Proto-Indo-European homeland

The Proto-Indo-European homeland (or Indo-European homeland) was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and went on to form the proto-communities of the different branches of the Indo-European language family.

B

When the IE family had been discovered and scholars sought the land of origin, they initially thought of India because of Sanskrit’s ancientness.
- Beekes, R.S.P., 1990: Vergelijkende Taalwetenschap. Tussen Sanskriet en Nederlands, Het Spectrum, Utrecht. (page 73)

Where would one have placed the homeland if the areas where all the Indo-European languages are spoken were to be eliminated by the logic used to eliminate the North-west of the subcontinent? While this may well be an unwarranted flight of fancy, it seems fair to point out that the homeland candidacy of the Volga Valley steppes, for one, is actually advantaged by the absence of ancient textual sources in the Indo-European languages spoken in that area (such as Balto-Slavic) that might well have proved detrimental to their case were they to have been preserved and discovered. The same holds true for other postulated homelands.
- Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 5

C

From the linguistic data alone... it is not possible to draw deﬁnite conclusions about the homeland of the speakers of PIE, or even the age of the language family.
- Clackson, James (2013) The origins of the Indic languages: the Indo-European model. In: Angela Marcantonio and Girish Nath Jha (eds.) Perspectives on the Origin of Indian Civilization. Dartmouth, MA: Center for India Studies, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Pp. 260–288. Quoted in Asya Pereltsvaig, Martin W. Lewis - The Indo-European Controversy (2015)

D

The 'problem' is primarily in the head of Indo-Europeanists: It is a problem of interpretative logic and ideology.
We have seen that one primarily places the lE's in the north if one is German, . . . in the east if one is Russian, and in the middle if, being Italian or Spanish, one has no chance of competing for the privilege.
- Jean-Paul Demoule, "Les Indo-Europeens: Ont-ils existe?", L'Histoire, 28 (1980), p. 120; quoted in translation by E. F. Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture (Oxford University Press, 2001), Ch. 1

Homelands are to be reconstructed in such a way as to minimize the number of migrations, and the number of migrating daughter branches, required to get from them to attested distributions.
- I. Dyen, 1956, Language distribution, page 613, quoted in Johanna Nichols in Archaeology and Language, Vol. I: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations edited by Roger Blench and Matthew Spriggs, Routledge, London and New York, 1997. (Paper by Johanna Nichols).

E

It is opposed to their foreign origin that neither in the code [of Manu], nor, I believe, in the Vedas, nor in any book that is certainly older than the code, is there any allusion to a prior residence.
- Mountstuart Elphinstone,quoted in (p.115-6) D. K. Chakrabarti, Nationalism in the Study of Ancient Indian History (Aryan Books International, Delhi). and quoted in [1]

The common origin of the Sanscrit language with those of the west leaves no doubt that there was once a connection between the nations by whom they are used; but it proves nothing regarding the place where such a connection subsisted, nor about the time, (…) To say that it spread from a central point is a gratuitous assumption.
- Mountstuart Elphinstone,quoted in (p.115-6) D. K. Chakrabarti, Nationalism in the Study of Ancient Indian History (Aryan Books International, Delhi). and quoted in [2]

Where, also, could the central point be, from which a language could spread over India, Greece and Italy, and yet leave Chaldaea, Syria and Arabia untouched? The question, therefore, is still open. There is no reason whatever for thinking that the Hindus ever inhabited any country but their present.
- Mountstuart Elphinstone,quoted in (p.115-6) D. K. Chakrabarti, Nationalism in the Study of Ancient Indian History (Aryan Books International, Delhi). and quoted in [3]

Postulating that the Vedic people kept silent about a homeland which they still vividly remembered, as the invasionists imply, is not coherent with all we know about ancient peoples, who preserved such memories for many centuries.
- Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

The shift from India to Europe as the preferred Urheimat was formally due to new linguistic insights.. but it was coincidentally also well-tuned to new political concerns. Apart from rising nationalism which explains the scramble among scholars to grab the Urheimat status for their own country, the main factor was European colonialism, then at its apogee. It seemed natural that the continent whose manifest destiny was the domination of the world, had also brought forth its own proto-historic Indo-European culture and language. Conversely, it seemed illogical that a backward country like India, badly in need of the White Man's civilising mission, could have brought forth the superior European culture.
- Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". I.244

H

Skepticism in scholarly circles grew rapidly after 1880. The obvious impossibility of actually locating the Aryan homeland; the increasing complexity of the problem with every addition to our knowledge of prehistoric cultures; the even more remote possibility of ever learning anything conclusive regarding the traits of the mythical "original Aryans"; the increasing realization that all the historical peoples were much mixed in blood and that the role of a particular race in a great melange of races, though easy to exaggerate, is impossible to determine, the ridiculous and humiliating spectacle of eminent scholars subordinating their interests in truth to the inflation of racial and national pride—all these and many other reasons led scholars to declare either that the Aryan doctrine was a figment of the professional imagination or that it was incapable of clarification because the crucial evidence was lost, apparently forever.
- Hankins, Frank H. 1948. "Aryans." In Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences.p 265, quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

