Kurgan hypothesis

Scheme ofIndo-European languagedispersals from c. 4000 to 1000 BC according to the Kurgan hypothesis.Center:Steppecultures

1:Anatolian languages(archaicPIE)

2:Afanasievo culture(early PIE)

3:Yamnaya cultureexpansion (Pontic-Caspian steppe,Danube Valley) (late PIE)

4A:WesternCorded Ware

4B:Bell Beaker culture(adopted by Indo-European speakers)

4C:Bell Beaker

5A-B:Eastern Corded ware;5C:Sintashta culture(proto-Indo-Iranian)

6:Andronovo

7:Indo-Aryans(A:Mittani;B:India)

8:Greek

9:Iranian

Proto-Balto-Slavic

Not shown:Armenian,expanding from western steppe

TheKurgan hypothesis(also known as theKurgan theory,Kurgan model,orsteppe theory) is the most widely accepted proposal to identify theProto-Indo-European homelandfrom which theIndo-European languagesspread outthroughout Europeandparts of Asia.It postulates that the people of a Kurgan culture in thePontic steppenorth of theBlack Seawere the most likely speakers of theProto-Indo-European language(PIE). The term is derived from theTurkicwordkurgan(курга́н), meaningtumulusor burial mound.

The steppe theory was first formulated byOtto Schrader(1883) andV. Gordon Childe(1926),then systematized in the 1950s byMarija Gimbutas,who used the term to group various prehistoric cultures, including theYamnaya(or Pit Grave) culture and its predecessors. In the 2000s,David Anthonyinstead used the core Yamnaya culture and its relationship with other cultures as a point of reference.

Gimbutas defined the Kurgan culture as composed of four successive periods, with the earliest (Kurgan I) including theSamaraandSeroglazovocultures of theDnieper–Volgaregion in theCopper Age(early 4th millennium BC). The people of these cultures werenomadic pastoralists,who, according to the model, by the early 3rd millennium BC had expanded throughout thePontic–Caspian steppeand intoEastern Europe.

Genetics studies in the 21st century have demonstrated that populations bearing specificY-DNA haplogroupsand adistinct genetic signatureexpanded into Europe and South Asia from the Pontic-Caspian steppe during the third and second millennia BC. These migrations provide a plausible explanation for the spread of at least some of the Indo-European languages, and suggest that the alternative theories such as theAnatolian hypothesis,which places the Proto-Indo-European homeland inNeolithicAnatolia,are less likely to be correct.

History

Predecessors

Arguments for the identification of the Proto-Indo-Europeans as steppe nomads from the Pontic–Caspian region had already been made in the 19th century by the German scholars,Theodor Benfey(1869) andVictor Hehn(1870), followed notably byOtto Schrader(1883, 1890).Theodor Poeschehad proposed the nearbyPinsk Marshes.In his standard workabout PIE and to a greater extent in a later abbreviated version,Karl Brugmanntook the view that theurheimatcould not be identified exactly by the scholarship of his time, but he tended toward Schrader's view. However, afterKarl Penka's 1883rejection of non-European PIE origins, most scholars favoured aNorthern European origin.

The view of a Pontic origin was still strongly supported, including by the archaeologistsV. Gordon ChildeandErnst Wahle.One of Wahle's students wasJonas Puzinas,who became one of Marija Gimbutas's teachers. Gimbutas, who acknowledged Schrader as a precursor,painstakingly marshalled a wealth of archaeological evidence from the territory of theSoviet Unionand theEastern Blocthat was not readily available to Western scholars,revealing a fuller picture of prehistoric Europe.

Overview

When it was first proposed in 1956, inThe Prehistory of Eastern Europe, Part 1,Gimbutas's contribution to the search for Indo-European origins was aninterdisciplinarysynthesis of archaeology and linguistics. The Kurgan model of Indo-European origins identifies the Pontic–Caspian steppe as the Proto-Indo-European (PIE)urheimat,and a variety of late PIE dialects are assumed to have been spoken across this region. According to this model, the Kurgan culture gradually expanded to the entire Pontic–Caspian steppe, Kurgan IV being identified with theYamnayaculture of around 3000 BC.

The mobility of the Kurgan culture facilitated its expansion over the entire region and is attributed to thedomestication of the horsefollowed by the use of earlychariots.The first strong archaeological evidence for the domestication of the horse comes from theSredny Stog culturenorth of theAzov SeainUkraine,and would correspond to an early PIE or pre-PIE nucleus of the 5th millennium BC.Subsequent expansion beyond the steppes led to hybrid, or in Gimbutas's terms "kurganized" cultures, such as theGlobular Amphora cultureto the west. From these kurganized cultures came the immigration ofProto-Greeksto theBalkansand the nomadicIndo-Iraniancultures to the east around 2500 BC.

