What is the Indo-European community? Where is the homeland of the Slavs? Who are the Indo-Europeans? Definitions and Explanations

Where did the Slavs and “Indo-Europeans” come from? DNA genealogy provides the answer. Part 1

Make yourself comfortable, dear reader. Some shocks await you. It’s not very easy to start a story with what the author expects from his research into the effect of a bomb exploding, but what to do if this happens?

But, in fact, why such confidence? Nowadays, nothing can surprise you anymore, right?

Yes, that's how it is. But when the issue is at least three hundred years old, and the conviction has gradually formed that the issue has no solution, at least by “available means,” and suddenly a solution is found, then this, you see, is not such a common occurrence. And this question is "The Origin of the Slavs". Or - “The origin of the original Slavic community.” Or, if you prefer, “The search for the Indo-European ancestral home.”

In fact, over these three hundred years, all sorts of assumptions have been made on this matter. Probably everything that is possible. The problem is that no one knew which ones were correct. The question was extremely confusing.

Therefore, the author will not be surprised if, in response to his findings and conclusions, a chorus of voices is heard - “this was known,” “they wrote about this before.” This is human nature. And ask this choir now - well, where is the ancestral home of the Slavs? Where is the ancestral home of the “Indo-Europeans”? Where did they come from? So there will no longer be a chorus, but a discord - “the question is complex and confusing, there is no answer.”

But first, a few definitions to make it clear what we are talking about.

Definitions and explanations. Background

Under Slavs in the context of their origin I will mean pre-Slavs. And, as will be seen from the subsequent presentation, this context is inextricably linked with the “Indo-Europeans”. The latter is a terribly awkward term. The word “Indo-Europeans” is just a mockery over common sense.

In fact, there is an “Indo-European group of languages”, and the history of this issue is such that two centuries ago certain similarities were discovered between Sanskrit and many European languages. This group of languages ​​was called “Indo-European”; it includes almost all European languages, except Basque, Finno-Ugric and Turkic languages. Then they didn’t know the reasons why India and Europe suddenly found themselves in the same language bundle, and even now they don’t really know. This will also be discussed below, and it would not have happened without the Proto-Slavs.

But the absurdities began to develop when the speakers of “Indo-European languages” themselves began to be called “Indo-Europeans”. That is, a Latvian and a Lithuanian are Indo-Europeans, but an Estonian is not. And the Hungarian is not Indo-European. A Russian living in Finland and speaking Finnish is not an Indo-European, but when he switches to Russian, he immediately becomes an Indo-European.

In other words, linguistic, the linguistic category was moved to ethnic, even essentially genealogical. Apparently, they thought that there was no better choice. It might not have been then. Now there is. Although, strictly speaking, these are linguistic terms, and when linguists say one thing, they mean another, and others get confused.

There is no less confusion when we return to ancient times. Who are they "Indo-Europeans"? These are those who in ancient times spoke “Indo-European” languages. And even earlier, who were they? And they were - "proto-Indo-Europeans". This term is even more unfortunate, and is akin to calling the ancient Anglo-Saxons “proto-Americans.” They have never even seen India, and that language has not yet been formed; only after thousands of years will it be transformed and join the Indo-European group, and they are already “Proto-Indo-Europeans”.

It’s like calling Prince Vladimir “proto-Soviet.” Although "indo-"- it is too linguistic term, and philologists have no direct connection with India.

On the other hand, you can understand and sympathize. Well, there was no other term for “Indo-Europeans”. There was no name for the people who in those distant times formed a cultural connection with India, and expanded this cultural, and in any case, linguistic connection throughout Europe.

Wait a minute, how did this not happen? A arias?

But more on this a little later.

More about terms. For some reason, it is acceptable to talk about the ancient Germans or Scandinavians, but not about the ancient Slavs. It immediately rings out - no, no, there were no ancient Slavs. Although it should be clear to everyone that we are talking about Proto-Slavs. What kind of double standard is this? Let's agree - when speaking about the Slavs, I do not mean the modern “ethno-cultural community”, but our ancestors who lived millennia ago.

Should they have some kind of name? Not awkward “proto-Indo-Europeans”? And not “Indo-Iranians”, right? Let there be Slavs pre-Slavs. AND arias, but more on that later.

Now – which Slavs are we talking about? Traditionally, the Slavs are divided into three groups - Eastern, Western and Southern Slavs. Eastern Slavs e – these are Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians. Western Slavs - Poles, Czechs, Slovaks. Southern Slavs- these are Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Slovenians. This is not an exhaustive list, you can remember the Sorbs (Lusatian Slavs), and others, but the idea is clear. Actually, this division is largely based on linguistic criteria according to which the Slavic group of Indo-European languages ​​consists of eastern, western and southern subgroups, with approximately the same division by country.

In this context, the Slavs are “ethno-cultural communities,” which includes languages. In this form, they are believed to have formed by the 6-7 centuries AD. And the Slavic languages, according to linguists, diverged about 1300 years ago, again around the 7th century. But genealogically The listed Slavs belong to completely different clans, and the history of these clans is completely different.

Therefore, Western and Eastern Slavs as “ethno-cultural communities” are somewhat different concepts. Some are mostly Catholics, others are Orthodox. The language is noticeably different, and there are other “ethno-cultural” differences. A within the framework of DNA genealogy - this is the same thing, one genus, the same mark on the Y chromosome, the same migration history, the same common ancestor. The same ancestral haplogroup, finally.

Here we come to the concept "ancestral haplogroup", or "genus haplogroup". It is determined by marks, or the pattern of mutations, on the male sex chromosome. Women also have them, but in a different coordinate system. So, East Slavs- this is a genus R1a1. They are among the residents of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus - from 45 to 70%. And in ancient Russian and Ukrainian cities, towns, villages - up to 80%.

Conclusion - the term "Slavs" depends on the context. In linguistics, “Slavs” are one thing, in ethnography – another, in DNA genealogy – a third. A haplogroup, a genus, was formed when there were no nations, no churches, no modern languages. In this regard, belonging to a genus, to a haplogroup - primary.

Since belonging to a haplogroup is determined by very specific mutations in certain nucleotides of the Y chromosome, we can say that each of us carries a certain label in DNA. And this mark in male offspring is indestructible; it can only be exterminated along with the offspring itself. Unfortunately, there have been plenty of such cases in the past. But this does not mean at all that this mark is an indicator of a certain “breed” of a person.

This the tag is not associated with genes and has nothing to do with them, namely genes and only genes can, if desired, be associated with the “breed”. Haplogroups and haplotypes do not in any way determine the shape of the skull or nose, hair color, or physical or mental characteristics of a person. But they forever tie the carrier of the haplotype to a certain human race, at the beginning of which there was a patriarch of the family, whose offspring survived and live today, unlike millions of other broken genealogical lines.

This mark in our DNA turns out to be invaluable for historians, linguists, anthropologists, because this the label is not “assimilated”, how speakers of languages, genes, and carriers of different cultures are assimilated and “dissolved” in the population. Haplotypes and haplogroups do not “dissolve”, do not assimilate. Whatever religion the descendants change over the course of thousands of years, whatever language they acquire, whatever cultural and ethnic characteristics they change, exactly the same haplogroup, same haplotype(except perhaps with a few mutations) stubbornly appear with appropriate testing of certain fragments of the Y chromosome. It doesn't matter if he is a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist, an atheist or a pagan.

As will be shown in this study, members of the genus R1a1 in the Balkans, who lived there 12 thousand years ago, after more than two hundred generations came to the East European plain, where 4500 years ago the ancestor of modern Russians and Ukrainians of the clan appeared R1a1, including the author of this article. Another five hundred years, 4000 years ago, they, the Proto-Slavs, reached the southern Urals, and four hundred years later they went to India, where they now live approximately 100 million their descendants, members of the same clan R1a1. Aryan family. Aryans, because they called themselves that, and this is recorded in the ancient Indian Vedas and Iranian legends. They are the descendants of the Proto-Slavs or their closest relatives. There was and is no “assimilation” of the R1a1 haplogroup, and the haplotypes are almost the same and are easily identified. Identical to Slavic. Another wave of Aryans, with the same haplotypes, went from Central Asia to Eastern Iran, also in the 3rd millennium BC, and became Iranian Aryans.

Finally, another wave of representatives of the genus R1a1 went south and reached the Arabian Peninsula, the Gulf of Oman, where Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates are now located, and the Arabs there, having received the results of DNA testing, look with amazement at the testing certificate with the haplotype and haplogroup R1a1. Aryan, Proto-Slavic, “Indo-European” - call it what you want, but the essence is the same. And these certificates determine the boundaries of the area of ​​​​the campaigns of the ancient Aryans. The calculations below show that the times of these campaigns in Arabia are 4 thousand years ago.

So, when we say “Slavs”, in this study we will mean Eastern Slavs, people from the family R1a1, in terms of DNA genealogy. Until very recently, science did not know how to define them in “scientific terms.” What objective, measurable parameter unites them? Actually, the question was not posed that way.

According to a huge amount of data accumulated by linguistics, comparative analysis of languages, these are certain “Indo-Europeans”, “Aryans”, newcomers from the north (to India and Iran), they know snow, cold, they are familiar with birch, ash, beech, they are familiar with wolves, bears , the horse is familiar. It has now become known that these are people of the kind R1a1, to which they belong 70% population modern Russia. And further to the west, to the Atlantic, the share of the Aryan, Slavic race R1a1 is steadily falling, and among the inhabitants of the British Isles it is only 2-4% .

This issue has been resolved. A "Indo-Europeans"- that's it then Who?

From the above it inevitably follows that “Indo-Europeans” is the ancient genus R1a1. Arias. Then everything, or at least a lot, falls into place - with the arrival of people of this kind in India and Iran, and the spread of people of the same kind throughout Europe, and hence the emergence of the Indo-European group of languages, since this is actually theirs, Aryan language or its dialects, and the emergence of “Iranian languages” of the Indo-European group, since this is what Aryan languages. Moreover, as we will see below, “Iranian languages” appeared after the arrival of the Aryans in Iran, or more precisely, not “after”, but became the result of the arrival of the Aryans there, in the 2nd millennium BC.

How do modern sciences now look at the “Indo-Europeans”?

“Indo-Europeans” for them are like a heffalump. “Indo-Europeans”, in modern linguistics and a little in archeology, are ancient (as a rule) people who then (!), after thousands of years (!), came to India, and somehow made it so that Sanskrit, the literary Indian language, found itself in the same linguistic connection with the main European languages, except for Basque and Finno-Ugric languages. And besides Turkic and Semitic, which do not belong to the Indo-European languages.

How they, the Europeans, did this, how and where they came from in India and Iran - linguists and archaeologists do not explain. Moreover, those who did not come to India and did not seem to have anything to do with Sanskrit, but apparently spread the language, are also included in the “Indo-Europeans”. Celts, for example. But at the same time they argue about who was Indo-European and who was not. The criteria used are very different, up to the shape of the dishes and the nature of the patterns on it.

Another complication– since many Iranian languages ​​also belong to the Indo-European languages, and many also do not understand, for some reason they often say “Indo-Iranian” instead of “Indo-European”. To make matters worse, “Indo-Europeans” are often called “Indo-Iranians.” And monstrous constructions appear that, for example, “Indo-Iranians lived on the Dnieper in ancient times.”

This must mean that those who lived on the Dnieper produced descendants over thousands of years who came to India and Iran, and somehow made the languages ​​of India and Iran become to a certain extent close to many European languages ​​- English, French, Spanish , Russian, Greek, and many others. Therefore, those ancients who lived on the Dnieper thousands of years before were “Indo-Iranians”. You can go crazy! Moreover, they spoke “Iranian languages”! This is despite the fact that the “Indo-European” ancient Iranian languages ​​appeared in the 2nd millennium BC, and those on the Dnieper lived 4000-5000 years ago. And they spoke a language that would appear only after hundreds, or even thousands of years.

They spoke Aryan, dear reader. But it’s simply scary to mention this among linguists. They don't even mention it. They don't do that. Apparently, no command or order was received. And we ourselves are afraid.

Who are they "proto-Indo-Europeans"? And it's like proto-heffalump. These, therefore, are those who were the ancestors of those who were the ancestors of those who, after thousands of years, came to India and Iran, and did so... well, and so on.

This is how linguists imagine it. There was a certain “Nostratic language”, a very long time ago. It is placed from 23 thousand to 8 thousand years ago, some in India, some in Central Europe, some in the Balkans. Not long ago, it was estimated in the English-language literature that scientific sources suggested 14 different "ancestral homelands""Indo-Europeans" and "Proto-Indo-Europeans". V.A. Safronov in the fundamental book “Indo-European Ancestral Homelands” counted them 25 – seven in Asia and 18 in Europe. This “Nostratic” language (or languages), which was spoken by the “Proto-Indo-Europeans”, about 8-10 thousand years ago split into “Indo-European” languages, and other non-Indo-European ones (Semitic, Finno-Ugric, Turkic). And the “Indo-Europeans”, therefore, developed their own languages. True, they came to India after many millennia, but they are still “Indo-Europeans”.

We sorted this out too. Linguists, however, have not figured it out yet. They note - “although the origin of Indo-European languages ​​has been studied more intensively than others, it continues to be the most difficult and persistent problem of historical linguistics... Despite more than 200 years of history of the issue, experts have not been able to determine the time and place of Indo-European origin."

