Discovering the Indo-Europeans

"Dyeu-Pater, pay manu peku!"
An Indo-Europen prayer that means "Sky-Father, protect us, people and cattle!"

Who were the original Indo-Europeans and when and where did they live? They left no written documents, which are the basis of history, and archeologists can't "excavate" a language. The answers to these questions can be best obtained by attempting to reconstruct their language. We can assume a word that is similar in most of the Indo-European descendant languages is a concept that existed in the original Indo-European society. On the other hand, a word that varies in most Indo-European languages designates a concept not discovered until later. From this we can draw certain tentative conclusions about who the Indo-Europeans were, how they lived and where. (Words in italics that follow are English words that we know existed in Proto Indo-European.)

The original Indo-European obviously contained general words common to all human language: to be, to live, to eat and drink, to sit, to stand, to lie, to come and go, old, new, good, bad, etc. There were pronouns of I, you, thou (you respectfully) and we. The Indo-Europeans apparently did not use third person he, she or it. The numbers one through ten existed, as well as hundred (other numbers were"built" -- twelve is "two-over-ten"). Indo-European had words describing the past, and words for the yet to exist future. The concept of people, animals and things bearing a name was widely and persistently expressed in Indo-European languages and the act of naming things appears to have been both sacred and ritualistic.

The passage of time was well-expressed, with year, month, winter, spring and summer, day and night, evening and dawn (which, like the sun and sky, were highly sacred in Indo-European and in the earliest descendant languages).

The Indo-Europeans clearly knew snow, but curiously, the word for rain differs among descendant languages. They had a word for the earth, but words for different terrain types do not seem to run through the entire family, except for many words for mountains and swift rivers and streams flowing from mountain sources (important to our efforts to locate them).The Indo-Europeans were an inland people, with no words for ocean or sea. They did have a word for lake, however, and for boat and the verb to row (important to the discussion of the great Black Sea flood).

Many tree names exist in Indo-European which implies a forest environment. They had tree, wood, and root. They had oak, willow, ash and pine, and a variety of words for beech and birch in particular, which some have tried to use to pin down the Indo-European homeland, since these trees have a distinct range. But tree ranges change widely over the millenia.

Indo-European had a generic word for wild animal. They knew the wolf and the bear and obviously feared them, since their names received a "taboo" alteration, as if they could not be safely called by their "real" names. They knew the fox and the beaver, fish (specifically the salmon and eel), birds; including the crane and eagle, as well as egg. The Indo-Europeans had words for the hare and, of course, for mouse.

For insects there was the hornet, the wasp, the fly, and especially the bee. Bees' honey was obviously an important part of the Indo-European diet and possibly the only source of sugar, since words for sweet are both very ancient and related to the words for honey. Honey was also the base for the Indo-Europeans' only alcoholic beverage: mead, or fermented honey. The same word would later be used in some descendant languages for wine, when it was discovered.

For humans themselves, a number of terms were used: person, man, and woman, and interesting expressions which show the Indo-Europeans making a clear distinction between the gods of the sky and the earthlings who are mortal. At the oldest layer of vocabulary are the words for the external body parts head, eye, ear, nose, foot, etc. (among the first learned by children today). Some internal organs had names: heart, liver, gall bladder, as well as the sexual organs: penis, womb, and buttocks.

There were a large number of terms describing kin groups and relationships. Father and head of the household are the same word -- not surprising since Indo-European societies from India to Ireland were patriarchical and patrilineal (descent traced through the father). Also in the house were the wife and mother, the grandfather, grandmother, son, daughter (this English word is almost exactly the same in Indo-European), maternal uncle, grandson and nephew. Brother in Indo-European extended to males of the same generation in the same clan regardless of father; similarly sister extended to female clan members. While there existed many words for relatives by marriage on the husband's side, fewer exist for the wife's side. The Indo-Europeans lived in a house, as part of a town or village, very often in a fort or on a fortified hilltop.

The Indo-Europeans practiced exchange and reciprocal gift-giving as a way to display status and to circulate wealth through the society. There were a variety of words for to give, to distribute, to take, to exchange; related to these words are words for guest.

