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*Page 1*
© 1989: Frederik Kortlandt
THE SPREAD OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS
*Frederik Kortlandt *
The publication of Mallory’s book (1989) has rendered much of what I had
to say in the present contribution superfluous. The author presents a
carefully argued and very well written account of a balanced view on
almost every aspect of the prob- lem. Against this background, I shall
limit myself to a few points which have not received sufficient attention
in the discussion. First of all, the relation between archaeology and
linguistics is a precarious and asymmetrical one (cf. already Schmitt
1974). Mallory’s lucid discussion of the problem (1989: 164-168) should
be required reading for anybody who ventures into this realm of shadows.
It is a methodologically legitimate activity to look for archaeological
traces of a linguistic group, but the converse does not hold. Specu-
lations about the linguistic affinity of a prehistoric culture are futile
because it is reasonable to assume that the vast majority of prehistoric
linguistic groups have vanished without leaving a trace. Thus, it is
certainly attractive to assign the an- cestors of the speakers of
Proto-Tocharian to the Afanasievo culture (cf. Mallory 1989: 62 and 225),
but we must never forget that the very existence of the Tochar- ian texts
which have survived is a purely accidental fact of history, due to a num-
ber of factors which happened to concur thousands of years after the
eastward mi- grations of the Indo-Europeans. It is not merely possible,
but very probable that many groups of Indo-Europeans migrated eastward
before the ancestors of the Indo-Iranians, and that the distinguishing
feature of the Tocharians is merely the preservation of their historical
records. If the differences between East and West Tocharian lead us to
date Proto-Tocharian to the second half of the first millen- nium BC, this
still leaves a gap of two or three millennia after the purported arri- val
the Indo-Europeans in the area. Many things may have happened in the mean-
time. The real argument for an early eastward migration of the ancestors
of the To- charians is the remarkably archaic character of the attested
languages (see now Penney 1989 for a point of particular importance). It
has often been argued that Tocharian has special connections with the
western Indo-European languages. In my view, this is the result of a
methodological bias in our way of reconstructing Proto-Indo-European. As
Mayrhofer has noted (1983), the history of reconstruc- tion can be
described as a gradual shift away from the languages on which the re-
construction is primarily based. The similarities which link Tocharian to
the west- ern Indo-European languages reflect precious archaisms which
were obscured by more recent developments affecting the dialectal area
from which Greek and
Indo-Iranian were to evolve. The bias is strengthened by the presence of
later par- allel innovations in the latter two branches, e.g. in the
development of the middle voice (cf. Kortlandt 1981: 130). Similarly,
Mallory’s inconclusiveness about the westward Indo-European migrations
(1989: 257) appears to result from a search for archaeological evidence
beyond what can be motivated from a linguistic point of view. If we follow
the traditional opinion and assign the ancestors of the speakers of Celtic
and Germanic to the La Tène and Jastorf cultures, respectively, this
again leaves us with a gap of two millennia after the Corded Ware horizon
to which the ancestors of the western Indo-Europeans may have belonged.
Here again, we can be sure that a lot of things happened in the meantime,
and it is most probable that many linguistic groups were irretrievably
lost. This leads me to the second point I want to make. There seems to be
a general tendency to date proto-languages farther back in time than is
warranted by the lin- guistic evidence. When we reconstruct Proto-Romance,
we arrive at a linguistic stage which is approximately two centuries later
than the language of Caesar and Cicero (cf. Agard 1984: 47-60 for the
phonological differences). When we start from the extralinguistic evidence
and identify the origins of Romance with the beginnings of Rome, we arrive
at the eighth century BC, which is almost a mil- lennium too early. The
point is that we must identify the formation of Romance with the imperfect
learning of Latin by a large number of people during the ex- pansion of
the Roman empire. Similarly, we may identify the formative period of
Proto-Indo-European with the earliest expansions of the Indo-Europeans.