Here again the question of the ancestral home arises. Namely, three ancestral homelands - the ancestral home of the “Proto-Indo-Europeans”, the ancestral home of the “Indo-Europeans”, and the ancestral home of the Slavs. It’s bad with the ancestral home of the “proto”, because it’s bad with the ancestral home of the “Indo-Europeans”. Currently, three are more or less seriously considered as candidates for the ancestral homeland of the “Indo-Europeans” or “Proto-Indo-Europeans”.

One option– Western Asia, or, more specifically, Turkish Anatolia, or, even more specifically, the area between lakes Van and Urmia, just south of the borders of the former USSR, in western Iran, also known as western Azerbaijan.

Second option– the southern steppes of modern Ukraine-Russia, in the places of the so-called “Kurgan culture”.

Third option– Eastern or Central Europe, or more specifically the Danube Valley, or the Balkans, or the northern Alps.

The time of spread of the “Indo-European” or “Proto-Indo-European” language also remains uncertain, and varies from 4500-6000 years ago, if we take representatives of the Kurgan culture as its speakers, to 8000-10000 years ago, if its speakers are the then inhabitants of Anatolia. Or even earlier. Proponents of the "Anatolian theory" believe that the main argument in its favor is that the spread of agriculture across Europe, North Africa and Asia began from Anatolia between 8,000 and 9,500 years ago, and reached the British Isles approximately 5,500 years ago. Proponents of the “Balkan theory” use the same arguments about the spread of agriculture, albeit from the Balkans towards Anatolia.

This question is before today not resolved. There are many arguments for and against each of the three options.

The same goes for ancestral home of the Slavs. Since no one has yet connected the Slavs (Proto-Slavs), Aryans, and Indo-Europeans, much less put a sign of identity between all three, the ancestral homeland of the Slavs is a separate and also unresolved question. This issue has been discussed in science for more than three hundred years, but there is no agreement, even minimal. It is generally accepted that the Slavs entered the historical arena only in the 6th century AD. But these are new times. And we are interested in the ancient Slavs, or Proto-Slavs, say, three thousand years ago and earlier. And this is generally bad.

Some believe that "ancestral home of the Slavs" was located in the region of Pripyat and the Middle Dnieper. Others believe that the “ancestral home of the Slavs” was the territory from the Dnieper to the Western Bug, which the Slavs occupied two to three thousand years ago. And where the Slavs were before, and whether they were there at all, is considered a question “unsolvable at this stage.” Still others suggest that the ancestral home of the Slavs, as well as the “Indo-Europeans” in general, was the steppes of the south of what is now Russia and Ukraine, but still others indignantly reject this. Fifth people believe that the ancestral homeland of the “Indo-Europeans” and the ancestral homeland of the Slavs must still coincide, because the Slavic languages ​​are very archaic and ancient. Others correct that it is not “Indo-Europeans”, but one of their large groups, thereby hinting that “Indo-Europeans” must be different. Which ones are usually not explained.

From time to time a certain "Indo-Iranian community", which for some reason spoke a “Balto-Slavic proto-language.” This is already starting to make my head spin. Sometimes there are some "Black Sea Indo-Aryans". Why they are suddenly “Indo” in the Black Sea region is not explained. Linguists say that this is customary.

They attract anthropology, and they say that the Slavs in this respect are close to the Alpine zone - modern Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Northern Italy, Southern Germany, the northern Balkans, and therefore the Proto-Slavs moved from west to east, and not vice versa. But anthropologists and archaeologists cannot indicate the time of this movement, since the Slavs usually burned corpses rather than burying them, which deprived scientists of material for two and a half millennia.

Some believe that the settlement of the Proto-Slavs across the territory of Eastern Ukraine is associated with the spread of the Kurgan archaeological culture, and therefore from east to west. It is almost unanimously believed that the population of the Andronovo culture was “Indo-Iranian” in its linguistic affiliation, that “Indo-Aryans” lived in the Southern Urals, in Arkaim, and it was again created by “Indo-Iranians”. There are expressions “Indo-Iranian tribes on the way to resettlement to India.” That is, they were already “Indo-Iranian,” although they had not yet moved there. That is, anything, even to the point of absurdity, only so as not to use the word "arias".

Finally, “pseudo-scientific” literature hits other extreme, and claims that “the Russian Slavs were the ancestors of almost all European and part of the Asian peoples,” and “from 60% to 80% of the British, northern and eastern Germans, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Icelanders, 80% of Austrians, Lithuanians are assimilated Slavs, Slavic Russes."

The situation is approximately clear. You can move on to the essence of my presentation. Moreover, the most “advanced” historical and linguistic scientific articles, recognizing that the question of the place and time of the emergence of the “Indo-European” language remains unresolved, call for going beyond archeology and linguistics and using “independent data” to resolve the issue, which will allow one to look look at the problem from the other side, and make a choice between the main theories.

Which is what I do in the research presented here.

DNA genealogy in general, and Slavs in particular

I have repeatedly described the essence of DNA genealogy and its main provisions before (http://www.lebed.com/2006/art4606.htm, http://www.lebed.com/2007/art4914.htm, http://www .lebed.com/2007/art5034.htm). This time I will get straight to the point, recalling only that in the DNA of every man, namely in his Y chromosome, there are certain areas, in which mutations gradually, once every few generations, accumulate in nucleotides over and over again. This has nothing to do with genes. And in general, only 2% of DNA consists of genes, and the male sex Y chromosome is even less, there are only a tiny fraction of a percent of genes there.

Y chromosome- the only one of all 46 chromosomes (more precisely, of the 23 that the sperm carries), which is transmitted from father to son, and then to each successive son along a chain of times tens of thousands of years long. The son receives the Y chromosome from his father exactly the same as he received from his father, plus new mutations, if any occurred during transmission from father to son. And this happens rarely.

How rare?

Here's an example. This is my 25-marker Slavic haplotype, genus R1a1:

13 24 16 11 11 15 12 12 10 13 11 30 16 9 10 11 11 24 14 20 34 15 15 16 16

Each number is a specific sequence of nucleotide blocks in the Y chromosome of DNA. It is called allele, and shows how many times this block is repeated in DNA. Mutations in such a haplotype (that is, a random change in the number of nucleotide blocks) occur at a rate of one mutation approximately every 22 generations, that is, on average once every 550 years. No one knows which allele will change next, and it is impossible to predict. Statistics. In other words, here we can only talk about the probabilities of these changes.

In my earlier stories about DNA genealogy, I gave examples on the so-called 6 -marker haplotypes, small, for simplicity. Or else they call it "bikini haplotypes". But to search for the ancestral home of the Slavs, a much more accurate tool is needed. Therefore, in this study we will use 25 -marker haplotypes. Since any man has 50 million nucleotides on his Y-chromosome, the haplotype with its numbers can, in principle, be made as long as desired, it’s just a matter of the technique for determining the nucleotide sequences. Haplotypes are determined to a maximum length of 67 markers, although technically there is no limit. But also 25 -marker haplotypes are a very fine resolution; such haplotypes are not even considered in scientific articles. This is probably the first one.

Haplotypes are extremely sensitive to origin when talking about genealogical lineages. Let’s take not the Slavic R1a1, but, say, the Finno-Ugric clan, N3 in the DNA genealogy system. A typical 25-marker haplotype of this genus looks like this:

14 24 14 11 11 13 11 12 10 14 14 30 17 10 10 11 12 25 14 19 30 12 12 14 14

It has 29 mutations compared to the Slavic one above! This corresponds to a difference of more than two thousand generations, that is, Slavic with Finno-Ugric common ancestor lived more than 30 thousand years ago.

The same picture emerges if we compare, for example, with Jews. Typical Middle Eastern haplotype of Jews (genus J1) such:

12 23 14 10 13 15 11 16 12 13 11 30 17 8 9 11 11 26 14 21 27 12 14 16 17

It has 32 mutations in relation to Slavic. Even further than the Finno-Ugric. And they differ from each other by 35 mutations.

In general, the idea is clear. Haplotypes are very sensitive when compared across genera. They reflect completely different stories clan, origin, migration of clans. Why are there Finno-Ugric people or Jews? Let's take the Bulgarians, brothers. Up to half of them have variations of this haplotype (genus I2):

13 24 16 11 14 15 11 13 13 13 11 31 17 8 10 11 11 25 15 20 32 12 14 15 15

It has 21 mutations in relation to the above East Slavic haplotype. That is, they are both Slavic, but the gender is different. Genus I2 descended from a different ancestor, the migration routes of the genus I2 were completely different from those of R1a1. It was later, already in our era or at the end of the last, that they met and formed a Slavic cultural-ethnic community, and then they combined writing and religion. And the gender is basically different, although 12% Bulgarians– East Slavic, R1a1 genus.

It is very important that by the number of mutations in haplotypes we can calculate when the common ancestor of the group of people whose haplotypes we are considering lived. I will not dwell here on exactly how the calculations are carried out, since all this was recently published in the scientific press (link is at the end of the article). The bottom line is that the more mutations there are in the haplotypes of a group of people, the more ancient their common ancestor. And since mutations occur completely statistically, randomly, with a certain average speed, the life time of the common ancestor of a group of people belonging to the same genus is calculated quite reliably. Examples will be given below.

To make it clearer, I will give a simple analogy. The haplotype tree is a pyramid standing at the top. The top at the bottom is the haplotype of the common ancestor of the genus. The base of the pyramid, at the very top, is us, our contemporaries, these are our haplotypes. The number of mutations in each haplotype is a measure of the distance from the common ancestor, from the top of the pyramid, to us, our contemporaries. If the pyramid were ideal, three points, that is, three haplotypes at the base would be enough to calculate the distance to the top. But in reality, three points are not enough. As experience shows, a dozen 25-marker haplotypes (which means 250 points) may be sufficient for a good estimate of the time to a common ancestor.

25-marker haplotypes of Russians and Ukrainians of the genus R1a1 were obtained from the international database YSearch . The carriers of these haplotypes are our contemporaries, living from the Far East to western Ukraine, and from the northern to southern outskirts. And in this way it was calculated that the common ancestor of the Russian and Ukrainian Eastern Slavs, clan R1a1, lived 4500 years ago. This figure is reliable, it was verified by cross-calculation using haplotypes of different lengths. And, as we will now see, this figure is not accidental. Let me remind you again that the details of calculations, verification and double-checking are given in the article given at the end. And these calculations were carried out using 25 marker haplotypes. This is already the highest level of DNA genealogy, if you call a spade a spade.

It turned out that the common Proto-Slavic ancestor, who lived 4500 years ago, had the following haplotype in his DNA:

13 25 16 10 11 14 12 12 10 13 11 30 15 9 10 11 11 24 14 20 32 12 15 15 16

For comparison - here my haplotype:

13 24 16 11 11 15 12 12 10 13 11 30 16 9 10 11 11 24 14 20 34 15 15 16 16

Compared to my Proto-Slavic ancestor, I have 10 mutations (highlighted in bold). If we remember that mutations occur once every 550 years, then I am separated from my ancestor 5500 years. But we are talking about statistics, and for everyone it turns out 4500 years. I got more mutations, someone else got fewer. In other words, each of us has our own individual mutations, but we all have the same ancestor haplotype. And, as we will see, it remains this way throughout almost all of Europe.

So let's take a breath. Our common Proto-Slavic ancestor lived on the territory of modern Russia-Ukraine 4500 years ago. The Early Bronze Age, or even the Chalcolithic, is the transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age. To imagine the time scale, this is much earlier than the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, according to biblical legends. And they came out, if you follow the interpretations of the Torah, 3500-3600 years ago. If we ignore the interpretation of the Torah, which, of course, is not a strict scientific source, then it can be noted that the common ancestor of the Eastern Slavs, in in this case Russian and Ukrainian, lived a thousand years before the eruption of the Santorini (Thera) volcano, which destroyed the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete.

Now we can begin to build a sequence of events in our ancient history. 4500 years ago pre-Slavs appeared on the Central Russian Upland, and not just some Proto-Slavs, but precisely those whose descendants live in our time, numbering tens of millions of people. 3800 years ago, the Aryans, descendants of those Proto-Slavs (and having an identical ancestral haplotype, as will be shown below), built the settlement of Arkaim (its current name), Sintashta and the “country of cities” in the Southern Urals. 3600 years ago the Arkaim left the Arkaim and moved to India. Indeed, according to archaeologists, the settlement, which is now called Arkaim, lasted only 200 years.

Stop! Where did we get the idea that these were the descendants of our ancestors, the Proto-Slavs?

How from? A R1a1, kind mark? This mark accompanies all the haplotypes given above. This means that it can be used to determine to what clan those who went to India belonged.

By the way, here's some more data. In recent work, German scientists have identified nine fossil haplotypes from Southern Siberia, and it turned out that eight of them belong to the genus R1a1, and one is a Mongoloid, kind WITH. Dating is between 5500 and 1800 years ago. Haplotypes of the genus R1a1, for example, are like this:

13 25 16 11 11 14 X Y Z 14 11 32

Here the undeciphered markers are replaced with letters. They are very similar to the Slavic haplotypes given above, especially when you consider that these ancient ones also carry individual, random mutations.

