In the 19th century, the proximity of the languages now called Indo-European (at that time they were called Indo-Germanic) was discovered, and the corresponding term appeared to denote the language family. The assumption immediately arose that such closeness is nothing but kinship, and that in ancient times the ancestors of the speakers of Indo-European languages were one people and lived on a compact territory. And if so, then it makes sense to look for this land, that is, the Indo-European ancestral home (IEP).
Since the language of the first Indo-Europeans was unwritten (and if there were any writing, then they have not yet been read), the main means of searching for the IEP was archeology. Additional information was provided by linguistics - it established with which other language families the early Indo-Europeans could contact. And the presence of common Indo-European roots in individual words could indicate the natural environment of the IEP and the occupation of its population. This gave rise to four main hypotheses about the location of the IEP.
Northern Black Sea region
One of the oldest and most developed hypotheses connects the IEP with an ancient pit cultural community that existed in the steppes of Eastern Europe in the 4th - early 3rd millennium BC. e. According to this version, the early Indo-Europeans began to settle in the III millennium, leaving the inhabited territories in different directions. The peoples of the Iranian group remained the longest in the old place, which then gave rise to the Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans. The migrations of the carriers of the corresponding cultural traditions have been well traced by archaeologists and generally coincide with the subsequent historical settlement of the Indo-European peoples. However, there are two buts: according to proto-linguistic reconstructions, the early Indo-Europeans were not nomad-pastoralists, but farmers; and the Proto-Indo-European language existed and disintegrated earlier. Now the carriers of the ancient pit community are usually considered the direct ancestors of only Indo-Iranian peoples.
Balkan-Danube region
Here, back in the VI-V millennium BC. e. developed agricultural cultures existed. Immediately, apparently, the first ideographic writing on Earth appeared. Between these cultures and later Indo-European (for example, proto-Greek), there is a connection in many elements. Many common Indo-European words indicate the climate, flora and fauna of these particular latitudes. However, it is difficult to explain the decay of the cultures of this region that occurred in the 4th millennium, if we assume that their carriers remained in place and were not expelled by aliens.
Promotional video:
Asia Minor and the Middle East
A number of researchers (T. V. Gamkrelidze, Vyach. Bs. Ivanov, V. A. Safronov, N. A. Nikolaeva) substantiated the hypothesis that the IEP was in the region of the origin of the first agricultural crops on Earth, in the area of the fertile crescent »In the Middle East and Asia Minor. Safronov suggested that culture on the Anatolian plateau is directly connected with the IEP, the monument of which is one of the oldest cities on Earth - Chatal-Huyuk, which existed already for 7500 years BC. e. According to Safronov's hypothesis, the creators of Chatal-Huyuk subsequently migrated to the Balkans, where they created the Vinca culture and from where they spread widely in all directions.
Mythical Arctida
At the end of the 19th century, the Indian scientist B. Tilak, relying on some fragmentary and confused indications of the ancient Aryan sacred books "Vedas" and "Avesta", tried to substantiate the theory of the northern, Arctic IEP. He admitted the existence of about 8000 BC. e. beyond the Arctic Circle of some land, later hidden under water or ice. The Aryans were prompted to migrate from their ancestral homeland by the Great Glaciation, which Tilak believed began just at that time. The provisions of the version of the Arctic IEP are in blatant contradiction with all data from the Earth sciences and do not find the slightest archaeological confirmation. Nevertheless, this hypothesis immediately became popular in mystical-occult circles and still feeds all kinds of Ariosophical and Nordic doctrines.
Was there a compact ancestral home?
It is easy to see that the Middle Eastern, South European, and Eastern European localizations of the IEP are not completely mutually exclusive. They can reflect different stages of the formation of the Indo-European community. However, it is very difficult to accept that the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans at any given time were in a narrow area. Questions immediately arise: what peoples lived outside of it, and where did they go then?
Back in the middle of the last century, a theory was substantiated according to which the similarity of the Indo-European languages was not the result of the explosive migration of the people from the local ancestral home, but the result of long-term contacts of various tribes in a rather large area. It was named Circumpontic (that is, located around the Black Sea). The credibility of this version of the formation of the Indo-European community is given by the fact that, according to all historical observations, the deeper the antiquity, the more languages it contains.
However, one should probably not exaggerate the importance of either one or the other way of creating modern language families. In different historical periods, both the processes of settlement of one people, which experienced a demographic surge, and the processes of mutual assimilation of peoples of different origins in one territory could prevail.
The most important thing is that the term "Indo-European" indicates the kinship of only languages, but does not necessarily mean the genetic community of their carriers, even in ancient times. This is also confirmed by modern paleogenetic studies. They revealed the impossibility of identifying the undoubted ancestors of the Indo-European peoples among the carriers of ancient cultures.
Yaroslav Butakov