The issue involved here is partly terminological. Elsewhere I have
presented a relative chronology of 22 stages for the phonological
developments which charac- terize the formation of Old Irish (1979). All
of these developments are posterior to the Ogam inscriptions, which lack
the characteristic features of the Old Irish lan- guage. If we use the
term “Primitive Irish” for the period before the apocope (my stage 15)
and the term “Archaic Irish” for the period between the apocope and
the syncope (my stage 19), we may wonder about the applicability of the
term “Irish” to the Ogam inscriptions; it may be more appropriate to
speak of the variety of Insular Celtic spoken by the ancestors of the
Irish. In any case, no reconstruction of Proto-Irish on the basis of Old
Irish and later materials comes close to anything resembling the language
of the Ogam inscriptions. Since the latter can hardly be older than the
beginning of the Christian era and the syncope may be dated to the sixth
century, it will be clear that I have little confidence in a theory which
rele- gates Proto-Indo-European to the fifth or sixth millennium BC. The
radical changes which embody the formation of Irish in the first half of
the first millen- nium AD are probably due to imperfect learning by
speakers of an unknown sub- strate language which was lost forever.
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*Page 3*
THE SPREAD OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS 3 Perhaps the best example of a
disintegrating proto-language is furnished by the Slavic material. Apart
from the rise of /x /all the major developments which differ- entiate
Slavic from its Baltic prototype are usually dated to the first millennium
AD (e.g., Shevelov 1964, Kortlandt 1982). The earliest dialectal
divergences within Slavic which have survived into historical times can
hardly be older than the fourth century, and the last shared innovations
of the entire group, such as the rise of the neo-acute tone, may be dated
to the ninth century. The modern dialectal situation is essentially the
same as it was in the twelfth century. When we recon- struct Proto-Slavic,
the result can largely be identified with the language of the ninth
century, apart from the dialectal differentiation which started half a
millen- nium earlier, apparently in connection with the earliest expansion
of the Slavic territory. It is reasonable to assume that many dialects
arose and disappeared at earlier stages, but it is not obvious that the
term “Slavic” is appropriate before the expansions of the first
millennium AD. This brings me to the third point I want to make here. If a
proto-language can be dated to the period of its expansion, the mechanism
of this process must be examined in detail. It comprises two phases, each
of which has its own dynamics. First, a number of people have to move from
their original homeland to a new territory. Second, a larger number of
people must find it expedient to adopt the language of the intruders. Both
developments are determined by specific social and economic circumstances.
Population movements are determined by three factors. Firstly, there must
be a reason to leave one’s homeland. This factor has rightly been
stressed by Anthony, who observes that people living along the boundary
between the poorer lowland steppe and the richer upland *forest* “risked
periodic exposure to severe stress, for small variations in precipitation,
temperature, population density, or deforestation rate would dramatically
alter the local distribution of critical resources in these fragile
borderland communities” (1986: 292). This periodic exposure to severe
stress prompted expansion when the opportunity presented itself. Secondly,
there must be a place where life seems to be better in order to make the
journey worth while. This is a reason to expect migrations toward rather
than away from more developed areas such as Assyria in the third and
second millennia BC. Thirdly, the cost of the journey must not be
prohibitive. It is now generally recognized that the domestication of the
horse played a crucial part in reducing the cost of physi- cal mobility.
