Indo-European Studies
The field of Indo-European studies was inspired by a British polymath, Sir William Jones. Jones, who was a linguistic prodigy, was appointed as a judge in Calcutta, Bengal in 1783, and decided to learn Sanskrit in order to better understand the history of the law in India. In 1786 Jones gave a speech on the Hindus to the Asiatic Society which contained the following passage:
The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.
Similarities between various European languages and Sanskrit had been observed as early as the 16th century, but Jones' observation captured the attention of many European intellectuals who began to uncover similarities between languages, and the field of comparative linguistics was born.
Linguists soon discovered that nearly all languages from Iceland to India were related, with the exception of the Finno-Uralic languages, Basque and Hungarian. Consider the words for "mother":
English mother (<OE mōdor)
Gothic ON móðir”mother”
Latin māter “mother”
Ancient Greek mḗtēr”mother”
Sanskrit mātár-“mother”
Iranian Av mātar-“mother”
Slavic OCS mati, mater-“mother”
Baltic Lithmóteris”woman”,motina; OPrusmuti”mother”
Celtic OIr māthir”mother”
Armenian mayr”mother”
Albanian motër”sister”
Tocharian A mācar, B mācer”mother”
You might argue that this is just a coincidence; after all, the word for mother in Chinese is moo-chin. Perhaps the word mother is derived from a baby's first word: ma-ma! Well, that might be, but the similarities among cognates (word roots) seems more than a coincidence and extends to other kinships, numbers, parts of the body, words for animals, food, farming, motion, time, and many other things as can be seen by clicking on the Wikipedia page to the right. As you look over these tables, do you think the similarities are more than a coincidence?
Statement of the Proto-Indo-European Problem
If you accept that the many languages spanning all of Europe and much of Asia are related, then the question becomes: How did this happen? Did the original settlers of the Eurasian continent all speak one language that separated into daughter languages over time? Or did a prehistoric group of people somehow expand across the Eurasian landmass, conquering the inhabitants and spreading their language? This is called demic diffusion. Or did a new culture or religion become wildly popular and spread across Eurasia, bringing a new language to the existing inhabitants? This is called cultural diffusion.
We call the original language spoken by these hypothesized people before it separated into daughter languages proto-Indo-European (or PIE). Since the early 1800's there has been a quest to determine who the people who spoke proto-Indo-European were and where they came from. Their ancestral home, called the urheimat in German, has been hypothesized to be in various places, including Turkey (the Anatolian hypothesis), India, Armenia, Ukraine and Russia (the steppe hypothesis), Northern Europe, Paleolithic Europe, and even the Arctic.
When Indo-European history started in the second millenium BCE, the Indo-European languages were already differentiated and disbursed, so to determine what happened prior to that, we can't rely on historical records. Instead, we look to linguistics, archeology, myth, and archaic DNA for circumstantial clues about what happened. Even if we can determine with some certainly where the proto-Indo-European homeland was, determining how and why the culture spread so far will still involve many mysteries. Those are the mysteries we are exploring in this course.
Hittite
The first Indo-European language recognized in history is Hittite, found on cuneiform tablets in the ruins of palaces in the former Hittite empire. The Hittite Empire reigned in Anatolia, what is now modern day Turkey from roughly 1650 BCE to 1180 BCE, although there were Assyrian records of traders with Hittite sounding names as early as 1900 BCE. The Hittites rose to power in the city of Kanesh and over time grew strong enough to conquer many other city states and create an empire. But the people who spoke Hittite were just a ruling class; they had conquered people who spoke Hattic, a non-Indo-European language, and the Hittite language borrowed many Hattic words for throne, lord, king, queen, queen mother, heir apparent, priest, and a long list of of palace officials. As David Anthony says,
After Hittite speakers usurped the Hattic kingdom they enjoyed a period of prosperity enriched by Assyrian trade, and then endured defeats that later were dimly but bitterly recalled. They remained confined to the center of the Anatolian plateau until about 1650 BCE, when Hittite armies became mighty enough to challenge the great powers of the Near East and the imperial era began. The Hittites looted Babylon, took other cities from the Assyrians, and fought the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II to a standstill at the greatest chariot battle of ancient times, at Kadesh, on the banks of the Orontes River in Syria, in 1286 BCE. A Hittite monarch married an Egyptian princess. The Hittite kings also knew and negotiated with the princes who ruled Troy, probably the place referred to in the Hittite archives as steep Wilusa (Ilios).7 The Hittite capital city, Hattušas, was burned in a general calamity that brought down the Hittite kings, their army, and their cities about 1180 BCE. The Hittite language then quickly disappeared; apparently only the ruling élite ever spoke it. Anthony, David W.. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (p. 71). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
The fact that the Hittite capital city, Hattuša was burned to the ground was a blessing for modern linguists, for the fire that destroyed the palace baked the clay tablets with cuneiform writing, thus preserving them. About 25,000 tablets have been found in the Boğazköy archives, including royal annals, treaties, political correspondence, legal texts, inventory texts along with instructions, texts related to administration, mythological texts, and religious texts.
