Proto-Indo-European homeland

The Proto-Indo-European homeland (or Indo-European homeland) was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and went on to form the proto-communities of the different branches of the Indo-European language family.

Quotes

• Ancient DNA available from this time in Anatolia shows no evidence of steppe ancestry similar to that in the Yamnaya (although the evidence here is circumstantial as no ancient DNA from the Hittites themselves has yet been published). This suggests to me that the most likely location of the population that first spoke an Indo-European language was south of the Caucasus Mountains, perhaps in present-day Iran or Armenia, because ancient DNA from people who lived there matches what we would expect for a source population both for the Yamnaya and for ancient Anatolians. If this scenario is right the population sent one branch up into the steppe-mixing with steppe hunter-gatherers in a one-to-one ratio to become the Yamnaya as described earlier- and another to Anatolia to found the ancestors of people there who spoke languages such as Hittite.
  • David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2018, p.177

• It is a basic tenet of migration and homeland theory that the geographical location of a language family’s proto-homeland is to be sought in the vicinity of the root of the family tree (i.e. in the region where the deepest branches come together on a map); or, more generally, that the homeland is to be sought in the region of present greatest genetic diversity of the family.
  • Johanna Nichols. NICHOLS 1997: The Epicentre of the Indo-European Linguistic Spread. Nichols, Johanna. Chapter 8, in ―Archaeology and Language, Vol. I: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations, ed. Roger Blench & Matthew Spriggs, Routledge, London and New York, 1997.

• “As defined by Dyen (1956), a homeland is a continuous area and a migration is any movement causing that area to become non-continuous (while a movement that simply changes its shape or area is an expansion or expansive intrusion). The linguistic population of the homeland is a set of intermediate protolanguages, the first-order daughters of the original protolanguage (in Dyen’s terms, a chain of coordinate languages). The homeland is the same as (or overlaps) the area of the largest chain of such co-ordinates, i.e. the area where the greatest number of highest-level branches occur. Homelands are to be reconstructed in such a way as to minimize the number of migrations, and the number of migrating daughter branches, required to get from them to attested distributions (Dyen 1956: 613).”109
  • Johanna Nichols in Archaeology and Language, Vol. I: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations edited by Roger Blench and Matthew Spriggs, Routledge, London and New York, 1997. (Paper by Johanna Nichols). Quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• The Indo-European homeland has to be localized at the area where the wild horse did not live.
  • Is Indo-European *Hekwo ̳horse‘ Really of Indo-European Origin? Voclav Blažek. In Studia Indogermanica Lodziensia (Sigl), Vol.II, Lodz, 1998. (BLAŽEK 1998:29).

• “Gimbutas, following most recent Russian work, has departed from Childe, to the extent of deriving the Kurgan cultures from the steppes on the Lower Volga and farther east (…) While linguistic opinion has been moving in the direction of putting the Indo-European homeland in the region of the Vistula, Oder or Elbe, archaeological opinion is now putting it in the Lower Volga steppe and regions east of the Caspian Sea.”
  • Ward H. Goodenough: “The Evolution of Pastoralism and Indo-European Origins”, in G. Cardona et al., eds.: Indo-European and Indo-Europeans, p.253-265, specially p.255, with reference to V. Gordon Childe: The Aryans. A Study of Indo-European Origins, London 1926., quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• If there are any lessons to be learned, it is that every model of Indo-European origins can be found to reveal serious deficiencies as we increase our scrutiny.
  • JP Mallory, Twenty-first century clouds over Indo-European homelands, 2013, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins.

• “We don’t exclude the possibility of contacts between the ancient Indo-Europeans and their Caucasian contemporaries, but no precise trace has so far been brought forward. The structural similarities that one may envision for a very distant period would not imply a common origin nor a period of symbiosis.”
  • Martinet (1985:21):, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins.

• The Vedas do not preserve any veneration, not even any mention, of an Urheimat. Compare this with the Thora (the first five books of the Bible): edited in about the 6th century BC, it gives a central place to Moses’ exodus from Egypt in about 1200 BC, and of Abraham from “Ur of the Chaldees” in about 1600 BC. Similarly, in the 16th century, the Aztecs in Mexico still preserved the memory of Aztlan (probably Utah), the country from which they migrated in the 12th century. Postulating that the Vedic people kept silent about a homeland which they still vividly remembered, as the invasionists imply, is not coherent with all we know about ancient peoples, who preserved such memories for many centuries.
  • Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• The shift from India to Europe as the preferred Urheimat was formally due to new linguistic insights.. but it was coincidentally also well-tuned to new political concerns. Apart from rising nationalism which explains the scramble among scholars to grab the Urheimat status for their own country, the main factor was European colonialism, then at its apogee. It seemed natural that the continent whose manifest destiny was the domination of the world, had also brought forth its own proto-historic Indo-European culture and language. Conversely, it seemed illogical that a backward country like India, badly in need of the White Man's civilising mission, could have brought forth the superior European culture.... In the same period, race theories conquered the intellectual scene, fitting neatly with the Europe-to-India scenario for the spread of Indo-European. It all fell into place: the Aryans had been white Nordic people who, with their inborn superiority, had developed a culture and technology which allowed them to subdue less advanced races: dark-haired Mediterraneans and West-Asians, and dark-skinned Indians. The linguistic "aryanization" of India by white Aryan invaders from Europe formed a complete case study of all that the upcoming racist worldview stood for.
  • Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". I.244

