The early ethnic history of the peoples of Europe is one of the hotly debated issues. The question of what the population of Europe was in the Eneolithic and Bronze Age is related to the problem of the formation of the Indo-European linguistic community and its localization.

Elements of clearly non-Indo-European origin are found in the Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bthat have spread throughout Europe. This is the so-called substratum lexicon - relics of extinct languages, supplanted by Indo-European languages. The substrate leaves traces, sometimes very noticeable, not only in the vocabulary, but also in the grammatical structure of the dialects of the tribes who moved to new places of residence. In recent decades, studies by L.A. Gindin have established the presence of several substrate layers in the south of the Balkan Peninsula, the islands of the Aegean Sea. Among them, the Aegean substrate stands out - a conglomerate of heterogeneous and multi-temporal toponymic and onomastic formations. Much more homogeneous, according to the researchers, is Minoan - the language of Linear A, which existed in Crete already in the 3rd millennium. A certain structural similarity of Minoan with the languages \u200b\u200bof the North-West Caucasian circle is noted, the most ancient representative of which, Hutt, is chronologically comparable with Minoan.

Several chronologically different substratum layers can be traced in the Apennines. The most ancient layer is probably of Iberian-Caucasian origin (traces of it are found in the west of the peninsula and especially on Sardinia Island). To a later time, M. Pallottino attributes the "Aegean-Asian" substrate, which is also found throughout the Aegean.

In the Western Mediterranean, an autochthonous substratum has been identified, to which the Iberian one probably belonged; for it Caucasian parallels are also allowed. According to archaeological reconstructions and some (so far isolated) linguistic facts, it can be assumed that there are analogies, defined as pre-North Caucasian, and in a number of late Peolithic cultures of the Carpathian-Danube region.

The far west of Europe before the appearance of the Indo-Europeans there (the arrival of the Celts in Ireland dates from the second quarter of the 1st millennium BC) was inhabited by peoples close to the Mediterranean in their anthropological type; the population of the northern regions of Ireland was believed to be of the Eskimoid type. The substrate vocabulary of this area has not yet been studied.

In the north-east of Europe, the analysis of the most ancient hydronymics indicates the presence in these regions of a population belonging to the Finno-Ugric family. The western border of this area in the 4th millennium passed in Finland between the rivers Torne and Kem and along the Aland Islands. As for Central Europe - the area of \u200b\u200bdistribution of the so-called ancient European hydronymy - the ethno-linguistic characteristic of this area is difficult.

Subsequently, carriers of the Indo-European dialects were layered on the ancient local cultures of Europe, gradually assimilating them, but the islands of these ancient cultures still remain throughout the Early Bronze Age. Their material traces, which have survived to this day in Europe from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, include, in particular, special megalithic structures - dolmens, cromlechs, menhirs, presumably having a cult purpose.

In historical time, the Indo-European peoples and languages \u200b\u200bgradually spread over a vast territory from the extreme west of Europe to Hindustan; it is obvious that as we move deeper into history, we will come to the period of their existence in a certain geographically more limited area, which is conventionally defined as the Indo-European ancestral home. Since the emergence of Indo-European studies in the first half of the 19th century. the question of the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans has repeatedly been in the center of attention of researchers who, in addition to linguistic material, operated on the data of those related sciences that in the corresponding period reached the required level of development, in particular archeology and anthropology.

A turning point in the approach to Indo-European problems was outlined in the late 50s - early 60s, when an expanded study of both the archeology of Central and Eastern Europe and adjacent regions, and the relationship between the Indo-European language family and other families, and numerous related studies led to the development of new methodological foundations for solving the problem of localization of the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans. In turn, the comparative historical study of Indo-European vocabulary and ancient written sources, numbering more than one and a half centuries of history, made it possible to identify the most ancient layers of the vocabulary that characterize the social level of Indo-Europeans, their economy, geographic environment, everyday life, culture, religion. As the analysis procedure improves, the degree of reliability of the reconstructions increases. This should also be facilitated by closer contacts of Indo-European studies with related disciplines - archeology, paleogeography, paleozoology, etc. As an illustration of the need for such cooperation, we will cite one well-known example. For Vedic. asi-, avest. ahhu- "(iron) sword" reconstructs the original form * nsis with the same meaning. However, archaeological data indicate that this restored form is neither common Indo-European, nor even Indo-Iranian, since the spread of iron as a material for weapons dates back to no earlier than the 9th-8th centuries, when not only Indo-European, but also Indo-Iranian unity has long been did not exist. Therefore, the semantic reconstruction of this stem is more likely as "a weapon (sword?) Made of copper / bronze".

In recent decades, it has been possible to achieve a relative unity of views on the chronological boundaries of the common Indo-European period, which dates back to the 5th-4th millennia, the 4th millennium (or, as some believe, the border of the 4th and 3rd millenniums) was probably the time when certain Indo-European dialect groups began to diverge. Of fundamental importance in solving these problems were the facts obtained by analyzing linguistic data, on some aspects of which it is advisable to dwell in more detail.

For general Indo-European, a rather ramified terminology associated with cattle breeding is being restored, including the designations of the main domestic animals, often differentiated by sex and age: * houi- "sheep, ram" (the presence of common words meaning "wool" * hul-n-, "scratch wool "- * kes - / * pek- assumes that this is a domestic sheep), * qog-" goat ", * guou-" bull, cow ", * uit-l- / s-" calf ", * ekuo- "horse, horse", * su- "pig", * porko- "piglet". In Indo-European languages, the verb * pah- "to guard (livestock), to graze" is widespread. Of the food products associated with cattle breeding, one should name * mems-o- "meat", * kreu- "raw meat"; the name "milk" is limited to individual areas (its absence in some of the ancient Indo-European dialects is explained by researchers by the taboo designation of "milk", which in the ideas of the ancient Indo-Europeans was associated with the magic sphere), on the other hand, it is interesting to note some general designations of milk processing products, for example: * sur -, * s.ro- "curdled milk; cheese".

General agricultural terms include the designation of actions and implements for cultivating land and agricultural products: * har- "cultivate the land, plow", * seH (i) - "sow", * mel- "grind", * serp- "sickle", * meH- "ripen, harvest", * pe (i) s- "crush, grind (grain)". Of the common names of cultivated plants, one must name * ieuo- "barley", * Had- "grain", * pur- "wheat", * lino- "flax", * uo / eino- "grapes, wine", * (s) amlu- "apple", etc.

Common Indo-European designations of ecological conditions and representatives of the plant world: * kel- "upland, hill", * hap- "river, stream", * tek- "flow, run", * seu - / * su- "rain", * (s ) neigh- "snow", * gheim- "winter", * tep- "heat, warm"; along with the general name of the "tree" * de / oru- the following types are distinguished: * bhergh- "birch", * bhaHgo- "beech", * perk-u- "oak", * e / oi- "yew", * ( s) grobho- "hornbeam", etc.

The Indo-European fauna is represented by the following common names: * hrtko- "bear", * ulko - / * lp- "wolf", * 1еu- "lion", * ulopek- "fox, jackal", * el (e) n - / * elk- "deer; elk", * leuk- "lynx", * eghi - (* oghi-, * anghi-) "snake"; * mus- "mouse", * he / or- "eagle", * ger- "crane", * ghans- "water bird, goose, swan", * dhghu- "fish", * karkar- "crab", etc. ...

One of the most significant aspects of the Indo-European problem is the question of the absolute chronology of the processes that took place in the preliterate era. Differences in the definition of the chronological boundaries of Indo-European unity, as well as the period of division of the Indo-European community and the allocation of separate dialectal groups, sometimes reach one or two millennia in different constructions. That is why the method of dating linguistic events (moments of disintegration of proto-linguistic communities) developed in comparative historical linguistics is especially important, the so-called "glottochronology method, based on the fact that languages \u200b\u200bhave basic vocabulary (including such universal concepts as numbers, body parts, the most common phenomena environment, common human conditions or actions), which, usually without borrowing from one language to another, is nevertheless subject to changes due to intra-linguistic reasons.It has been established that over 10 thousand years about 15% of the original vocabulary is replaced with a new one; reconstruction, the percentage shifts somewhat: for example, about 28% of the words of the main fund change over 2 thousand years, about 48% over 4 thousand years, etc. Despite the real difficulties facing glottochronology (for example, it does not take into account the possibilities of sharp changes in the vocabulary of the language, moreover, one must constantly keep in mind that it will give "understated" chronology as the reconstruction deepens), it can be used in calculations that are partly comparable to radiocarbon dating in archeology. The prerequisites are created for correlating the reconstructed data with archaeological complexes determined in place and time.

The role of vocabulary in the study of the preliterate history of peoples is not limited to the above. Along with the study of the main vocabulary fund, no less important is the analysis of cultural vocabulary - the designation of objects and concepts that are borrowed in various kinds of linguistic contacts. Knowledge of the patterns of phonetic development of the languages \u200b\u200bin contact makes it possible to determine the relative chronology of these contacts and thus narrow the likely boundaries of their localization.