The Treaty of Kadesh tablet is shown to the right. It is the earliest known peace treaty and documents peace between the Hittite king and Ramesses II of Egypt, dating to 1259 BCE.
Two closely related languages, Luwian (or Luvian) and Lycian were found in cuneiform archives in Western Anatolia around the same time. It is possible that Luwian was the language of Troy during the Trojan Wars, but no definitive proof has been found in the ruins of what was then called Wilusa. Hittite, Luwian and Lycian are sometimes called the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European languages.
While the Hittites enjoyed military success for several centuries, they were eventually defeated by the Middle- and Neo-Assyrian empires. The Hittite language lived on in some city states for several centuries but eventually Hittite, Luwian and Lycian died out.
Greek
David Anthony says the following:
Greek was the language of the palace-centered Bronze Age warrior kings who ruled at Mycenae, Pylos, and other strongholds in Greece beginning about 1650 BCE. The Mycenaean civilization appeared rather suddenly with the construction of the spectacular royal Shaft Graves at Mycenae, dated about 1650 BCE, about the same time as the rise of the Hittite empire in Anatolia. The Shaft Graves, with their golden death masks, swords, spears, and images of men in chariots, signified the elevation of a new Greek-speaking dynasty of unprecedented wealth whose economic power depended on long-distance sea trade. The Mycenaean kingdoms were destroyed during the same period of unrest and pillage that brought down the Hittite Empire about 1150 BCE. Mycenaean Greek, the language of palace administration as recorded in the Linear B tablets, was clearly Greek, not Proto-Greek, by 1450 BCE, the date of the oldest preserved inscriptions. The people who spoke it were the models for Nestor and Agamemnon, whose deeds, dimly remembered and elevated to epic, were celebrated centuries later by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey. We do not know when Greek speakers appeared in Greece, but it happened no later than 1650 BCE. As with Anatolian, there are numerous indications that Mycenaean Greek was an intrusive language in a land where non-Greek languages had been spoken before the Mycenaean age. Anthony, David W.. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (p. 77). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
The Mycenaean Greeks also conquered Knossos on Crete, as the recorded language in the palace switched from Linear A to Linear B. But where the Greek warriors came from is a mystery which we hopefully will explore in Week 10.
Indo-Iranian
The Indo-Iranian languages are the largest current branch of the Indo-European languages, spoken by about 1.5 billion speakers across India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. The Rig Vedas are the earliest attestation of Sanskrit (the word veda means 'knowledge"). They are a collection of 1,028 hymns in 10 books, written down around 500 BCE, but having been preserved through strict oral performance for perhaps 1,000 years prior. The word Sanskrit means "put together, well formed, perfected" suggesting the language was used for religious ceremonies, as opposed to vernacular uses. While the Rig Vedas are predominantly religious hymns, they do offer some clues to the life of these Indo-Europeans. As Wikipedia says,
The Rigveda offers no direct evidence of social or political systems in the Vedic era, whether ordinary or elite.[37] Only hints such as cattle raising and horse racing are discernible, and the text offers very general ideas about the ancient Indian society. There is no evidence, state Jamison and Brereton, of any elaborate, pervasive or structured caste system.[37] Social stratification seems embryonic, then and later a social ideal rather than a social reality.[37] The society was semi-nomadic and pastoral with evidence of agriculture since hymns mention plow and celebrate agricultural divinities.[38] There was division of labor and a complementary relationship between kings and poet-priests but no discussion of a relative status of social classes.[37] ... The women of the Rigveda are quite outspoken and appear more sexually confident than men, in the text.[37] Elaborate and aesthetic hymns on wedding suggest rites of passage had developed during the Rigvedic period.[37] There is little evidence of dowry and no evidence of sati in it or related Vedic texts.[39]
The Rig Veda is the earliest of four ancient collections of poems, prayers and religious instructions that formed the early core of Hinduism.
