Proto-Indo-European homelands from 1653 to present-day

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I want to briefly summarize which places have been proposed as the PIE homeland in the past.

An overview of PIE homelands from 1653 to 2015:

Author / year / suggested PIE homeland:

M. Z. van Boxhorn 1653 - Eurasian Steppe - "Scythia"
W. Jones 1786 - Iranian Plateau
F. von Schlegel 1808 - Indian subcontinent
J. Schmidt 1890 - Asia Minor (Anatolia)
O. Schrader 1890 - Eurasian Steppe
Kossina 1902 - North European Plain
H. Hirt 1905 - North European Plain
V. G. Childe 1925-26 - South Russian Steppe (1950: change of mind - Anatolia)
A. H. Sayce 1927 - Anatolia
L. Dhar 1930 - India ("Out of India"; today S. G. Talageri, K. Elst, N. Kazanas, T. Kivisild support it)
H. Kuehn 1932 - the Paleolithic Continuity Theory (Aurignacian culture)
T. Sulimirski 1933 - Eurasian Steppe (as original homeland of Corded Ware ancestors)
W. Koppers 1934 - Western Turkestan
F. Schpecht 1936 - North European Plain
E. Mayer 1948 - North European Plain
A. Schmidt 1949 - from the East (outside of Europe)
J. Pokorny 1954 - North European Plain
A. Nehring 1954 - between the Caspian Sea and Caucasus, in South Dagestan
P. Thieme 1954 - North European Plain
H. Hencken 1955 - South-East Europe or Ukraine
W. Merlingen 1955 - South-East Europe (1976: change of mind, Sahara Desert as PIE homeland)
M. Gimbutas 1956-1970s - Steppe (Kurgan Hypothesis)
H. Krahe 1957 - Northern Europe
G. Schwantes 1958 - the Paleolithic Continuity Theory
V. Georgiev 1958 - Europe or Western Anatolia
P. Bosch-Gimpera 1961 - between South Poland or Czechoslovakia and the Black Sea
V. Illic-Svityc 1960s - Anatolia
G. Devoto 1962 - Europe
H. Łowmiański 1963 - Central Asian Steppe
I. R. Danka 1966 - Danube Basin
T. Milewski 1968 - North European Plain
W. Scherer 1968 - Central and Southern Russia
G. Ivanescu 1970 - steppe of Kazakhstan, Steppe north of Caucasus, or Forest-Steppe north of it
R. A. Crossland 1971 - Steppe North-West of Black Sea
W. P. Schmid 1978 - North-Eastern Europe
I. Djakonov 1982 - Balkan-Carpathian territory
L. Kilian 1983 - between Black Sea & North Sea
T. Gamkrelidze & V. Ivanov 1984 - Armenian Plateau
A. Martinet 1986 - Eurasian Steppe
V. Sheveroshkin 1987 - Eastern Anatolia
A. Dolgopolsky 1987 - Eastern Anatolia
C. Renfrew 1987 - Anatolia (1993-2003: Balkans; 2005: the Paleolithic Continuity Theory)
M. Zvelebil 1988 - between Black Sea & North Sea
W. Mańczak 1988 - Poland
Safronov 1989 - Balkan-Carpathian areas
F. Kortlandt 1985-1990 - North of Caspian Sea
D. W. Anthony 1991 - between Dnieper and Volga
G. Decsy 1991 - Northern Germany
Z. Gołąb 1992 - Asian Steppe (east of Ural)
M. Alinei 1996 - the Paleolithic Continuity Theory
J. Nichols 1997 - Bactria and Sogdiana (east of Caspian Sea, borderland of Afganistan-Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Tajikistan)
J. P. Mallory 1997 - Pontic-Caspian Steppe
V. Mair 1998 - the concept of "Linguistic Amoeba" ("Schprachamobe")
H. J. Holm 2000s - first split of PIE language into 2 languages was manifested in archaeology by division into CWC and Yamnaya
K. T. Witczak 2003 - Anatolia
R. Gray & Q. Atkinson 2003 - Anatolia
W. Haak 2015 - Eurasian Steppe
J.-P. Demoule 2015 - Indo-Europeans are the untraceable people that racist fantasies are obsessed with

Which theory is the best? Perhaps the oldest one, or the most recent one? :grin:
 
Mmm...PIE

All of them have some value and truth. The concept of a single Urheimat doesn't work well with the fact that most cultures have been moving around, evolving, mixing, and splitting constantly. Consider how you would define the exact moment in time in which the very first PIE person walked the earth. Before that person, not a single PIE person existed, and after that, many PIE people came about. What year was that? Was this person a newborn PIE baby born to non-PIE parents or was this a non-PIE person who went out to the woods to dream up his own ideal society and language and came back PIE? It is possible that PIE language and PIE culture (e.g. kurgans, patriarchy, threefold division of society) originated in separate locations and were later fused when multiple peoples merged. Were the merged people the original PIE, or were one or all of the source peoples also PIE?

