Tomenable
Elite member
- Messages
- 5,419
- Reaction score
- 1,337
- Points
- 113
- Location
- Poland
- Ethnic group
- Polish
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- R1b-L617
- mtDNA haplogroup
- W6a
I think the confusion is because many users here are from the USA, and they all speak English, but declare different "cultures" (for example - French, African, German, Italian, even "American"), so it's hard for them to grasp the importance of language in PIE studies. In the USA you can be Italian and speak English. But in case of PIEs it was different than with Americans - there could not be Proto-Indo-Europeans who did not speak PIE. Of essential importance for PIE origins is PIE language.
If some people spoke PIE language but - for instance - did not burry their dead in kurgans, they were PIE.
And if some people spoke Turkic language, but did burry their dead in kurgans, they were not PIE, but Turkic.
So language is more important for the issue of PIE origins, than is material culture.
And while Proto-Indo-European language contained words which indicated common culture (for example the word for wheel - which indicated that they had wheeled vehicles), this does not tell us anything about the beginning of PIE language, only about the end of it.
Because all IE languages have words for wheels which are cognates (derived from a common PIE root), it means that Proto-Indo-Europeans had wheels before they split into different groups and before their languages became differentiated into different IE languages.
What it does not mean, however, is that PIE was spoken only after PIEs acquired wheels.
It could be spoken also waaaay before the acquisition of wheels by that community. The so called "Wheel Line", dated to 3500 BC, only means that Late Proto-Indo-European was still a single language in year 3500 BC, but it does not tell us anything about when it originated (for example, it could had originated in 6000 BC, and then continued to be a single language for 2500 years, starting to split into what later became various Indo-European linguistic families and languages only after 3500 BC):
The "PIE cultural package" as defined by some users here, emerged during the existence of PIE speakers.
It did not initiate their existence.
If some people spoke PIE language but - for instance - did not burry their dead in kurgans, they were PIE.
And if some people spoke Turkic language, but did burry their dead in kurgans, they were not PIE, but Turkic.
So language is more important for the issue of PIE origins, than is material culture.
And while Proto-Indo-European language contained words which indicated common culture (for example the word for wheel - which indicated that they had wheeled vehicles), this does not tell us anything about the beginning of PIE language, only about the end of it.
Because all IE languages have words for wheels which are cognates (derived from a common PIE root), it means that Proto-Indo-Europeans had wheels before they split into different groups and before their languages became differentiated into different IE languages.
What it does not mean, however, is that PIE was spoken only after PIEs acquired wheels.
It could be spoken also waaaay before the acquisition of wheels by that community. The so called "Wheel Line", dated to 3500 BC, only means that Late Proto-Indo-European was still a single language in year 3500 BC, but it does not tell us anything about when it originated (for example, it could had originated in 6000 BC, and then continued to be a single language for 2500 years, starting to split into what later became various Indo-European linguistic families and languages only after 3500 BC):
The "PIE cultural package" as defined by some users here, emerged during the existence of PIE speakers.
It did not initiate their existence.