In eastern Iran, the Avestan language was used to compose the Gathas, 17 hymns believed to have been composed by the prophet Zarathustra (or Zoroaster). Dating is debated, but thought to be somewhere between 1500 and 500 BCE. Zoroaster was a religious reformer who considered the pagan pantheon of the Rig Vedas not worthy of worship and instead taught worship of a single supreme creator. Zoroastrianism was the official religion of the Iranian empires, from Cyrus the Great in 550 BCE until the Muslim conquest of Persia in 632 CE. The Avestan language is quite similar to ancient Sanskrit, and it is thought that both cultures must have been derived from a people who moved into and conquered northern India and eastern Iran around the same time. We'll explore these people in Week 10.
Mittani
The kingdom of Mitanni, in what is present day Syria/Lebannon, spoke the non-Indo-European Hurrian language, but like the Hittites next door, seemed to be ruled by an Indo-European speaking people. The name Maitanni combines an Indo-European stem maita-, meaning "to unite" with a Hurrian suffix -nni, and thus meant the "united kingdom." The kingdom was contemporaneous with the Hittites, lasting from 1600 BCE to 1260 BCE. However, the rulers of Mittani do not seem to be related to the Hittites, but rather to the Sanskrit speakers in India. The name of the Mitanni capital city, Waššukanni, was Old Indic vasu-khani, literally “wealth-mine.” The Mittani kings had Indo-Aryan throne names (e.g. Tvesa-ratha ‘having an attacking chariot’, and S’attuara I was Satvar ‘warrior’). The Mittani were famous as charioteers and, in the oldest surviving horse-training manual in the world, a Mitanni horse trainer named Kikkuli (a Hurrian name) used many Old Indic terms for technical details, including horse colors and numbers of laps. Additionally, important deities from the Rig Veda are listed as witnesses in a treaty between the Mittani kingdom and the Hittites. The similarities between the Mittani kingdom and the Indo-Aryans 3,000 miles away has long puzzled researchers. David Anthony suggests that maybe a Hurrian speaking king hired Old Indic speaking mercenaries, perhaps charioteers, who overthrew the king and founded a dynasty. In any event, the Mittani kingdom was sandwiched between the Hittites, Egyptians and Assyrians, and like the Hittites, were eventually taken over by the Assyrians and disappeared.
Kingdom of Mitanni at its greatest extent under c. 1490 BCE
About that term: Aryan
Both the early Sanskrit speakers and Iranian Avestan speakers referred to themselves as Aryan, an ethnocultural self designation of those who spoke the language, followed the religion of the Vedas or Zoroaster, and was contrasted with the outsiders, or non-Aryans. The stem of the word is the foundation for the word Iran and Iranian. Sanskrit and Avestan are thus often referred to as Indo-Aryan languages.
In the 19th century, several authors began to couple the idea of Aryans with a race of light skinned, blue eyed blonds, although there is no such evidence in the Rig Vedas. The search for the homeland of the proto-Indo-Europeans was imagined in Northern Europe and the success of the Indo-Europeans in spreading their language was interpreted due to racial superiority. The Nazis adopted Aryanism: the concept of the Aryans being a superior race and that the Germanic peoples were the most racially pure peoples of Aryan stock. Their subsequent descent into barbarism and disaster should have disproven for all time the ideas of racial superiority, but evidently that fire still smolders among ignorant people.
The backlash against Aryanism touches on the field of population genetics, with some people uncomfortable with the idea of testing people's genotype. We'll discuss DNA testing later in the course, but aside from certain rare medical conditions, it is only useful to us as a marker of population movement, and has nothing to do with people's inherent capabilities which are remarkably universal across the species.
