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The Canonical Indo-European Model and Its Underlying Assumptions

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The Canonical Indo-European Model and Its Underlying Assumptions The canonical Indo-European model and its underlying assumptions Jean-Paul Demoule It is widely known that the canonical Indo-European model, which was originally a purely linguistic model, is founded on a strong central assumption: that of an original people (Urvolk), who inhabited an original homeland (Urheimat) where they spoke an original language (Ursprache). They left this homeland to spread progressively throughout a large part of Eurasia, giving rise through a process of scissiparity to all of the historically known Indo-European languages and to the peoples who spoke, or still speak, them. I am not the first person to call this model into question, which I do on a number of levels in a recent book (Demoule 2014): a) On a factual, strictly extra-linguistic level, based on data provided by archaeology, comparative mythology, biological anthropology and linguistic palaeontology. This approach leads to the conclusion that, in the present state of knowledge, it is impossible to confirm the validity of the canonical centrifugal tree model in all its various forms. b) On a historical and cultural level, by calling into question the usual “Kossinian” model, i.e. the correspondence, based on the model of the 19th century Nation State, between an “archaeological material culture”, a “people”, and a homogenous language; the model followed here adopts a biological view of language. c) On a linguistic level, by questioning the validity of the tree model for charting the resemblances and correspondences between Indo-European languages. d) Finally, on an ideological level, showing by means of historiography how the idea of an original people was constructed over time by European thinkers as an alternative origin-myth to the Bible, even though it re-used the same models, such as a point of origin and the Tower of Babel; from this perspective, national socialism is but one of the possible mythical outcomes, which also functions as a magnifying mirror. Université de Paris I Panthéon – Sorbonne et Institut universitaire de France, Courriel : [email protected] Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:47:49PM via free access 166 Jean-Paul Demoule In the current paper, however, only the first two levels will be examined, the third being only touched upon, even though it is in fact difficult to dissociate these four levels from each other because reasoning relating to the Indo- European question tends to function in a circular manner: the idea, for example, of a migration from the Pontic steppe has been postulated for the past 300 years and is regularly reaffirmed using various new arguments. 1. WHAT ARCHAEOLOGY CAN TELL US As regards the facts, we will begin with the realia, i.e. archaeology. In order to prove a migration archeologically, it is necessary to be able to trace, step by step, the diffusion of a complete material culture – pottery forms and decoration, tools and weapons, architecture, funerary practices, etc. – from a specific region. Such migrations are well defined in Europe for the spread of Neolithic agricultural colonisation from the Near East at the end of the 7th millennium BCE (cf. infra) and also for the Polynesian migrations which occurred at a later period on the other side of the world. With regard to the original Indo-European people, therefore, it is essential to: a) prove archaeologically that a migration originated in some part of Eurasia and spread throughout all of the regions where historically-attested Indo-European languages were spoken; b) prove that this original migration was Indo-European. Three principal alternative homelands are proposed in current scientific literature: the Baltic, the Near East and the Pontic steppe. The idea of a Baltic and Scandinavian homeland, postulated by German nationalist archaeologists, such as Gustaf Kossinna, by their national-socialist epigones, and subsequently by contemporary extreme right-wing groups (“New Right”), is archaeologically untenable. This region, which was occupied by small groups of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, was colonised by Neolithic farming populations originating from Central Europe from the end of the 5th Millennium BCE. There is no evidence for a north to south migration such as that postulated by Kossinna, which he envisaged as occurring in 14 movements. As we have seen, the Near-Eastern homeland, defended by the archaeologist Colin Renfrew (Renfrew 1987), is the point of origin for the agricultural colonisation of Europe (and elsewhere) from the 7th millennium BCE onwards; however, there is no evidence that these early farmers spoke Indo-European languages, and there are, in fact, several arguments against it, as I have outlined elsewhere (Demoule 2014: 353-384). Finally, the classic steppe homeland is considered to be “Indo-European” based on the domestication of the horse and the emergence of the chariot (cf. infra the question of linguistic palaeontology). However, it can be demonstrated that