• “It is opposed to their foreign origin that neither in the code [of Manu], nor, I believe, in the Vedas, nor in any book that is certainly older than the code, is there any allusion to a prior residence”.... “The common origin of the Sanscrit language with those of the west leaves no doubt that there was once a connection between the nations by whom they are used; but it proves nothing regarding the place where such a connection subsisted, nor about the time, (…) To say that it spread from a central point is a gratuitous assumption (…) Where, also, could the central point be, from which a language could spread over India, Greece and Italy, and yet leave Chaldaea, Syria and Arabia untouched? The question, therefore, is still open. There is no reason whatever for thinking that the Hindus ever inhabited any country but their present.”
  • Mountstuart Elphinstone,quoted in (p.115-6) D. K. Chakrabarti, Nationalism in the Study of Ancient Indian History (Aryan Books International, Delhi). and quoted in [1]

• It is probable that one of the earliest homes (if not the first seat) of the members of the great Aryan family was in the high land surrounding the sources of the Oxus, to the north of die point connecting the Hindu Kush with the Himalayas . . . the Pamir Plateau.
  • Monier Williams (1891) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

• From a common Proto-Aryan speech we infer also a common Proto-Aryan homeland. . . . Where was this primitive home from which the Aryan blood went out in so many streams over the earth?
  • Widney, Joseph P. 1907. Race Life of the Aryan Peoples. London: Funk. quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

• "The 'problem' is primarily in the head of Indo-Europeanists: It is a problem of interpretative logic and ideology. We have seen that one primarily places the lE's in the north if one is German, . . . in the east if one is Russian, and in the middle if, being Italian or Spanish, one has no chance of competing for the privilege" (Demoule I 980, 120).
  • quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

• Earlier still, in 1948, Hankins articulated the level of disillusionment in his time: Skepticism in scholarly circles grew rapidly after 1880. The obvious impossibility of actually locating the Aryan homeland; the increasing complexity of the problem with every addition to our knowledge of prehistoric cultures; the even more remote possibility of ever learning anything conclusive regarding the traits of the mythical "original Aryans"; the increasing realization that all the historical peoples were much mixed in blood and that the role of a particular race in a great melange of races, though easy to exaggerate, is impossible to determine, the ridiculous and humiliating spectacle of eminent scholars subordinating their interests in truth to the inflation of racial and national pride—all these and many other reasons led scholars to declare either that the Aryan doctrine was a fig- ment of the professional imagination or that it was incapable of clarification because the crucial evidence was lost, apparently forever.
  • quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

• One does not ask 'where is the Indo-European home- land?' but rather 'where do they put it now?'
  • JP Mallory (1989) 1989. In Search of the Indo-Eumpecms. London: Thames and Hudson. quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

• The cynical have been tempted to describe it as the phlogiston of prehistoric research.
  • JPMallory, J. P. 1973. "A History of the Indo-European Problem." Journal of Indo-European Studies 1:21-66. quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

• We have different sub-regions of an early IE world, scattered in space from the Baltic to Anatolia and east across the European steppe. . . . To unify these disparate geographical elements together into a single 'unified theory' seems to be as distant to those seeking such a goal in Indo-European studies as it is for physicists.
  • JP Mallory's (1997) 1997. "The Homelands of the Indo-Europeans." In Archaeology and Language (93-121). Ed. R. Blench and M. Spriggs. London: Routledge. quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

• Instead of letting us know definitely and precisely where the so-called original home of the Aryans lay, they drag us into a maze of conjectures clouded by the haze of presumptions. The whole subject of the Aryan problem is a farrago of linguistic speculations or archaeological imaginations complicated by racial prejudices and chauvinistic xenophobia. It is high time we extricate ourselves from this chaos of bias and belief.
  • (Prakash, 1966, xliv) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

• For nearly two centuries the investigations went on, and voluminous works were written on the subject. The net result of their investigations ended in failure, and nothing definite was settled either in the sphere of language or race. What they finally left behind is the fiction of Ursprache [original language] with a false Urvolk [original people], who are found located in an equally nebulous Urheimat [homeland].
  • (C. Pillai 1940, 2) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

• Where would one have placed the homeland if the areas where all the Indo-European languages are spoken were to be eliminated by the logic used to eliminate the North- west of the subcontinent? While this may well be an unwarranted flight of fancy, it seems fair to point out that the homeland candidacy of the Volga Valley steppes, for one, is actually advantaged by the absence of ancient textual sources in the Indo-European languages spoken in that area (such as Balto-Slavic) that might well have proved detrimental to their case were they to have been preserved and discovered. The same holds true for other postulated homelands.
  • Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 5

• This thesis will receive—and has already received—cheers from dilettantes. Dilettantes desperately need one thing: the proof that the population of the Armenian Plateau spoke Armenian ever since the Palaeolithic period, if possible.
  • D'iakonov (1985) (156-157). commenting on the Armenian homeland theory. in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 13