Italo-Celtic
The Italian and Celtic branches of the Indo-European language family are more recent. Italic first enters recorded history around 200 BCE, with the Umbrian, Oscan and Latin languages appearing in central Italy. Rome had been a city state, allegedly founded by Romulus and Remus in 753 BCE. Continuous warring between the various city states of Italy and Etruscan and Gaulish peoples led to an expansion of Rome's power and influence and by the second century BCE, Rome had conquered Carthage, Sicily, Sardinia, and parts of Spain and Greece. Later conquests of Europe and the adoption of Vulgar Latin led to the evolution of 44 Romance languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, Portugese and Romanian.
The Celts were spoken of by Roman historians, but their homeland and evolution is a mystery which we will examine in week 7. Celtic speakers once lived from Austria to the British Isles as evidenced by Celtic place and river names e.g. Vienna, Latin Vindobona : from Celtic *windo- 'white' (Welsh gwyn) + *bona 'base, foundation' (Welsh bôn 'base, bottom, stump', Irish bun 'bottom, base').
The earliest attestation of Celtic languages are Old Irish and Welsh from around 800CE.
Germanic
Gothic is an extinct Germanic language, once spoken by the Goths, a Germanic tribe who invaded the Roman Empire and eventually sacked Rome. The earliest attestation dates to around 350 CE in a 6th century copy of a 4th century Bible translation. Old High German, Old English and Old Norse are extinct Germanic languages first recorded from 900 CE to 1200 CE.
As shown to the right, it is believed that tribes which spoke Germanic dialects invaded north-central Europe from their homelands in Scandinavia in the first millenium BCE, displacing native Celtic tribes. The Germanic language family includes Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, German, Yiddish, Afrikaans, and of course English which is the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. We'll examine the history of the Germanic speaking peoples in Week 5.
Expansion of early Germanic tribes into previously mostly Celtic Central Europe:[1]
Settlements before 750 bc
New settlements by 500 bc
New settlements by 250 bc
New settlements by ad 1
Some sources also give a date of 750 BC for the earliest expansion out of southern Scandinavia and northern Germany along the North Sea coast towards the mouth of the Rhine.[2]
Tocharian
The Tocharian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European language family, spoken in oasis cities of the Tarim basin in modern day Xinjiang Province in western China. The texts date from the 8th century and are mostly translations of Buddhist works from Sanskrit. The location of the texts and the archaic nature of Tocharian have intrigued Indo-European scholars with the mystery of how that language got there.
The Tocharian language may have been brought by people preserved as the Tarim mummies. These are bodies mummified naturally in the dry desert atmosphere of the Tarim basin. The mummies date from 2135 to 500 BCE and many have Europoid features, some with blond or red hair.
There may be relationships with the Wusun people, attested in Chinese history from the 2nd century BCE to the 5th century CE as fierce nomadic warriors. A later Han dynasty book described them as having green eyes and red hair and looking like monkeys. We find no trace of them or their language in China today.
Linguistic map of Slavic languages
Balto-Slavic
The final branch of Indo-European languages that we'll consider is the Balto-Slavic branch. These languages come into history rather late, with Old Church Slavonic around 1000 CE and Old Prussian 1400 CE, but the speakers of Baltic and Slavic languages were well known prior to their language. In the sixth century Slavic tribes came from the north, crossing the Danube rive and invading and settling the Balkans. These were fierce warriors who caused the abandonment of all Greek and Byzantine towns in the Balkans. They reportedly killed all captured men with barbarous tortures and took the women and children into slavery.
Today, some but not all of their descendants are more civilized. The extant Baltic languages include Latvian and Lithuanian, and the Slavic languages, which are shown on the map above, include Czech, Slovak, Polish, languages of the Balkans, Russian and Ukrainian.
What can we infer about Proto-Indo-European Society?
By the time the Indo-European languages first appear in the historical record, they have already spread from wherever they started to all of Europe and most of Asia. What hope is there that we can learn about their forebears who lived perhaps thousands of years before recorded history? Perhaps this course will offer some hope. Let's start with what we can infer from the vocabulary of the proto-Indo-Europeans, which has been preserved in their daughter languages.