there were other regions of origin for the domestication of the horse, and that the first “chariots” were not war chariots with spoked wheels (these did not appear until c.1800 BCE) but, instead, were heavy, solid-wheeled carts drawn by oxen, which Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:47:49PM via free access The canonical Indo-European model 167 were not necessarily invented in one single place. While nomadism is presumed, agriculture, on the other hand, is well attested (Pashkevich 2003). Moreover, there is a lack of archaeological evidence for large-scale migrations emanating from the steppes. It is clear that significant socio-economic transformations took place throughout Europe during the 5th millennium BCE, but this involves a more general phenomenon: the emergence of increasingly hierarchical societies at the moment when the Neolithic colonisation of Europe had reached the Atlantic and when increasingly numerous human groups had to live in a space which would remain confined for some time. On the other hand, there is no evidence within the archaeological record for large scale movements from the steppes to Central and Western Europe, or to Central Asia: In other words, we do not find evidence for the diffusion of the entire material culture of the steppe to those regions where historically attested Indo-European languages were spoken (See genetic data presented below). Classically, it has been argued for more than a century that the migration must have involved small warrior groups who managed to take control of vast territories without leaving detectable traces in the archaeological record. In addition to finding ourselves in the realm of the undecidable and, therefore, outside the realm of science in the strict sense, all known historic examples indicate that when a minority (military or not) elite forcibly takes political control of a population, its members become subsumed by the mass within the space of a few generations, mainly through marriage, and rapidly end up losing their language: such was the case for the Franks in France, the Vikings in various parts of Europe (from the Ukraine to Normandy and from Sicily to England), the Proto-Bulgarian Turco-Mongols in Bulgaria, the Lombards in Italy, the Visigoths in Spain, etc. Mention could also be made of the Spanish conquistadors who, with a couple of hundred mercenaries, succeeded in bringing down the Aztec and Inca empires. The fact that Spanish is spoken in Latin America today (along with Portuguese, English and French elsewhere in America) is due to 500 years of state, military, bureaucratic, and religious domination, and, despite this, numerous indigenous languages have survived and continue to be spoken today. 2. RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE FIELD OF GENETICS In terms of biological data, we can cite physical anthropology, which, from the mid- 19th century to the mid- 20th century, attempted to define race using cranial measurement, thereby endlessly distinguishing between dolichocephalics and brachycephalics, Nordic, Alpine and Dinaric races etc. in the search for the great Indo-European and “Aryan” migrations. However, the more measurements were taken, the more the races became diluted and their frontiers dissolved, to the point where institutional physical anthropology finally gave up, underwent a name change to become “biological anthropology”, and shifted its interest to other characteristics. Nevertheless, the notion of a “Nordic race” persisted in ideological literature and particularly among proponents of the Baltic hypothesis (Haudry 1981, Day 2001). Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:47:49PM via free access 168 Jean-Paul Demoule After a number of early attempts based on blood markers, DNA has recently become the favoured focus of research in this field. Most notably, modern human DNA was used to recreate the Great Hereditary Tree of all humans, which is linked to the tree of all languages of the world (Cavalli-Sforza 1994, Ruhlen 1994). More recently, DNA analysis has been used to shed light on Indo- European migrations and has been shown to support the thesis of a massive Indo- European migration from the Pontic steppe during the 4th millennium BCE (Keyser et al. 2009, Ricault et al. 2012, Haak et al. 2015, Allentoft et al. 2015). While offering future potential, these analyses nonetheless present several problems. Firstly, the samples are small in number, chiefly due to the cost and complexity of the analysis: 200-300 samples were used, spread over several millennia and over a large part of Eurasia. Secondly, numerous technical problems arise, particularly regarding the risk of cross-contamination between samples and contamination occurring during excavation and post-excavation handling of the bone remains. Thirdly, the samples are used within the framework of the same simplistic models as those previously employed by craniometry, i.e. models involving large-scale migrations of homogenous peoples from a single point of origin, with a clear risk of circular reasoning. Finally, without going into detail, the published results present several interpretation issues.
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