* The Proto Indo Europeans
• Where did the PIE People live, and come from? • The Archaeological Evidence
• By contrast, most of the Indo European languages that have disappeared from Europe were replaced by the conqueror’s language, which also happened to be of Indo European origin. (For example many Celtic and Germanic tribes languages were lost to Rome, and Latin.)
• Had the holocaust of Indo European languages in Central Asia not have occurred, we would not be able to suggest that the Indo European homeland was in Europe, but was probably more centrally located between the two far reaches, allowing for expansion in both directions * The Proto Indo Europeans
• Where did the PIE People live, and come from? • The Linguistic Evidence
• Just as their language provided the evidence that they actually existed, it also provides clues as to where they lived. • The first clue is that the Indo-European Language Family’s closest relative is the Finno-Ugric Language Family, which includes Finnish and other languages native to the forests of Northern Russia
• Links between language families are much weaker than the links to their daughter languages, or to the daughter languages to each other, but the fact that they do have links suggests a much older relationship between the speakers of PIE and Proto Finno-Ugric.
• With this clue, we can say with some confidence that the PIE homeland was very near the Finno-Ugric native land, because if it had been closer to say, Turkey, it would be much more Semitic in its foundation and show a relationship to the Semitic language family rather then the Finno-Ugric one. * The Proto Indo Europeans
• Where did the PIE People live, and come from? • The Linguistic Evidence
• Just as their language provided the evidence that they actually existed, it also provides clues as to where they lived. • The second clue is the words borrowed from other languages, and how much of the daughter language is composed of those borrowed words.
• The more borrowed words, the more likely that the language was not native to the area, particularly if there are more borrowed words for place names that are not Indo European in origin
• Indo European languages that show a great deal of evidence of borrowed words, particularly place names, include Greek, Hittite, Sanskrit and Old Irish, indicating that Greece, Turkey, India and Ireland are probably not the homeland of the ancient Proto Indo Europeans * The Proto Indo Europeans
• Where did the PIE People live, and come from? • The Linguistic Evidence
• Just as their language provided the evidence that they actually existed, it also provides clues as to where they lived. • Conversely, the modern Indo European language that still shares the most similarity to Proto Indo European is Lithuanian, so we can possibly place the Proto Indo Europeans into that area.
• The third clue is reconstructed words from the PIE language itself suggesting things about the natural environment.
• PIE includes a word for snow “snoighwos” suggesting a temperate rather than a tropical location
• Of the many names of plants and wild animals in PIE (like “mus”), most are widespread in the temperate zone of Eurasia * The Proto Indo Europeans
• Where did the PIE People live, and come from? • The Linguistic Evidence
• Just as their language provided the evidence that they actually existed, it also provides clues as to where they lived. • However, the words it lacks may be of more importance than the words it contains.
• There are no words for many crops. There are PIE words for plow and sickle, so surely they farmed, but only one word for an unspecified grain has survived.
• Other language families reconstructed, like the Bantu in South Africa, contain hundreds of names for different crops, as well as languages of South East Asia and Austronesian (the Australian and Polynesian native peoples) which are far older, and have had much more time to lose those names from their languages. * The Proto Indo Europeans
• Where did the PIE People live, and come from? • The Linguistic Evidence
• Just as their language provided the evidence that they actually existed, it also provides clues as to where they lived. • This indicates that though they were farmers, they must have lived somewhere that farming was difficult
• However, the PIE language does contain many words for animal husbandry, including yoke, plow, milk, butter, wool, weave, and many related to wheeled power, most likely pulled by animals, including wheel, axle, shaft, harness, hub, and lynchpin
• So, the Indo European homeland had to be most likely a place where humans found it difficult to farm, but could easily raise and feed animals * The Proto Indo Europeans
• Where did the PIE People live, and come from? • The Evidence in Total
• The PIE homeland is most likely halfway between Chinese Turkistan and Ireland
• Its climate is temperate
• It is difficult to support large scale agriculture, but easily supports large scale animal husbandry HOMEWORK ESSAY ASSIGNMENT
Attempt to locate the homeland of the Proto Indo Europeans, and write an explanation as to why you think that where you have chosen is the most likely location. * The Proto Indo Europeans
• What does it all mean for the World? • The Second Agricultural Evolution
• The first agricultural revolution dealt with the domestication of plants and animals, however, even after domestication, they were being used in the same manner as they had been for the millennia proceeding the event, food and hides and tools
• The second agricultural revolution dealt with the other uses of plants and animals, particularly their by products
• Milk • Butter • Cheese • Wool • Plant Fibers • Oxen Power pulling wheeled vehicles and plows • And, probably the most important, the use of the horse for transportation * The Proto Indo Europeans
• What does it all mean for the World? • The Second Agricultural Evolution
• Just before their domestication, wild horses were absent from the Middle East and Southern Europe, rare in Northern Europe, and abundant only in the steppes of Russia and eastward.