J.P. Mallory, a pre-eminent Indo-European archeologist and Douglas Adams, a comparative Indo-European Linguist published a book titled The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World which attempts to reconstruct proto-Indo-European society from the cognates, or word stems which can be traced back to proto-Indo-European. The evidence is somewhat limited; they compile 1474 words, of which only 16 are evident in all 12 language groups, and 402 are attested in only two or three groups, and thus may not go all the way back to proto-Indo-European. Despite these limitations, there are some interesting observations:
1) The common words for fauna and flora suggest a temperate zone homeland. Common words include aspen, birch, willow, otter, beaver, lynx, and bear. The lack of a word for "sea" (instead, "salted lake") suggest an inland location.
2) The word for cow, *gwou- is attested in all IE language groups, and terms for ox, sheep, bull, ewe, lamb, goat, livestock, and herd suggest a pastoral society. As David Anthony says:
The speakers of Proto-Indo-European were farmers and stockbreeders: we can reconstruct words for bull, cow, ox, ram, ewe, lamb, pig, and piglet. They had many terms for milk and dairy foods, including sour milk, whey, and curds. When they led their cattle and sheep out to the field they walked with a faithful dog. They knew how to shear wool, which they used to weave textiles (probably on a horizontal band loom). They tilled the earth (or they knew people who did) with a scratch-plow, or ard, which was pulled by oxen wearing a yoke. There are terms for grain and chaff, and perhaps for furrow. They turned their grain into flour by grinding it with a hand pestle, and cooked their food in clay pots (the root is actually for cauldron, but that word in English has been narrowed to refer to a metal cooking vessel). They divided their possessions into two categories: movables and immovables; and the root for movable wealth (*peku-, the ancestor of such English words as pecuniary) became the term for herds in general. Anthony, David W.. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (p. 135). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
3) There are many more words for men than women, including terms relating to youth and strength, but also death (mortal). There also are many more words for a man's relatives (uncle, in-laws) than for a woman's. There are also words for servant and the words "payment/prize" in Greek and Indic suggest slavery. The word for marry, or bride in several language groups comes from the verb "lead", such as leading away a wife who has been given by her father. This suggests a patrilocal social organization with exogamy, where the woman would leave her home to marry into a man's extended family. A recent paper by Birgit Olsen observes:
de Lamberterie (2018), with reference to Daniel Kölligan (2014), has compared Armenian ałǰik ‘young girl’ with the Greek compound ἀλφεσίβοιος ‘having the worth of (several) oxen’, used as an epithet of πάρθενος ‘young girl, virgin’. With a slight variation in the stem formations, both formations would contain the word for ‘worth, price’, *h2(a)lgwh-i-/*h2algwh-os, and a stem derived from the noun ‘cow’, *gwou̯- (Greek βοῦς, Armenian ku). While this equation does not take us further back than Graeco-Armenian – if such a stage existed – the formation is still interesting, pointing back to a time when the bride-price consisted at least partly in cattle, as also attested in other Indo-European traditions.
Within the European branches of Indo-European, Olsen argues that the institution of fosterage was common, whereby some sons in a family were placed to be raised for a time with the mother's uncle's family. This can reduce strife between sons, but more importantly, strengthen the alliances between the two families.
4) There are terms for "master" of a household, but beyond that, there are works suggesting tribal organization: master of the clan, leader/lord, king/ruler, and even queen. The word guest can be traced back to a proto-Indo-European *ghos-ti-, which refered to a relationship of hospitality between friendly strangers from the same tribe. A generous host may have created obligation to the guest, as in the Illiad, Book VI when the enemies Diomedes and Glaucus stopped fighting, embraced each other and exchanged gifts when it became apparent that Diomedes' grandfather had hosted Glaucus' grandfather long before.
In the legal sphere there are several words relating to law and order, such as order, fitting, commit a crime, oath, blame, and make restitution. There are many words related to warfare: war, army, warband, fight, strike, defend, destroy, conquer, booty and brave. The term for war in the Rig Veda is "gavishthi" which means "search for cows." Cows at that time seemed to be the most important form of wealth and stories of cattle raiding are known from India to Ireland.