Kurgan culture

Cultural horizon

Gimbutas defined and introduced the term "Kurgan culture"in 1956 with the intention of introducing a" broader term "that would combineSredny Stog II,Pit Grave(Yamnaya), andCorded warehorizons (spanning the 4th to 3rd millennia in much of Eastern and Northern Europe).The Kurganarchaeological cultureor cultural horizon comprises the various cultures of the Pontic–Caspian steppe in the Copper Age to Early Bronze Age (5th to 3rd millennia BC), identified by similar artifacts and structures, but subject to inevitable imprecision and uncertainty. The eponymouskurgans(mound graves) are only one among several common features.

Cultures that Gimbutas considered as part of the "Kurgan culture":

• Bug–Dniester(6th millennium)
• Samara(5th millennium)
• Khvalynsk(5th millennium)
• Dnieper–Donets(5th to 4th millennia)
• Sredny Stog(mid-5th to mid-4th millennia)
• Maykop–Deriivka(mid-4th to mid-3rd millennia)
• Yamnaya (Pit Grave):This is itself a varied cultural horizon, spanning the entire Pontic–Caspian steppe from the mid-4th to the 3rd millennium.
• Usatove(late 4th millennium)

Stages of culture and expansion

Overview of the Kurgan hypothesis

Gimbutas's original suggestion identifies four successive stages of the Kurgan culture:

• Kurgan I,Dnieper/Volgaregion, earlier half of the 4th millennium BC. Apparently evolving from cultures of the Volga basin, subgroups include theSamaraandSeroglazovocultures.
• Kurgan II–III,latter half of the 4th millennium BC.Stone circles,anthropomorphicstone stelae of deities. Includes theSredny Stog cultureand theMaykop cultureof the northernCaucasus.
• Kurgan IVorPit Grave(Yamnaya) culture, first half of the 3rd millennium BC, encompassing the entire steppe region from theUraltoRomania.

In other publicationsshe proposes three successive "waves" of expansion:

• Wave 1,predating Kurgan I, expansion from the lower Volga to the Dnieper, leading to coexistence of Kurgan I and theCucuteni–Trypillia culture.Repercussions of the migrations extend as far as theBalkansand along theDanubeto theVinčaculture inSerbiaandLengyel cultureinHungary.
• Wave 2,mid 4th millennium BC, originating in theMaykop cultureand resulting in advances of"kurganized"hybrid cultures into northern Europe around 3000 BC (Globular Amphora culture,Baden culture,and ultimatelyCorded Ware culture). According to Gimbutas this corresponds to the first intrusion of Indo-European languages into western and northern Europe.
• Wave 3,3000–2800 BC, expansion of the Pit Grave culture beyond the steppes, with the appearance of the characteristic pit graves as far as modern Romania, Bulgaria, eastern Hungary and Georgia, coincident with the end of theCucuteni–Trypillia cultureandTrialeti culturein Georgia (c. 2750 BC).

Timeline

• 4500–4000:Early PIE.Sredny Stog, Dnieper–Donets andSamaracultures,domestication of the horse(Wave 1).
• 4000–3500: The Pit Grave culture (a.k.a. Yamnaya culture), the prototypicalkurganbuilders, emerges in the steppe, and theMaykop culturein the northernCaucasus.Indo-Hittitemodels postulate the separation ofProto-Anatolianbefore this time.
• 3500–3000:Middle PIE.The Pit Grave culture is at its peak, representing the classical reconstructedProto-Indo-European societywithstone idols,predominantly practicinganimal husbandryin permanent settlements protected byhillforts,subsisting on agriculture, and fishing along rivers. Contact of the Pit Grave culture with lateNeolithic Europecultures results in the "kurganized"Globular AmphoraandBadencultures (Wave 2). The Maykop culture shows the earliest evidence of the beginningBronze Age,and Bronze weapons and artifacts are introduced to Pit Grave territory. Probable earlySatemization.
• 3000–2500:Late PIE.The Pit Grave culture extends over the entire Pontic steppe (Wave 3). TheCorded Ware cultureextends from theRhineto theVolga,corresponding to the latest phase of Indo-European unity, the vast "kurganized" area disintegrating into various independent languages and cultures, still in loose contact enabling the spread of technology and early loans between the groups, except for the Anatolian and Tocharian branches, which are already isolated from these processes. Thecentum–satembreak is probably complete, but the phonetic trends of Satemization remain active.