Thus, a number of cultural terms are known that are common to Indo-European (or some part of its dialects), on the one hand, and Semitic or Kartvelian, on the other. At the end of the last century, individual Indo-European-Semitic convergences of the type of Indo-European * tauro- "(wild) bull ~ Semitic. * Tawr-" bull "were noted; at the same time the idea of \u200b\u200ba possible contiguity of the Indo-European and Semitic ancestral homeland was expressed. to Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bfrom the ancient languages \u200b\u200bof Western Asia - Sumerian, Hatti, for example, Indo-European * r (e) ud (h) - "ore, copper; red "~ Sumerian. urud, Indo-European * pars - / * part-" leopard, leopard "~ Hutt. ha-pras-" leopard ", etc. Regardless of the direction of these borrowings, the very fact of the presence of language (and, therefore, ethnic) contacts, preventing the identification of most regions of Central and Western Europe with the Indo-European ancestral home.

Other linguistic levels also retain indirect evidence of the preliterate period of Indo-European history. Knowledge of phonetic patterns and the establishment of grammatical isoglosses make it possible to trace the sequential separation of dialect groups from a certain community: the parallel linguistic development observed in a group of distinguished dialects indicates their entry into a relatively closed zone and stay in it for a certain time. Taking into account phonetic changes is fundamentally important when analyzing borrowings (this is the only way to determine the nature of the latter - common Indo-European, or Indo-Iranian, or East Iranian, etc.), and for identifying linguistic unions.

At present, many points of view on Indo-European issues are grouped around several main hypotheses that localize the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans, respectively, in the Balkan-Carpathian region, in the Eurasian steppes, in the territory of Western Asia, in the so-called circumpontic zone.

The cultures of the Balkan-Carpathian region have been distinguished by their brightness and originality since ancient times. This region, together with Asia Minor, formed one geographic zone, in which the "Neolithic revolution" took place in the 7th-6th millennia: for the first time on the European continent, the population here switched from appropriating forms of economy to producing ones. The next stage of historical development was the discovery of the properties of copper; the level of metallurgical production in the 5th-4th millennia was very high in this region and, perhaps, had no equal at that time, neither in Anatolia, nor in Iran, nor in Mesopotamia. The Balkan-Carpathian cultures of this period, according to the supporters of the hypothesis of the Balkan ancestral home (V. Georgiev, I. M. Dyakonov, and others), are genetically related to the early agricultural cultures of the Neolithic. It was in this region, according to this hypothesis, that the most ancient Indo-Europeans should have lived. Acceptance of this hypothesis seems to remove some historical, chronological and linguistic problems.

In this case, however, much more serious difficulties arise. First of all, it is necessary to take into account the archaeologically revealed orientation of the movement of the ancient Balkan cultures, which went in a southern direction. The continuation of the ancient Balkan cultures of the 4th millennium is found in the south of the Balkans and in the Aegeid, in Crete and the Cyclades, but not in the eastern direction, where, according to this hypothesis, separate groups of Indo-Europeans should have moved. There is no evidence of movement of these cultures to the west of the European continent, which begins to "Indo-Europeanize" not earlier than the 2nd millennium BC. e. Therefore, within the framework of the Balkan hypothesis, it remains unclear where the speakers of Indo-European dialects were after significant ethnocultural shifts in Central and Eastern Europe in the 4th-3rd millennia BC.

The chronological and cultural-historical difficulties associated with accepting the Balkan hypothesis are exacerbated by linguistic problems. Information about natural conditions, elements of the social system, economic structure, worldview systems, which are being restored for the most ancient Indo-European period, do not fit into the set of characteristics that characterize Central European agricultural cultures. It is also significant that the hypothesis of the Balkan-Carpathian ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans is not able to explain where and when their long-term contacts with other language families (Kartvelian, North Caucasian, Semitic, etc.) could occur, accompanied by the borrowing of cultural vocabulary, the formation of language alliances, etc. Finally, the localization of the Indo-European ancestral home in the Balkans would raise additional difficulties in front of the theory of Nostratic kinship, according to which a number of linguistic families of the Old World - Indo-European, Kartvelian, Dravidian, Uralic, Altai, Afrasian - go back to one macrofamily. According to historical and linguistic considerations, the time of the collapse of the Nostratic linguistic community, localized in northeast Africa and Western Asia, belongs to the 12th - 11th millennia. Despite the hypothetical nature of many particular issues of Nostratic theory, it cannot be ignored in the reconstructions of chronologically later periods of the corresponding linguistic families.

According to another hypothesis (TV Gamkrelidze, Vyach. Vs. Ivanov and others), the area of \u200b\u200bthe initial settlement of the Indo-Europeans was an area within Eastern Anatolia, the South Caucasus and Northern Mesopotamia in the 5th-4th millennia. To prove this hypothesis, the arguments of paleogeography and archeology are used (the continuity of the development of local Anatolian cultures throughout the entire 3rd millennium), data from paleozoology, paleobotany, linguistics (the sequence of division of the Indo-European dialectal community, borrowing from individual Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bor their groups into non-Indo-European languages \u200b\u200band vice versa, etc.).

The linguistic argumentation of this hypothesis is based on the strict use of the comparative historical method and the main provisions of the theory of linguistic borrowing, although it raises objections from opponents on some particular issues. It is very important to emphasize that according to this concept, Indo-European migrations are viewed not as a total ethnic "expansion", but as a movement, first of all, of the Indo-European dialects themselves, together with a certain part of the population, stratifying different ethnic groups and transmitting their language to them. The latter provision is methodologically very important, since it shows the inconsistency of hypotheses based primarily on anthropological criteria for ethnolinguistic attribution of archaeological cultures. In general, despite the fact that the hypothesis under consideration requires clarification on a number of archaeological, cultural, historical and linguistic issues, it can be stated that the allocation of the area from the Balkans to Iran and to the east as a territory in a certain part of which the Indo-European ancestral home can be localized has not yet met refutations of a principled order.

The problem of the disintegration of common Indo-European unity and the divergence of Indo-European dialects received the most thorough development (despite the controversial nature of a number of points) within the framework of this concept, therefore, they should be specially dwelt upon. According to this hypothesis, the beginning of migrations of Indo-European tribes refers to the period no later than the 4th millennium. The Anatolian is considered the first linguistic community that separated from the Indo-European one. Bilateral borrowings found in the Anatolian and Caucasian languages \u200b\u200btestify to the original, more eastern and northeastern position of the speakers of the Anatolian languages \u200b\u200bin relation to their historical habitats. The separation of the Greco-Armenian-Aryan unity follows the separation of the Anatolians, and the Aryan dialect area is presumably separated within the limits of the common Indo-European one. Subsequently, Greek (through Asia Minor) enters the islands of the Aegean Sea and mainland Greece, layering on the non-Indo-European "Aegean" substratum, which includes various autochthonous languages; Indo-Aryans, some of the Iranians and Tochars move at different times in the (north-) eastern direction (for the Indo-Aryans, the possibility of moving to the Northern Black Sea region through the Caucasus is allowed), while the carriers of "ancient European" dialects through Central Asia and the Volga region move to the west, to historical Europe. Thus, the existence of intermediate territories is allowed, where the newly arriving groups of the population, who later settled in the more western regions of Europe, settled, pouring into local populations in repeated waves. For "ancient European" languages, the common source (albeit secondary) area is considered to be the region of the Northern Black Sea region and the Volga steppes. This explains the Indo-European nature of the hydronymy of the Northern Black Sea region, comparable to the West European one (the absence of more eastern traces of Indo-Europeans may be due to insufficient knowledge of the ancient hydronymy of the Volga region and Central Asia), and the presence of a large layer of contact vocabulary in the Finno-Ugric, Yenisei and other languages.

The territory where the localization of the secondary linguistic community of initially related Indo-European dialects is assumed is central to the third hypothesis of the Indo-European ancestral home, shared by many researchers like. archaeologists and linguists alike.

The Volga region is one of the well-studied archaeologically and described in a number of authoritative studies (KF Smirnov, EE Kuzmina, N. Ya. Merpert). It has been established that at the turn of the 4th - 3rd millennia, the Yamnaya cultural community spread in the Volga region. It consisted of mobile cattle-breeding tribes, who mastered the steppes and were in wide contact with foreign-cultural territories. These contacts were expressed in exchange, incursions into neighboring territories, the settling of a part of the ancient pit tribes on the borderlands of the territories of early agricultural centers. Archaeologically, very early ties of the steppe tribes with the South and Southeast are noted, the possibility of movement of significant groups of the population to the steppe from the regions of the Caucasus and the Caspian region is not denied.

The western direction of the Yamny culture expansion is postulated in a number of works that study the transformation of Central European cultures from the late 4th - early 3rd millennia and the reasons that caused it (M. Gimbutas, E. N. Chernykh). The changes taking place in the area of \u200b\u200bancient European agricultural cultures, according to some researchers, affected the economic structure (a sharp increase in the share of livestock in comparison with agriculture), the type of dwelling and settlement, elements of worship, the physical type of the population, and there is a decrease in ethnocultural shifts as we move forward. to the northwest of Europe.

