Every reconstructed language must have been spoken by some community. In the case of Proto-Indo-European, we call the people belonging to this community the Indo-Europeans. Because the Indo-Europeans never wrote anything down, we have no direct sources which can tell us about their culture. Nonetheless, we do have some information about the identity of these people. Our knowledge mainly comes from three scientific fields, linguistics, archaeology, and genetics. In this lecture we will discuss the data that allow us to identify some characteristics of Indo-European culture. Perhaps the most debated aspect of Indo-European origins is the location of the Indo-European homeland. We know that the Indo-Europeans did at some point spread over nearly all of Europe and Central Asia, but when their language was still one entity they must have been living in a much smaller area. Where was this area? For most of the last couple of decades, there have been three main contenders for the Indo-European homeland. Anatolia or modern Turkey, the Caucasus and the Steppes above the Black Sea in modern day Russia and Ukraine. From any of these locations, one could in theory move into both Europe and Asia. The Anatolian hypothesis was mostly advocated by archaeologists. They connected the spread of the Indo-Europeans to another major population movement which is known to have occurred, the spread of agriculture. From archaeological evidence we know that agriculture started in Anatolian Mesopotamia, around 9,000 BC, and that it spread to the rest of Europe and Central Asia from that basis. Therefore, some scholars suggested that if these agriculturalists spoke Indo-European, the explosive spread of the language is also explained at once. That sounds nice, but from the start it was clear that this hypothesis is contradicted by the linguistic data. The Indo-European language, as we reconstruct it, did not look at all like an early agricultural language. For example, many Indo-European languages share the same word for 'horse'. That means that the original Indo-Europeans must have had this word so that it could survive in many different branches. But the farmers spreading from Anatolia did not yet have horses. Similarly, the wheel had not been invented around the spread of agriculture, but different Indo-European languages do have a word for wheel that goes back to Proto-Indo-European. This cannot be explained if Indo-European was indeed the language of the first farmers. There are more problems with the Anatolian hypothesis. For example, the Anatolian branch of Indo-European looks like an intruder in Anatolia replacing older languages that were spoken there. It doesn't look like Indo-European speakers have been living in this region for a very long time. As an alternative to the Anatolian hypothesis, it has also been suggested that Indo-Europeans spread from the Caucasus. After all, this region is still pretty close to Anatolia. So the Anatolian languages may have originated here. Moreover, we have early agriculture in this region, which is a plus for the people who would like to connect the spread of Indo-European to the spread of agriculture. However, the Caucasian hypothesis also has its problems. For example, in this theory it is usually assumed that Indo-Iranian migrated to the South from the Caucuses on their way to Asia. But this creates problems. It doesn't fit the fact that we find a handful of clear Indo-Iranian loanwords in the Uralic languages that are spoken to the north of the Russian Steppes. Linguists therefore usually prefer the Steppe hypothesis, which suggests an Indo-European homeland north of the Black Sea. From there speakers of the language would have migrated to Europe, Asia, and Anatolia around 3,000 BC. The location and time frame fit what we know about Indo-European technology and economy from the common vocabulary of the different branches. In the South Russian Steppes we also find an archaeological culture which suits the reconstructed Indo-European culture very well. This so-called Yamnaya culture existed on the Pontic-Caspian steppes around 3,500 BC. And is characterized by its burial mounds, the kurgans, one of which you see here. Later we see very similar archaeological traces such as specific graves and burial traditions occurring in different places in Europe and Asia. It therefore looks as if the Yamnaya people have indeed spread through the Indo-European language area. For a long time the discussion of the homeland was stuck in an impasse between these camps. Thankfully, in more recent years genetic research has advanced a lot. In 2015, two papers were published that both reach the same conclusion. If you compare ancient DNA across Europe and Asia, you see there's a large component of Yamnaya DNA moves into all regions where we find Indo-European languages in historic times. It is now quite commonly accepted that the Yamnaya expansion was indeed part of the same expansion that spread the Indo-European languages and that the Russian steppes were indeed the Indo-European homeland. Inferring a concrete location from linguistic data decades before genetics could come up with a conclusive answer has been one interesting application of reconstructed vocabulary. However, there is more that we can say about Indo-European culture, on the basis of shared vocabulary between branches. For example, a reconstruction of the Indo-European language also tells us that the accompanying culture was strongly patriarchal. How do we know this? We can reconstruct many different terms for family members on the fathers and husbands side of the family. On the mother's or wife's side, however, many family members do not have an equivalent name. For example, we can reconstruct a word *ienh2-ter- meaning wife of one's husband's brother. Well, there are no words for such extended family on the wife's side. This suggests that the matrilineal line was considered less important in the society. This reconstruction too is confirmed by genetic data. We see that both in the Yamnaya culture and in the later cultures that succeeded it, communities have relatively little variation in the Y chromosome, which is inherited only from the father. This suggests that men usually stay to live near their family. On the other hand, there's generally a lot of variation in the mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from the mother. This implies that the women in the community came from a lot of different places and didn't live near their own mothers and grandmothers. In other words, it looks like women married into their husband's family and left her own family and that their children grew up with their father's relatives as their primary family. From the common Indo-European vocabulary, we also know quite a lot about Indo-European economy. For example, there were words for horses, cows, pigs and sheep, and for some agricultural terms such as sowing and ploughing. These, in other words, suggest that the Indo-Europeans kept domesticated animals and practiced at least some form of agriculture. Note that the opposite is not always the case. For example, we could argue that the Indo-Europeans did not keep chickens because we can't reconstruct a word for chicken. However, in theory, it is also possible that the word did exist, but that it was replaced in all branches by later borrowings so that we can no longer reconstruct the word. Absence of evidence is therefore no evidence of absence. To give another example, we cannot reconstruct a word for 'finger' in Proto-Indo-European. But we can be rather sure that speakers of the language did have fingers. Most likely the Indo-Europeans were nomads. The meanings 'to dwell' or 'to live' and 'to spend the night' were all expressed by the same verb, so there was no difference in meaning. The Kurgan people living in the Pontic-Caspian steppes were nomads. The Indo-Europeans must also have had the carts as we can reconstruct several terms that are related to carts. These are *kʷe-kʷl- meaning 'wheel', *h2eḱs- ' axle' *iug-o- 'yolk', and also *h2eǵ- which was a verb for driving or transporting. We even find traces of wooden wagons, sometimes together with horses in some of the Yamnaya Kurgan graves. Like in this example here. It therefore looks like wagon transport was an important technology in this society. The fact that Indo-Europeans had wheels and domesticated horses may have been an important factor in their explosive spread over Europe and Asia. After all, they could move relatively fast for that time and likely had an advantage in warfare as well. As such, they could relatively easily move into new territory, even if other people were already living there. Beside archaeology, genetics, and shared vocabulary, we have one more way to determine characteristics of Proto-Indo-European culture: the cultural features of its descendants. In the lesson following this video, we will discuss some interesting similarities in Indo-European myths and religions, which may well go back to the culture of the Indo-Europeans themselves.
