Editor Алексей Германович Виноградов

Illustrator Алексей Германович Виноградов

Translator Алексей Германович Виноградов

© A. G. Vinogradov, 2025

© S. V. Zharnikova, 2025

© Алексей Германович Виноградов, illustrations, 2025

© Алексей Германович Виноградов, translation, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0065-5450-4

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Problems of localization of the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans

The problem of localization of the ancestral homeland of Indo-European peoples has been facing science for a long time. As far back as the mid-18th century, the linguistic kinship of European peoples was noted, and in 1767, Kerdu pointed out the proximity of a number of European languages to Sanskrit, the language of the sacred texts of Ancient India «Vedas. «The decisive for the emergence of Indo-European studies was the discovery of Sanskrit, acquaintance with the first texts on it and the enthusiasm that began with ancient Indian culture, the most striking reflection of which was the book of F. von Schlegel» On the language and wisdom of Indians ” (1808), writes V. N. Toporov. F. von Schlegel, the first to express the idea of a single ancestral home of all Indo-Europeans, placed this ancestral home on the territory of Hindustan. However, the fallacy of this assumption was soon proved, since before the arrival of the Aryan (Indo-European) tribes, India was inhabited by representatives of another language family and another one-time type – black Dravids.

Assumed at different times as the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans (today this is the people of 10 language groups: Indian, Iranian, Slavic, Baltic, German, Celtic, Romance, Albanian, Armenian and modern Greek): India, the slopes of the Himalayas, Central Asia, Asian steppes, Mesopotamia, Near and Middle East, Armenian Highlands, territories from Western France to the Urals between 60° and 45° N, territory from the Rhine to the Don, Black Sea-Caspian steppes, steppes from the Rhine to Hindu Kush, areas between the Mediterranean and Altai, in Western Europe – currently, for one reason or another, most researchers rejected.

It should be noted that the Soviet historical school until the beginning of the 30s of the 20th century proceeded from the definition of the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans based on the works of A. A. Shakhmatov and L. I. Niederle. The ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans, based on naturally geographical factors, was placed by them in Moravia and Silesia. At the same time, the ancestral home of the East Indo-Europeans (Slavs, Albanians, summer-Lithuanians, Armenians, Indo-Iranians) was placed in the Moscow and Tver regions, in the upper Dnieper.

The ancestral home was placed by the Baltov in the Minsk and Vitebsk regions.

The ancestral home of the Slavs was located by them from Prussia to Pskov, along the banks of the Neman, Dvina and the Gulf of Riga. It was assumed that later the East Indo-Europeans moved south along the Dnieper, to the Black Sea, where the Aryans formed – the Indo-Iranians, who then left the Don to Iran and India. Slavs moved to Poland and further to the Balkans, Carpathians and Ukraine.

Similar scientific hypotheses were then replicated, in particular, in K. Kudryashov’s mass-circulation «Russian Historical Atlas» issued by the State Publishing House in 1928. Despite fundamentally different scientific views, this work was supported and approved by academicians M. N. Pokrovsky, S. F. Platonov, S. V. Voznesensky, B. D. Grekov, N. S. Derzhavin, Yu. G. Oksman, P F. Preobrazhensky, A. E. Presnyakov, O. N. Serbina, A. V. Shebalov.

But then, in 1929, «Russian history» itself was recognized as counter-revolutionary, and in 1932—36 the theory of the ancestral home was declared by communist ideologists – not Bolshevik, fascist and anti-scientific.

Russian historical atlas of K. Kudryashov

Among the hypotheses formulated in recent years, I would like to dwell on two in more detail: V. A. Safronov, who proposed in his monograph Indo-European Ancestral Homes the concept of the three ancestral homelands of Indo-Europeans —

in Asia Minor, the Balkans and Central Europe (Western Slovakia), and T.V. Gamkrelidze and V.V. Ivanov, who own the idea of the Near-Asian (more precisely, located on the territory of the Armenian Highlands and adjacent areas of Western Asia) the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans, spelled out and argued by them in the fundamental two-volume «Indo-European language and Indo-Europeans».