Further expansion during the Bronze Age

Main article:Indo-European migrations

The Kurgan hypothesis describes the initial spread of Proto-Indo-European during the 5th and 4th millennia BC.As used by Gimbutas, the term "kurganized" implied that the culture could have been spread by no more than small bands whoimposed themselveson local people as an elite. This idea of PIE and itsdaughter languagesdiffusing east and west without mass movement proved popular with archaeologists in the 1970s (thepots-not-peopleparadigm).The question of further Indo-Europeanization of Central and Western Europe, Central Asia and Northern India during theBronze Ageis beyond the scope of the Kurgan hypothesis, and far more uncertain than the events of the Copper Age, and subject to some controversy. The rapidly developing fields ofarchaeogeneticsandgenetic genealogysince the late 1990s have not only confirmed a migratory pattern out of the Pontic Steppe at the relevant timebut also suggest the possibility that the population movement involved was more substantial than earlier anticipatedand invasive.

Revisions

Invasion versus diffusion scenarios (1980s onward)

Gimbutas believed that the expansions of the Kurgan culture were a series of essentially-hostile military incursions in which a new warrior culture imposed itself on the peaceful,matrilinear,and matrifocal (but notmatriarchal) cultures of "Old Europe"and replaced it with apatriarchalwarriorsociety,a process visible in the appearance of fortified settlements and hillforts and the graves of warrior-chieftains:

The process of Indo-Europeanization was a cultural, not a physical, transformation. It must be understood as a military victory in terms of successfully imposing a new administrative system, language, and religion upon the indigenous groups.

In her later life, Gimbutas increasingly emphasized the authoritarian nature of this transition from the egalitarian society centered on the nature/earthmother goddess(Gaia) to a patriarchy worshipping the father/sun/weather god (Zeus,Dyaus).

J. P. Mallory(in 1989) accepted the Kurgan hypothesis as thede factostandard theory of Indo-European origins, but he distinguished it from an implied "radical" scenario of military invasion. Gimbutas' actual main scenario involved slow accumulation of influence through coercion or extortion, as distinguished from general raiding shortly followed by conquest:

One might at first imagine that the economy of argument involved with the Kurgan solution should oblige us to accept it outright. But critics do exist and their objections can be summarized quite simply: Almost all of the arguments for invasion and cultural transformations are far better explained without reference to Kurgan expansions, and most of the evidence so far presented is either totally contradicted by other evidence, or is the result of gross misinterpretation of the cultural history of Eastern, Central, and Northern Europe.

Alignment with Anatolian hypothesis (2000s)

Main article:Anatolian hypothesis

In the 2000s, Alberto Piazza andLuigi Luca Cavalli-Sforzatried to align the Anatolian hypothesis with the steppe theory. According to Piazza, "[i]t is clear that, genetically speaking, peoples of the Kurgan steppe descended at least in part from people of the Middle Eastern Neolithic who immigrated there fromAnatolia."According to Piazza and Cavalli-Sforza (2006), the Yamna-culture may have been derived from Middle Eastern Neolithic farmers who migrated to the Pontic steppe and developed pastoral nomadism.Wells agrees with Cavalli-Sforza that there is "somegenetic evidence for migration from the Middle East. "Nevertheless, the Anatolian hypothesis is incompatible with the linguistic evidence.

Anthony's revised steppe theory (2007)

David Anthony'sThe Horse, the Wheel and Languagedescribes his "revised steppe theory". He considers the term "Kurgan culture" so imprecise as to be useless, and instead uses the coreYamnaya cultureand its relationship with other cultures as points of reference.He points out:

The Kurgan culture was so broadly defined that almost any culture with burial mounds, or even (like the Baden culture) without them could be included.

He does not include theMaykop cultureamong those that he considers to be Indo-European-speaking and presumes instead that they spoke aCaucasian language.

See also

• Hamangia culture
• Varna culture
• Animal sacrifice
• Ashvamedha
• Shaft tomb
• Revised Kurgan theory
• Germanic substrate hypothesis

Genetics

• Archaeogenetics of Europe
• Haplogroup R1a
• Lactase persistence

Competing hypotheses

• Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses
  • Armenian hypothesis
  • Anatolian hypothesis
  • Out of India theory
  • Paleolithic continuity theory