Rconstructing the Proto-Indo-European Language
The divergence of Indo-European languages has been great. Speakers of English can hardly understand German despite it being extremely closely related; languages such as Hittite and Sanskrit are incredibly different from English. How can we make sense of these differences and how can understanding the differences inform our understanding of the proto-Indo-Europeans?
Why Languages Change
The daughter Indo-European languages diverged for a wide variety of reasons. The first is geography: in a land that is settled by agriculturalists traveling by foot, it is estimated that a language will splinter into separate dialects once the area of the culture exceeds 70,000 square miles, roughly the size of New England. Indeed, Bill Bryson recounts a story by William Caxton, the first person to print a book in English, regarding a group of London sailors in 1490 who sailed down the river Thames, and by the time they had traveled 50 miles to Kent they could no longer converse with the local farmers:
And one of theym named sheffelde, a mercer, cam in-to an hows and axed for mete ; and specyally he axyd after eggys ; And the goode wyf answerde, that she coude speke no frenshe.
A more important factor is culture. Languages reflect differences between cultures; in fact, languages are used to define differences between cultures. Consider rhoticity in English: the tendency for upper class English to drop the r sound after a vowel in words such as hard or butter. The language of upper classes is often mimicked by social climbers within societies. Contrast rhoticity with lower class Cockney in which the t sound in the middle of a word like butter is replaced by a glottal stop. These language differences are used to designate identity with a particular cultural group. David Anthony suggests that along a well established border of two cultures, or linguistic frontier, linguistic and cultural differences are often preserved for an extended length of time, to demark a cultural group against the Other.
Another example of long lasting language is that of Icelanders. Due to the small size of their population and due to their reverence for their cultural history in the Sagas, modern Icelanders can read sagas written a thousand years ago. A similar process may have preserved Sanskrit and Avestan for a long time.
Languages change by absorbing loan words from other languages, e.g. the Japanese word for hamburger and camera are Hanbāgā and kamera. Many proto-Indo-European words are similar to proto-Uralic words spoken north of the Urals, such as PIE *pot-, PU *pata (both “pot”), PIE *kʷalo- (“large fish”), PU *kala (“fish”), and PIE *nomen-, PU *nimi (both “name”). This suggests that the proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in contact with people north of the Urals, although the direction of borrowing is unknown.
Another reason languages change is economy. As Wikipedia says: Speech communities tend to change their utterances to be as efficient and effective (with as little effort) as possible, while still reaching communicative goals. Purposeful speaking therefore involves a trade-off of costs and benefits. The principle of least effort tends to result in phonetic reduction of speech forms. See vowel reduction, cluster reduction, lenition, and elision. After some time, a change may become widely accepted (it becomes a regular sound change) and may end up treated as standard. For instance: going to [ˈɡoʊ.ɪŋ.tʊ] → gonna [ˈɡɔnə] or [ˈɡʌnə], with examples of both vowel reduction [ʊ] → [ə] and elision [nt] → [n], [oʊ.ɪ] → [ʌ].
Can you think of similar sound changes that are currently changing spoken English in the Boston area?
In 1822 Jacob Grimm, of the Brothers Grimm fairytale compilers, suggested that German evolved from proto-Indo-European due to economy of speech according to three rules, known as Grimm's Law:
Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives.
Proto-Indo-European voiced stops become voiceless stops.
Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops become voiced stops or fricatives (as allophones).
Since Grimm's time, linguists have mapped the differences between Indo-European languages, not only sound changes, but also changes in syntax and grammar and come up with many rules to explain how and why each subgroup of Indo-European languages diverged from the previous group. Since this level of reconstruction is entirely prehistorical and theoretical, one might wonder if linguists were just making stuff up. However, linguists' confidence were bolstered that they were on the right track when Hittite was deciphered in the early 20th century. In the late 19th century, Ferdinand de Saussure had proposed that the Indo-European consonant system contained laryngeals, a type of consonant attested in no Indo-European language known at the time. The hypothesis was vindicated with the discovery of Hittite, which proved to have exactly the consonants Saussure had hypothesized in the environments he had predicted.
To get a sense of the wild and wacky world of proto-Indo-European phonology, syntax and grammar, sample the video on the right.
