03-27-2007, 04:57 AM
Mallory and Adams (2006) on the IE homeland question
âMany of the language groups of Europe, i.e. Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, and Slavic, may possibly be traced back to the Corded Ware horizon of northern, central, and eastern Europe that flourished c. 3200-2300 BC. Some would say that iron age culture of Italy might also be derived from this cultural tradition. For this reason the Corded Ware Culture is frequently discussed as a prime candidate for early Indo-European; in the past it was even suggested as the Proto-Indo-European culture. However, the Corded Ware cannot even remotely explain the Indo-European groups of the Balkans, Greece, Anatolia, nor those of Asia. For the steppeland regions of Eurasia, the retrospective method takes us back through the Bronze Age Andronovo and Timber-grave cultures of the Eurasian steppe to the underlying Yamna culture of c. 3600-2200 BC. This method can supply us with an archaeological proxy for the Eastern Iranians but that is about all the retrospective method gets us. We may argue that the Yamna culture should minimally reflect the proto-Indo-Iranians if not more; however, we cannot do this by the retrospective method since there is no ancestral culture that territorially underlies the Iranians or Indo-Aryans, i.e. there is no specific culture X that both embraces the historical seats of the Indo-Iranians and can also be traced back to the Yamna culture. Similarly, there is no solid evidence in the retrospective method in Greece that takes us anywhere that we can confidently tie to one of the other two âancestral cultures,â nor Anatolia. Sooner or later the retrospective method leads us to a series is what seem to appear to be independent cultural phenomena that somehow must be associate with one another. In that lies most of the archaeological debate concerning Indo-European origins (Mallory and Adams 2006, p. 452).â
âAlthough the difference between the Wave of Advance and Kurgan theories is quite marked, they both share the same explanation for the expansion of the Indo-Iranians in Asia (and there are no fundamental differences in either of their difficulties in explaining the Tocharians), i.e. the expansion of mobile pastoralist eastwards and then southwards into Iran and India. Moreover, there is recognition by supporter of the Neolithic theory that the âwave of advanceâ did not reach the peripheries of Europe (central and western Mediterranean, Atlantic and northern Europe) but that these regions adopted agriculture from their neighbours rather than being replaced by them.
In short, there is no easy way to locating the Indo-European homeland; there is no certain solution (Mallory and Adams 2006, p. 453,).â
âAs both theories explain the Asian Indo-Europeans in the same manner, there is no dispute there although it does militate against one of the most attractive aspects of the âwave of advanceâ. The archaeological evidence for an expansion from the steppelands across historical Iran and India varies from meager to total absence: both the Anatolian and the Kurgan theory find it extraordinarily difficult to explain the expansion of Indo-European languages over a vast area of urbanized Asia populations, approximately the same area as that of Europe. To assert, as some supporters of the âWave of Advanceâ theory do, that only a major change such as agriculture could explain the distribution of Indo-European languages does seem to be contradicted by their own models. In terms of the Europeans west of the Black Sea, the Neolithic model provides a larger area for Indo-Europeanization, i.e. both south-east and central Europe. The steppe model is not nearly so secure for explaining central Europe. As for the peripheries of Europe, both confront analogous problems of language shift (Mallory and Adams 2006, pp. 462-3).â
âToday there is an entire school that makes a similar argument for local continuity in Northern India and argues that there in lies the homeland. In both casesâor any other case for regional continuity a solution is made for one area and the rest of the Indo-European world is forced to accommodate it, generally without the slightest credible evidence. No solution is valid if it only rest on local continuity, it must provide a viable model for the spread of all the Indo-European languages (p. 456).â
â⦠the absence of the evidence of the horse altogether from both Greece and Italy (but not India) before the Bronze Age makes it less likely that these were the earliest seats of the Indo-Euopreans (Mallory and Adams 2006, p. 449, parenthesis added).â
Mallory, J. P., and Adams, D. Q. (2006). The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. New York: Oxford University Press.