Bibliography

• Anthony, David W (1991). "The Archaeology of Indo-European Origins".The Archaeology of Indo-European Origins.19(3–4): 193–222.ISSN0092-2323.
• Anthony, David W. (2007),The Horse, The Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World,Princeton University Press,ISBN978-0-691-05887-0
• Anthony, David W.; Bogucki, Peter; Comşa, Eugen; Gimbutas, Marija; Jovanović, Borislav; Mallory, J. P.; Milisaukas, Sarunas (1986). "The" Kurgan Culture, "Indo-European Origins, and the Domestication of the Horse: A Reconsideration".Current Anthropology.27(4): 291–313.doi:10.1086/203441.ISSN0011-3204.JSTOR2743045.S2CID143388176.
• Anthony, David W.; Ringe, Donald (January 2015),"The Indo-European Homeland from Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives",Annual Review of Linguistics,1(1): 199–219,doi:10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124812
• Anthony, David; Vinogradov, Nikolai (1995), "Birth of the Chariot",Archaeology,vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 36–41,JSTOR41771098
• Blench, Roger; Spriggs, Matthew, eds. (1999),Archaeology and Language,Vol. III:Artefacts, languages and texts,London: Routledge
• Bojtar, Endre (1999),Foreword to the Past: A Cultural History of the Baltic People,Budapest: Central European University Press
• Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca (2000).Genes, peoples, and languages.Farrar Straus & Giroux.ISBN978-0-86547-529-8.
• Gimbutas, Marija(1956),The Prehistory of Eastern Europe. Part I: Mesolithic, Neolithic and Copper Age Cultures in Russia and the Baltic Area,Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum.
• Gimbutas, Marija(1970), "Proto-Indo-European Culture: The Kurgan Culture during the Fifth, Fourth, and Third Millennia B.C.", in Cardona, George; Hoenigswald, Henry M.; Senn, Alfred (eds.),Indo-European and Indo-Europeans: Papers Presented at the Third Indo-European Conference at the University of Pennsylvania,Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 155–197,ISBN0-8122-7574-8.
• Gimbutas, Marija(1982), "Old Europe in the Fifth Millenium B.C.: The European Situation on the Arrival of Indo-Europeans", in Polomé, Edgar C. (ed.),The Indo-Europeans in the Fourth and Third Millennia,Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers,ISBN0-89720-041-1
• Gimbutas, Marija(Spring–Summer 1985), "Primary and Secondary Homeland of the Indo-Europeans: comments on Gamkrelidze–Ivanov articles",Journal of Indo-European Studies,13(1&2): 185–201
• Gimbutas, Marija (1997), Dexter, Miriam Robbins; Jones-Bley, Karlene (eds.),The Kurgan Culture and the Indo-Europeanization of Europe: Selected Articles from 1952 to 1993,Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series, vol. 18, Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man,ISBN978-0-941694-56-8.
• Gimbutas, Marija;Dexter, Miriam Robbins (1999),The Living Goddesses,Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press,ISBN0-520-22915-0
• Haak W, Lazaridis I, Patterson N, Rohland N, et al. (2015), "Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe",Nature,522(7555): 207–211,arXiv:1502.02783,Bibcode:2015Natur.522..207H,bioRxiv10.1101/013433,doi:10.1038/nature14317,PMC5048219,PMID25731166
• Krell, Kathrin (1998), "Gimbutas' Kurgans-PIE homeland hypothesis: a linguistic critique",Archaeology and Language,vol. II, Blench and Spriggs
• Mallory, J. P.(1997), "Kurgan Tradition",Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture,London: Fitzroy Dearborn, pp. 338–341,ISBN1-884964-98-2
• Mallory, J. P.(1989),In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth,London: Thames & Hudson,ISBN0-500-27616-1.
• Mallory, J. P.(1996), Fagan, Brian M. (ed.),The Oxford Companion to Archaeology,New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press,ISBN0-19-507618-4
• Piazza, Alberto; Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi (2006)."Diffusion of genes and languages in human evolution".Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Evolution of Language.pp. 255–266. Archived fromthe originalon 2008-12-11.Retrieved2023-10-11.
• Renfrew, Colin (1999), "Time depth, convergence theory, and innovation in Proto-Indo-European: 'Old Europe' as a PIE linguistic area",Journal of Indo-European Studies,27(3–4): 257–293
• Schmoeckel, Reinhard (1999),Die Indoeuropäer. Aufbruch aus der Vorgeschichte[The Indo-Europeans: Rising from pre-history] (in German), Bergisch-Gladbach (Germany): Bastei Lübbe,ISBN3-404-64162-0
• Strazny, Philipp, ed. (2000).Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics(1st ed.). Routledge.ISBN978-1-57958-218-0.
• Wells, Spencer; Read, Mark (2002),The journey of man: a genetic odyssey,Princeton University Press,ISBN978-0-691-11532-0
• Zanotti, D. G. (1982), "The Evidence for Kurgan Wave One As Reflected By the Distribution of 'Old Europe' Gold Pendants",Journal of Indo-European Studies,vol. 10, pp. 223–234

External links

• Humanjourney.us,The Indo-Europeans