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30. The Indo-Europeans.

It is assumed that the Indo-European family of languages, with its numerous branches and its millions of speakers, has developed out of some single language, which must have been spoken thousands of years ago by some comparatively small body of people in a relatively restricted geographical area. This original language is called Proto-Indo-European (PIE). The people, who spoke it or who spoke languages evolved from it, are called Indo-Europeans. People of very different races and cultures can come to be native speakers of Indo-European languages: such speakers today include Indians, Afghans, Iranians, Greeks, Irishmen, Ukrainians, Mexicans, Brazilians, and Norwegians.

The traditional view has been that the Indo-Europeans were a nomadic or semi-nomadic people, who invaded neighboring agricultural or urban areas, and imposed their languages on them. It is believed that the initial expansion of the Indo-Europeans was simply the pushing out of the frontiers of an agricultural people, who over centuries introduced agriculture into the more thinly populated country round their periphery, inhabited by hunters or food-gatherers. This mass migration began in about 7000 BC or according to the traditional point of view it dates back to 4000BC or later.

The home of Indo-Europeans. There several opinions regarding where from the dispersal began. 1) Scandinavia, and the adjacent parts of Northern Germany, and it was often linked with a belief that the Germanic peoples were the ‘original’ Indo-Europeans; b) steppes of Ukraine, north of the Black sea; c) eastern Anatolia, to the South of the Caucasus range, and west of the Caspian sea.

Let us assume that it was the Ukrainian steppes or South Russian steppes, where about 5th millennium BC, lived people, who formed a loosely linked group of communities with common gods and similar social organization. After 4000 BC, when the language had developed into a number of dialects, they began to expand in various directions, different groups ending up in Iran, India, the Mediterranean area, and most part of Europe. In the course of their expansion, the Indo-Europeans overran countries which had reached a higher level of civilization than they had themselves, the Aryas, for example, conquered the civilizations of Northern India, and the Persians those of Mesopotamia. Primitive nomadic peoples have overrun more advanced urban civilizations, and there is no need to postulate some special intellectual or physical prowess in the Indo-Europeans.

There is one technical factor, which played a role in the expansion of Indo-Europeans. This was the use of horse-drawn vehicles, which was characteristic of Indo-European society. The horse was a later introduction into the river valleys of the great early urban civilizations, in which the normal draught animal was the ass, and when the horse came to them, it came from the North. It is possible that Indo-Europeans were ahead of time, and it was their use of wheeled vehicles, especially the fast horse-drawn chariot, that enabled them to overrun such a large part of the Eurasian continent.

The family tree of the Indo-European languages.

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