The main objections addressed to this hypothesis are due to the fact that from the very beginning it was developed as a purely archaeological concept. The movements of the Indo-Europeans, according to some of these constructions, look like the migrations of entire cultures; Many arguments, both economic and ethnocultural, are presented to justify such migrations. At the same time, the extremely important fact remains aside that in the problem of localization of the ancient settlement area of \u200b\u200bIndo-Europeans, the primary role belongs to linguistic and comparative historical and philological data, and only linguistic methods can reliably establish the ethno-linguistic identity of the population of a certain archaeological culture. For example, linguistic evidence does not allow identifying the ancient population of the steppe zone of Central Asia, in particular the carriers of the Andronovo culture, with the Indo-Iranians - although this point of view exists, it leaves without explanation the presence of Indo-Aryan elements in the Black Sea region and Western Asia. Chronological data (III thousand), as well as external contacts of Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bwith other linguistic families, allow us to correlate the area of \u200b\u200bthe ancient pit cultural community with the "secondary" area of \u200b\u200bsettlement of Indo-Europeans. It is these territories, and not more southeastern or western ones, that, according to experts, are the place of isolation of the Indo-Iranian dialect community (the "ancestral home" of the Indo-Iranians). It is significant that the picture of the economy and life of the Indo-Iranians in the ancestral home, reconstructed according to linguistic data, among the archaeological cultures of the Old World, correlates only with the materials of the steppe cultures of Eurasia (E.E. Kuzmina, K.F.Smirnov, G.M.Bongard-Levin, E, A . Grantovsky).

A fundamentally different approach to the definition of the Indo-European ancestral homeland is represented by the concept of the so-called circumpontic zone, which has been actively developed in the last decade. According to the idea put forward, deep ethnocultural shifts in the development of the Balkan-Danube region in the second half of the 4th millennium went in parallel with the emergence of a new system of cultures, minimally connected with the previous ones. The complex historical and, in some cases, genetic ties of this system with such cultural communities as the Corded Ware culture, spherical amphorae, and cattle-breeding cultures of the Caspian-Black Sea steppes (N. Ya. Merpert) are noted. It is assumed that there is a certain contact continuity and cultural integration not only in the area of \u200b\u200bdistribution of ancient pit cultures, but also to the south of the Black Sea, where elements of the new cultural system can be traced all the way to the Caucasus. In this vast territory, according to a number of researchers, the process of formation of specific groups of Indo-Europeans could take place. The process was quite complex; it included both the separation of originally united groups and the convergence of unrelated groups drawn into the contact zone. The spread of close elements within the zone could be conditioned (along with the initial general impulse), in addition to contact continuity and close communication, also by the existence of a kind of "transfer sphere" - mobile cattle-breeding collectives. At the same time, this area was in contact with the most ancient cultural centers of the Mediterranean, the Middle East, which would well explain the borrowing of cultural vocabulary along with the corresponding realities, techniques, etc.

It is interesting to note that such an approach to the definition of the Indo-European ancestral home finds some analogs in the direction called "linguistic geography" (V. Pisani, A. Bartholdi, etc.). Indo-European linguistic unity is defined as a zone of transitional phenomena - isogloss, genetic kinship gives priority to secondary "affinity" (affinite secondaire) - phenomena caused by parallel development in contacting dialects. The Indo-Europeans, as Pisani, for example, thinks, are "a collection of tribes who spoke dialects that were part of a single system of isogloss, which we call Indo-European." It is obvious that the supporters of this trend make a certain (albeit negative) contribution to the solution of the Indo-European problem, simply removing it, because if, as they believe, there was no more or less compact Indo-European community, then the question of the Indo-European ancestral homeland loses its meaning. As for the hypothesis of the "circumpontine" zone, its authors nevertheless make a reservation that this can be a solution to the Indo-European problem only on a certain chronological cut.

Summing up the above, it should be noted that at the present stage of research, the following seems to be the most promising solution to the Indo-European problem. Some areas of Central Europe since the Bronze Age were the area of \u200b\u200bsettlement of "ancient European" peoples; In this case, the Balkan-Carpathian region becomes the "ancestral home" for some of the speakers of Indo-European dialects. This should have been preceded by a period of their stay in the more eastern territory, including the steppes of the Volga region and the Northern Black Sea region, as part of the Indo-European dialect community, which at that time still included the Indo-Iranian (or part of it), Tocharian and other groups (cf. the idea of \u200b\u200bthe "Circumpontian" zone). The "steppe" ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans, thus, will be correlated with the area common to most of the Indo-European dialects, from which the movement to the Central European regions took place. The question of whether this area was the primary ancestral home of all Indo-Europeans, or (as, for example, the authors of the Near Asian hypothesis show on a huge amount of material) an intermediate area of \u200b\u200bsettlement ("secondary ancestral home") for most Indo-European dialect groups, must be solved in close connection with the question of the most ancient stages of the formation and development of a number of ethno-linguistic communities, showing contact and genetic affinity to the Indo-European.

A. Meillet and J. Vandries are at the origin of the comparative historical study of Indo-European mythology and religion. Meillet was the first to express the idea of \u200b\u200bparallelism between the terms denoting deity among Indo-European peoples. He showed that the ancient indian. devah, lithuanian. devas, Old Prussian. deiws "god", Latin. divus "divine" can be associated with the Indo-European root "di-e / ow-" day, light. "Meie did not find common Indo-European terms for a cult, priests, sacrifice; he noted that in the Indo-European world there were no gods as such, instead of them were “natural and social forces.” The problem was further developed by Vandries, who explored such aspects as the range of terms associated with the concept of faith (Latin credo, Old Irish cretim, Old Indian crad, etc.), sacral and administrative functions (for example, the designation of the priest: Latin flamen, ancient Indian brahman), specific sacred actions and objects (sacred fire, appeal to a deity, etc.) Analyzing the corresponding terms, Vandries came to the conclusion about the existence of religious traditions common to Indo-Iranian , Latin and Celtic ethno-linguistic groups. He pointed out the main reason why, as he believed, languages \u200b\u200bso far apart from each other keep these traditions: only in the Indus ei and Iran, in Rome and among the Celts (but nowhere else in the Indo-European world) their carriers have been preserved - the colleges of priests. Despite the limited methodological base of these studies, which relied primarily on the data of etymological analysis, they undoubtedly opened up new perspectives for historical mythology.

The next stage, associated with the general progress of the development of philological sciences, was the transition from the study of specific mythological units to the study of Indo-European mythology as a system that has a definite structure, the individual elements of which are in the relationship of opposition, distribution, etc. In the works of J. Dumézil, in In many ways, the historical and mythological research of the last decades was determined, the idea of \u200b\u200ba three-part structure of Indo-European ideology, correlated with the ideas of Indo-Europeans about man, nature, Space, was consistently carried out.

Among the central Indo-European mythological motives is the motive of the unity of heaven and earth as the progenitors of all that exists; in many Indo-European traditions, there is a connection between the name of a person and the designation of the earth (Lithuanian zmones "people", zeme "earth", Latin homo "man", humus "soil"), which finds a typological correspondence in the motive of the origin of man from clay, which is widespread in mythologies of the Middle East.

An important place in the Indo-European system of representations is occupied by the idea of \u200b\u200btwinning, already reflected in the motive of the original undivided earth and sky. In all Indo-European traditions, there is a connection between the divine twins and the cult of the horse (Dioscuri, Ashvina, etc.). The idea of \u200b\u200btwinning is associated with the twins' incest motif, which is present in the most ancient Indo-European mythologies (Hittite, Old Indian, Baltic, etc.) and has certain typological parallels (albeit socially conditioned) in the upper strata of some ancient Eastern societies.

The central image of Indo-European mythology is a thunderer (Old Indian Parjanya-, Hittite Pirua-, Slavic Perunъ, Lithuanian Perkunas, etc.), located "above" (hence the connection of his name with the name of a rock, mountain) and entering into single combat with the enemy representing the "bottom" - he is usually under a tree, mountain, etc. Most often, the enemy of the thunderer appears in the form of a snake-like creature, correlated with the lower world, chaotic and hostile to man. At the same time, it is important to note that the beings of the lower world also symbolize fertility, wealth, vitality. A number of Indo-European mythological motives (the creation of the universe out of chaos, myths associated with the first cultural hero, the distinction between the language of gods and people, a certain sequence in the change of generations of gods, etc.) finds parallels in ancient Eastern mythologies, which can be explained by the ancient contacts of Indo-Europeans with the peoples of the Middle East ...

The dual social organization of the ancient Indo-European society had a direct impact on the formation of the structure of spiritual concepts and the mythological picture of the world. It has been established that the main Indo-European mythological motives (old and new gods, twin cult, incest, etc.) and ritually significant oppositions (top-bottom, right-left, sunset-sunrise, etc.), based on the principle of duality, are universal character and are found in various unrelated traditions associated with a certain stage of social development, undoubtedly earlier than that reflected in the reconstructions of Dumézil and his school. The absence of classical Indo-European ternary distributions in the Anatolian area, which as a whole was strongly influenced by ancient Eastern cultures (cf. also partly Greek), makes it possible to correlate two different systems of representations with chronologically different periods of the existence of the Indo-European dialect community.