Currently, the proportion of Slavic-Aryan haplogroup R1a1 in Lithuania 38%, in Latvia 41%, and Belarus 40%, in Ukraine from 45% to 54%. In Russia, Slavic-Aryans on average 48% , due to the high share of Finno-Ugric people in the north of Russia, but in the south and center of Russia the share of Eastern Slavic-Aryans reaches 60-75% and higher.

Haplotypes of Indians and the lifespan of their common ancestor

Let me make a reservation right away - I deliberately write “Indians” and not “Indians”, because the majority of Indians are aborigines, Dravidians, especially Indians in the south of India. And the Hindus, for the most part, are carriers of the R1a1 haplogroup. To write “haplotypes of Indians” would be incorrect, since Indians as a whole belong to a wide variety of DNA genealogies.

In this sense, the expression “haplotypes of the Indians” is similar to the expression “haplotypes of the Slavs”. It reflects the “ethno-cultural” component, but this is one of the characteristics of the genus.

Unique possibilities of DNA genealogy. Anatoly Klyosov

Entertaining DNA- genealogistsI

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language family. Indo-European languages ​​are now spoken by most of humanity: Slavic peoples (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Bulgarians, Czechs, Slovaks, etc.), Baltic peoples (Lithuanians, Latvians), Romano-Germanic (British, Germans, French, Italians) . Iranians, Indians, Armenians, too, I. For more than four hundred years, scientists have been searching for the ancestral home of I. Why are their languages ​​so close, why does the culture of these peoples have much in common? Apparently they originated from one ancient people, scientists believed. Where did these people live? Some thought that I.'s homeland was India, other scientists found it in the Himalayas, and still others in Mesopotamia. However, the majority considered the ancestral home of India to be Europe, or more precisely the Balkans, although there was no material evidence for these hypotheses. After all, if the I. moved from somewhere, then there should be material traces of such a resettlement, the remains of cultures. However, archaeologists have found no tools, dwellings, etc. common to all these peoples. were not found.

The only thing that united all I. in ancient times was the microliths and later, in the Neolithic, agriculture. Only they appeared in the Stone Age wherever I still live. They are in Iran, and in India, and in Central Asia, and in the forest-steppe and steppe of Eastern Europe, and in England, and in France.

More precisely, they are everywhere where Indo-European peoples live, but they are not there where these peoples do not exist. Apparently, all of Europe, together with the microliths, adopted agriculture from the Zagros and Southern Caspian mountains. The distribution map of geometric crops and the map of agricultural distribution paths coincide completely. The transition to agriculture is the largest revolution in human history. Such a disruption in the life of hunters and gatherers could not go unnoticed. After all, everything changed - lifestyle, activities, and ideology. And of course, this could not pass without leaving a mark on the language. A study of the life of primitive tribes shows that they are very reluctant to accept anything in the economy from other peoples. For example, the Australian aborigines still do not want to adopt cattle breeding. They continue to hunt herds of sheep, considering them to be no one's, which incurs the wrath of the authorities. If something is perceived, then it is perceived with all the rituals associated with new customs, with a new economy. Apparently, while perceiving agriculture, European hunters adopted both rituals and spells from settlers from the Near and Middle East. Moreover, naturally, these spells (agricultural spells) were pronounced in the language of the discoverers, i.e. in the language of the peoples who brought this economy to Europe. Thus, together with agriculture, a new language and new rituals spread across a wide territory. This is how peoples with a similar language and culture were formed - the Indo-European peoples.

This is a hypothesis that I expressed more than 20 years ago. Then linguists did not accept it. They were still looking for I.'s ancestral home in the Balkans. However, in 1984, two major linguists T. Gamkrelidze and V. Ivanov published a huge book about I. They tried to restore the language of ancient I. and find its ancestral home using the remains of ancient words and figures of speech in all modern languages ​​of I. And came to the conclusion, that “lexical connections and structural-typological similarities of the Indo-European, Semitic and Kartvelian proto-language families exclude the Balkans, a territory located towards the north or east.

from them, from the “candidates” for the competition of possible ancestors... the Indo-European ancestral home was in Western Asia,” in the area between Van Island and Urmia Island.

The stories of all peoples go back to ancient times. People often traveled long distances in search of suitable conditions for their homes. You can learn more about who the Indo-Europeans are and how they are related to the Slavs from this article.

Who is this?

Speakers of an Indo-European language are called Indo-Europeans. Currently this ethnic group includes:

• Slavs
• Germans.
• Armenians
• Hindus.
• Celts.
• Grekov.

Why are these peoples called Indo-European? Almost two centuries ago, great similarities were discovered between European languages ​​and Sanskrit, the dialect spoken by Indians. The group of Indo-European languages ​​includes almost all European languages. The exceptions are Finnish, Turkic and Basque.

The original habitat of the Indo-Europeans was Europe, but due to the nomadic lifestyle of most peoples, it spread far beyond the original territory. Now representatives of the Indo-European group can be found on all continents of the world. The historical roots of the Indo-Europeans go far into the past.

Homeland and ancestors

You may ask, how is it that Sanskrit and European languages ​​have similar sounds? There are many theories about who the Indo-Europeans were. Some scientists suggest that the ancestor of all peoples with similar languages ​​were the Aryans, who, as a result of migrations, formed different peoples with different dialects, which remained similar in the main. Opinions also differ about the ancestral homeland of the Indo-Europeans. According to the Kurgan theory, widespread in Europe, the territories of the Northern Black Sea region, as well as the lands between the Volga and Dnieper, can be considered the homeland of this group of peoples. Why then does the population of different European countries differ so much? Everything is determined by differences in climatic conditions. After mastering the technologies of domesticating horses and making bronze, the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans began to actively migrate in different directions. The difference in territories explains the differences in Europeans, which took many years to form.

Historical roots

• The first option is Western Asia or Western Azerbaijan.
• The second option, which we have already described above, is certain lands of Ukraine and Russia, on which the so-called Kurgan culture was located.
• And the last option is eastern or central Europe, or more precisely the Danube Valley, the Balkans or the Alps.

Each of these theories has its opponents and supporters. But this question has still not been resolved by scientists, although research has been ongoing for more than 200 years. And since the homeland of the Indo-Europeans is not known, the territory of origin Slavic culture It is also not possible to determine. After all, this will require accurate data about the ancestral homeland of the main ethnic group. A tangled tangle of history that conceals more riddles than answers, I can’t unravel to modern humanity. And the time of the birth of the Indo-European language is also shrouded in darkness: some call the date 8 centuries BC, others - 4.5 centuries. BC.

Traces of a former community

Despite the isolation of peoples, traces of commonality can be easily traced among the various descendants of the Indo-Europeans. What traces of the former community of Indo-Europeans can be cited as evidence?

• Firstly, this is the language. He is the thread that still connects people on different parts of the planet. For example, Slavic people have such general concepts as “god”, “hut”, “axe”, “dog” and many others.
• The commonality can also be seen in applied arts. Many embroidery patterns European peoples strikingly similar to each other.
• The common homeland of the Indo-European peoples can also be traced by “animal” traces. Many of them still have a cult of the deer, and some countries hold annual holidays in honor of the awakening of the bear in the spring. As you know, these animals are found only in Europe, and not in India or Iran.
• In religion one can also find confirmation of the theory of community. The Slavs had a pagan god Perun, and the Lithuanians had Perkunas. In India, the Thunderer was called Parjanye, the Celts called him Perkunia. And the image of the ancient god is very similar to the main deity Ancient Greece- Zeus.

Genetic markers of Indo-Europeans

The main distinguishing feature of the Indo-Europeans is their linguistic community. Despite some similarities, different peoples of Indo-European origin are very different from each other. But there is other evidence of their commonality. Although genetic markers do not 100% prove the common origin of these peoples, they still add more common characteristics.

The most common haplogroup among Indo-Europeans is R1. It can be found among the peoples who inhabited the territories of Central and Western Asia, India and Eastern Europe. But this gene was not found in some Indo-Europeans. Scientists believe that the language and culture of the Proto-Indo-Europeans were transmitted to these people not through marriage, but through trade and socio-cultural communications.

Who applies

Many modern peoples- descendants of Indo-Europeans. These include the Indo-Iranian peoples, Slavs, Balts, Romanesque peoples, Celts, Armenians, Greeks and Germanic peoples. Each group, in turn, is divided into other, smaller groups. The Slavic branch is divided into several branches:

• South;
• Eastern;
• Western.

The South, in turn, is divided into such famous peoples, like Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, Slovenes. Among the Indo-Europeans there are also completely extinct groups: the Tocharians and Anatolian peoples. The Hittites and Luwians are considered to have appeared in the Middle East two thousand years BC. Among the Indo-European group there is also one people who do not speak the Indo-European language: the Basque language is considered isolated and it has not yet been precisely established where it originates.

Problems

The term "Indo-European problem" appeared in the 19th century. It is connected with the still unclear early ethnogenesis of the Indo-Europeans. What was the population of Europe like during the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages? Scientists have not yet come to a consensus. The fact is that in the Indo-European languages ​​that can be found on the territory of Europe, sometimes elements of non-Indo-European origin are found. Scientists, studying the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans, combine their efforts and use all possible methods: archaeological, linguistic and anthropological. After all, in each of them lies a possible clue to the origin of the Indo-Europeans. But so far these attempts have led nowhere. More or less studied areas are the territories of the Middle East, Africa and Western Europe. The remaining parts remain a huge blank spot on the archaeological map of the world.

Studying the language of Proto-Indo-Europeans also cannot provide scientists with much information. Yes, it is possible to trace the substrate in it - the “traces” of languages ​​supplanted by Indo-European ones. But it is so weak and chaotic that scientists have never come to a consensus about who the Indo-Europeans are.

Settlement

The Indo-Europeans were originally sedentary peoples, and their main occupation was arable farming. But with climate change and the coming cold, they had to begin to develop neighboring lands, which were more favorable for life. From the beginning of the third millennium BC it became the norm for the Indo-Europeans. During the resettlement, they often entered into military conflicts with the tribes living on the lands. Numerous skirmishes are reflected in the legends and myths of many European peoples: Iranians, Greeks, Indians. After the peoples inhabiting Europe were able to domesticate horses and make bronze items, the resettlement gained even greater momentum.

How are Indo-Europeans and Slavs related? You can understand this if you follow their spread. Their spread began from the southeast of Eurasia, which then moved to the southwest. As a result, the Indo-Europeans settled all of Europe as far as the Atlantic. Some of the settlements were located on the territory of the Finno-Ugric peoples, but they did not go further than them. The Ural Mountains, which were a serious obstacle, stopped Indo-European settlement. In the south they advanced much further and settled in Iran, Iraq, India and the Caucasus. After the Indo-Europeans settled across Eurasia and began to lead again, their community began to disintegrate. Under the influence of climatic conditions, peoples became more and more different from each other. Now we can see how strongly anthropology was influenced by the living conditions of the Indo-Europeans.

Results

Modern descendants of Indo-Europeans inhabit many countries of the world. They speak different languages, eat different foods, but still share common distant ancestors. Scientists still have many questions about the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans and their settlement. We can only hope that, over time, comprehensive answers will be received. As well as the main question: “Who are the Indo-Europeans?”

Doctor of History, Prof. L.L. Zaliznyak

Part 1. IN SEARCH OF THE HOMELAND

Preface

This work is an attempt at a popular presentation of complex problems of Indo-European studies to a wide range of educated readers. Since the early 90s of the last century, when the author of this work became interested in Indo-European studies, several of his articles have been published. Most of them are intended not for a narrow circle of professional Indo-Europeanists (linguists, archaeologists), but for a wide audience of readers interested in ancient history and, above all, students of historians and archaeologists from history departments of universities in Ukraine. Therefore, some of these texts exist in the form individual chapters textbooks for historical faculties of Ukraine. One of the incentives for this work was the unprecedented explosion in the post-Soviet space of fantastic quasi-scientific “concepts” of countless myth-makers.

The fact that most modern researchers, to one degree or another, include the territory of Ukraine in the ancestral homeland of the Indo-Europeans, also played a role, and some even narrow the latter to the steppes between the Southern Carpathians and the Caucasus. Despite the fact that archaeological and anthropological materials obtained in Ukraine are actively interpreted in the West, Indo-European studies has not yet become a priority issue for Ukrainian paleoethnologists, archaeologists, and linguists.

My vision of the problem of origin and early history Indo-Europeans developed on the basis of the developments of many generations of Indo-Europeans from different countries. Without in any way claiming to be the author of most of the points raised in the work and having no illusions regarding the final solution to the problem of the ethnogenesis of the Indo-Europeans or an exhaustive analysis of all the vast literature on Indo-European studies, the author tries to give a critical analysis of views on the origin of the Indo-Europeans from the standpoint of archeology and other sciences.

There is a huge literature in different languages ​​of the world dedicated to the search for the country from where the ancestors of related Indo-European peoples 5-4 thousand years ago settled the space between the Atlantic in the west, India in the east, Scandinavia in the north and the Indian Ocean in the south. Considering the limited amount of work aimed at a wide audience, the bibliography of the article is narrowed to the most important works on the topic. The specific genre and limited volume of the work excludes the possibility of a full historiographical analysis of the problems raised in it, which would require a full-fledged monographic study.