I'm not saying that there haven't been homelands. There certainly have been. I'm saying that defining a single, exact point of origin is much tougher than it seems.

Where is the Urheimat of white people from Oklahoma? New York maybe? St. Louis, Missouri? Boston? Philadelphia? The Plymouth Colony? London? Somewhere in Germany? Classical Rome? Anatolia? Do we even know what the question is really asking?
 
Where is the Urheimat of white people from Oklahoma? New York maybe? St. Louis, Missouri? Boston? Philadelphia? The Plymouth Colony? London? Somewhere in Germany? Classical Rome? Anatolia? Do we even know what the question is really asking?

White people in Oklahoma are ultimately from Europe. Besides this question isn't similar to the PIE question, because it is impossible for PIE to have existed in New York and Indiana and Wisconsin at the same time, unlike the ancestors of white people in Oklahoma. PIE had to of originated in a small region because people couldn't keep contact across long distances till recently. So, PIE does have a homeland.
 
All of them have some value and truth. The concept of a single Urheimat doesn't work well with the fact that most cultures have been moving around, evolving, mixing, and splitting constantly. Consider how you would define the exact moment in time in which the very first PIE person walked the earth. Before that person, not a single PIE person existed, and after that, many PIE people came about. What year was that? Was this person a newborn PIE baby born to non-PIE parents or was this a non-PIE person who went out to the woods to dream up his own ideal society and language and came back PIE? It is possible that PIE language and PIE culture (e.g. kurgans, patriarchy, threefold division of society) originated in separate locations and were later fused when multiple peoples merged. Were the merged people the original PIE, or were one or all of the source peoples also PIE?

I'm not saying that there haven't been homelands. There certainly have been. I'm saying that defining a single, exact point of origin is much tougher than it seems.

Where is the Urheimat of white people from Oklahoma? New York maybe? St. Louis, Missouri? Boston? Philadelphia? The Plymouth Colony? London? Somewhere in Germany? Classical Rome? Anatolia? Do we even know what the question is really asking?
For PIE this by definition is a linguistic question that follows this path:
Where and when and by whom was the language - common ancestor of all known IE languages spoken?
 
It's been an interesting mystery for a long time.

My current thought is original PIE urheimat = pontic steppe with some expansion from there leading directly or indirectly to Corded Ware but with the main IE expansion coming out of Corded Ware later.

(based on dna results which are still in flux so may change)
 
Follow Y-DNA R1b. Since there's very old R1b in Africa we know that R1b in West Asia has to be very old. Older than R1b in Africa. They found R1b in Yamnaya. So R1b from Maykop entered Yamnaya. From there Yamnaya Indo-Europized almost the whole Europe.

IE language of Europeans is from Yamnaya. But Urheimat of PIE R1b is Leyla-Tepe/Iranian Plateau.
 
W. Haak 2015- Eurasian Steppe
This is not true. W. Haak 2015 never claimed that PIE is from the Eurasian Steppes. Maybe those who entered Europe, but that's different. IE from Yamnaya never Indo-Europized Armenia, India etc. There're studies about it.
 
Here are some typical Proto-Indo-European words that usually form layers in modern Indo-European languages:

Father
Horse
Wagon
Wheel

To track down the PIE community, surely 3 things are necessary: 1) fathers :), 2) horses, 3) wheeled vehicles.

Currently the oldest known evidence of wheeled wagons, is the Bronocice pot:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronocice_pot

Fathers date back all the way to Y-DNA "Adam". The third element are horses.
 
Follow Y-DNA R1b. Since there's very old R1b in Africa we know that R1b in West Asia has to be very old. Older than R1b in Africa. They found R1b in Yamnaya. So R1b from Maykop entered Yamnaya. From there Yamnaya Indo-Europized almost the whole Europe.

IE language of Europeans is from Yamnaya. But Urheimat of PIE R1b is Leyla-Tepe/Iranian Plateau.

I have some food for thought for you: if the original PIE homeland was in the Iranian plateau, as you assert, shouldn't there be Elamite loanwords in all branches of Indo-European (and Indo-Iranic in particular, by extend)? After all, Elamites were a civilization that emerged in southern Iran - indeed they were 'Iran's' first civilization even though obviously they weren't Iranian/Indo-European at all.
 

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