Archaeological data do not allow us to judge the linguistic affiliation of the ancient population of Europe. In the languages \u200b\u200bof the peoples of Europe, in toponymy, elements of the substrate vocabulary of the pre-Indo-European time have been preserved (substrate layers in the south of the Balkan Peninsula, the islands of the Aegean Sea - the Minoan language, Linear A - III thousand, Crete - similarity with the West Caucasian languages \u200b\u200b- Hutt).

The composition of the population of the pre-Indo-European population of the Aegean era (III-II thousand) is practically not studied. The Apennine Peninsula was inhabited by Etruscans, Ligurs; Iberian - Iberians, Lusitanians, Vascons; The British Isles are Picts. Of these peoples, only Vascons - Basques have survived. According to the anthropological type, the population was close to the modern Mediterranean.

In Northern Ireland, the Eskimoid type was probably widespread. The pre-Indo-European population includes megalithic structures - dolmens, menhirs, cromlechs, which most likely have a cult purpose.

Who are the Indo-European peoples?

The popular “Archaeological Dictionary” by W. Bray and D. Trump says that this is “a language family, the origin of which is apparently associated with the steppes. Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bspread widely during the migration of peoples of the 2nd millennium BC. in Europe, as well as in Iran, India, temporarily also in the Middle East (with the Hittites and Hurrians -? in Mitanni). Almost all modern languages \u200b\u200bof Europe, as well as India, are Indo-European. As it was first shown by Sir William Jones in 1786, the term I. can be applied with confidence only to linguistic material, since it correlates poorly with anthropological and archaeological data. "

The commonality of Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bwas established in the 18th century - the beginning of the study of Sanskrit.

Questions arose about the chronology and territory of distribution of the Indo-Europeans.

The problem of finding the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans gained popularity in the first half of the 19th century.

1. The ancestral home was located in the east: Bactria (between the Hindu Kush, Amu Darya and the Caspian Sea) - A. Pikte. For the Asian ancestral home - V. Hen, G. Kipert, I. Moore.

2. The ancestral home in Europe - R. Latham (1860s) - t. most of all Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bare here. B. Benfey, Hommel - southeast Europe and the region north of the Black Sea (from the Danube to the Caspian Sea). F. Spiegel - Eastern Europe from 45.5 o N

After research in the 1950s and 60s. By identifying the oldest vocabulary, new archaeological finds, the time of the common Indo-European period was established - V-IV thousand, the beginning of the divergence of Indo-European languages \u200b\u200b- IV thousand. (sometimes the line IV-III thousand.).

Glottochronology

Written sources, according to V. Ivanov, date back to the beginning of the 2nd millennium - these are the most ancient evidences of the Hittite and other Anatolian languages.
In the Cappadocian tablets from the Old Assyrian trading colonies in Asia Minor, dating back to the turn of the III-II millennia and the beginning of the II millennium BC. e., a large number of proper names are attested, etymologized on the basis of individual Anatolian languages. Consequently, separate Anatolian dialects of Hittite and Luwian were formed long ago. This forces us to attribute the separation of the Anatolian community from the Indo-European proto-language and thereby the beginning of the disintegration of the proto-language to the period no later than the IV millennium BC. e., and possibly much earlier.

V. Ivanov: it can be argued with sufficient confidence that the Indo-European ancestral home was an area with a mountainous landscape. This is evidenced primarily by the multiplicity of Indo-European words denoting high mountains and hills. In addition, by reconstructing the landscape that surrounded the ancient Indo-European and which he recorded in the language, one more conclusion can be drawn. It is a landscape with a wide distribution of mountain oak and a number of other trees and plants growing in the highlands. Oak forests are uncharacteristic for the northern regions of Europe, where they have spread only since the 4th-3rd millennia.

Recent studies concerning the World Tree as the main symbol around which the Indo-European model of the world is built, formed by all living things located in several tiers - "upper", "middle", "lower", also lead to the conclusion that such ideas could arise only in a zone rich in forests, and only later could they be transferred to a more northern steppe zone. This localization is consistent with the so-called "beech argument", which excludes from the ancestral home a part of Eastern Europe northeast of the Black Sea region to the lower Volga (where beech is absent throughout the post-glacial period), but compatible with its localization from the Balkans to the Middle East.

For the IV millennium BC. BC, that is, during the existence of the common Indo-European language and its carriers - the ancient Indo-Europeans, cattle breeding (like agriculture) in Central Europe was in its infancy, while in the common Indo-European language a developed cattle-breeding system is being restored with the presence of the main domestic animals: the names of a horse, a donkey, bull, goat, pig, dog, etc. The ancient word for "shepherd" and the verb "to graze, to guard the cattle" were also reconstructed. For Eastern Europe, in particular for the Northern Black Sea region and the Volga steppes, such a developed cattle breeding is known only in the III millennium BC. e. In central Europe, sheep breeding, which was highly developed among the ancient Indo-Europeans, as can be seen from the developed sheep-breeding terminology, is almost completely absent until the 1st millennium BC. e. This is consistent with the absence of "wool" in the Neolithic of Europe. Goat breeding is noted in Europe even later, including Eastern. That is, in this way, most likely the idea that the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans was in Central or Eastern Europe is incorrect.

Of particular value for the establishment of the original habitat of the ancient Indo-Europeans and the localization of the Indo-European ancestral homeland is the Indo-European terminology of transport - the names of "wheeled carts" and "wheels", the names of metals - "bronze", necessary for the manufacture of wheeled carts from hard rocks of mountain forests, and draft power - "horse", which should be assumed already during the existence of the common Indo-European language, that is, in the IV millennium BC. e. This entire set of data again limits the territory of the initial distribution of the Indo-European language to an area from the Balkans to the Middle East and Transcaucasia, right up to the Iranian plateau and southern Turkmenistan.

Modern hypotheses.

1. Eastern Anatolia, South Caucasus, North. Mesopotamia. Archeology indicates the continuity of the development of Anatolian cultures throughout the III thousand. Movement is viewed not as a total ethnic expansion, but as a movement of the dialects themselves, together with a certain part of the population, layering on various ethnic groups and transmitting their language to them.

Migrations begin no later than IV thousand. First, the Anatolian linguistic community (Hittites) emerged, located near the places of formation of the Indo-Europeans and representing the most archaic languages. In the light of the latest archaeological data related to the discovery of horse bone remains in eastern Anatolia (excavations of German archaeological expeditions in Demirji-Huyuk, Yarykkaya and Norshuntepe), the appearance of Indo-European tribes in these areas of Asia Minor is attributed to an even earlier period, to the end of the 4th millennium BC. BC e.

Then the Greco-Armenian-Aryan became separate (moreover, the Aryan stood out within the general Indo-European). Greek moves to Greece through Asia Minor and is layered on the Aegean substrate. The Dorians run northwest into the Balkans (north of Greece). Among the early Greek groups could be the Pelasgians who occupied the Peloponnese -?

What happened in the Balkans?

Even before the appearance of the listed Indo-European dialects in the Balkans from Asia Minor, the Balkan area was the oldest center of civilization in Europe, the origins of which date back to the 5th millennium.
Archaeological discoveries in recent years have revealed the existence of a developed civilization in the Balkans, similar in type to the ancient Eastern and associated with an even more ancient civilization in the west of Asia Minor - Chatal-Huyuk (VI millennium BC).

The culture of the ancient Balkans of the 5th and 4th millennia BC e. (Starchevo in Yugoslavia, Karanovo I - in Bulgaria, Krish - in Romania, Körös - in Hungary, Sesklo - in Thessaly) is characterized by developed agriculture and the use of cereals of ancient Middle Eastern origin, copper metallurgy, which was also formed under the probable influence of Asia Minor, the presence of a rather complex religion and corresponding symbols, including pictographic signs of a linear nature. The belonging of this culture (both typologically and genetically) to the Middle Eastern cultural area can be interpreted as evidence that it is an early offshoot of the Central Asian center of civilization. Establishing a more specific ethnic character of this ancient Balkan culture (as, incidentally, and the most ancient civilization of Asia Minor such as Chatal-Huyuk) is currently not possible. On this ancient Balkan culture of the 5th millennium BC. e. later, apparently starting from the 3rd millennium BC. e., migratory waves of carriers of Indo-European dialects, emanating from the common Indo-European area in the Middle East, are layered.

Indo-Aryans, part of Iranians and Tochars move in a northeastern direction (Indo-Aryans could have passed through the Caucasus in the Northern Black Sea region), and the carriers of ancient European dialects - through Central Asia to the Volga region and further to Europe.

Thus, for the "ancient European" languages, the region of the Northern Black Sea region and the Volga steppes can be considered a common initial distribution area (albeit a secondary one). The theory that localizes the “ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans” in this area takes on a new meaning in this light as a hypothesis about the ancestral home for the western group of Indo-European languages. This temporary area of \u200b\u200bcohabitation of tribes - carriers of ancient Indo-European dialects could serve as an area where various migration waves of carriers of these dialects moved and secondary isoglosses were formed, superimposed on the old ones; the latter combine these dialects with other Indo-European languages, the speakers of which migrated from the original areas of their settlement in other directions.