The direct predecessors of this article were the author’s works published over the last quarter of a century (Zaliznyak, 1994, pp. 78-116; 1998, pp. 248-265; 2005, pp. 12-37; 1999; 200; 2012, pp. 209- 268; Zaliznyak, 1997, p.117-125). The work is actually an expanded and edited translation into Russian of one of the two chapters of a course of lectures for history faculties of Ukraine dedicated to Indo-European studies, published in 2012 ( Leonid Zaliznyak Ancient history of Ukraine. - K., 2012, 542 pp.). The full text of the book can be found on the Internet.

The term Ukraine is used not as the name of a state or ethnonym, but as a toponym denoting a region or territory.

I would like to sincerely thank the classic of modern archeology, deeply respected by me from my student days and ancient history Lev Samoilovich Klein for his kind offer and the opportunity to place this far from perfect text on this site.

Discovery of the Indo-Europeans

The high level of human development at the beginning of the third millennium was largely predetermined by the cultural achievements of European civilization, the founders and creators of which were, first of all, the peoples of the Indo-European language family - the Indo-Europeans (hereinafter referred to as I-e). In addition, the settlement of other peoples largely predetermined the modern ethnopolitical map of Europe and Western Asia. This explains the extreme scientific significance of the problem of origin Indo-European family peoples for the history of mankind in general and for the primitive history of Ukraine in particular.

The mystery of the origin of i-e has been worrying scientists in many countries for more than two centuries. The main difficulty in solving it lies, first of all, in the complexity and interdisciplinarity of the problem. That is, to solve it it is necessary to involve data and methods from various scientific disciplines: linguistics, archeology, primitive history, anthropology, written sources, ethnography, mythology, paleogeography, botany, zoology, and even genetics and molecular biology. None of them separately, including the latest sensational constructions of geneticists, are able to solve the problem on their own.

The Chernobyl disaster of 1986 coincided with the 200th anniversary of the great discovery of Indian Supreme Court Justice Sir William Jones, which Hegel compared to the discovery of the New World by Columbus. Reading the book of religious hymns of the Aryan conquerors of India, the Rig Veda, W. Jones came to the conclusion about the relatedness of the genetic predecessors of other languages ​​- Sanskrit, Latin, Ancient Greek, Germanic, Slavic. The work of the English lawyer was continued by German linguists of the 19th century, who developed the principles of comparative analysis of languages ​​and finally proved the origin of i-e from one common ancestor. Since then, both modern and dead languages ​​have been thoroughly studied. The latter are known from sacred texts The Rig Vedas of the mid-2nd millennium BC, later written down in Sanskrit, the hymns of the Avesta at the turn of the 2nd-1st millennium BC, the proto-Greek language of ancient Mycenae of the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, the cuneiform writings of the Hittites of Anatolia of the 2nd millennium. BC, Tocharian sacred texts of Xinjiang of Western China.

Classification of Indo-European languages ​​and peoples

In the middle of the nineteenth century. German linguist A. Schleicher proposed the principle of reconstructing Proto-Indo-European vocabulary using the method of comparative linguistic paleontology. The use of comparative linguistics made it possible to develop a genetic scheme tree i-e languages. The consequence of centuries of efforts by linguists was the classification of languages, which basically took shape by the end of the 19th century. However, to this day there is no consensus among experts about the number of not only languages, but also linguistic groups and peoples. Among the most recognized is the classification scheme, which covers 13 ethno-linguistic groups of peoples: Anatolian, Indian, Iranian, Greek, Italic, Celtic, Illyrian, Phrygian, Armenian, Tocharian, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic (Fig. 1). Each of these groups consists of many closely related living and dead languages.

Anatolian(Hittite-Luwian) group includes Hittite, Luwian, Palaic, Lydian, Lycian, Carian, as well as the so-called “minor languages”: Pisidian, Cilician, Maeonian. They functioned in Asia Minor (Anatolia) during the 2nd millennium BC. The first three languages ​​are known from the texts of 15,000 clay cuneiform tablets obtained by the German archaeologist Hugo Winkler in 1906. During the excavations of the capital of the Hittite kingdom, the city of Hattusa, east of Ankara. The texts were written in Akkadian (Assyro-Babylonian) cuneiform, but in an unknown language, which was deciphered in 1914 by the Czech B. Grozny and was called Hittite or Nesian. Among the mass of ritual and business texts in the Hittite language, a few records were found in the related Hittite languages ​​Luwian and Palayan, as well as in the non-Indo-European Hattian. The autochthons of Asia Minor, the Hutts, were conquered at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. the Hittites, but influenced the language of the Indo-European conquerors.

The early Anatolian Hittite, Luwian, and Palalayan languages ​​functioned in Asia Minor until the 8th century. BC. and in ancient times gave rise to the Late Anatolian Lydian, Carian, Cilician and other languages, the speakers of which were assimilated by the Greeks in Hellenistic times around the 3rd century. BC.

Indian(Indo-Aryan) group: Mithani, Vedic, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Urdu, Hindi, Bikhali, Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Sindhi, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Bhili, Khandeshi, Pahari, Kafir or Nuristani, Dardic languages, Gypsy dialects .

The Mittani language was spoken by the ruling elite of the Mittani state, which in the 15th–13th centuries. BC. existed in the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates. The Indian group of languages ​​comes from the language of the Aryans, who in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. advanced from the north into the Indus Valley. The oldest part of their hymns was recorded in the 1st millennium BC. Vedic language, and in the III century. BC. – IV Art. AD - literary language Sanskrit. The sacred Vedic books Brahmanas, Upanishads, sutras, as well as epic poems Mahabharata and Ramayana. In parallel with literary Sanskrit, living Prakrit languages ​​functioned in early medieval India. From them come the modern languages ​​of India: Hindi, Urdu, Bykhali, Bengali, etc. Texts in Hindi have been known since the 13th century.

Kafir, or Nuristani, languages ​​are common in Nuristan, a mountainous region of Afghanistan. In the mountains of Northern Afghanistan and the adjacent mountainous regions of Pakistan and India, the Dardic languages, which are close to Kafir, are widespread.

Iranian(Irano-Aryan) group of languages: Avestan, Old Persian, Median, Sogdian, Khorezmian, Bactrian, Parthian, Pahlavi, Saka, Massagetian, Scythian, Sarmatian, Alanian, Ossetian, Yaghnobi, Afghani, Mujan, Pamir, New Per, Tajik, Talysh, Kurdish, Baluchi, Tat, etc. The Iranian-Aryan group is related to the Indo-Aryan group and comes from the language of the Aryans, who in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. settled Iran or Airiyan, which means “country of the Aryans”. Later, their hymns were recorded in the Avestan language in the sacred book of the followers of Zarathustra, the Avesta. The ancient Persian language is represented by cuneiform writings of the Achaemenid period (VI–IV centuries BC), including historical texts of Darius the Great and his successors. Median is the language of the tribes that inhabited Northern Iran in the VIII–VI centuries. BC. before the emergence of the Persian Achaemenid kingdom. The Parthians lived in Central Asia in the 3rd century. BC e. – III Art. AD, until their kingdom was conquered in 224 by the Sassanids. Pahlavi is the literary language of Persia during the Sasanian era (III–VII centuries AD). At the beginning of our era, Sogdian, Khorezmian and Bactrian languages ​​of the Iranian group also functioned in Central Asia.

Among the North Iranian languages ​​of the Eurasian steppe, the dead languages ​​of the nomadic Sakas, Massagetae, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans and direct descendants of the last Ossetians are known North Caucasus. The Yaghnobi language of Central Asia is a direct continuation of the Sogdian language. Many modern Iranian languages ​​are descended from Farsi, the language of early Middle Ages Persia. These include Novopersky with literary monuments from the 9th century. AD, close to it Tajik, Afghan (Pashto), Kurdish, Talysh and Tat of Azerbaijan, Baluchi, etc.

In history Greek There are three main eras of the language: Ancient Greek (XV century BC – IV century AD), Byzantine (IV–XV centuries AD) and Modern Greek (from the XV century). The ancient Greek era is divided into four periods: archaic (Mycenaean or Achaean), which dates back to the 15th–7th centuries. BC, classical (VIIII–IV centuries BC), Hellenistic (IV–I centuries BC), late Greek (I–IV centuries AD). During the Classical and Hellenistic periods, the following dialects were common in the Eastern Mediterranean: Ionian-Attic, Achaean, Aeolian and Dorian. The Greek colonies of the Northern Black Sea region (Thira, Olbia, Panticapaeum, Tanais, Phanagoria, etc.) used the Ionian dialect, since they were founded by immigrants from the capital of Ionia, Miletus in Asia Minor

The most ancient monuments of the Greek language were written in the Cretan-Mycenaean linear letter “B” in the 15th–12th centuries. BC. Homer's poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey", describing the events of the Trojan War in the 12th century. BC. were first recorded in the 8th–6th centuries. BC. the ancient Greek alphabet, which laid the foundation for the classical Greek language. Classical period characterized by the spread of the Attic dialect in the Greek world. It was on it that during the Hellenistic period the pan-Greek Koine was formed, which, during the campaigns of Alexander the Great, spread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, where it dominated in Roman and Byzantine times. The literary language of Byzantium strictly corresponded to the norms of the classical Attic dialect of the V–IV centuries. BC. It was used by the court of the Byzantine emperor until the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. The modern modern Greek language was finally formed only in the 18th–19th centuries.

Italian(Romance) group of languages ​​includes Oscan, Volscian, Umbrian, Latin and the Romance languages ​​derived from the latter: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Sardinian, Romansh, Provençal, French, Romanian, etc. Inscriptions related to Oscan, Volscian, Umbrian, Latin, appeared in Central Italy in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. During the process of Romanization of the provinces in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. Latin dialects spread throughout the Roman Empire. In the early Middle Ages, this “kitchen Latin” became the basis for the formation of the Romance group of languages.

Celtic the group of languages ​​consists of Gaulish, Irish, Breton, Equine, Welsh, Gaelic (Scottish), and the O.Men dialect. Ancient sources first mention the Celts in the 5th century. BC. in the territories between the Carpathians in the east and the Atlantic coast in the west. In IV–III centuries. BC. There was a powerful Celtic expansion to the British Isles, to the territory of France, the Iberian, Apennine, and Balkan peninsulas, to Asia Minor, in the central regions of which they settled under the name of the Galatians. The La Tène archaeological culture of the 5th–1st centuries is associated with the Celts. BC, and the area of ​​their formation is considered to be the northwestern foothills of the Alps. As a result of the expansion of first the Roman Empire, and later the Germanic tribes (primarily the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes), the Celts were forced out to the extreme north-west of Europe.

The language of the Gauls assimilated by the Romans from the territory of France at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. known very little from a few inclusions in Latin texts. The Breton, Cornish, and Welsh languages ​​of the Breton peninsulas in France, Cornwall and Wales in Great Britain descended from the language of the Britons, who dispersed under the onslaught of the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th–7th centuries. The Scottish and Manx languages ​​are close to Irish, which is recorded in written sources of the IV, VII, XI centuries.

Illyrian the group of languages ​​covers the Balkan-Illyrian, Mesapian, Albanian languages. The Illyrians are a group of Indo-European tribes, which, judging by ancient sources, at least from the 7th century. BC. lived in the Carpathian Basin, on the Middle Danube, in the north-west of the Balkan Peninsula (Fig. 2). Its archaeological correspondence is the so-called eastern Hallstatt VIII–V centuries. BC. The Illyrian tribes were assimilated by the Romans and later by the South Slavs. The Albanian language is an Illyrian relic that has been significantly influenced by Latin, Greek, Slavic and Thracian dialects. Albanian texts have been known since the 15th century. Mesapian is a branch of the Illyrian language massif of the north-west of the Balkan Peninsula, which is preserved in the form of grave and household inscriptions of the 5th–1st centuries. BC. in the east of the Apennine Peninsula in Calabria.

In Phrygian The group includes the Thracian dialects of the Dacians, Getae, Mesians, Odrysians, and Tribalians, who in ancient times lived in Transylvania, the Lower Danube and the northeast of the Balkan Peninsula. They were assimilated by the Romans in the 2nd–4th centuries. and the Slavs in the early Middle Ages. Their Romanized descendants were the medieval Volochs - the direct ancestors of modern Romanians, whose language, however, belongs to the Romance group. The Phrygians are a people whose ancestors (flies) in the 12th century. BC. came from the northeast of the Balkan Peninsula to Asia Minor. I.M. Dyakonov believed that they took part in the destruction of Troy and the Hittite kingdom (History of the Ancient East, 1988, vol. 2, p. 194). Later, the state of Phrygia with its capital Gordion arose in the north of Anatolia, which was destroyed by the Cimmerians around 675 BC. Phrygian inscriptions date back to the 7th–3rd centuries. BC.

Armenian a language related to Phrygian, and through it connected with the Thracian dialects of the Balkans. According to ancient sources, the Armenians came to Transcaucasia from Phrygia, and the Phrygians came to Asia Minor from Thrace, which is confirmed by archaeological materials. I.M. Dyakonov considered the Armenians to be the descendants of the Phrygians, some of whom, after the fall of Phrygia, moved east to Transcaucasia to the lands of the Huritto-Urartians. The Proto-Armenian language was partially transformed under the influence of the aboriginal language.

