Page 159 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

978 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be
human together. • Desmond Tutu (b.1931)

pig, and dog; Proto-Indo-Europeans also knew the horse, toric linguistic entities: while the object being sought is
but whether wild or domesticated is hotly disputed).They strictly linguistic—a protolanguage—there is no purely
engaged in cereal agriculture (there are Proto-Indo-Euro- linguistic technique that yields a convincing solution.
pean words for grain, barley, yoke, plow, harvest, winnow, That is not to say that there is not an arsenal of tech-
and grinding stone); stored and cooked their food in ce- niques that have been employed, but they just do not give
ramic vessels; hunted and fought with the knife, spear, convincing results when applied to the world’s largest
and bow; had some acquaintance with metals (there are language family. One technique, for example, applies the
words for copper, gold, and silver); and utilized wheeled notion of the “center of gravity” in the search for a lan-
transport (wheel, wagon, pole). In addition we can recover guage family’s place of origin.The logic is that where we
the names of at least some of the wild plants and animals find the greatest amount of differentiation (in other words,
known to the Proto-Indo-European speakers. In general, the greatest concentration of different languages, dia-
the arboreal evidence suggests a temperate climate (tree lects, and so forth) is where the place of origin should
words include Proto-Indo-European equivalents of oak, lie, because it is in that area that the language family has
birch, willow, and ash) and forest and riverine animals existed longest and had the greatest amount of time to
(judging from words for bear, wolf, fox, red deer, otter, change. While languages invariably change over time,
and beaver). time is not the only factor of linguistic change. Topog-
In general, linguists have estimated that Proto-Indo- raphy, social structure, and contact with various foreign
European was spoke from about 4000 to about 2500 substrates, which are more diverse and inclusive than
BCE, but this is largely an informed guess. Nevertheless, any single language, are also likely to influence language
those dates do broadly conform with the dates indicated divergence.
by analysis of their vocabulary for material culture, as Recognizing this, some linguists have sought to locate
such items as wheeled vehicles do not appear anywhere the homeland where they either find the greatest amount
in the world before approximately 4000 BCE. of conservation of the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary
(presuming preservation to indicate the absence of for-
The Homeland Problem eign substrates and therefore the least movement from
For two centuries linguists and archaeologists have sought the homeland) or the least evidence for non-Indo-Euro-
to determine the location or homeland of the Proto-Indo- pean loanwords. But neither of these techniques is sat-
Europeans and their subsequent migrations. In a vast lit- isfying. Because the various Indo-European languages
erature that comprises both the brightest and the weirdest have been attested at widely different times (with San-
of would-be scholarship, the homeland has been located skrit attested earlier than 1000 BCE and evidence for
in space anywhere from the North Pole to the South Pole Lithuanian appearing two and a half thousand years
and from the Atlantic to the Pacific; in time the Proto- later), it is hard to know how one can make a fair test
Indo-Europeans have been sought from the time of the of which has the most archaic vocabulary or the great-
Neanderthals (before 100,000 BCE) until the spread of est number of loanwords. In fact, every Indo-European
use of the chariot (after 2000 BCE). The (Proto-)Indo- language possesses a sizeable vocabulary that cannot be
Europeans have been presented as everything from the demonstrated to derive from Proto-Indo-European.
bringers of a high culture who civilized Europe to the de- There is no evidence that any Indo-European language
stroyers of European (proto)civilization; from peaceful has sat in blissful purity over the past four or five thou-
farmers to warlike barbarian horsemen, depending on sand years. A measure of the inadequacy of these purely
how scholars, sometimes acting under various national or linguistic methods can be seen in the fact that the center-
ideological agendas, choose to interpret the limited data. of-gravity principle has generally favored southeastern
The difficulty of the whole enterprise, from a scholarly Europe (Greece and the Balkans) as the homeland, while
perspective, rests with the nature of searching for prehis- the conservation principle has been adduced most often