo-Uralic, as a possible pre-PIE. According to Kortlandt, "Indo-European is a branch of Indo-Uralic which was radically transformed under the influence of a North Caucasian substratum when its speakers moved from the area north of the Caspian Sea to the area north of the Black Sea."
Uralic, Caucasian and Semitic borrowings
and PIE have a lexicon in common, generally related to trade, such as words for "price" and "draw, lead". Similarly, "sell" and "wash" were borrowed in Proto-Ugric. Although some have proposed a common ancestor, this is generally regarded as the result of intensive borrowing, which suggests that their homelands were located near each other. Proto-Indo-European also exhibits lexical loans to or from Caucasian languages, particularly Proto-Northwest Caucasian and Proto-Kartvelian, which suggests a location close to the Caucasus.Gramkelidze and Ivanov, using the now largely unsupported glottalic theory of Indo-European phonology, also proposed Semitic borrowings into Proto-Indo-European, suggesting a more southern homeland to explain these borrowings. According to Mallory and Adams, some of these borrowings may be too speculative or from a later date, but they consider the proposed Semitic loans *táwros 'bull' and *wéyh₁on- 'wine; vine' to be more likely. Anthony notes that those Semitic borrowings may have travelled along trade or migration routes.
Phases of Proto-Indo-European
According to Anthony, the following terminology may be used:- Archaic PIE for "the last common ancestor of the Anatolian and non-Anatolian IE branches";
- Early, core, or Post-Anatolian, PIE for "the last common ancestor of the non-Anatolian PIE languages, including Tocharian";
- Late PIE for "the common ancestor of all other IE branches".