The oldest Armenian texts date back to the 5th century, when the Armenian alphabet was created by Bishop Mesrop Mashtots. The language of that time (grabar) functioned until the 19th century. In the XII–XVI centuries. Two dialects of modern Armenian began to form: Eastern Ararat and Western Constantinople.

Tocharian language is the conventional name for dialects, which in the 6th–7th centuries. AD functioned in Chinese Turkestan (Uighuria). Known from religious texts of Xinjiang. V.N. Danilenko (1974, p. 234) considered the ancestors of the Tocharians to be the population of the Yamnaya culture, which in the 3rd millennium BC. reached Central Asia, where it was transformed into the Afanasyev culture. In the sands of Western China, mummies of light-pigmented northern Caucasians of the 1st millennium BC were found, the genome of which shows similarities with the genome of the Celts and Germans of northwestern Europe. Some researchers associate these finds with the Tocharians, who were finally assimilated in the 10th century. Uyghur Turks.

Germanic languages ​​are divided into three groups: northern (Scandinavian), eastern (Gothic) and western. The oldest Germanic texts are represented by archaic runic inscriptions of Scandinavia, which date back to the 3rd–8th centuries. AD and bear the features of the common Germanic language before its dismemberment. Numerous Old Icelandic texts from the 13th century. preserved rich Scandinavian poetry (Elder Edda) and prose (sagas) of the 10th-12th centuries. From about the fifteenth century. The collapse of the Old Icelandic, or Old Norse, language began into the West Scandinavian (Norwegian, Icelandic) and East Scandinavian (Swedish, Danish) branches.

The East Germanic group, in addition to Gothic, known from the translation of the Bible by Bishop Ulfila, included the now dead languages ​​of the Vandals and Burgundians.

The West Germanic languages ​​include Old English (Anglo-Saxon texts of the 7th century), Old Frisian, Old Low German (Saxon texts of the 9th century), and Old High German. The most ancient monuments of West Germanic languages ​​are the Anglo-Saxon epic of the 8th century. “Beowulf”, known from manuscripts of the 10th century, the High German “Song of the Nibelungs” of the 8th century, the Saxon epic of the 9th century. "Heliad".

Among the modern Germanic languages ​​is English, which in the 11th–13th centuries. was significantly influenced by French, Flemish is a descendant of Old Frisian, Dutch is a branch of Old Low German. Modern German consists of two dialects - in the past separate languages ​​(Low German and High German). Among the Germanic languages ​​and dialects of our time, mention should be made of Yiddish, Boer, Faroese, and Swiss.

Baltic The languages ​​are divided into Western Baltic languages ​​- dead Prussian (disappeared in the 18th century) and Yatvingian, which was widespread in the Middle Ages in the territory of North-Eastern Poland and Western Belarus, and Eastern Baltic languages. The latter include Lithuanian, Latvian, Latgalian, as well as common until the 17th century. on the Baltic coast of Lithuania and Latvia the Curonian. Among the dead are the Selonian and Golyad languages ​​of the Moscow region, and the Baltic language of the Upper Dnieper region. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Baltic languages ​​were widespread from the Lower Vistula in the west to the Upper Volga and Oka in the east, from the Baltic in the north to Pripyat, Desna and Seim in the south. The Baltic languages ​​have preserved the ancient Indo-European linguistic system more fully than others.

Slavic languages ​​are divided into Western, Eastern and Southern. East Slavic – Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian. West Slavic are divided into three subgroups: Lechitic (Polish, Kashubian, Polabian), Czech-Slovak and Serbologian. The Kashubian language, related to Polabian, was widespread in Polish Pomerania to the west of the Lower Vistula. Lusatian is the language of the Lusatian Serbs of the upper reaches of the Spree in Germany. South Slavic languages ​​- Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Macedonian. Slavic languages ​​are close to each other, since they come from one Old Slavic language, which collapsed relatively recently in the 5th–7th centuries. Presumably, the speakers of Old Slavic before its collapse were the Antes and Sklavins of the territory of Ukraine, whose archaeological counterparts were the population of the Prague-Korchak and Penkovka cultures.

Most modern Indo-Europeanists, recognizing the existence of the 13 mentioned groups of Indo-European languages, abandoned the simplified scheme of the ethnogenesis of Indo-European peoples according to the principle of the genetic tree, proposed back in the 19th century. Obviously, the process of glottogenesis and ethnogenesis occurred not only through the transformation or division of the mother language into daughter languages, but, perhaps to a greater extent, in the process of interaction of languages ​​with each other, including with non-Indo-European ones.

Scientists explain the high degree of relatedness of Indo-European languages ​​by their origin from a common genetic ancestor - the Proto-Indo-European language. This means that more than 5 thousand years ago, in some limited region of Eurasia, there lived a people from whose language all Indo-European languages ​​originate. Science was faced with the task of searching for the homeland of the Indo-European peoples and identifying the routes of their settlement. By Indo-European ancestral home, linguists mean the region occupied by the speakers of the ancestral language before its collapse in the 4th millennium BC.

History of the search for the Indo-European ancestral home

The search for this ancestral home has a two-hundred-year dramatic history, which has been repeatedly analyzed by various researchers (Safronov 1989). Immediately after the discovery of William Jones, the ancestral home was proclaimed India, and the Sanskrit of the Rig Veda was considered almost the ancestor of all languages, which supposedly retained all the features of the Indo-European proto-language. It was believed that India's favorable climate was responsible for population explosions and surplus i-e population settled west into Europe and Western Asia.

However, it soon became clear that the languages ​​of the Iranian Avesta are not much younger than the Sanskrit Rigveda. That is, the common ancestor of all i-e peoples could live in Iran or somewhere on Middle East, where great archaeological discoveries were made at this time.

In 30-50 years. XIX century Indo-Europeans were derived from Central Asia, which was then considered the “forge of nations.” This version was fueled by historical data on migration waves that periodically arrived from Central Asia to Europe over the past two thousand years. This refers to the arrival in Europe of the Sarmatians, Turkic and Mongolian tribes of the Huns, Bulgarians, Avars, Khazars, Pechenegs, Torks, Cumans, Mongols, Kalmyks, etc. Moreover, at this time, European interest in Central Asia grew, since its colonization by Russians began from the north and the British from the south.

However, the rapid development of linguistic paleontology in the middle of the 19th century. showed the discrepancy between Asia and the natural and climatic realities of its ancestral home. The common I-e language reconstructed by linguists indicated that the ancestral home was located in a region with a temperate climate and its corresponding flora (birch, aspen, pine, beech, etc.) and fauna (grouse, beaver, bear, etc.). In addition, it turned out that most I-e languages ​​were localized not in Asia, but in Europe. The vast majority of ancient Indo-European hydronyms are concentrated between the Rhine and the Dnieper.

From the second half of the 19th century. many researchers transfer their ancestral home to Europe. The explosion of German patriotism in the second half of the 19th century, caused by the unification of Germany by O. Bismarck, could not but influence the fate of Indo-European studies. After all, most of the specialists of that time were ethnic Germans. Thus, the growth of German patriotism was stimulated by the popularity of the concept of the origin of i-e from German territory.

Referring to the temperate climate of the ancestral home established by linguists, they begin to localize it precisely in Germany. Additional argument served as the Northern European appearance of the ancient Indo-Europeans. Blonde hair and blue eyes are a sign of aristocracy both among the Aryans of the Rigveda and the ancient Greeks, judging by their mythology. In addition, German archaeologists came to the conclusion about the continuous ethnocultural development on the territory of Germany from the archaeological culture of linear-band ceramics of the 6th millennium BC. to modern Germans.

The founder of this concept is considered to be L. Geiger, who in 1871, relying on the argument of beech, birch, oak, ash eel and three seasons in the reconstructed language of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, as well as on the evidence of Tacitus about the autochthony of the Germans east of the Rhine, proposed Germany as possible ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans (Geiger, 1871).

A significant contribution to the development of the Central European hypothesis of the origin of i-e was made by the famous German philologist Hermann Hirt. He came to the conclusion that German is a direct descendant of Proto-Indo-European. The languages ​​of other peoples allegedly arose in the process of mixing the language of the Indo-Germans who arrived from the north of Central Europe with the languages ​​of the aborigines (Hirt 1892).

The ideas of L. Geiger and G. Hirt were significantly developed by Gustav Kosinna. A philologist by training, G. Kossinna analyzed enormous archaeological material and in 1926 published the book “The Origin and Distribution of the Germans in Prehistoric and Early Historical Times” (Kossinna 1926), which was used by the Nazis as scientific justification its aggression to the east. G. Kosinna traces the archaeological materials of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages “14 colonial campaigns of megalithic Indo-Europeans east through Central Europe to the Black Sea.” It is clear that this politicized pseudoscientific version of resettlement failed along with the Third Reich.

In the 70s of the twentieth century. P. Bosch-Gimpera (1961) and G. Devoto (1962) derived it from the culture of linear band ceramics. They made an attempt to trace the phases development from the Danube Neolithic 5th millennium BC to the Bronze Age and even to the historical peoples of the Early Iron Age. P. Bosch-Zhimpera considered the culture of Tripoli to be Indo-European, since, in his opinion, it was formed on the basis of the culture of linear band ceramics.

Fig.3. Steppe mound

Almost together with Central European concept of origin and-e was born and steppe. Its supporters consider it the ancestral home of the steppe from the Lower Danube to the Volga. The founder of this concept is rightfully considered to be the outstanding German scientist, encyclopedist of Indo-European studies Oswald Schrader. In his numerous works, which were published between 1880 and 1920, he not only summarized all the achievements of linguists, but also analyzed and significantly developed them using archaeological materials, including from the Black Sea steppes. The linguistic reconstruction of the pastoral society of the ancient Indo-Europeans has been brilliantly confirmed by archaeology. O. Schrader considered the pastoralists of the Eastern European steppe of the 3rd–2nd millennium BC to be Proto-Indo-Europeans, who left thousands of mounds in the south of Eastern Europe (Fig. 3). Since both languages ​​are widespread in Europe and Western Asia, then, according to O. Schrader, their ancestral home should be located somewhere in the middle - in the steppes of Eastern Europe.

Gordon Childe, in his 1926 book “The Aryans,” significantly developed the ideas of O. Schrader, narrowing the ancestral homeland of the Indo-Europeans to the steppes of Ukraine. Based on new archaeological materials, he showed that burials under burial mounds with ocher in the south of Ukraine (Fig. 4) were left by the most ancient Indo-European pastoralists, who began to settle throughout Eurasia from here.

Being a follower of G. Child, T. Sulimirsky (1933; 1968) expressed the idea that i-e cultures Corded ceramics of Central Europe were formed as a result of the migration of the Yamniki from the Black Sea steppes to the west.

In his 1950 book, G. Child supported T. Sulimirsky and concluded that the Yamniki from the south of Ukraine through the Danube migrated to Central Europe, where they laid the foundation for Corded Ware cultures, from which most researchers derive the Celts, Germans, Balts, and Slavs. The researcher considered the Yamnaya culture of the south of Eastern Europe to be undivided i-e, which advanced not only to the Upper Danube, but also to the north of the Balkans, where they founded the Baden culture, as well as to Greece and Anatolia, where they laid the foundation for the Greek and Anatolian branches of the i-e.

A radical follower of Gordon Childe was Maria Gimbutas (1970, p.483; 1985), who considered the Yamniki to be Proto-Indo-Europeans, “who moved west and south in the 5th-4th millennium BC. from the lower Don and Lower Volga." By the Indo-Europeanization of Europe, the researcher understood the settlement of militant carriers of the Kurgan culture of the steppes of Eastern Europe to the Balkans and Western Europe, inhabited at that time by non-Indo-European groups of the Balkan-Danubian Neolithic and the Funnel Beaker culture.

Due to schematism, ignorance of linguistic data and some radicalism, the works of M. Gimbutas were criticized, but her contribution to the development of the ideas of O. Schrader and G. Child is unconditional, and the steppe version of the origin of the Indo-Europeans remains quite convincing. Among her followers we should remember V. Danilenko (1974), D. Mallory (1989), D. Anthony (1986; 1991), Y. Pavlenko (1994), etc.

Middle Eastern version of the origin of i-e was born at the dawn of Indo-European studies. In 1822 G. Link and F. Miller placed their homeland in Transcaucasia. Under the influence of Pan-Babylonism, T. Momsen believed that they originated from Mesopotamia. However, the most detailed argument about the origin of i-e from the Middle East, more precisely from the Armenian Highlands, was presented in their two-volume encyclopedic work of 1984 by G.T. Gamkrelidze and V.V. Ivanov. Based on an in-depth analysis of a huge array of linguistic material and a generalization of the developments of predecessors, the researchers gave a broad picture of the economy, life, material culture, beliefs of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and the natural landscape characteristics of their ancestral home.

At the same time, the location of the ancestral home on Armenian Highlands and the attempt to argue for the settlement of Europe by Indo-Europeans bypassing the Caspian Sea from the east does not stand up to criticism. Plants (aspen, hornbeam, yew, heather) and animals (beaver, lynx, black grouse, elk, crab) that are typical for their homeland are not typical for Transcaucasia. Corresponding hydronymy is also very scarce here. Not confirmed by archaeological material and travel i-e around the Caspian Sea through Central Asia, the Lower Volga region and the steppes of Ukraine to the west.