• The first evidence for the domestication of the horse is around 4000 B.C. in the steppes just north of the Black Sea where archaeologists have identified wear marks on horse’s teeth that indicate the use of a bit for riding
• For the first time in human evolution, man could travel at a greater speed than his legs could carry him. Speed helped hunters run down their prey, helped herders manage their sheep and cattle over large areas, and, most importantly, helped warriors launch quick surprise raids on distant enemies and to withdraw again before the enemies had opportunity to organize a counterattack. * The Proto Indo Europeans
• What does it all mean for the World? • The Second Agricultural Evolution
• Without the horse, human settlement of the Eurasian Steppe would have been very difficult to have obtained, because they would need to range great distances and have transportation for their goods.
• With the horse, however, the human population of the Steppes exploded, and a unique economy centered on a combination of cattle for meat, milk, and sheep for wool, plus horses and wheeled vehicles for transport, supplemented by a little farming, developed to sustain them.
• The Steppes abruptly end within modern day Hungary, and near the Russian Dnieper River, and give way to the forests of Europe, and there is a marked archaeological distinction between these boundaries with the people occupying either side. * The Proto Indo Europeans
• What does it all mean for the World? • The Second Agricultural Evolution
• Those to the east provide little evidence of intensive agriculture and food storage, while those to the west are littered with the evidence of heavy agricultural and food storage activity.
• Steppe peoples lacked any large permanent settlements, and the evidence suggests that they were highly mobile, whereas in the west villages with hundreds of rows of two story houses exist.
• What the horsemen lacked in architecture they made up for in the enthusiasm in which they buried their elite, a warrior caste. They were laid in lavish tombs with enormous numbers of metal weapons, and sometimes even with wagons filled with wealth and horse skeletons.
• So, how do you think these poor subsistence, herder economies were obtaining such wealth, based on the evidence? * The Proto Indo Europeans
• What does it all mean for the World?
• It would seem that the Proto Indo Europeans happened to be at the right place at the right time, culturally, technologically and linguistically
• Future steppe peoples have not been as successful because the original spread of the P.I.E. people introduced horse warfare into those cultures as well
• It was the start of a form of cultural unification of Europe that might have expanded across Asia had it not been for Steppe marauders later in history
• It developed not only similar languages, but poetic phrasing, religion and culture
• Phrases such as “imperishable fame” and “wine dark sea” are found throughout most of the daughter languages, and mark a tradition of heroic poetry and song * The Proto Indo Europeans
• What does it all mean for the World?
• It developed not only similar languages, but poetic phrasing, religion and culture
• Most early history in Indo European language speaking cultures is one of division into three separate social structures, a warrior class, a priestly class, and a commons/laborer class • Think of the caste system in India, or medieval Christendom where the Brahmins and Bishops are a priestly class, the Kshatriya and Knights were a warrior class, and the Vaishyas/Sudrhas and peasants being the commoner class • A religion dominated by a father figure sky god usually in a tripartite form
• To the Greeks and Romans this was usually the three brothers Zeus/Jupiter dyeus pater PIE for Sky Father), King of the gods and god of the skies, Poseidon/Neptune god of the seas, and Hades/Pluto god of the underworld
• More evidence of the rise of cultures as distinct as Ireland and India can be found in their religions, of Druidism and Hinduism
* The Proto Indo Europeans
• What does it all mean for the World?
