Page 161 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

980 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Lo! Men have become the tools of their tools. • Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

the proponents of the Neolithic hypothesis to abandon movement the Indo-European languages could have
their demic model and adopt a segment of the second spread from one region to another, arriving in the north
model: Bronze Age migrations (around 2000 BCE) of and west of Europe by around 3000 BCE or more
horse-using warriors from the steppe lands of Eurasia. recently.The steppe model explains the Indo-Europeans
The Neolithic model also seems to require migrations of Asia as further expansions of Bronze Age mobile war-
that are still several thousand years earlier than the most riors. The problem with the steppe model is that while
recent technological items associated with the Proto-Indo- evidence for migration can be found from the steppe
European vocabulary; in other words, it places Indo- lands into the lower Danube region, especially in char-
Europeans in Greece and Italy several thousand years be- acteristic burials under a mound (in Russian kurgan; the
fore archaeologists believe that they could have become term gives the model its alternative name, Kurgan
acquainted with either the horse or wheeled vehicles, model), it is much more difficult to trace such movements
items that are reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European and beyond Hungary and the Balkans. Similarly, while there
whose names are inherited in the vocabularies of these is clear evidence of expansions from Europe into the Asi-
regions. Finally, the suggested path of Neolithic expan- atic steppe and partially into central Asia, there is mini-
sions in Europe does not correlate very well with the mal evidence of any migrations further south into what
linguistic relationships between the different Indo-- would become the major civilizations of ancient Iran and
European groups. India. Moreover, the presence in an area of many of the
alleged traits of the steppe expansions, such as greater
The Steppe Model mobility, increased weaponry, and development of status
The second model suggests that the Indo-Europeans orig- burial, has been attributed to internal social processes
inated in the steppe and forest-steppe of eastern Europe rather than the impact of intruding Indo-Europeans.
(south Russia and the Ukraine). Proponents of this model The problem of Indo-European origins and migrations
argue that expansions began about 4500 BCE and contin- has been a major challenge to prehistorians, and the fail-
ued in a series of waves both west into Europe and east ure to develop a single fully convincing model is a salu-
into Asia. The farmers of the Neolithic model are here tary caution to anyone interested in tracing the path of
regarded as non-Indo-Europeans who occupied much of migrations in the archaeological record. If increased
Europe before the expansion of the Indo-European lan- doubt is the result of the type of intense discussion that
guages. Rather than population replacement, the steppe tracing the roots of the Indo-Europeans has occasioned,
model requires massive language shift among the indige- then this does not bode well for many other hypothe-
nous population brought about by a minority of intru- sized migrations that have seen far less scrutiny.
sive Indo-Europeans whose possession of the domesti-
J. P. Mallory
cated horse and ox-drawn wagon provided far greater
mobility, and whose economy (pastoralism, with some See also Language, Classification of
agriculture) and social system were far more aggressive
than those of the farmers of Europe.The mechanism for
Further Reading
language shift lies here in either the political dominance
Anthony, D. (1991).The archaeology of Indo-European origins. Journal
of the intrusive Indo-European elites or the spread of Indo-
of Indo-European Studies, 19(3–4), 193–222.
European social institutions, which the local populations Blench, R., & Spriggs, M. (Eds.). (1997). Archaeology and language I:
adopted along with the language associated with the new Theoretical and methodological orientations. London and New York:
Routledge.
order.The key here—as with the spread of any language Diakonoff, I. (1985). On the original home of the speakers of Indo-
—is establishing what causes people to become initially European. Journal of Indo-European Studies, 13(1–2), 92–174.
Dolgopolsky, A. (1987).The Indo-European homeland and lexical con-
bilingual and then to abandon their native language.
tacts of Proto-Indo-European with other languages. Mediterranean
Once the process was initiated, with minimal population Language Review,3, 7–31.