The Indo-Europeans certainly practiced agriculture with words for grain: wheat, barley, oats and millet. They made meal, and knew how to mill, to sow, to plow, and to harvest. Stockbreeding and animal husbandry were critical components of their society. The names for the familiar domesticated farm animals existed: cow, bull, sheep, pig, goat, duck and (most ancient) dog. Livestock was the source and measure of wealth in Indo-European and the descendant societies. The words for cattle and wealth were the same, and often still are in the descendant languages. The root of the English word "capital" for instance, originally meant "a head of cattle".

It was the horse, however, that was most prized. The Indo-European diaspora, their expansion and migration across the length of Eurasia, was made possible when they learned to tame and breed the horse to pull their wagons (and later, war chariots).

They exerted a good deal of energy to herd and to protect their stock. Interestingly, the original Indo-European verb which meant to circle and watch (the herds) was later used as the word for wheel, when discovered.

Iinside the door of the Indo-European home there was a fire on the hearth used to cook the bread dough. They knew how to spin thread, to weave, and to sew clothes to wear. Their homes were fabricated with a "wattle and daub" architecture: wood branches and sticks woven together in a clay matrix. The Indo-European word for this type of house and process of building it are the roots of the words "textile", "technical" and "technology" in the modern descendant languages.

For metals, the Indo-Europeans knew copper and possibly bronze. Metal was probably imported by trade, and there is some dispute whether words regarding mining and smelting were Proto Indo-European, or absorbed into the language along with the metals. In any case, the Indo-European learned to master copper, then bronze, and finally iron.

There were a number of words describing activities of the mind: to remember, to heed, to think. The Indo-European verb "to take the appropriate measures" is the root for our modern words "medical" and "medicine".

The Indo-Europeans certainly had a king (a tribal chieftain, of course) and the modern words "rex", "reign", "reich", and "rajah" reflect this. They had laws and understood justice. With a culture of exchange and reciprocity, there were many words for contractual obligations: to bond, to tie (by law) and to oblige. They would punish a wrongdoer and force him to compensate for his crime.

Lastly, the Indo-Europeans had a particularly rich religious vocabulary. They would pray to a diety to gain favor, sing hymns, make vows and practice a creed. To perform a rite was a way to express gratitude. The terms for eternity and long life were related, as were health and holy. Many things were sacred. The Indo-Europeans had many gods, but the chief was Dyeu-Pater -- "Sky Father" -- who over time became the Greek Zeus Pater, Sanskrit Dyaus Pitar, Hittite Tiwaz Tatis, Latin Jupiter, Germanic Tiu, then Old German Ghu-Tiu, finally German Got and English God.

Conclusions

This is what we know about the Indo-Europeans based on their reconstructed vocabulary. Phonology, archeology, linguistics and prehistory tell us more.

Phonology—the study of word sounds—is all-important to historical linguists because sounds are more stable over the centuries than are meanings. According to Grimm's Law (see previous page) sets of consonants displace one another over time in predictable and regular fashion. By this measure, we can see that the earliest Indo-European descendant language -- Anatolian (Hittite) -- broke away from Proto Indo-European at the very latest in 4500 B.C. It is much more likely, however, that it diverged a thousand or more years before. So the Indo-Europeans as a unified people must have lived (at least) prior to 5000 B.C.

But where? Three generations of archaeologists and linguists have excavated and deciphered manuscripts in close to a dozen ancient languages from sites in modern Turkey and as far east as modern Turkestan on the Chinese border. Their observations, combined with the reconstructed Indo-European vocabulary, indicate the probable location of the Indo-Europeans.

The landscape described by Proto Indo-European as now resolved must lie somewhere in the crescent that curves around the southem and eastern shores of the Black Sea -- east across ancient Anatolia (modern Turkey) and north to the Caucasus Mountains. Here the agricultural revolution created the food surplus that impelled the Indo-Europeans to found villages and city-states from which, some 6,500 years ago, they began their migrations over the Eurasian continent and into history.

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