• It developed not only similar languages, but poetic phrasing, religion and culture
• A religion dominated by a father figure sky god usually in a tripartite form
• Even in Christianity, as it spread into Indo European language speaking areas, this division of Christ’s divinity was expressed in the tripartite that those cultures were so accustomed to in their native beliefs by becoming God the father, God the son, and God the holy spirit.
• The use of sacrificial rites, very similar amongst these cultures is also performed * The Proto Indo Europeans
• What does it all mean for the World?
• It developed not only similar languages, but poetic phrasing, religion and culture
• The culture was patrilineal (leadership passed from father to son, women had little to no say in society)
• Young men, particularly of the warrior sect, went through certain rites of initiation that were most likely religious in nature, and centered on a connection with either the wolf or the dog, and set them apart from the rest of society
• Burials, particularly of warriors and the wealthy, (men only) were done in mounds
• True wealth was measured by the number of animals in your herds (cattle, chattel, cash) * The Proto Indo Europeans
• What does it all mean for the World?
• What did they look like?
• The Tocharian mummies, well preserved in the arid environment of the Gobi Desert were fair haired and light eyed, indicating Caucasian features
• Archaeogenetic information of remains found in steppe regions around the Caspian and Black seas indicate that the people were Caucasian with light, reddish to blonde hair, and most likely blue to green eyes.
• Studies have found both of these remains groups share a gene R1A1 with each other, that most Europeans also carry, linking them into the same haplogroup * The Proto Indo Europeans
• What does it all mean for the World?
• In the end, the steam roller of Indo European peoples changed the face of Europe and India forever, and their supremacy has led to peoples asserting a certain racial superiority over others
• Adolph Hitler assured people of the superiority of the Aryan race, and even adopted an ancient symbol, the sun wheel, used by Indo European cultures from India to Ireland representing the continuity of time, and the dawning of a new day, to represent his National Socialist party * The Proto Indo Europeans
• What does it all mean for the World?
• Racial superiority groups such as the Aryan Brotherhood today continue to use this imagery and idea of a “master” race based on the Proto Indo Europeans to support their worldview • In the end, though, what I feel the existence of the Proto Indo Europeans tells us, is that we do have a shared linguistic and cultural tie that does not demonstrate mastery, but allows us to not only appreciate what we have in common, but continue to search for those things that bind us from a shared past, even if we can only find them in the rudiments of a language we have to rebuild from the small vestiges left to us.
• Which brings us back to the story we used to first begin this introduction to our P.I.E. ancestors…… “Gwrreei owis, quesyo wlhnaa ne eest ekwoons espeket, oinom ghe gwrrum woghom weghontim oinomque megam bhorom, oinomque ghmmenm ooku bherontm. Owis nu ekwomos ewewquet: “Keer aghnutoi moi ekwoons agontm nerm widntei.” Ekwoos tu ewewquont: “Kludhi, owei, keer ghe aghnutoi nsmei widntmos: neer, potis, owioom r wlhnaam sebhi gwhermom westrom qurnneuti. Neghi owioom wlhnaa esti.” Tod kekluwoos owis agrom ebhuget.”
“On a hill, a sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: “My heart pains me, seeing a man driving the horses.” The horses said: “Listen sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool.” Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.”
• Owis- sheep (ewe, ovine) Whlnaa- wool Ekwoos- Horse (equine, equestrian) Ghmmenm- Human, man (human, hominem, Homo) Que- And, Megam- Big (mega) Keer- Core, center, heart (cardiology) Moi- to me, Widntei, Widntmos- You see, We see (video)