Centum and Satem Languages
The western branches of Indo-European (in blue in the map) are known as centum languages , from the Latin word for hundred. The eastern branches (in red in the map except Tocharian) are known as satem languages, for the Avestan word for hundred. The hard centum "k" sound has changed in satem languages to a softer "s" sound. This can be interpreted in one or two ways: either the western branches split away from proto-Indo-European and then underwent a sound change, or the satem sound change was adopted by Indo-European groups who were neighbors.
Approximate extent of the centum (blue) and satem (red) areals.
Language Trees
If you click on the pop-out icon in the upper right hand corner of the window to the right, you'll see a proposed language tree for proto-Indo-European. This tree, which supports the Anatolian hypothesis that PIE originated in Turkey, shows all the modern day branches of IE and a proposal for when they diverged back in time.
Starting from the left of the language tree, at the earliest point in time there was a group of people speaking a common language. As time went by, the assumption is that groups of people left starting with what would be the Hittites and Tocharians. As the language further evolved more groups left: the Indo-Iranians split from the Germano/Italo/Celtic groups. Each group then evolved futher until we get to historical times with dead languages and the current living languages.
This model probably oversimplifies what actually happened in that it assumes that once a daughter language split away it had no further contact with other languages. However we know that English, which is a Germanic language, has been greatly influenced by French and Latin, Italic languages. As a further example, the strict splitting of a tree model can't explain why Tocharian is a centum language, grouped with the Italo/Celtic/Germanic branches. These and more esoteric subtleties give linguists no end of things to argue about. Nevertheless, as a first order model, this philogenetic language tree may be very helpful to us as we try to decipher the travels of the Indo-Europeans.
What Religion and Mythology tell us about PIE
Just as we can compare the Indo-European daughter languages in an attempt to reconstruct the proto-Indo-European language, we can compare Indo-European religions and myths in an attempt to reconstruct proto-Indo-European religions and myth.
The Indo-European Creation Myth
Rigveda 10:129 (trans. Doniger):
There was neither non-existence nor existence then
there was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond...
There was neither death nor immortality then.
There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day.
The first man, *Manu and his giant twin *Yemo (PIE meaning Twin) are crossing the universe, accompanied by a primordial cow who fed Manu and Yemo. Manu decided to create the earth and with the help of the sky gods: Sky Father, Storm God of War and the Divine Twins, he sacrificed Yemo (and in some versions the cow). From the cow's body came the earth, the sky, the sun and moon, horses, cattle, goats and sheep and all animals and vegetables. From Yemo's body came three classes of men: Priests, Warriors and Farmer/Herders.
Elements of this myth are found in the Rig Vedas of India, Avestan texts from Iran, Old Norse sagas, and several other cultures. In the Germanic version the being who is sacrificed, called Ymir, is a hermaphrodite and the act of sacrifice divides the sexes into two. In Italy, the foundation myth of Rome involved the twins Romulus (a name deriving from Rome) and Remus (derived from Yemo). Given the war like nature of Rome, Romulus and Remus suckle from a wolf, instead of a primordial cow. But Remus is killed by Romulus, in a form of sacrifice that gives rise to the civilizing society of Rome.
Bruce Lincoln, in The Indo-European Myth of Creation pulls elements of the myth from a wide variety of ancient texts to recreate the original story. Manu is the model for future priests and Yemo the model for future kings. Lincoln emphasizes that the myth was associated with ritualistic animal and sometimes human sacrifices. Archeological evidence shows that sacrificial feasting was common in early Indo-European societies; the Rig Vedas describe the ritualized gatherings of people, the chanting of priests, the consumption of the sacred soma drink, and the sacrifices, which if successful, would bring the Gods to visit the gathering. Gregory Nagy noted that at sacrifices, people attending will experience something deeply personal at the climax of sacrifice. In performing the ritual, the balance of the cosmos is restored and renewed as in the original sacrifice that created the universe.
*Trito and the Serpent
Another foundation myth that is found in Indic, Iranian, Hittite, Norse, Roman and Greek myths is *Trito (meaning Third man, perhaps after Manu and Yemo) and the Serpent *H₂n̥gʷʰis. Trito has a herd of cows but they are stolen by a three headed serpent. Trito does battle with the serpent, kills it, and retrieves his cows. Bruce Lincoln, in The Indo-European Cattle Raiding Myth suggests that, as Manu and Yemo are archetypes for Priest and King, Trito is the original warrior, protecting his wealth and livelihood against the serpent which represents the aboriginal peoples the Indo-Europeans came in contact with. Since cattle raiding was an important activity for pastoralists, Trito was the hero that young warriors could aspire to.