It was on the paths to these areas of the “secondary ancestral home” - the Black Sea and Trans-Volga regions - that contacts of the ancient European dialects with the speakers of the languages \u200b\u200bof Central Asia could occur (compare borrowings into Finno-Ugric languages \u200b\u200bfrom these dialects, as well as borrowings into these dialects from Altai languages).

Here the Kurgan (ancient pit) culture of the III millennium BC takes shape. e., which is characterized by the presence of cattle breeding and agriculture, wheeled carts, the use of the domestic horse as a draft force, the developed metallurgy of copper, and then bronze, the construction of fortresses on hills. This culture is characterized by the identification of social ranks, the presence of tribal leaders and a special rank of warriors, the presence of a significant number of religious symbols (the chariot of the Sun, etc.); burial of corpses in some cases with cremations.

An essential point in the light of the proposed interpretation of the Kurgan culture is that it reveals connections with the Near East world, which went through Central Asia and through the Caucasus. This is indicated by wheeled carts of the Near Asian type, the nature of metal products with images of such animals as lions, sceptres made of diorite and other precious stones, etc.

Other hypotheses.

2. Balkan-Carpathian region - V. Georgiev, I. M. Dyakonov - here the population for the first time on the European continent switched to a manufacturing economy. After the discovery of the properties of copper metallurgy V-IV thousand. reached a high level. The cultures of this period, according to the supporters of the hypothesis, are genetically related to early agricultural ones.

However, no movement of the ancient Balkan cultures of the 4th millennium to the east is found, there is no evidence of their movements to the west - the Indo-Europeans appeared there no earlier than the 2nd thousand. It is not clear where the contacts of the Indo-Europeans with representatives of the Kartvelian, North Caucasian, Semitic language families took place.

3. Volga region. / K.F.Smirnov, E.E. Kuzmina, N.Ya. Merpert /. At the turn of the IV-III thousand. here the Yamnaya culture of cattle-breeding tribes spread. Archaeological finds indicate links with the east and southeast, as well as further advancement to the west. This is a purely archaeological concept.

4. Circumpontic zone. This hypothesis assumes the presence of a certain contact continuity not only in the area of \u200b\u200bancient pit cultures, but also to the south of the Black Sea, where elements of the new cultural system can be traced all the way to the Caucasus.

Ethnic composition of the population of Europe in the 1st millennium BC can be judged by Greek and Roman sources (Herodotus, Strabo, Polybius, Caesar, etc.).

Cretan-Mycenaean civilization.

Man appeared in Crete only in the 7th millennium BC. The sailors came from the east, most likely from the southwestern coast of Asia Minor. At first they lived in caves, then rectangular houses made of baked bricks, then from raw bricks - dried in the sun.

In the first centuries 3000 (about 2800), the Bronze Age begins on Crete. This is the earliest European civilization with a high standard of living. The population of Crete was named by A. Evans as Minoans (from King Minos). As a cultural group, the Minoans appeared approx. 2500 BC Perhaps this is a mixture of Anatolian immigrants and the local Neolithic population - an anthropologically mixed group. Unlike other civilizations of the Bronze Age (for example, the Egyptian), the Minoan had a clearly expressed maritime character.

They were engaged in agriculture. So, in the late period, wheat, millet, barley, lentils, peas, grapes, olives, industrial crops (spices, flax, saffron - for the manufacture of dyes) were grown. Livestock - cattle, sheep, goats. The horse appeared on the island not earlier than the middle of the 16th century. BC.

Around 2000, urbanization began - cities grow, the first palaces appear (Knossos, Mallia, Festus) - this is a purely Minoan phenomenon. The palaces are beautifully arranged, decorated with abundant paintings and equipped with sewerage systems. Knossos was excavated by archaeologist Arthur Evans in 1899-1935. The palace occupied an area of \u200b\u200babout a hectare (in the book of Molchanov - more than 1.5 hectares), the central courtyard was 26.5 by 53.1 m. Three tiers of premises for various purposes. Unlike other palaces, Santorini survived the eruption of 1450, and then fell under the rule of the Mycenaeans. The origin of the legend of the labyrinth, Daedalus and Icarus, Theseus and Mintavr (the house of the double ax - Knossos) is attributed to this time. King Minos is also legendary. Some believe that there were several rulers with this name. Herodotus wrote that Minos established dominion over the Aegean Sea and even made a trip to Sicily.

Numerous examples of Cretan ceramics with ornaments of abstract curvilinear and plant motifs, as well as seascapes, have come down to us. Stone-cutting art - figurines, vessels, seals. The processing of bronze and gold has reached a high level.

The sea trade expanded.

There is little information about religion. Apparently, they worshiped the Mother Goddess (statuettes), a double ax (labrys) and "dedicatory horns" (a symbol based on bull horns) had a cult significance. The goddess was worshiped in special sanctuaries on the tops of the mountains. Games (or fight) with bulls (frescoes, figurines) are known. Unknown secular or religious character were these games

Hieroglyphic writing has survived, which has not yet been deciphered. There is a syllabic writing. The signs were applied with a sharp object on clay tablets. The most famous find is the Phaistos disc (1908, diameter about 16 cm).

Linear A (2000-1500 BC, there have been attempts to decipher through the Semitic or Anatolian languages \u200b\u200b- they are unconvincing). Linear B (1500-1100) decoded by M. Ventris in 1952 is an early form of Greek written in the syllabic system. But this type gravitates more towards the Mykene. “His reading has demonstrated the continuity of development between the Bronze Age and the Classical period in Greece, although the texts contain simple inventories).

Cretan writing grew out of pictograms - figurative writing. The pictogram designates only the object that it depicts (there is no inseparable connection with a specific word of a specific language). As a result of further development, a letter of 60-70 syllable characters (sylabograms) was formed. That is, the language did not have closed syllables (ending with a consonant), there was, accordingly, no doubling of consonants.

The Mycenaeans are the population of Eastern and Southern Greece (appeared around 2000 BC, self-name Achaeans) - with them came the Indo-European language. The Mycenaean civilization emerged around the 16th century. BC, as a result of contact with the Minoans.

The peak of development of Crete was reached in the 18th and 15th centuries. BC. (the end of the Middle Minoan period - the beginning of the Late Minoan). Crete's dominions included the south of the Aegean Sea and many islands.

OK. In 1450, the palaces were destroyed (possibly a volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini, 110 km from Crete, which caused a blast wave, tsunamis and an ash cloud), and the island falls under the control of the Greek-speaking Mycenaeans for about 50 years. In 1400, the destruction of Knossos occurs for an unknown reason (mutiny, invasion, nature -?).

Having taken Crete, they began to control trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Cypriot copper (in 1960, a sunken ship of the 13th century BC was found off the southwestern coast of Turkey near Cape Gelidonia - a cargo of copper ingots in the form of bull skins ). Continental trade was also carried out (in particular, Baltic amber). Those. the influence of Mycenae spread over a vast territory.

The Mycenaeans lived in strong-walled citadels, behind which were palaces of the megaron type (Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos). Megaron is a type of house that includes a rectangular room, the side walls of which continue towards the entrance and form a portico, sometimes columned. There was usually a hearth in the center of the room, additional rooms were arranged at the back or between the side walls. The form M. appeared in Troy in the middle of the 3rd millennium and existed in Turkey and Greece.

There are many Minoan borrowings - frescoes, painted ceramics, seals, linear writing.

Mycenae is a city on the Argos Plain in the Eastern Peloponnese. It is surrounded by walls, the entrance is through the Lion's Gate. At the top are the remains of a palace. In Mycenae, mine tombs were found (Schliemann, 1874), which were located outside the gates of the city. The tombs contained metal items and ceramics (16th century BC). Buried in tholos - a cell in the form of a hive with a stepped vault.

The period of Mycenaean hegemony lasted for about 150 years. The reasons for the decline are not clear. The Trojan War at the end of the 13th century is evidence of the troubled state. At the same time, many cities perish. There is evidence of depopulation in southern Greece, which contributed to the invasion of the Dorians. Mycenae itself was destroyed around 1100.

At the turn of the 12-11 centuries, there was a transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. The last wave of immigrants - the Dorians - came to Crete.

Iberians.

Iberians are a people who inhabited the eastern and southeastern regions of Spain in 1 thousand. BC. The archaeological material falls into several groups, but the inscriptions testify to the unity. They had a common writing based on the Greek alphabet with the addition of several syllable characters. The language cannot be deciphered.

Jewelry and sculpture ("lady from Elche") occupied a special place in culture.

The settlements are small, but fortified, on the coast of the city, were heavily Hellenized. The funeral rite is cremation, the ashes are in urns.

Appearance - dark hair; clothes - a tunic pulled together at the waist with a belt, a wide cloak, sandals made of leather, reed. Riders and warriors wore leather boots. Women have a lot of jewelry. Like the Celts, they wore torques.

Agriculture - cereals, grapes, olives, fruits, vegetables.

Cattle breeding - horse breeding, sheep breeding (including Celto-Iberians).