Colin Renfrew (1987) places his homeland within the fertility crescent - in the south Anatolia. This assumption is fundamental to his concept because it is based on the obvious fact of the migration of early farmers of the Middle East west to Europe and east to Asia. The researcher started from the Nostratic concept of V. Illich-Svitych (1964, 1971), according to which the linguistic kinship with the peoples of the Afroasiatic, Ellamo-Dravidian, Ural and Sino-Caucasian families is explained by their common ancestral home in the Middle East. Pointing out that the speakers of the mentioned languages ​​are also genetically related, K. Renfrew claims that their resettlement from a common ancestral home took place in the 8th-5th millennium BC. in the process of spreading the reproducing economy (Renfrew, 1987). Without refuting the very fact of the mentioned migrations, most Indo-Europeans doubt that there were Indo-Europeans among the migrants from the Middle East.

Balkan the concept of the origin of i-e is associated with the discovery in the first half of the twentieth century. Balkan-Danube Neolithic proto-civilization of the 7th-5th millennium BC. It was from here that, according to archaeological data, the Neolithization of Europe took place. This gave grounds to B. Gornung (1956) and V. Georgiev (1966) to suggest that Proto-Indo-Europeans formed on the Lower Danube as a result of mixing of local Mesolithic hunters with Neolithic migrants from the Balkans. The weak point of the concept is the extreme poverty of the Mesolithic Lower Danube. I. Dyakonov also considered the Balkans to be his ancestral home (1982).

The ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans according to paleolinguistics

The realities of the ancestral home must correspond to the natural landscape, socio-economic and cultural-historical characteristics reconstructed using linguistic analysis of the most ancient common elements of the basic vocabulary of different languages.

The 19th century was an era of bold reconstructions of the society, economy, culture, spiritual world, and natural environment of the early Indo-Europeans with the help of so-called linguistic paleontology. The successful works of A. Kuhn (Kuhn, 1845) and J. Grimm (Grimm, 1848) provoked numerous paleolinguistic studies, the authors of which did not always adhere to strict rules for the comparative analysis of languages. Criticism of attempts to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European realities using linguistic analysis made it possible for A. Schleicher (1863) to introduce such reconstructions within the framework of strict rules. However, the real discovery of the world of Proto-Indo-Europeans belongs to O. Schrader (1886), who summarized the results of the reconstructions of his predecessors, clarifying and checking them using materials from the Bronze Age, which at that time became available to researchers.

Using the method of linguistic paleontology, scientists were able to reconstruct the stages of the formation of the proto-language. Based on the developments of F. Saussure and A. Meillet, M.D. Andreev (1986) suggested the existence of three stages of its formation: boreal, early and late Indo-European.

The proto-language reconstructed on the basis of the general i-e vocabulary at the stage preceding its collapse in the 4th millennium BC. T.V. Gamkrelidze and V.V. Ivanov (1984) analyzed them into separate language groups. The Proto-Indo-European dictionary indicates that its speakers lived in a temperate zone, albeit with a sharply continental climate, with cold winters and warm summers. They lived in both mountainous and flat areas, among rivers, swamps, coniferous and deciduous forests. They were well acquainted with the natural and climatic specifics of the steppes.

The economy of the Proto-Indo-Europeans at the time of the collapse was of a pastoral and agricultural nature. However, the significant development of cattle-breeding terminology indicates the dominance of this particular industry in the economy. Domestic animals include a horse, a bull, a cow, a sheep, a goat, a pig, and a dog. Transhumance cattle breeding for meat and dairy production dominated. Proto-Indo-Europeans possessed advanced methods of processing livestock products: hides, wool, milk. The cult of the horse and the bull occupied an important place in ideology.

Agriculture has reached a fairly high level. There was a transition from hoeing to the early form of arable farming, using a rawl and a plow pulled by a pair of oxen. They grew barley, wheat, and flax. The harvest was harvested with sickles and threshed, the grain was ground with grain grinders and millstones. They baked bread. They knew gardening (apples, cherries, grapes) and beekeeping. They made a variety of pottery. They were familiar with the metallurgy of copper, bronze, silver, and gold. Wheeled transport played a special role: bulls and horses were harnessed to carts. They knew how to ride a horse.

The significant role of cattle breeding in the economy determined the specifics of the social system. It was characterized by patriarchy, male dominance in the family and clan, and belligerence. Society was divided into three strata: priests, military aristocracy and simple community members (shepherds, farmers, warriors). The warlike spirit of the era was reflected in the construction of the first fortified settlements - fortresses. The uniqueness of the spiritual world consisted in the sacralization of war, the supreme warrior god. They worshiped weapons, horses, war chariots (Fig. 5), fire, and the sun-wheel, the symbol of which was the swastika.

An important element e-mythology is the world tree. By the way, this indicates that the ancestral home was a fairly forested region. Plants and animals whose names are present in the Late European language recreated by linguists help to localize it more precisely.

Plants: oak, birch, beech, hornbeam, ash, aspen, willow, yew, pine, walnut, heather, rose, moss. Animals: wolf, bear, lynx, fox, jackal, wild boar, deer, elk, wild bull, hare, snake, mouse, louse fish, bird, eagle, crane, crow, black grouse, goose, swan, leopard, lion , monkey, elephant.

The last four animals are atypical for the European fauna, although lions and leopards lived in the Balkans for another 2 thousand years. back. It has been established that the words denoting leopard, lion, monkey and elephant came into the I-e proto-language from the Middle East, most likely from the Afrasians of the Levant (Gamkrelidze, Ivanov 1984, pp. 506, 510).

Thus, plant and animal peace e-e ancestral home corresponds to the temperate zone of Europe. This gave the basis for most modern researchers to place it between the Rhine in the west, the Lower Volga in the east, the Baltic in the north and the Danube in the south (Bosh-Gimpera, 1961; Devoto, 1962; Grossland, 1967; Gimbutas, 1970; 1985; Häusler, 1985; Gornung, 1964; Georgiev, 1966; Mallory, 1989; Childe, 1926; Sulimirski, 1968, Zaliznyak, 1994, 1999, 2012, Pavlenko, 1994, Koncha, 2004). L.S. Klein places the ancestral home within the same limits in his fundamental monograph of 2007.

The reconstruction of the unified vocabulary of the Proto-Indo-Europeans gave grounds to assert that before their collapse they already knew agriculture, cattle breeding, ceramic dishes, copper and gold metallurgy, the wheel, that is, they were at the Eneolithic stage. In other words, the collapse occurred no later than the 4th - 3rd millennium BC. (Gamkrelidze, Ivanov, 1984, pp. 667-738, 868-870). The same is evidenced by the discovery of Hittite, Palai, Luwian and individual languages ​​due to the decipherment of texts from the library of the capital of the Hittite kingdom, Hatusa, 2nd millennium BC. Since there is convincing archaeological evidence that the Hittites came to Anatolia at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, the collapse of the Proto-Indo-Europeans into separate branches began no later than the 4th millennium BC.

G. Kühn believed that Proto-Indo-European unity existed in the Upper Paleolithic, and associated it with the Magdalenian culture of France (Kühn, 1932). S.V. Koncha sees undivided Indo-Europeans in the early Mesolithic lowlands between the Lower Rhine in the west and the Middle Dnieper in the east (Koncha, 2004).

Linguistic contacts of Proto-Indo-Europeans

Archaic i-e hydronymy is concentrated in Central Europe between the Rhine in the west, the Middle Dnieper in the east, the Baltic in the north and the Danube in the south (Gamkrelidze, Ivanov 1984, p. 945).

The ancestral homeland can be more accurately localized by the in both languages traces of contacts with the Finno-Ugric peoples, Kartvelians and the peoples of the Middle East (Prahattas, Prahurites, Afrasians, Sumerians, Elamites). Linguistic analysis indicates that the Proto-Finno-Ugrians, before their collapse in the 3rd millennium BC. borrowed from and it's significant amount of agricultural terminology (pig, piglet, goat, grain, hay, hammer ax, etc.). A variety of i-e vocabulary is present in the Kartvelian languages ​​(Georgian, Mingrelian, Svan) (Gamkrelidze, Ivanov, 1984, p. 877). Particularly important for the localization of their ancestral home is the presence in their languages ​​of parallels with the languages ​​of the peoples of the Middle East.

The famous linguist V. Illich-Svitych (1964) noted that a certain part of the agricultural and livestock vocabulary was borrowed from the proto-Semites and Sumerians. As an example of Proto-Semitic borrowings, the researcher named the words: tauro - bull, gait - goat, agno - lamb, bar - grain, cereal, dehno - bread, grain, kern - millstone, medu - honey, sweet, sekur - axe, nahu - vessel , ship, haster - star, septm - seven, klau - key, etc. According to V. Illich-Svitych, the following words were borrowed from the Sumerian language: kou - cow, reud - ore, auesk - gold, akro - cornfield, duer – doors, hkor – mountains, etc. (Gamkrelidze, Ivanov, 1984, pp. 272–276).

However, there is especially a lot of agricultural and livestock terminology, names of food products, objects everyday life borrowed from the Prakhatti and Prahurites, whose ancestral home is located in Anatolia and in the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates. S. A. Starostin (1988, pp. 112–163) believes that the roots of klau, medu, akgo, bar and some others given by V. Illich-Svitych are not at all Proto-Semitic or Sumerian, but Hatto-Huritic. In addition, he provides numerous examples of Hatto-Huritic vocabulary in both languages. Here are just a few of them: ekuo - horse, kago - goat, porko - pig, hvelena - wave, ouig - oats, hag - berry, rughio - rye, lino - flion, kulo - stake, list, gueran - millstone, sel - village, dholo - valley, arho - open space, area, tuer - cottage cheese, sur - cheese, bhar - barley, penkue - five and many others. Analysis of these linguistic borrowings indicates that they occurred in the process of direct contacts of the Proto-Indo-Europeans with the more developed Prahatto-Hurites no later than the 5th millennium BC. (Starostin, 1988, pp. 112–113, 152–154).

The nature of all these expressive linguistic parallels between the Proto-Indo-European, on the one hand, and the Proto-Ugro-Finnish, Proto-Kartvelian, languages ​​of the mentioned peoples of the Middle East, on the other, indicates that they are a consequence of close contacts of the Proto-Indo-Europeans with these peoples. That is, the sought-after ancestral home had to be located somewhere between the homelands of these ethnic groups, which makes it possible to localize it more accurately. It is known that the ancestral home of the Finno-Ugric peoples is the forest-steppe between the Don and the Urals, and the Kartvelians are the Central Caucasus. Regarding the mentioned Middle Eastern borrowings in other languages, their source, in our opinion, could be the Balkan-Danube Neolithic, including the bearers of the Trypillian culture of Right Bank Ukraine. After all, the Neolithic colonization of the Balkans and Danube region took place in the 7th - 6th millennium BC. from Asia Minor, the homeland of the Hatto-Hurites.

Analysis of modern versions of the ancestral home

In our time, five regions claim the honorable right to be called their ancestral home: Central Europe between the Rhine and the Vistula (I. Geiger, G. Hirt, G. Kosinna, P. Bosch-Zimpera, G. Devoto), the Middle East (T. Gamkrelidze, V. Ivanov, K. Renfrew), the Balkans (B. Gornung, V. Georgiev, I. Dyakonov) and the forest-steppe and steppe zones between the Dniester and Volga (O. Schrader, G. Child, T. Sulimirsky, V. Danilenko , M. Gimbutas, D. Mallory, D. Anthony, Y. Pavlenko). Some researchers combine Central Europe with the Eastern European steppes up to the Volga into their ancestral home (A. Heusler, L. Zaliznyak, S. Koncha). Which of these versions is more plausible?

Origin concept Central Europe(lands between the Rhine, Vistula and Upper Danube) was especially popular at the end of the 19th - in the first half of the 20th century. As noted, its founders were L. Geiger, G. Hirt, G. Kosinna.

The constructions of the mentioned German researchers are based on the coincidence of the natural and climatic realities of the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary with the nature and temperate climate of Central Europe, as well as the Northern European appearance of the early I-e (Fig. 6). It is also important that the main area of ​​hydronymy coincides with the territories of several archaeological cultures. This refers to the cultures of linear-band ceramics, funnel-shaped beakers, spherical amphorae, and corded ceramics, which from the 6th to 2nd millennium BC. successively replaced each other in the indicated territories of Central Europe.

No one now doubts the Indo-European nature of the Corded Ware cultures. Their genetic predecessors were the Funnel Beaker and Globular Amphorae cultures. However, there is no reason to call the culture of linear-band ceramics Indo-European, since it lacks the defining elements reconstructed by linguists. i-e features: pastoral direction of the economy, the dominance of men in society, the warlike nature of the latter - the presence of a military elite, fortresses, the cult of war, weapons, a war chariot, a horse, the sun, fire, etc. The bearers of the traditions of the linear-band ceramics culture, in our opinion, belonged to the Neolithic circle of the Balkans, the non-Indo-European nature of which is recognized by most researchers.

The location of the ancestral home in Central Europe is hampered by the presence in the I-e languages ​​of traces of close linguistic contacts with the Proto-Kartvelians of the Caucasus and the Finno-Ugric peoples, whose homeland was the forest-steppe between the Don and the Southern Urals. If the Proto-Indo-Europeans lived in Central Europe, then how could they have contacted the inhabitants of the Caucasus and Transdon?

