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Understanding Indo-European origins

When I was in highschool in the sixties I bought a copy of the new American Heritage Dictionary, which traced each word's etymology back to its proto-Indo-European (pIE) roots, with an appendix that allowed these roots to be retraced forwards to the modern words.

These etymological changes provide a large-scale framework for western history since 4500 BC, and more recent genetic studies have allowed this to be traced back much further. But political-correctness has made it unfashionable to spell out these patterns in a straightforward manner.

About 25,000 years ago, the light-skinned caucasian 'race' of hunter-gatherers began to spread north, east, and west from the Caucasus mountains. By 12,000 years ago the Nostratic language super-family could be found radiating around this Caucasian homeland.

The Indo-European language group apparently originated around 4500 BC, somewhere north of the Caucasus, among the people who, over the next millennium or two, would first master horse-riding and horse-drawn wheeled transport for their possessions.

They had already adopted livestock-herding from the non-caucasian mideast where agriculture had been evolving for 5000 years, and where small cities were already starting to form, though writing was still a millennium off.

Reconstructed pIE vocabulary likely included: cow, ox, steer, cattle-raid, sacrifice, butter, cheese, plow, yoke, wheel, axle, boat, sheep, wool, weaving, belt, pig, horse, dog, grain, sowing, grinding, sickle, house, post, door, doorpost, hearth, clan, chief, fort, pot, whetstone, hemp, flax, bow, arrow, dagger, fart, widow, lead-home (wed), put-heart (worship), father-god, sun-god, storm-god, three estates (white priest, red warrior, dark farmer), three cures (spells, surgery, herbs), twin, right-good, left-sinister

There were surely hundreds of language groups around the world in 4500 BC, most of which are lost forever. We can only reconstruct those few that survived long enough to be written down.

To the proto-Indo-Europeans' immediate north was the related (Nostratic) Finno-Ugric language group, which survives most notably in Finnish and Hungarian. To the south in the Caucasus was the Kartvelian language group, eg Georgian. To the east was the Altaic group including Turkic. (All of these were caucasian peoples, as were originally the orientals of China and Japan, and even the American Indians.)

Farther south, in the near east and north Africa, was the Hamito-Semitic language group including Egyptian and Phoenician (which survives as Hebrew). Farther east in India was the Dravidian group. Between the Semitic and the Dravidian was Sumerian, now extinct. (None of these was racially caucasian, though the Dravidian language was Nostratic via conquest.)

Of Europe's non-pIE languages at this point, only Basque (again caucasian) has survived. Europe had been mostly buried by glaciers until their gradual retreat began in 15,000 BC. It's very likely that one or more Nostratic language groups close to pIE dominated eastern and central Europe in 4500 BC, but as the pIE horse-culture moved west, these were overlaid by the Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, Italian and Greek groups.

Such spoken languages spread more easily than the physical populations moved, and genetic studies suggest the average European still lives near many of his ancestors from six millennia earlier.

Recent western history is mostly the story of the warring within and between the Germanic and Italic language groups, as adopted by previously Celtic peoples. The Celts of France (ie the Gauls) were conquered by Julius Caesar in 52 BC and accepted his Italic language, and then reconquered by Germanic barbarians in the 4thC, with French emerging as the local variant of Latin.

The Germanic Angles and Saxons took Celtic England in the 5thC, imposing their own language, but when the Scandinavian Germanic Vikings took French Normandy in the 10th they accepted the Italic language of their Celto-Germanic subjects, before extending their dominance to England in 1066 where they kept English, but added many latinate words.

During Elizabeth's reign (16thC) English thought began to dominate Europe, and the rise of the English-speaking USA in the 20thC has made it the unchallenged first language of global communication.

Important non-pIE (and mostly non-caucasian) influences on western culture have included agriculture, eastern religions, Judeo-Christianity, the oriental Huns, Islam, African musical innovations and modern Jewish thought. The success of Romanised Christianity has been especially notable, despite its inversion (in practice) of the main values Jesus taught.

Indo-Europeans meanwhile repeatedly asserted temporary dominance over non-pIE peoples, from the Mitanni c2500 BC in the mideast, to the empires of Alexander and Rome, to the Crusades of the 11thC, to the predatory colonialism of the 16th to 19thC, to the German persecution of Jews in the 20thC, to the recent wag-the-dog crusades against Iraq and Afghanistan (evidently zionist-driven).

Everywhere resources are being privatised by a self-perpetuating elite dominated by an uneasy alliance of Jews and Britons using corporations as a legal blind, while the vast majority of the world's population has been reduced to dire poverty as their homeland environments are raped by predatory capitalism. The corporate-controlled mass media are systematically excluding critical viewpoints, so that pro-forma democracies can no longer threaten the elite's plans in any serious way.