The expansion of Indo-European presupposes not only the migrations of
Indo- Europeans, but also the adoption of Indo-European languages by local
popula- tions. With respect to this issue Mallory refers to Barth’s work
(1981) in a discus- sion which is really too short. The complexity of the
problem is illustrated by the following passage, which I cannot refrain
from quoting at some length (Mallory 1989: 260f.):
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*Page 4*
FREDERIK KORTLANDT 4 “Barth examined the linguistic relations between
the Pathans and Baluchi on the Afghan- Pakistan border. The Pathans were
the more numerous, the wealthier, better armed, and even possessed a
better military reputation. Nevertheless, it is the Baluchi who have been
making the sustained linguistic assimilation of the Pathans. The Baluchi
social structure is hierarchic and encourages vertical relationships
between local leaders and clients. The vari- ous bands offer opportunities
for social advancement within these hierarchies, and dis- placed Pathans
in a frontier situation are attracted individually and in groups to join
Baluchi communities. On the other hand, the more egalitarian society of
the Pathans was ill-suited to absorb foreigners who could only enter it
either in roles despised by the Pathans or by undertaking a more
complicated process to being admitted as an equal in Pathan society. The
nub of the issue here is not weapons, wealth or population size but the
social perme- ability of the competing social organizations. As numerous
historical instances testify, pas- toral societies throughout the Eurasian
steppe are typified by remarkable abilities to absorb disparate
ethno-linguistic groups. Indo-European military institutions may have
encouraged membership from local groups in the form of clientship which
offered local populations greater advantages and social mobility.” This
must have been the decisive force in the spread of the Indo-European lan-
guages. Starting from the linguistic evidence and trying to fit the pieces
into a coherent whole, we arrive at the following picture. The best
candidate for the original Indo- European homeland is the territory of the
Sredny Stog culture in the eastern Ukraine. The attested languages reflect
a number of waves of migration to the east, north of the Caspian Sea
(Tocharian, Indo-Iranian), to the south, west of the Black Sea (Anatolian,
Greek, Armenian, Albanian), and to the west, south of the Baltic Sea
(Italo-Celtic, Germanic). As Mallory notes, there may have been a fourth,
abortive wave of migration to the southeast, west of the Caspian Sea,
which is not reflected in the linguistic records, perhaps because the
Indo- Europeans were assimilated to the local population at an early
stage. The earlier migrations yielded the peripheral languages (Tocharian,
Anatolian, Italo-Celtic), which did not take part in the late
Indo-European innovations of the central dia- lects (Indo-Iranian, Greek,
Germanic, Balto-Slavic, etc.). Some innovations af- fected only a part of
the central dialects, such as the assibilation of the palatove- lars
(which did not reach Greek and Germanic) or the loss of aspiration in the
voiced stops (which did not reach Greek and Indic). Other developments had
a more local character. An interconsonantal laryngeal voiced the following
stop in North Iranian (Avestan, Sogdian) /dugdar-/ ‘daughter’, but not
in its Persian and Indic cognates. This must have been a very early
development. It appears that Phrygian was rather closely related to Greek
(cf. now Lubotsky 1988), Thracian to Armenian (cf. Kortlandt 1988), and
Venetic to Italic. The position of Illyrian re- mains unclear. The
Indo-Europeans who remained after the migrations became speakers of
Balto-Slavic. If the speakers of the other satem languages can be assigned
to the Yamnaya horizon and the western Indo-Europeans to the Corded Ware
horizon, it
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*Page 5*
THE SPREAD OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS 5 is attractive to assign the ancestors
of the Balts and the Slavs to the Middle Dnieper culture. If the origin of
this culture “is to be sought in the Sredny Stog, Yamnaya and Late
Tripolye cultures” and this phase is “followed by a middle pe- riod
where the classic Corded Ware amphorae and beakers appear” (Mallory
1989: 248), the course of events corresponds nicely with the development
of a satem language which was drawn into the western Indo-European sphere
of influ- ence. The disintegration of Balto-Slavic is closely parallel to
that of Indo- European: the Slavs migrated to the west, the south, and the
east, the Latvians to the north, and the Prussians were assimilated to the
Germans. The deceptively archaic character of the Lithuanian language may
be compared to the calm eye of a cyclone. The resulting picture can be
summarized as follows. Eastward migrations: 1. Tocharian. 2a. Indic. 2b.
South Iranian. 2c. North Iranian. (3. East Slavic.) Southward migrations:
1. Anatolian. 2a. Greek. 2b. Phrygian. 2c. Armenian. 2d. Thracian. 2e.
Daco-Albanian. (3. South Slavic.) Westward migrations: 1a. Italic. 1b.