âMany of the language groups of Europe, i.e. Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, and Slavic, may possibly be traced back to the Corded Ware horizon of northern, central, and eastern Europe that flourished c. 3200-2300 BC. Some would say that iron age culture of Italy might also be derived from this cultural tradition. For this reason the Corded Ware Culture is frequently discussed as a prime candidate for early Indo-European; in the past it was even suggested as the Proto-Indo-European culture. However, the Corded Ware cannot even remotely explain the Indo-European groups of the Balkans, Greece, Anatolia, nor those of Asia. For the steppeland regions of Eurasia, the retrospective method takes us back through the Bronze Age Andronovo and Timber-grave cultures of the Eurasian steppe to the underlying Yamna culture of c. 3600-2200 BC. This method can supply us with an archaeological proxy for the Eastern Iranians but that is about all the retrospective method gets us. We may argue that the Yamna culture should minimally reflect the proto-Indo-Iranians if not more; however, we cannot do this by the retrospective method since there is no ancestral culture that territorially underlies the Iranians or Indo-Aryans, i.e. there is no specific culture X that both embraces the historical seats of the Indo-Iranians and can also be traced back to the Yamna culture. Similarly, there is no solid evidence in the retrospective method in Greece that takes us anywhere that we can confidently tie to one of the other two âancestral cultures,â nor Anatolia. Sooner or later the retrospective method leads us to a series is what seem to appear to be independent cultural phenomena that somehow must be associate with one another. In that lies most of the archaeological debate concerning Indo-European origins (Mallory and Adams 2006, p. 452).â
âAlthough the difference between the Wave of Advance and Kurgan theories is quite marked, they both share the same explanation for the expansion of the Indo-Iranians in Asia (and there are no fundamental differences in either of their difficulties in explaining the Tocharians), i.e. the expansion of mobile pastoralist eastwards and then southwards into Iran and India. Moreover, there is recognition by supporter of the Neolithic theory that the âwave of advanceâ did not reach the peripheries of Europe (central and western Mediterranean, Atlantic and northern Europe) but that these regions adopted agriculture from their neighbours rather than being replaced by them.
In short, there is no easy way to locating the Indo-European homeland; there is no certain solution (Mallory and Adams 2006, p. 453,).â
âAs both theories explain the Asian Indo-Europeans in the same manner, there is no dispute there although it does militate against one of the most attractive aspects of the âwave of advanceâ. The archaeological evidence for an expansion from the steppelands across historical Iran and India varies from meager to total absence: both the Anatolian and the Kurgan theory find it extraordinarily difficult to explain the expansion of Indo-European languages over a vast area of urbanized Asia populations, approximately the same area as that of Europe. To assert, as some supporters of the âWave of Advanceâ theory do, that only a major change such as agriculture could explain the distribution of Indo-European languages does seem to be contradicted by their own models. In terms of the Europeans west of the Black Sea, the Neolithic model provides a larger area for Indo-Europeanization, i.e. both south-east and central Europe. The steppe model is not nearly so secure for explaining central Europe. As for the peripheries of Europe, both confront analogous problems of language shift (Mallory and Adams 2006, pp. 462-3).â
âToday there is an entire school that makes a similar argument for local continuity in Northern India and argues that there in lies the homeland. In both casesâor any other case for regional continuity a solution is made for one area and the rest of the Indo-European world is forced to accommodate it, generally without the slightest credible evidence. No solution is valid if it only rest on local continuity, it must provide a viable model for the spread of all the Indo-European languages (p. 456).â
â⦠the absence of the evidence of the horse altogether from both Greece and Italy (but not India) before the Bronze Age makes it less likely that these were the earliest seats of the Indo-Euopreans (Mallory and Adams 2006, p. 449, parenthesis added).â
Mallory, J. P., and Adams, D. Q. (2006). The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. New York: Oxford University Press.