V. A. Safronov, referring to the work of N. D. Andreev, emphasizes that on the basis of the Early Indo-European (hereinafter RIE) vocabulary, we can conclude that «early Indo-European society lived in cold places, may be in the foothills, in which there were no large rivers, but rivulets, streams, springs; rivers, despite the rapid flow, were not an obstacle; crossed through them in boats. In winter, these rivers froze, and in spring they spilled scattered and swamps… The climate of the RIE ancestral homeland was probably sharply continental with severe and cold winters, when the rivers froze, strong winds blew; «in a stormy spring with thunderstorms, heavy snowmelt, river spills, hot dry summers when the grass was drying out, there was not enough water.» The early Indo-Europeans had early phases of agriculture and cattle breeding, although hunting, gathering and fishing did not lose their significance. Among the tamed animals are a bull, a cow, a sheep, a goat, a pig, a horse and a dog that guarded the herds. V. A. Safronov notes that: «Riding was practiced by the early Indo-Europeans: what animals were circled around is not clear, but the goals are obvious: taming.» Agriculture was represented by a hoe and fire-arm form, processing of agricultural products was carried out by grinding grain. The early Indo-European tribes lived settled; they had different types of stone and flint tools, knives, shelters, scrapers, axes, adzes, etc. They exchanged and traded. In the early Indo-European community, there was a difference in childbirth, taking into account the degree of kinship, and juxtaposition of friends and foes. The role of women was very high. Particular attention was paid to the «progeny generation process», which was expressed in a number of root words that passed into the Early Indo-European language from the boreal parent language.

In early Indo-European society, a paired family stood out, management was carried out by the leaders, and there was a defensive organization. There was a cult of fertility associated with zoomorphic cults, was a developed funeral rite. From the foregoing, V. A. Safronov concludes that the ancestral home of the early Indo-Europeans was in Asia Minor. He notes that such an assumption is the only possible, because: «Central Europe, including the Carpathian basin, was occupied by a glacier».

However, the data of paleoclimatology indicate something else. At the time in question, those during the final stage of the Valdai glaciation (the chronological framework of which is established from 11,000 to 10,500 years ago), the nature of the vegetation cover of Europe, although it was different from the modern one, but in Central Europe, arctic tundra with birch-spruce woodlands, low-mountain tundra and alpine meadows were common, not a glacier. Sparse forests with birch-pine stands occupied most of Central Europe, and steppe vegetation prevailed on the Great Central Danube Lowland and in the southern part of the Russian Plain.

Paleogeographers note that in the south of Europe the influence of the ice sheet was not felt, especially in the Balkans and Asia Minor, where the influence of the glacier was not felt at all. The time, to which the culture of Asia Minor Chatal Gayuk belongs, associated by V.A. Safonov with the early Indo-Europeans, marked by the warming of the Holocene.

As early as 9780 years ago, elms appear in the Yaroslavl Region, 9400 years ago in the Tver Region of lindens, 7790 years ago in the Leningrad Region, oaks.

The more unlikely the presence of a cold climate in Asia Minor. Here I would like to refer to the conclusions of L. S. Berg and G. N. Lisitsina, made at different times, but, nevertheless, not refuting each other. So L.S. Berg in his work «Climate and Life» (1947) emphasized that the climate of the Sinai Peninsula has not changed over the past 7 thousand years and that here and in Egypt, «if there was a change, it would rather increase, and not a decrease in precipitation».

He noted that: «Blankenhorn believed that in Egypt, Syria and Palestine the climate remained broadly constant and similar to that present since the end of the pluvial period; the end of the latter, Blankenhorn attributes to the beginning of the interglacial epoch» (130—70 thousand BC).

In his 1921 work, Blankenhorn writes that «From the Riess-Wurm interglacial (mousterien of Western Europe) to the present (in these territories) a dry desert climate, and in the north a semi-arid climate, similar to the modern one, interrupted by a short wet time corresponding to the Wurm glaciation.» G. N. Lisitsina comes to similar conclusions, who write in 1970: «The climate of the arid zone in the XVII millennia BC not much different from the modern one». We have no reason to believe that the climate of the west of Asia Minor, where daphne, cherry, barberry, maquis, Calabrian pine, oak, hornbeam, hop hornbeam, ash, white and prickly astragalus also live, also live animals like mongoose, jackal, porcupine, mouflon, wild ass, hyena, bats and locusts, and «snow does not fall every year, snow cover, as a rule, does not form», in 8—7 thousand BC so significantly different from the modern that it could be similar to that harsh ancestral home of the early Indo-Europeans, which is reconstructed on the basis of their vocabulary.

In addition, V. A. Safonov writes: «The close relationship between the boreal and the Turkic and Uralic languages, according to N. D Andreyev, allows localization of the boreal community in the forest zone from the Rhine to Altai.

From this it also follows that from all areas where RIE carriers could have gone, Anatolia seems to be the only possible one: narrow straits did not serve as an obstacle, since the early Indo-Europeans knew the means of crossing (the «boat» was recorded in the language of the early Indo-Europeans).»