Weapons - a dart and a spear or lance (length 1.6 m - 2 m, square or hexagonal in cross section), falcata - a curved short sword, chariots were not used. There were no ladders, spurs were found.

Religion is little known. The figurines indicate Greek influence. Images of the Astarte-Venus type; winged deity; a goddess accompanied by wild beasts. In Andalusia and the Balearic Islands - the cult of the bull.

The origin is associated with the North. Africa or with the Caucasian peoples. In the process of expansion, the Roman influence disappeared, partially merging with the Celts. The endings of the names of the Iberian settlements are "ilti", "ili", "ilta", "ilu". Celtic - "briga". It is believed that the original Celto-Iberians lived in New Castile. In the northwest - Galicia, Asturias, Portugal - culture "castres" - settlements with a stone wall - accommodated from two or three families to 2 thousand people. They had round or oval dwellings. Existed in the II century. BC.

Etruscans

Etruscans are a people who in 1 thousand. BC. inhabited the north of Central Italy (Etruria - modern Tuscany). For the first time they stand out in 8 BC, differing from their predecessors, the wealth and oriental appearance of the tombs.

The main area between the rivers Arno and Tiber (Florence - Rome).

Extensive trade contacts that extend to Greece and Carthage, through the Alpine passes to Central Europe. In the South, the influence of the Etruscans spread through the possessions of Rome to Campania in the south and the Po valley in the north.

The origin of the Etruscans is debatable. In Egyptian sources of the XIV-XII centuries. BC. Etruscans are mentioned among the so-called peoples of the sea and appear as tursha, from where the ancient Greek name of this people - tyrrens, or tyrsens - originated.

The Etruscan culture was closely associated with the sea. As Titus Livy wrote, the Adriatic Sea was named after the Etruscan colony of Adria, and the second Tyrrhenian after the people. The Etruscan cities had access to the sea, although now many bays are already dry or swampy, and one gets the impression of remoteness from the coast. On ships, the Etruscans sailed along the Elba - Corsica - Sardinia line (up to this point, the voyage took place with the coastline visible) - Africa. Judging by the reports of ancient authors, the Etruscans built 50 oar ships (penteconters) up to 25 m long. There were also smaller, but mobile vessels. Etruscan piracy was also widely known, especially after the Etruscan cities lost independence.

According to one theory (see Herodotus), the Etruscans sailed from Western Turkey and conquered the local population (Villanova culture). On the other hand, the bearers of the Villanova culture themselves took on the features of Eastern civilization through trade with Greek and Phoenician merchants.

Both interpretations are not convincing enough. Both concepts should probably be considered. There is reason to speak of small groups of aliens who arrived in Italy in the 2nd millennium BC.

Most of the Etruscan data comes from burials, which show a rapid increase in wealth and luxury. First cremation, then the transition to inhumation.

A lot of pottery was exported from Greece. Local metalworking (especially the production of engraved bronze mirrors). The nature of the jewelry is close to the Phoenician one.

Crypts are often decorated with frescoes depicting scenes of everyday life and mythology, funeral rites (dancers, wrestlers, demons)

The Etruscans' own sources using the Greek alphabet can be transliterated, but very little can be translated.

Scientists began to master individual words of the Etruscan language, starting from the 18th century. Affected by a small number of literary manifestations of the language. At the moment, about 11 thousand inscriptions in the Etruscan language are known, mostly very short. The largest text was written on the bandages of the so-called Zagreb mummy. By the nature of the outlines of individual letters, the letter was attributed to 150 BC. But a recent radiological analysis of the linen fabric on which the text is written has shown that the book may be 200 years older. It was not possible to find a clue as to how the book appeared in Egypt. It is believed to have belonged to an exiled Etruscan before the mummy was wrapped in it. The text was religious in content and offered a description of the rituals associated with the gods for different days of the year. It includes 216 texts - significantly less than what you might expect. originally contained. Perhaps some parts of the text were lost after the opening. Scientists have noted spelling errors, which are probably explained by the fact that at the time of the census the language was already out of use.

The Etruscans are characterized by city-states - policies. "The Twelve Grades". Among the Etruscan cities are Populonia, Vetulonia, Tarquinia, Tsere (Cerveteri) on the coast, Veii, Clusium (Chiusi) and Perusia (Perugia) inland. These cities formed a free confederation.

We have received information about the rituals that accompanied the construction of the city. A plow was used to plow a furrow at the site of the future ditch and walls (this is a circle). This border in Roman times was called Pomerius. Passing through it or building was considered a religious crime, the violator of which was waiting for death. At the site of the future gate, the priest raised the plow share, interrupting the furrow. Thus, those who passed through the gate avoided the wrath of the gods.

The ritual of founding the city also included a construction in the center of its pit, known as mundus. The first fruits of the harvest were thrown into the pit, as well as the land that each new settler brought from the old place of residence. The word mundus (Etruscan - manth) has in Latin the meaning of "world", "space", and in Etruscan it is similar to the name of the underground demon Mantus. The name of the Italian city of Mantua comes from him. There is no other data on this custom.

There was a royal power. Attributes of power that later entered Roman culture:

A portable seat (this is not the same as a throne), in the Roman tradition - ivory;

Fascia - bunches of rods

Toga, painted or embroidered with palm leaves;

The scepter - at the top is decorated with an eagle - a sacred bird, the eagle was considered a bird of Zeus, in Hittite myths - an eagle - the messenger of the sun god. In the legend of the accession of Tarquinius the Ancient, the king's power was predicted to him by an eagle that fell from the sky on his head.

Double ax - Greek "labrys" (apparently borrowed from Lycian). Known from ancient Cretan seals, where priests and priestesses hold labrys. There are also archaeological finds of labrys in Cretan burials. It is believed that the term labyrinth originated from this word, which meant a funerary structure with a complex layout (A. Evans mistakenly believed that the labyrinth is a palace). For example, Pliny the Elder, referring to early sources, calls the grandiose tomb of Porsenna in Clusia (Etruscan city) a labyrinth.

Also mentioned is the "Etruscan crown", in which oak leaves and acorns were reproduced from gold. The oak was considered a symbol of the highest heavenly deity. This is known among other peoples as well. In Dodona, the oak of the ancient Pelasgian sanctuary was dedicated to Zeus. In Rome at the time of the Tarquinians there was an oak, the sacredness of which was attested to by a golden tablet with Etruscan letters. Those. the Etruscans had ideas about the king as the embodiment of the supreme god Tina.

Thus, the royal power had a sacred character. This was manifested in religious rituals and holidays, the most famous of which - regifugiy ("the run of the king") - on February 24 - is associated with sacrifices to the gods of the underworld - manna. Having made sacrifices at the comitia, the tsar fled from the forum. The run of the king can be understood as the fear of touching the manna that will come out of the underground dwellings at the smell of the victims.

The connection of sacred functions with the ceremony of triumph is the rite of "cleansing the army". The Etruscan word triumpe corresponds to the pre-Greek (triamb) meaning "hymn" (associated with Bacchic processions). In the ceremony of Roman triumph, the general was the main person. But all the insignia that he received were identical to the Etruscan and were common to many peoples of Asia Minor (for example, the Persians).

The Etruscan king, like the god Tin, appeared on a quadriga (4 is a sacred number, four cardinal points) in the garment of the god - a tunic and toga, embroidered or painted with palm leaves, a scepter in his hand. The naked parts of his body were painted with the same paint as the statue of Tin.

We can judge the religion of the Etruscans by the Roman texts, which speak of the existence of a coherent cosmogonic doctrine ("Etruscan discipline") among the Etruscans. A text came through where it was said that God was engaged in the creation of the world for 12 thousand years, after which he distributed all the creations into 12 “houses”. 1 millennium - heaven and earth; 2 - the visible firmament, 3 - the sea and all the waters, 4 - the great luminaries and stars, 5 - animals, 6 - people. The next 6 millennia will be spent on the life of the human race. Probably, this teaching, which has parallels with the Bible, goes back to an unknown Eastern source.

According to the Etruscans, the world had a three-part division (lower-underground, middle, upper-heavenly).

There was also a cult of vegetation (see ideas and the world tree). It is known that "unfortunate trees" (more precisely, plants in general) were distinguished - these are those that are under the auspices of the lower gods: fern, holly, forest pear, blackberry bush, blackthorn. There are also "lucky trees", there are only 13 of them: summer and winter oak, cork oak, beech, hazel, mountain ash, white fig, apple, pear, plum, dogwood, grapevine, lotus. These plants are associated with the upper heavenly gods. We do not find such a systematization of trees among any people.

Preserved information about the Etruscan pantheon of gods. A model of a sheep's liver was found, divided into segments, in each of which the name of a deity is written (in some segments, two) - a total of 40 sections, the names of the gods are also known from the texts. In addition, there were gods who did not have individual names, or gods with names that should not be disclosed.

Goddess Turan - attributes of a dove and a swan, like Aphrodite, her image is known as a woman with four wings. Mentions date back to the 4th-3rd centuries. BC. There is no liver on the model. The name Turan is probably from the root Tur - to give (good).