Most modern scientists consider Central Europe to be the birthplace of the Corded Cultures of the 3rd-2nd millennium BC, whose bearers were the ancestors of the northern branches of the Ie: Celts, Germans, Balts, Slavs. However, Central Europe could not be the homeland of all I-e peoples because the southern I-e (Illyrians, Phrygians, Greeks, Hittites, Italics, Armenians), as well as the eastern (Indo-Iranians) cannot be derived from the Corded People either linguistically or archaeologically . In addition, in forest-steppes and steppes Ukraine and appeared earlier than the most ancient corded people - no later than the end of the 5th millennium BC. (Sredny Stog residents).

Near East it also could not have been its ancestral home, because here was the homeland of non-Indo-European ethnic groups: the Hattic, Khuritian, Elamite, Afroasiatic linguistic communities. Mapping of the I-e languages ​​shows that this region was the southern periphery of their ecumene. The Hittites, Luwians, Palayans, Phrygians, and Armenians appeared here quite late - in the 3rd-2nd millennium BC, that is, after the collapse of the Proto-Indo-European language in the 4th millennium BC. Unlike Europe, there is almost no hydronymy here.

The cold continental climate of the ancestral home with frosty snowy winters does not correspond to the realities of the Middle East. Almost half of the plants and animals that appear in the language are missing here (aspen, hornbeam, linden, heather, beaver, black grouse, lynx, etc.). On the other hand, the I-E dictionary does not contain the names of typical representatives of the Middle Eastern fauna and flora (cypress, cedar, etc.). As for the lion, leopard, monkey and elephant, their names turned out to be borrowed from Proto-Semitic. If these animals were typical of their ancestral home, then why was it necessary to borrow them from their southern neighbors? Proto-Indo-Europeans could not live in the Middle East because the strong influence of their language can be traced to the Finno-Ugric peoples, whose homeland is located too far north of the Middle East, which excludes the possibility of contacts with them.

Assuming that both happen to Balkan, we will ignore their linguistic connections not only with the Finno-Ugric peoples, but also with the Kartvelians of the Caucasus. It is impossible to remove their eastern branch, the Indo-Iranians, from the Balkans. This is contradicted by data from both archeology and linguistics. Both hydronyms are known only in the north of the Balkans. Most of them are distributed to the north, between the Rhine and the Dnieper. The hypothesis about the origin of the i-e from the Balkan Neolithic farmers is also contradicted by the fact that the appearance of the first i-e on the historical arena in the 4th–3rd millennium BC. e. coincided with the aridization of the climate, the separation of cattle breeding into a separate industry and its spread across the vast expanses of Eurasia, and, finally, with the collapse of the agricultural Neolithic itself in the Balkans and Danube region. What gives grounds for some researchers to consider the Balkan Peninsula as their ancestral home?

The famous researcher Colin Renfrew rightly believes that the grandiose linguistic phenomenon of the spread of languages ​​must be met by an equally large-scale socio-economic process. According to the scientist, such a global phenomenon in primitive history was the neolithization of Europe. This refers to the settlement of ancient farmers and livestock breeders from the Middle East to the Balkans and further to Europe.

A reasoned criticism of K. Renfrew's attempts to derive i-e from the Middle East from the standpoint of new genetic research was given by R. Solaris (1998, p. 128, 129). Biomolecular analysis of paleoanthropological and paleozoological remains demonstrates the correspondence of genome changes between Europeans and domesticated animals of Near Eastern origin. This strongly suggests that Europe was colonized by Neolithic populations from the Middle East. However, substrate phenomena in Greek and other i-e languages ​​indicate that i-e came to the Balkans after they were explored by Neolithic colonists from Anatolia. The genetic kinship of the peoples of the Nostratic family of languages ​​of Eurasia is explained, according to R. Sollaris (1988, p. 132), by the existence of common ancestors of the population of Eurasia, who settled from the Western Mediterranean to the west and east at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic 40 thousand years ago.

The fact that the “surplus” of the early agricultural population flowed from the Middle East to the Balkans and further to Europe is beyond doubt. However, was it Indo-European? After all, archeology testifies that from the first centers of the productive economy in the south of Anatolia, in Syria, Palestine, in the Zagrosu Mountains, it was not e-e, but Elamite, Hattian, Huritian, Sumerian and Afrasian communities that grew up. It is in the latter that the material and spiritual culture and economy of the Neolithic farmers of the Balkans have direct parallels. Their anthropological type is close to the type of Neolithic inhabitants of the Middle East and differs significantly from the anthropology of the first reliable Indo-Europeans who lived in the 4th millennium BC. e. in Central Europe (Corded Ware culture) and in the forest-steppes between the Dnieper and Volga (Sredny Stog and Yamnaya cultures). If the Neolithic population of the Balkans and the Middle East was a bearer of the southern European or Mediterranean anthropological type (gracile, short Caucasians), then the mentioned Indo-Europeans were massive, tall northern Caucasians (Potekhina 1992) (Fig. 6). Clay figurines from the Balkans depict people with large noses of a specific shape (Zaliznyak, 1994, p. 85), which are an important defining feature of the Eastern Mediterranean anthropological type, according to V.P. Alekseev (1974, pp. 224, 225).

The direct descendant of the Neolithic proto-civilization of the Balkans was Minoan civilization, which formed on the island of Crete around 2000 BC. According to M. Gimbutas, the Minoan linear letter “A” comes from the sign system of the Neolithic farmers of the Balkans of the 4th millennium BC. e. Attempts to decipher the texts of the Minoans showed that their language belongs to the Semitic group (Gimbutas 1985; Gamkrelidze, Ivanov 1984, pp. 912, 968; Renfrew 1987, p.50). Since the Minoans were descendants of the Balkan Neolithic, the latter could not possibly be Indo-European. Both archaeologists and linguists came to the conclusion that before the appearance of the first i-e in Greece in the 2nd millennium BC. e. non-Indo-European tribes lived here.

Thus, culturally, linguistically, anthropologically and genetically, the Balkan Neolithic was closely related to the non-Indo-European Neolithic proto-civilization of the Middle East. It seems that the mentioned significant number of agricultural terms of Middle Eastern origin in the I-e languages ​​is explained by the intense cultural influence of Balkan farmers, genetically related to the Middle East, on the ancestors of the I-e - the aborigines of Central and southern Eastern Europe.

Steppe version of the origin of the Indo-Europeans

The most well-reasoned and popular in our time versions of the location of the ancestral homeland of the I-e peoples include the steppe version, according to which the I-e originated in the steppes between the Dniester, the Lower Volga and the Caucasus. Its founders were the aforementioned O. Schrader (1886) and G. Child (1926, 1950), who at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. expressed the idea that the first impetus for the Indo-Europeanization of Eurasia came from the ancient pastoralists of the Northern Black Sea steppes and forest-steppes. Later, this hypothesis was fundamentally substantiated and developed by T. Sulimirsky (1968), V. Danilenko (1969; 1974), M. Gimbutas (1970; 1985), D. Mallory (1989), D. Anthony (1991). Its supporter was Yu. Pavlenko (1994).

According to this version the most ancient formed in the south of Ukraine as a result of complex historical processes that led to the separation of cattle breeding into a separate branch of the primitive economy. Due to the long-term agrarian colonization of the Balkans and Danube by Middle Eastern hoe farmers, the reserves of hoe farming in Central Europe were exhausted. Further expansion of the reproducing economy in the steppe and forest zones required an increase in the role of cattle breeding. This was facilitated by the progressive aridization of the climate, which led to a crisis in the agricultural economy of the Balkans and Danube region, while at the same time creating favorable conditions for the spread of various forms of livestock farming. This was also facilitated by the clearing of deciduous forests of Central Europe and Right Bank Ukraine by Neolithic farmers in the 4th-5th millennium BC. e., since wastelands on the site of former fields became potential pastures.

Neolithic hoe farmers grazed their few animals near villages. When the harvest ripened, they were driven away from the crops. Thus, the oldest transhumance form of cattle breeding arose. It is common for her to graze animals in the summer on pastures remote from permanent settlements. It was this ancient type of cattle breeding that made it possible for societies with a reproducing economy to colonize not only the Eurasian steppes, but also to move into the forests of central Europe.

The separation of cattle breeding from the ancient mixed agricultural and livestock economy of the Balkan-Danube Neolithic into a separate industry began in the south of Ukraine, on the border of the fertile black soils of the Right Bank of the Dnieper occupied by hoe farmers and the Eurasian steppes, which from that time became the home of mobile and warlike pastoral peoples. Thus, in the 4th millennium BC. e. the territory of Ukraine became the border between the sedentary, peace-loving farmers of the Danube region and the mobile, warlike pastoralists of the Eurasian steppes.

It was in the south of Ukraine that the agricultural proto-civilization of the Balkans and Danube region, through its northeastern outpost - the Trypillian culture - directly influenced the ancestors of the most ancient pastoralists - Mesolithic and Neolithic hunters and fishermen of the forest-steppes of the Dnieper and Seversky Donets basins. The latter received from the Balkan-Danube descendants of the ancient farmers and pastoralists of the Middle East not only the skills of reproducing farming, but also Middle Eastern agricultural terminology, traced by linguists in other languages ​​(Illich-Svitych 1964; 1971; Starostin, 1988). The localization of the first shepherds-pastoralists in the steppes and forest-steppes between the Dniester, Lower Don and Kuban is in good agreement with the three main directions of Proto-Indo-European linguistic contacts. In the west they directly bordered with the speakers of agricultural vocabulary of Middle Eastern origin (Trypillians), in the northeast - Finno-Ugric, and in the southeast - Kartvelian vocabulary of the Caucasus (Fig. 2).

M. Gimbutas placed the birthplace of cattle breeding and its first carriers in the Middle Volga region, which is difficult to agree with. After all, cattle breeding was born from complex hoe farming in the process of separation into an independent branch of the economy. That is, this could only happen if the first pastoralists had direct and close contacts with large agrarian communities, such as the early agricultural proto-civilization of the Balkans and Danube region.

There was nothing like this in the Volga region. The nearest center of agriculture lay 800 km south of the Middle Volga region behind the Great Caucasus Range in the basins of the Kura and Araks rivers. If the first pastoralists had borrowed the productive economy along with agricultural terminology from there, then the latter would have been mainly Kartvelian. However, a significant number of common Indo-European pastoral and agricultural terms are not of Caucasian, but of Anatolian origin. Thus, they were directly borrowed by the Proto-Indo-Europeans from the Neolithic population of the Balkans and Danube - the direct descendants of the Neolithic colonists from Anatolia, most likely the Proto-Hurites.

The cattle-breeding skills acquired from the Trypillians took root and quickly developed into a separate industry in the favorable conditions of the steppes and forest-steppes of Left Bank Ukraine. Herds of cows and flocks of sheep moved intensively in search of pastures, which required pastoralists to live an active lifestyle. This stimulated the rapid spread of wheeled transport, domestication in the 4th millennium BC. e. horses, which, together with bulls, were used as draft animals. The constant search for pastures led to military clashes with neighbors, which militarized society. Pastoral farming turned out to be very productive. One shepherd was tending a flock that could feed many people. In conditions of constant conflicts over pastures and cows, the surplus of male labor was transformed into professional warriors.

Among pastoralists, unlike farmers, it was not a woman, but a man who became the main figure in the family and community, since all life support lay with the shepherds and warriors. The possibility of accumulating livestock in one hand created the conditions for property differentiation of society. A military elite appears. The militarization of society determined the construction of ancient fortresses, the spread of the cults of the supreme god of the warrior and shepherd, the war chariot, weapons, horses, the sun-wheel (swastika), and fire.

Rice. 7. Yamnaya pottery (1-4), as well as dishes and war hammers (vajras) of the Catacomb cultures of the 3rd-2nd millennium BC. South of Ukraine. Catacomb vessels and axes - Ingul culture

These ancient pastoralists of the south of Eastern Europe of the 4th-3rd millennium BC. e. were not yet real nomads who spent their entire lives on horseback or on a cart in constant migrations for herds and herds of animals. Nomadism, as a way of nomadic life and a developed form of pastoral economy, was finally formed in the steppes only at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. The basis of the economy of the steppes of the 4th-3rd millennium BC. e. there was less mobile transhumance. It provided for more or less settled living of women and children in permanent settlements in river valleys, where they grew barley, wheat, raised pigs, goats, and fished. The male population spent more and more time with herds of cows, sheep and horses on the summer steppe pastures. In the spring, the animals, accompanied by shepherds and armed guards, were driven far into the steppe and only returned home for the winter in the fall. This semi-sedentary way of life quickly acquired more and more mobile forms due to the increasing role of cattle breeding.

These early semi-nomadic pastoralists left few settlements, but a large number of burial mounds. Especially many of them were poured by the pitmen (hundreds of thousands) in the 3rd millennium BC. e. Archaeologists recognize them by the so-called steppe burial complex. Its most important elements are the burial mound, placing the deceased in a burial pit in a crouched position, and filling the buried person with red ocher powder. Rough clay pots, often decorated with cord marks and impalations, and weapons (stone war hammers and maces) were placed in the grave (Fig. 7). Wheels were placed in the corners of the pit, symbolizing the funeral cart, and often its parts (Fig. 4). Stone anthropomorphic steles are found in the mounds, which depict a tribal patriarch with the corresponding attributes of a warrior leader and a shepherd (Fig. 8). An important feature of the first and southern Ukraine is the domestication of the horse, traces of which can be traced in the forest-steppe Dnieper region from the 4th-3rd millennium BC. e. (Telegin 1973).

