I think the three major hypothesis concerning IE
Urheimat are:
(1) Hypothesis of Childe and M. Gibumtas. In 1926
Childe from de evidences of the names of animal, plants and some patrimonial
words related to weather supposed in his book The Aryans, that the IE
were a group of nomadists and cattle raising that lived in some indeterminated
place among Black Sea and Baltic Sea or in the Russian Steppes. Marija
Childe also used archaeological arguments. More recently Marija Gibumtas of UClA
have collected many archaelogical data and has claimed that it is very
reasonable to identified ancient IE peoples with de Culture of Kurgans (BC 4000
- BC 3000). This idetification is based on the material culture of the Kurganic
people that seem very similar to that reconstruted form linguisticical evidences
for IE peoples.
(2) Hypothesis of C. Renfrew. The
archaeologist C. Renfrew have propposed recently a theory completely different
from that of Childe. For Renfrew the IE spreading was relatively pacific and was
associated with an agricultural revolution. Each generation moving away a
certain distance from paternal house in a king of Random Walking spreaded IE
culture (supposing 20 km in average, random direction from fahter's house and 25
years for generation have been calculated that about 1500 years are needed for
the spreading from Anatolia to North Europe; in good accordance with
archaleological data!)
(3) Hypothesis of Gramkelidze and
Ivanov. These linguists reexaming linguistic data have given support
that these data are more coherent with an Anatolian place, than with an
Stepparian place. For these authors Anatolia have been colonized by
proto-hitites about BC 2000 and a few centuries later have been formed the
hitite empiere. Except for Greek peoples that migrated across Dardanels, the
main stream of IE peoples turned around Caspian Sea. I think this hypothesis
explain much better similarities among the different IE
subfamilies.
But, which data must be explaind by theories (1),
(2) and (3), for linguistic purposes:
(a) The hitite language represent a type of more
archaic indoeuropen language, in wicht gender and other grammatical cathegories
had not yet formed (previously it was suggeted that this were consecuences
of loses and innovations in Anatolian group, but nowadays is commonly accepted
that these facts represent an ancient status of things).
(b) Reconstruted PROTO-URALIC (pU)
curiously show IE loanwords like that for 'pig', 'honey' and 'salt' that were
borrewed from a satem dialect (this shows that was pU that borrowed for pIE and
no otherwise). This may suggets that IE were technologically more advanced at
the time of the contact and it was from IE peoples that Uralians adopted pigs,
honey and the word for '100' (pU has <*sata> that seems borrowed from
a "sanscritoid" satem dialect <*s'ata(m)> (but general IE
<*kntom>).
pU <*s'ata> '100' [Finnish <sata>,
Hungarian <száz>, Lappish <c'uotte>] <<< SatemIE
<s'ata>
pU <-des'ä> (?) '10'
[Finnish <-deksän>, Mari <-deše>]
pU <*mete> 'honey' [Finnish <mete>,
Hungarian <mez>, Komi <ma>] <<<< IE <*medhu>
(?)
pU <*porsas> 'pig' [Finnish <porsz>]
<<<< IE <*porkos> (?)
pU <*sol> [Finnish <suoloa>, Komi
<sol>] <<< IE soH2l (?)
pU <*orb-> 'orphan' [Finnish <orpo>,
Hungarian <árva>]
(c) Loanwords in PROTO-KARTVELIAN
(Meridional Caucasian) [and the very intelligent reconstruction of
Gramkelidze and Ivanov of IE stops in a more logical fashion] suggest a direct
contact with meridional caucasic.
<*mk'erd> 'breast' related to IE
<*kerd> 'heart'
<t'ep-> 'warm' related to IE <tep->
'warm'
(d) GENETICAL STUDES [and also
linguistical ones] suggest that pIE might be related to proto-AfroAsiatic
(pAA) [formerly hamito-semitic] and Dravidian [both groups of languages are
supposed originated in the Middle East]-
According to these four exigences (a), (b), (c) and
(d) the explicativeness of theories (1), (2) and (3) [see at the
map]:
(1) Childe-Gibumtas: (a) is poorly explained / (b)
pse pse / (c) very poorliy expl. / (d) very poorly expl.
(2) Renfrew: (a) well explained / (b) poorly
explained / (c) regularly explained / (d) well explained
(3) Gramkelidze-Ivanov: (a) well explained / (b)
well explained / (c) very well explained / (d) well explained
David Sánchez
(Sorry, for my awful
English!)