The goddess Aritimi or Artoumes - the Roman Diana - is of Asia Minor origin. Greek Artemis - daughter of Zeus and sister of Apollo. The Greeks worshiped her as early as the 2nd millennium BC.

Uni - on a bronze plaque, she is the only one seated on a throne, and not on a curule chair.

In the Roman capitoline cult, together with Tin and Menrva, she formed a triad.

Conflict with the Celts in the north and Rome in the south led to the conquest by the Romans, which began in 396. BC. capture of Veii and ended at the beginning of the 2nd century. BC.

Mitanni - Hurrian kingdom (with the ruling Indo-European dynasty) in the foothills between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, 1500-1370. BC, destroyed by the Hittites. The Hittites subjugated the territory of central Turkey, Syria.

doctor of History, prof. L.L. Zaliznyak

Part 1. IN SEARCH OF PRORONALITY

Foreword

The present work is an attempt to popularize the complex problems of Indo-European studies to a wide range of educated readers. Since the beginning of the 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 designed not for a narrow circle of professional Indo-Europeanists (linguists, archaeologists), but for a wide audience of readers interested in ancient history, and, first of all, students of historians and archaeologists of the history departments of Ukrainian universities. Therefore, some of these texts exist in the form of separate chapters of textbooks for the history departments of Ukraine. One of the stimuli for this work was the unprecedented explosion in the post-Soviet space of fantastic quasi-scientific “concepts” of innumerable myth-makers.

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

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

There is a gigantic literature in different languages \u200b\u200bof the peoples of the world dedicated to the search for the country from where the ancestors of kindred Indo-European peoples 5-4 thousand years ago inhabited the space between the Atlantic in the west, India in the east, Scandinavia in the north and the Indian Ocean in the south. Given the limited scope of works aimed at a wide audience, the bibliography of the article is narrowed down to the most important works of the problem. A certain genre and limited scope of work excludes the possibility of a complete historiographic analysis of the problems raised in it, which would require a full-fledged monographic study.

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

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

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

Discovery of the Indo-Europeans

The high level of human development at the beginning of the third millennium is 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 - Indo-Europeans (hereinafter-e). In addition, the resettlement of other peoples largely predetermined the modern ethnopolitical map of Europe and Western Asia. This explains the extraordinary scientific significance of the problem of the origin of the Indo-European family of 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 attract data and methods of 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 unable to solve the problem on their own.

The 1986 Chernobyl disaster coincided with the 200th anniversary of the great discovery of Sir William Jones, a member of the Supreme Court of India in Calcutta, which Hegel likened to the discovery of the New World by Columbus. Reading the book of religious hymns of the Aryan conquerors of India to the Rig Veda, W. Jones came to the conclusion about the kinship of the genetic predecessors of i-e languages \u200b\u200b- Sanskrit, Latin, Ancient Greek, Germanic, Slavic. The business of the English lawyer was continued by the German linguists of the 19th century, who developed the principles of comparative analysis of languages \u200b\u200band finally proved the origin of i-e from one common ancestor. Since then, both modern and dead languages \u200b\u200bhave been thoroughly studied. The latter are known from the sacred texts of the Rig Veda of the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, later recorded in Sanskrit, the hymns of the Avesta at the turn of the 2nd-1st millennium BC, the proto-Greek language of the ancient Mycenaeans of the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, cuneiform Hittites of Anatolia II millennium BC, Tocharian sacred texts of Shinjiang of Western China.

Classification of Indo-European languages \u200b\u200band peoples

In the middle of the nineteenth century. German linguist A. Schleicher proposed the principle of reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European vocabulary by the method of comparative linguistic paleontology. The use of comparative linguistics made it possible to develop a scheme for the genetic tree of u-e languages. The result of centuries of efforts by linguists was the classification of i-e languages, which was mainly formed by the end of the 19th century. However, even to this day, there is no consensus among specialists about the number of not only languages, but also the language groups and nations. Among the most recognized is the classification scheme, which covers 13 ethno-linguistic groups and-e peoples: Anatolian, Indian, Iranian, Greek, Italian, Celtic, Illyrian, Phrygian, Armenian, Tocharian, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic (Fig. 1). Each of these groups consists of many closely related languages \u200b\u200bliving now and already dead.

Anatolian (Hittite-Luwian) group includes Hittite, Luwian, Palai, Lydian, Lycian, Carian, as well as the so-called "minor languages": Pisidian, Cilician, Meonian. They functioned in Asia Minor (Anatolia) during the 2nd millennium BC. The first three languages \u200b\u200bare known from the texts of 15,000 clay cuneiform tablets obtained by the German archaeologist Hugo Winkler in 1906. During the excavation of the capital of the Hittite kingdom, the city of Hattusa, east of Ankara. The texts were executed in Akkadian (Assyro-Babylonian) cuneiform, but in an unknown language, which was deciphered in 1914 by the Czech B. the Terrible and was called Hittite or Nesian. Among the mass of ritual and business texts in the Hittite language, few records have been found in the Hittite-related Luwian and Palai languages, as well as in non-Indo-European Huttian. The autochthonous Hutts of Asia Minor were conquered at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. Hittites, however, influenced the language of the Indo-European conquerors.

Early Anatolian Hittite, Luwian, Palalayan languages \u200b\u200bfunctioned 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 carriers of which were assimilated by the Greeks in the Hellenistic time around the 3rd century. BC.

Indian (Indo-Aryan) group: Mitanian, Vedic, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Urdu, Hindi, Bihali, Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Sindhi, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Bhili, Khadeshi, Pahari, Kafir or Nuristani, Dardan dialects, Gypsy languages ...

The Mitanian language was spoken by the ruling elite of the state of Mittani, which in the XV-XIII centuries. BC. existed in the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates. The Indian group of languages \u200b\u200bcomes from the language of the Aryans, who in the middle in 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. in the Vedic language, and in the III Art. BC. - ІV Art. AD - the literary language of Sanskrit. The sacred Vedic books of the Brahmanas, Upanishads, Sutras, as well as the epic poems Mahabharata and Ramayana are written in classical Sanskrit. In parallel with the literary Sanskrit, living Prakrit languages \u200b\u200bfunctioned in early medieval India. The modern languages \u200b\u200bof India originate from them: Hindi, Urdu, Bykhali, Bengali, etc. Hindi texts have been known since the 13th century.

Kafir, or Nuristani, languages \u200b\u200bare 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 \u200b\u200bclose to the Kafir are common.

Iranian (Iranian-Aryan) group of languages: Avestan, Ancient Persian, Median, Sogdian, Khorezmian, Bactrian, Parthian, Pahlavi, Saka, Massagetan, Scythian, Sarmatian, Alanian, Ossetian, Yagnobian, Afghani, Mujan, Pamirian, Tammir Talysh, Kurdish, Baluch, Tat, etc. The Iranian-Aryan group is related to the Indo-Aryan and comes from the language of the Aryans, who in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. settled in Iran or Ayriyan, which means "the country of the Aryans." Later, their hymns were recorded in the Avestan language in the sacred book of the followers of Zarathustra Avesta. The ancient Persian language is represented by cuneiforms of the Achaemenid time (VI-IV centuries BC), including the historical texts of Darius the Great and his successors. Median is the language of the tribes that inhabited Northern Iran in the VIІІ-VI centuries. BC. before the emergence of the Persian kingdom of the Achaemenids. The Parthians lived in Central Asia ІІІ century. BC e. - ІІІ Art. AD, until the time when their kingdom was not conquered in 224 by the Sassanids. Pahlavi is the literary language of Persia of the Sassanian time (III – VIІ centuries AD). At the beginning of our era, the Sogdian, Khorezm and Bactrian languages \u200b\u200bof the Iranian group also functioned in Central Asia.

Among the North Iranian languages \u200b\u200bof the Eurasian steppe, the dead languages \u200b\u200bof the nomads of Saks, Massagets, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans and direct descendants of the last Ossetians of the North Caucasus are known. The Yagnob language of Central Asia is a direct continuation of the Sogdian language. Many modern Iranian languages \u200b\u200bderive from Farsi, the language of Persia in the early Middle Ages. These include Novopersk with literary monuments from the 9th century. AD, close to it Tajik, Afghan (pashto), Kurdish, Talysh and Tat of Azerbaijan, Baluch, etc.

In history greek There are three main eras of the language: Ancient Greek (XV century BC - IV century AD), Byzantine (IV-XV century AD) and Modern Greek (from XV century). The ancient Greek era is divided into four periods: the archaic (Mycenaean or Achaean), which dates from the 15th – 6th centuries. BC, classical (VIІІ – IV centuries BC), Hellenistic (IV – І centuries BC), Late Greek (I – IV centuries AD). In the classical and Hellenistic periods, dialects were common in the Eastern Mediterranean: Ionian-Attic, Achaean, Aeolian and Dorian. The Greek colonies of the Northern Black Sea region (Tira, 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 oldest monuments of the Greek language were written in the Cretan-Mycenaean linear script "B" in the 15th – 13th centuries. BC. Homer's poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey", describing the events of the Trojan War of the XII century. BC. were first recorded in the VІІІ-VІ century. BC. the ancient Greek alphabet, which laid the foundation for the classical Greek language. The classical period is characterized by the spread of the Attic dialect in the Greek world. It was on it in the Hellenistic period that the common Greek Koine was formed, which, during the campaigns of Alexander the Great, spread throughout the entire 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 5th – 4th centuries. BC. It was used by the court of the Byzantine emperor until the fall of Constantinople under the blows of the Turks in 1453. The modern modern Greek language was finally formed only in the 18th – 19th centuries.