I

The Indo-European homeland need not be identical to the area of horse domestication, but should be connected to it. The ways in which names and technical knowledge . . . spread should be explored.
- Ivanov, Vyacheslav. 1999. "Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo-European." UCLA Indo-European Studies 1:147-264 (233).23 quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

K

Apart from the linguistic issue, however, we have here another subtle aspect. Since there are all these different claims for the Urheimat... then any one location is controversial. Why mainstream scholarship should single out and ostracize only N-W-India-and-Pakistan is incomprehensible—particularly when archaeology and anthropology since the early 1980s stressed that there was no trace of mass invasion in this area.
- Kazanas, N. (2002). Indigenous Indo-Aryans and the Rigveda: Indo-Aryan migration debate. Journal of Indo-European Studies, 30(3-4), 275-334.

M

If there are any lessons to be learned, it is that every model of Indo-European origins can be found to reveal serious deficiencies as we increase our scrutiny.
- JP Mallory, Twenty-first century clouds over Indo-European homelands, 2013, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins.

The cynical have been tempted to describe it as the phlogiston of prehistoric research.
- J. P. Mallory, "A History of the Indo-European Problem", Journal of Indo-European Studies, 1 (1973), pp. 21-66; quoted by E. F. Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture (Oxford University Press, 2001), Ch. 1

One does not ask 'where is the Indo-European home- land?' but rather 'where do they put it now?'
- JP Mallory (1989) 1989. In Search of the Indo-Eumpecms. London: Thames and Hudson. quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

We have different sub-regions of an early IE world, scattered in space from the Baltic to Anatolia and east across the European steppe. . . . To unify these disparate geographical elements together into a single 'unified theory' seems to be as distant to those seeking such a goal in Indo-European studies as it is for physicists.
- JP Mallory's (1997) 1997. "The Homelands of the Indo-Europeans." In Archaeology and Language (93-121). Ed. R. Blench and M. Spriggs. London: Routledge. quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

We don’t exclude the possibility of contacts between the ancient Indo-Europeans and their Caucasian contemporaries, but no precise trace has so far been brought forward. The structural similarities that one may envision for a very distant period would not imply a common origin nor a period of symbiosis.
- Martinet, André, 1986: Des Steppes aux Océans. L’Indo-Européen et les “Indo-Européens”, Paris: Payot. Martinet (1985:21):, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins, and in Elst, "Some unlikely tentacles of early Indo-European", published as ch.3 in Angela Marcantonio & Girish Nath Jha, eds.: Perspectives on the Origins of Indian Civilization, Center for Indic Studies, Dartmouth MA, and DK Printworld, Delhi, 2013, from Dartmouth conference 2011.

N

It is a basic tenet of migration and homeland theory that the geographical location of a language family’s proto-homeland is to be sought in the vicinity of the root of the family tree (i.e. in the region where the deepest branches come together on a map); or, more generally, that the homeland is to be sought in the region of present greatest genetic diversity of the family.
- Johanna Nichols. NICHOLS 1997: The Epicentre of the Indo-European Linguistic Spread. Nichols, Johanna. Chapter 8, in ―Archaeology and Language, Vol. I: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations, ed. Roger Blench & Matthew Spriggs, Routledge, London and New York, 1997.

P

Instead of letting us know definitely and precisely where the so-called original home of the Aryans lay, they drag us into a maze of conjectures clouded by the haze of presumptions. The whole subject of the Aryan problem is a farrago of linguistic speculations or archaeological imaginations complicated by racial prejudices and chauvinistic xenophobia. It is high time we extricate ourselves from this chaos of bias and belief.
- Prakash, Buddha. 1966. Rgveda and the Indus Valley Civilization. Hoshiapur: Vishveshvarananda Institute. (Prakash, 1966, xliv) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

For nearly two centuries the investigations went on, and voluminous works were written on the subject. The net result of their investigations ended in failure, and nothing definite was settled either in the sphere of language or race. What they finally left behind is the fiction of Ursprache [original language] with a false Urvolk [original people], who are found located in an equally nebulous Urheimat [homeland].
- Pillai, C. 1940. A Short History of the Faulty Study Conducted in the Indo-European Field. Palamcottah: Palamcottah. (C. Pillai 1940, 2) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

V

The Indo-European homeland has to be localized at the area where the wild horse did not live.
- Voclav Blažek. Is Indo-European *Hekwo horse‘ Really of Indo-European Origin? In Studia Indogermanica Lodziensia (Sigl), Vol.II, Lodz, 1998, page 29. (BLAŽEK 1998:29).

W

It is probable that one of the earliest homes (if not the first seat) of the members of the great Aryan family was in the high land surrounding the sources of the Oxus, to the north of die point connecting the Hindu Kush with the Himalayas . . . the Pamir Plateau.
- Monier Williams (1891) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

From a common Proto-Aryan speech we infer also a common Proto-Aryan homeland. . . . Where was this primitive home from which the Aryan blood went out in so many streams over the earth?
- Widney, Joseph P. 1907. Race Life of the Aryan Peoples. London: Funk. quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1

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Proto-Indo-European homeland