The unprecedented scale of settlement of the ancient I-e from the south of Ukraine to the endless steppe expanses to the Middle Danube in the west and to Altai in the east is explained by the pastoral economy, the spread of wheeled transport - carts and war chariots (Fig. 9), draft animals (bull, horse) , and later horsemanship, which determined the mobile way of life, militancy and the grandiose scale of expansion of the early I-e (Fig. 2).

From Rhine to Donets

However restriction i-e ancestral homeland only in the steppes and forest-steppes of Ukraine does not explain why the main body of ancient hydronymics lies in Central Europe between the Rhine and the Dnieper. Such natural realities as mountains, swamps, the spread of aspen, beech, yew, heather, beavers, black grouse, etc. also do not fit with the south of Ukraine. These elements of the natural environment are more typical for the temperate and cool climate of Central Europe than for the sultry steppes of the Black Sea region. And the northern European appearance of the first i-e, as evidenced by the most ancient written sources, does not fit with the Black Sea region.

These contradictions are resolved if we assume the existence of a single ethnocultural substrate between the Lower Rhine and the Donets, on which in the 5th-4th millennium BC. The ancient Indo-Europeans of the Black Sea region and Central Europe began to form. Such a substrate began to emerge in the last third of the 20th century. during studies of Mesolithic monuments in the North German, Polish, Polesie lowlands, in the Neman and Donets basins.

The Central European lowlands, which stretch from the Thames basin through northern Germany, Poland, Polesie to the Middle Dnieper, from the final Paleolithic until the Middle Ages, were a kind of corridor through which migration waves rolled from west to east. The reindeer hunters of the Lingby culture were the first to travel this route from Jutland to the Dnieper 12 thousand years ago (Fig. 10). They settled the Central European lowlands that had just been liberated from the glacier, giving rise to related cultures of reindeer hunters of the last millennium of the Ice Age: Arensburg of Northern Germany, Svider and Krasnoselye of the Vistula, Neman, Pripyat, Upper Dnieper basins.

Rice. 10. Map of the distribution of monuments of the Bromme-Lingby type, about 11 thousand years ago. back. (Zaliznyak, 2005, p.45) Conventional signs: 1- sites of the Lingbi culture, 2- locations of the Lingbi tips, 3- directions of migration of the population of the Lingbi culture, 4- southern and eastern border of the outwash lowlands.

The Mesolithic of the Central European Lowlands began with new wave settlers to the east, which led to the formation of the Duvensi cultural region. It includes the related Early Mesolithic cultures of Star Car of England, Duvensey of Germany, Klosterlund of Denmark, Komornitsa of Poland, Kudlaevka of Polesie and the Neman basin (Fig. 11, 12).

The migration of bearers of the Maglemose culture traditions of the South-Western Baltic was especially powerful in the Atlantic period of the Holocene. In the boreal in the 7th millennium BC. Maglemose was transformed into the Svadborg culture of Jutland, whose population was due to the Baltic transgression around 6000 BC. migrated to the east, where it took part in the formation of the Janisławice culture of the Vistula, Neman and Pripyat basins (Fig. 13) (Kozlowsky 1978, p. 67, 68; Zaliznyak 1978, 1984, 1991, pp. 38-41, 2009, p. 206 -210). At the end of the 6th millennium BC. bearers of the Yanislavitsky traditions advanced through the Dnieper valley to Nadporozhye and further east into the Seversky Donets basin (Fig. 15). This is evidenced by the map of the distribution of characteristic Janisławice points (Fig. 14).

Rice. 13. Map of the distribution of monuments of the Janislavice culture of the 6th-5th millennium BC. Neman basin (Zaliznyak, 1991, p. 29)

Rice. 14. Map of the distribution of points with microincisal chips on plates on the territory of Ukraine. (Zaliznyak, 2005, p. 109) Conventional signs: 1-sites with a series of points, 2-points with 1-3 points, 3-direction of migration from the South Baltic in the 7th-5th millennium BC, 4-border Polesie, the 5th southern border of forests in the Atlanticum.

Rice. 15. Points on plates with microincisal chips from Ukrainian sites. Janislavitz type and the like. (Zaliznyak, 2005, p. 110)

The process of penetration of forest hunters of the Maglemose cultural traditions from Polesie to the south was probably stimulated by the movement in a southerly direction along the river valleys of broad-leaved forests in connection with the general warming and humidification of the climate at the end of the Mesolithic. As a result of the spread of forest and forest-steppe biotopes with the corresponding fauna along river valleys up to the Black and Azov Seas, conditions were created for the advance of forest hunters of the Yanislavitsa culture to the south and southeast of Ukraine.

So, in the VI-V millennium BC. The Late Mesolithic post-Maglemosis cultural community was formed, which covered the low-lying areas from Jutland to the Seversky Donets (Fig. 16). It included the Mesolithic post-Maglemosis cultures of the Western and Southern Baltic states, Janislavitsa of the Vistula, Neman, and Pripyat basins, as well as the Donetsk culture of the Seversky Donets basin. The flint inventory of these cultures convincingly testifies to their relationship and genesis on the basis of the Baltic Mesolithic. Numerous finds of microliths characteristic of the Mesolithic Baltic and Polesie in Nadporozhye and even on the Seversky Donets indicate that migrants from the Baltic reached the Donets (Zaliznyak, 1991, pp. 40, 41; 2005, pp. 109–111).

In the 5th millennium BC. on the basis of post-maglemosis, but under the southern influence of cultural communities of the Balkan-Danube Neolithic, a group of forest Neolithic cultures was formed: Ertebølle of the South-Western and Tsedmar of the Southern Baltic, Dubichay of the Neman basin, Volyn of the Pripyat and Neman basin, Dnieper-Donetsk of the Middle Dnieper and Donetsk of the Seversky Donets (Fig. . 16). Among the Neolithic donors of the mentioned forest Neolithic cultures of the German, Polish, Poloska lowlands and the Middle Dnieper special role played by the Linear Band Ware and Cucuteni-Trypillia cultures.

The existence of a cultural and genetic community on the plains from the Lower Rhine to the Seversky Donets is confirmed not only by archeology. The above-mentioned autochthonous hunting communities of the Central European lowlands and the Dnieper region were connected not only by a single type of forest hunting and fishing economy and material culture, but also by an anthropological type of population. Anthropologists have long written about the penetration of northern Caucasoids from the Western Baltic to the Middle Dnieper and South-East Ukraine in the Mesolithic and Neolithic (Gokhman 1966, Konduktorova 1973). Comparison of materials from Mesolithic and Neolithic burial grounds of the Dnieper region of the 6th-4th millennium BC. with the synchronous burials of Jutland indicates both a certain cultural and genetic relatedness of the population that left them. Not only the funeral rites were similar, but also the anthropological type of those buried (Fig. 4). These were tall, very massive, broad-faced northern Caucasians, buried in an extended position on their backs (Telegin 1991, Potekhina 1999). In the 5th millennium BC. this population advanced through the forest-steppe strip to the Left Bank Ukraine and to the east of the Middle Volga region (Syezzhee burial ground), forming the Mariupol cultural community, represented by numerous Mariupol-type burial grounds with numerous osteological remains of massive northern Europeans (Telegin, 1991). The population of early Indo-European communities of the 4th millennium BC comes from this anthropological massif. – Sredny Stog and Yamnaya cultures of forest-steppe Ukraine.

Thus, in the VI-V millennium BC. The northern European hunting population, which since the end of the Ice Age lived in the lowland forest expanses of the Southern Baltic and Polesie, moved along the Left Bank of the Dnieper to the Seversky Donets basin. A huge ethnocultural community was formed, which stretched from Jutland to the Donets for two thousand km and consisted of related cultures of hunters and fishermen. Under the influence of the agricultural cultures of the Balkan-Danube Neolithic from the south, the post-Maglemesian Mesolithic community moved to the Neolithic stage of development. Due to the spread of steppes due to climate aridization, these aboriginal societies of northern Europeans began to switch to cattle breeding and transformed into the most ancient cultures of the 4th millennium BC. (Srednostogovskaya on the Left Bank of the Dnieper and funnel-shaped cups in Central Europe).

Thus, the ancient Indo-Europeans of the 4th-3rd millennium BC. The carriers of the Sredny Stog and Yamnaya cultures (arose on the basis of the Dnieper-Donets and Mariupol cultures) in the east and the funnel-shaped beaker and spherical amphorae cultures (descendants of the Ertebelle culture) in the west belonged to the North European anthropological type. At the same time, the bearers of these early Indo-European cultures exhibit some gracilization of the skeleton, which indicates their formation on the basis of local northern Caucasians under the conditions of a certain influx of a more graceful non-Indo-European population from the Danube region colonized by farmers. Massive northern Caucasians, according to E.E. Kuzmina (1994, pp. 244-247), were also carriers of the Andronovo culture of Central Asia (Fig. 9).

The Northern European appearance of the early I-e is confirmed by written sources and mythology, which indicate the light pigmentation of the Indo-Europeans of the 2nd millennium BC. Thus, in the Rig Veda, the Aryans are characterized by the epithet “Svitnya”, which means “light, fair-skinned”. The hero of the famous Aryan epic "Mahabharata" often has eyes the color of "blue lotus". According to Vedic tradition, a real Brahman should have brown hair and gray eyes. In the Iliad, the Achaeans have golden blonde hair (Achilles, Menelaus, Odysseus), the Achaean women and even the goddess Hera have blonde hair. The god Apollo was also depicted as golden-haired. On Egyptian reliefs from the time of Thutmose IV (1420-1411 BC), the Hittite charioteers (Mariana) have a Nordic appearance, in contrast to their Armenoid squires. In the middle of the 1st millennium BC. Blonde-haired descendants of the Aryans allegedly came to the king of Persia from India (Lelekov, 1982, p. 33). According to the testimony of ancient authors, the Celts of Central and Western Europe were tall blonds. The legendary Tocharians of Xinjiang in Western China, not surprisingly, belonged to the same Northern European type. This is evidenced by their mummified bodies, which date back to approximately 1200 BC. and Tocharian wall paintings of the VII-VI centuries. AD Ancient Chinese chronicles also testify to blue-eyed blonds who in ancient times lived in the deserts of Central Asia.

The fact that the oldest Indo-Europeans belonged to the Northern Caucasians is consistent with the localization of their ancestral home between the Rhine and the Seversky Donets, where by the 6th-5th millennium BC. According to modern archeology, an ethnocultural community was formed (Fig. 16), on the basis of which the most ancient cultures arose (Mariupol, Sredny Stog, Yamnaya, funnel-shaped beakers, spherical amphorae).

To sum up, we can assume that the ancestral home of I-e was probably the German, Polish, Dnieper lowlands and the Donets basin. At the end of the Mesolithic in the 6th–5th millennium BC. these territories were inhabited by massive northern Caucasians from the Baltic states. In the 5th millennium BC. on their genetic basis, a group of related Neolithic cultures is formed, which developed under the progressive influence of the agricultural proto-civilization of the Balkans. As a result of contacts with the latter, in conditions of climate aridization and expansion of the steppes, the transformation of the autochthons of Proto-Indo-Europeans into the actual Indo-European early pastoral mobile society took place (Zaliznyak 1994, pp. 96-99; 1998, pp. 216-218, 240-247; Zaliznyak, 1997, p .117-125; 2005). An archaeological marker of this process is the beginning of formation in the Azov and Black Sea steppes at the end of the 5th–4th millennium BC. pastoral burial mound burial rite (mound, burials with skeletons crouched and painted with ocher, anthropomorphic steles with images of weapons and shepherd attributes, traces of the cult of the horse, bull, wheeled vehicles, weapons, etc.).

If the author of these lines considers the post-Maglemez ethnocultural community he identified to be the 6th–5th millennium BC. (Fig. 16) by Proto-Indo-Europeans, the substrate on which the Indo-Europeans themselves were formed, then another Ukrainian researcher S.V. Koncha considers the carriers of post-maglemosis as already established Indo-Europeans before their collapse into separate ethno-linguistic branches. According to S.V. Koncha, “there are strong reasons to date the Indo-European community to the early Mesolithic (VIII-VII millennium BC), and associate the beginning of its collapse with the resettlement of the Yanislavitsky population to the east, in Polesie, and further, to the Donets basin in the 6th–5th millennium BC.” The researcher believes that the determining factor for early i-e cultural complex (mobile pastoral cattle breeding, burial mound ritual, cults of the horse, bull, sun-wheel, weapon, patriarch shepherd-warrior, etc.) was purchased i-e later, after the collapse of the Proto-Indo-European community in the 4th–3rd millennium BC. (Concha, 2004, pp.191-203).

One way or another, in the lowlands from the Lower Rhine in the west to the Middle Dnieper and Seversky Donets in the east, a cultural and historical community can be traced archaeologically, which began to form with the end of the Ice Age and which may have been the ethnocultural basis of the Indo-European group of peoples.

The problem of the Indo-European homeland is far from its final solution. The considerations expressed above will undoubtedly be adjusted and clarified as new facts become available and the latest scientific methods are applied to solving the problems of Indo-European studies.

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