Venetic 1c. Celtic. 2. Germanic. (3. West Slavic.) Once again it must be
emphasized that many linguistic groups may have vanished without leaving
any historical record. We must now examine how the view developed here can
be related to Gimbu- tas’ theory of two homelands and three waves of
migration into the Balkans. The main objection which can be raised against
*Gimbutas*’ scheme (e.g., 1985: 198) is that it starts from the
archaeological evidence and looks for a linguistic interpreta- tion. As a
consequence, the scheme does not fit the linguistic evidence very well.
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*Page 6*
FREDERIK KORTLANDT 6 It seems to me that we arrive at a much better
representation if we start from the linguistic side and try to find an
archaeological corroboration. The natural solu- tion then is to link
*Gimbutas*’ first wave (4400-4200 BC) to the ancestors of the
Anatolians, her second wave (3400-3200 BC) to the ancestors of the Greeks
and the Phrygians, and her third wave (3000-2800 BC) to the ancestors of
the Arme- nians and the Thracians. If this identification is correct, the
satemization process can be dated to the last centuries of the fourth
millennium. It is possible that the speakers of Italo-Celtic must be
assigned to the Globular Amphora culture, and that Germanic grew out of a
later component of the Corded Ware horizon. Since the beginnings of the
Yamnaya, Globular Amphora, Corded Ware, and Afana- sievo cultures can all
be dated between 3600 and 3000 BC, I am inclined to date
Proto-Indo-European to the middle of the fourth millennium, and to
recognize Proto-Indo-Hittite as a language which may have been spoken a
millennium ear- lier. If we can identify Indo-Hittite and Indo-European
with the beginning and the end of the Sredny Stog culture, respectively,
it will be clear that the linguistic evi- dence from our family does not
lead us beyond *Gimbutas*’ secondary homeland and that the Khvalynsk
culture on the middle Volga and the Maykop culture in the northern
Caucasus cannot be identified with the Indo-Europeans. Any proposal which
goes beyond the Sredny Stog culture must start from the possible
affinities of Indo-European with other language families. It is usually
recognized that the best candidate in this respect is the Uralic language
family, while further connec- tions with the Altaic languages and perhaps
even Dravidian are possible. The hy- pothesis that Indo-European is
genetically related to a Caucasian language family or to Afro-Asiatic
seems much less probable to me. What we do have to take into account is
the typological similarity of Proto-Indo-European to the North-West
Caucasian languages. If this similarity can be attributed to areal
factors, we may think of Indo-European as a branch of Uralo-Altaic which
was transformed under the influence of a Caucasian substratum. It now
appears that this view is actually supported by the archaeological
evidence. If it is correct, we may locate the earli- est ancestors of the
speakers of Proto-Indo-European north of the Caspian Sea in the seventh
millennium (cf. Mallory 1989: 192f.). This is essentially in agreement
with *Gimbutas*’ theory. [Cf. now Kortlandt 1989.] *REFERENCES * Agard,
F.B. 1984 /A course in Romance linguistics 2: A diachronic view/.
Washington DC: Georgetown UP. Anthony, D.W. 1986 The ‘*Kurgan*
culture’, Indo-European origins, and the domestication of the horse: A
reconsideration, /Current Anthropology/ 27, 291-304.
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*Page 7*
THE SPREAD OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS 7 Barth, F. 1981 /Selected essays/, 2
vols., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. *Gimbutas*, M. 1985 Primary and
secondary homeland of the Indo-Europeans, /Journal of Indo-/ /European
Studies/ 13, 185-202. Kortlandt, F. 1979 The Old Irish absolute and
conjunct endings and questions of relative chronol- ogy, /Ériu/ 30,
35-53. 1981 1st sg. middle *-/H/ /2/ , /Indogermanische Forschungen /86,
123-136. 1982 Early dialectal diversity in South Slavic I, /Studies in
Slavic and General Lin-/ /guistics 2: South Slavic and Balkan
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