There are also many similar myths wherein a storm god (Hittite: Tarhund, Vedic: Indra, Greek: Zeus, Norse: Thor) slays a serpent or dragon which has been causing a drought by trapping the waters in his mountain lair. Echoes of the myth are seen in Germanic folk tales where dragons guard treasures. Upon killing the serpent, the waters are released, saving the people. The medieval myth of Saint George and the Dragon is probably a Christianized version of the old Indo-European myth.
Proto-Indo-European Gods
The proto-Indo-Europeans seem to have had a pantheon of mostly nature deities.
*Dyḗus, literally daylight-sky-god was the all seeing head deity, who ruled the heavens where many of the gods lived. In Greek, Latin, and Norse he appears as Zeus, Jove and Odin.
The Divine Twins rode the two horses who pull the sun across the sky, and were sometimes depicted as horses themselves. They were the sons of *Dyḗus and shared a sister, *H₂éwsōs, the dawn goddess who opened the gates of heaven every day. We see the Divine Twins in Greece as Castor and Pollux.
*Perkʷūnos, literally 'the Striker' or the 'Lord of Oaks', was the storm god, who lived in the mountains and used a mace or hammer to hurl lightning and cause thunder. Thor and Jupiter are the German and Greek descendants. What do you think is the significance of the hammer?
*Dʰéǵʰōm, literally 'earth' was a mother earth goddess, commonly associated with fertility, growth and death. She is associated with the agricultural season and just as she brings life, in death, mortals return to the earth.
There are very many other deities attested in various Indo-European traditions but not necessarily being able to be traced back to proto-Indo-European. These include deities for fire, wind, guardians, cattle, fate (such as the three fate goddesses who spun the destinies of mankind), love, and ironwork.
Georges Dumézil and Tripartition
Georges Dumézil was a French linguist who developed a theory of Indo-European tripartition, which has become extremely popular. The idea is that early Indo-European societies were divided into three social classes:
the executive class which included priests and kings (e.g. Manu and Yemo), responsible for cosmic and juridical soverignty
the warrior class, responsible for physical prowess (represented by Trito)
and the commoners: farmers and herders, responsible for the promotion of physical well-being, fertility and wealth.
J.P. Mallory points out that the treaty between the King of Mitanni and the Hittite king, dating from 1380 BCE invoked the Vedic gods Mitra-Varuna, Indra and the Nasatyas as witnesses to the treaty. Dumézil argued that Mitra-Varuna represented the sovereign class of priest/kings, Indra as the storm god represented the warrior function and the Nasatyas representing the Divine Twins, find their clearest roles in the maintenance of health in both livestock and people. Mallory continues,
This same tripartite division is seen over and over again throughout the mythologies of the Indo-European peoples. Herodotus records, for example, how the kingship of the Scythians was awarded to one of three brothers who could pick up three heavenly (but burning) objects that fell to earth - a cup, an axe, and a plough with yoke. The first is regarded as a symbol of the ritual and sovereign function, the axe is the instrument of war, and the plough with yoke are clearly symbols of the cultivator. The pre-Capitoline divine trio in ancient Rome consisted of the sovereign Jupiter, the war-god Mars and, finally, Quirinus, the patron of the people. Or, to take a more well-known example, preparatory to the disastrous judgment of Paris in Greek mythology, the three goddesses in competition each attempted to bribe Paris with a primary aspect of their own character. Hera offered sovereignty, Athena promised military prowess while Aphrodite promised the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, an arguably obvious aspect of fertility.
Once you understand tripartition you can find examples, real or imagined, almost everywhere. For example, the American government consists of the Supreme Court (priests), the Presidency (warrior), and Congress (commoners). Do you think Dumézil tripartition theory represented a unique societal structure, or can it be found in all societies? If it was unique, and there was the equivalent of a standing army in proto-Indo-European society, what are the implications?