SciAm, multipage, well-read

African climate: [timeline]

"...a second aridity maximum around 22,000-13,000 14C years ago. Conditions then quickly became warmer and moister, though with an interruption by aridity around 11,000 14C years ago. A resumption of warm, moist conditions led up to the Holocene 'optimum' [8000-6000 BC] of greater rainforest extent and vegetation covering the Sahara. Conditions then became somewhat more arid and similar to the present. Relatively brief arid phases (e.g. 8,200 14C y.a.) appear to punctuate the generally moister early and mid Holocene conditions."

pre-10,000 BC:

Before agriculture, human beings grouped themselves into small tribes-- extended families-- and camped in different areas for winter and summer. They'd carry their belongings, and expect anything they left at an old campground to be gone on their next visit. Even the longest exploratory migrations would normally be within range of the old campgrounds (as a fallback).

They would know many of their neighboring tribes, and exchange members thru marriage. They'd keep track of kinship relations over some generations. The languages of such neighbors would remain close.

If a founder-group was lucky enough to move into a new area where they faced no serious competition, they could gradually fill it with a neat continuum of relatives, speaking neatly continuous versions of the founder-language.

But usually some neighbors were seen as non-kin enemies, and probably killed if the opportunity arose. Their languages would not converge, and any past kinship-connections would be forgotten. (Captured enemies might become bilingual slaves, however.) Crossroad-areas like the Levant would be especially contested, changing hands frequently and violently.

So a map of tribal connections would show well-connected clusters separated by poorly-connected margins. But even tribes at opposite edges of the same cluster would gradually speak different dialects.

Language skills would be developed mainly by listening to storytellers. Cultures with little storytelling would have inferior language skills. A good storyteller with innovative speechpatterns might influence a whole generation of imitators. Vocabulary-words that weren't kept alive in stories would be forgotten.

Rare individuals might travel long distances and maintain links with distant tribes, even learning their languages, especially for the purpose of trade.

One theory proposes that sometime before the origins of agriculture c10,000 BC, there was a root-language (designated 'Nostratic') that gave birth to all the major Eurasian languages. article Nova [tree] [dictionary?] [before Nostratic] ditto, not Hebrew?

Kartvelian - Indo-European - Uralic - Altaic - Eskimo
                                          \
                                           Dravidian

Cf genetics: [diagram]

Europe was mostly covered with glaciers until 13,000 BC, so as the climate warmed, virgin territory became available for expansion.

The Indo-European family was the most successful of the Nostratic language groups, growing up somewhere around the Black Sea. The Semitic and Hamitic groups were also early adopters of agriculture. [Proto-Afrasian]

10,000-4000 BC:

Agriculture changed the nomadic, small-tribal pattern by encouraging much larger groups living very close, all year round. (A popular intermediate adaptation was semi-nomadic herding of sheep and goats.)

The Fertile Crescent pioneered almost all the cultural innovations of this period: irrigation, pottery, wheat, barley, pigs.

Catal Hoyuk (before 5000 BC) and later Hamoukar were the biggest cities, and may have spoken an Indo-European ancestor-language. [SciAm] There may have been some traffic with southeast Europe by boat (or fording the Bosporus during dry phases). Agriculture seems to have crossed, and then headed up the Danube, possibly accompanied by an Indo-European ancestor-language.

IE words: barley, wheat, flax, apples, cherries, mulberries, grapes, wine, agricultural implements, mountainous landscape, oak, birch, beech, hornbeam, ash, willow, yew, pine, heather, moss, leopard, snow leopard, lion, monkey, elephant, wheel, axle, yoke, horse, foal

domestication of horse

3500 BC? Greek-Armenian-Indo-lranian splits from Anatolian

3000 BC? Tocharians - Gutians?

2900 BC? Danube culture invades Aegean via Troy

Tripolie culture north of Black Sea

2500 BC: Indo-Iranian splits from Greek-Armenian

2500 BC: Kartvelian in Caucasus [info]

2500: early date for Indo-European conquest of Hurrian copper mines (Mitanni dynasty) [info] [map]

centum-satem split? [info]

Tripolie replaced by nomadic (horse-riding) Pit Grave (Kurgan) culture

2200: hypothetical Egyptian contacts with Indo-European sailors via Troy [info]

2000 BC: Hittite kingdom founded, speaking Anatolian Indo-European tongue, written in cuneiform.

1500 BC: Mitanni (Indo-Iranian) has split from Vedic Sanskrit

1200 BC: Luwian inscriptions

[diagram]

current: [map] [Europe]

texts

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