Italic (Romance) group of languages \u200b\u200bincludes Osk, Volsky, Umbrian, Latin and Romance languages \u200b\u200bderived from the latter: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Sardinian, Romansh, Provencal, French, Romanian, etc. Inscriptions related to Osc, Vols, Umbrian, Latin, appeared in Central Italy in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. In the process of the 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.

Celticthe group of languages \u200b\u200bis made up of Gaulish, Irish, Breton, equine, Welsh, Gaelic (Scottish), the dialect of the Isle of Man. 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 the IV – III centuries. BC. there was a powerful Celtic expansion to the British Isles, to 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 Tene archaeological culture of the V – I century is associated with the Celts. BC, and the region of their formation is considered to be the north-western foothills of the Alps. As a result of the expansion, first of the Roman Empire, and later of the Germanic tribes (primarily the Angles, Saxons, Jutes), the Celts were driven out to the extreme north-west of Europe.

The language of the Gauls assimilated by the Romans in the territory of France at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. known very little for its few inclusions in Latin texts. Breton, Cornish, Welsh languages \u200b\u200bof the Breton peninsulas in France, Cornwall and Wales in Great Britain originated from the language of the Britons, who dispersed under the onslaught of the Anglo-Saxons in the V-VІІ c. Scottish and Menic languages \u200b\u200bare close to Irish, which is recorded in written sources IV, VІІ, XI century.

Illyrianthe group of languages \u200b\u200bcovers the Balkan-Illyrian, Mesapian, Albanian languages. The Illyrians are a group of Indo-European tribes, which, according to ancient sources, at least from the VІІ century. BC. lived in the Carpathian depression, on the Middle Danube, in the northwest of the Balkan Peninsula (Fig. 2). Its archaeological correspondence is the so-called eastern hallstatt of the 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 undergone significant influence from Latin, Greek, Slavic and Thracian dialects. Albanian texts are known from the 15th century. Mesapsky is an offshoot of the Illyrian language array of the north-west of the Balkan Peninsula, which has been preserved in the form of grave and household inscriptions of the V – I centuries. BC. in the east of the Apennine Peninsula in Calabria.

In phrygian the group includes the Thracian dialects of Dacians, Getae, Messes, Odrises, Tribals, which in ancient times lived in Transylvania, on the Lower Danube and in the northeast of the Balkan Peninsula. They were assimilated by the Romans in the II – IV centuries. and the Slavs in the early Middle Ages. Their romanized descendants were the medieval Volokhs - the direct ancestors of modern Romanians, whose language, however, belongs to the Romance group. Phrygians are a people whose ancestors (flies) in the XII 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 in the north of Anatolia the state of Phrygia arose with the capital Gordion, which was destroyed by the Cimmerians around 675 BC. Phrygian inscriptions date from the VІІ – ІІІ centuries. BC.

Armeniana language related to Phrygian, and through it is associated with the Thracian dialects of the Balkans. According to ancient sources, the Armenians came to Transcaucasia from Phrygia, and the Phrygians 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, withdrew to the east in the Transcaucasus to the lands of the Huritto-Urartians. The Pro-Armenian language was partially transformed under the influence of the language of the aborigines.

The oldest Armenian texts date back to the V 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.

Tokharianlanguage - the conventional name of i-e dialects, which in the VІ-VІІ centuries. AD functioned in Chinese Turkestan (Uyguria). Known from Xinjiang religious texts. V.N.Danilenko (1974, p. 234) considered the population of the Yamnaya culture to be the ancestors of the Tochars, 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 demonstrates similarity to the genome of the Celts and Germans of north-western Europe. Some researchers associate these findings with the Tochars, finally assimilated in the 10th century. by the Uighur Turks.

Germaniclanguages \u200b\u200bare divided into three groups: northern (Scandinavian), eastern (Gothic) and western. The oldest Germanic texts are represented by the 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 of the XIII century. preserved rich Scandinavian poetry (the Elder Edda) and prose (sagas) of the X-XII centuries. Approximately from the XV Art. began the disintegration of the Old Norse, or Old Scandinavian, language into the West Scandinavian (Norwegian, Icelandic) and East Scandinavian (Swedish, Danish) branches.

The East German group, in addition to the Gothic language known from the translation of the Bible by Bishop Ulfilah, included the now-dead languages \u200b\u200bof the Vandals and Burgundians.

The West Germanic languages \u200b\u200binclude Old English (Anglo-Saxon texts of the 7th century), Old Frisian, Old Low German (Saxon texts of the 9th century), Old High German. The most ancient monuments of West Germanic languages \u200b\u200bare the Anglo-Saxon epos of the VIII century. "Beowulf", known from the 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 \u200b\u200b- English, which in the XI-XIII centuries. was significantly influenced by French, Flemish - a descendant of Old Frisian, Dutch - an offshoot of Old Low German. Modern German consists of two dialects - formerly separate languages \u200b\u200b(Low German and High German). Among the Germanic languages \u200b\u200band dialects of our time, Yiddish, Boer, Faroese, Swiss should be mentioned.

Balticlanguages \u200b\u200bare divided into West Baltic - dead Prussian (disappeared in the 17th century) and Yatvyag, which was widespread in the Middle Ages on the territory of North-Eastern Poland and Western Belarus, and East Baltic. The latter include Lithuanian, Latvian, Latgalian, as well as common up to the XVII century. on the Baltic coast of Lithuania and Latvia Curonian. Among the dead are Selonsky and Golyadsky of the Moscow region, the Baltic language of the Upper Dnieper. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Baltic languages \u200b\u200bwere spread from the Lower Vistula in the west to the Upper Volga and Oka in the east, from the Baltic in the north to the Pripyat, Desna and Seim in the south. The Baltic languages \u200b\u200bhave preserved the ancient Indo-European linguistic system more fully than others.

Slaviclanguages \u200b\u200bare divided into western, eastern and southern. East Slavic – ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian. West Slavic are divided into three subgroups: Lehite (Polish, Kashubian, Polabian), Czech-Slovak and Serboluzhek. The Kashubian language, related to Polabian, was spread in the Polish Pomerania west of the Lower Vistula. Luzhitsky is the language of the Lusatian Serbs of the upper Spree in Germany. South Slavic languages \u200b\u200b- Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Macedonian. The Slavic languages \u200b\u200bare close to each other, since they come from one Old Slavic language, which disintegrated relatively recently in the V-VII century. Presumably, the carriers of Old Slavic before its collapse were the Antes and Sklavins of the territory of Ukraine, the archaeological correspondences of which were the population of the Prague-Korchak and Penkovka cultures.

The majority of modern Indo-Europeanists, recognizing the existence of the 13 mentioned groups of Indo-European languages, rejected the simplified scheme of the ethnogenesis of Indo-European peoples according to the principle of the genetic tree, proposed as early as the 19th century. Obviously, the process of glottogenesis and ethnogenesis took place not only through the transformation or division of the mother language into daughter ones, but, perhaps to a greater extent, in the process of interaction of languages \u200b\u200bwith each other, including non-Indo-European ones.

Scientists explain the high degree of relatedness of Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bby their origin from a common genetic ancestor - the Proto-Indo-European language. It 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 \u200b\u200boriginate. Science was faced with the task of finding the homeland of the Indo-European peoples and identifying ways of their settlement. Under the Indo-European ancestral home, linguists mean the region that was occupied by the bearers of the proto-language before its disintegration in the 4th millennium BC.

History of the search for the Indo-European ancestral home

The search for the ancestral homeland 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 due to the favorable climate of India, demographic explosions took place, and surplus of i-e population was resettled westward to Europe and West Asia.

However, it soon became clear that the languages \u200b\u200bof the Iranian Avesta are not much younger than the Sanskrit of the Rig Veda. That is, the common ancestor of all i-e peoples could live in Iran or somewhere on Middle Eastwhere the great archaeological discoveries were made at this time.

In 30-50 years. XIX century Indo-Europeans were withdrawn from Central Asia, which was then considered the "forge of nations." This version was fueled by historical data on migratory 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 Mongol tribes of the Huns, Bulgarians, Avars, Khazars, Pechenegs, Torks, Polovtsians, Mongols, Kalmyks, etc. Moreover, at this time, the interest of Europeans in Central Asia increased, since its colonization by the 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 inconsistency of Asia with the natural and climatic realities of the ancestral home. The common i-e language reconstructed by linguists testified that the ancestral home was located in a region with a temperate climate and corresponding flora (birch, aspen, pine, beech, etc.) and fauna (black grouse, beaver, bear, etc.). In addition, it turned out that most of the i-e languages \u200b\u200bwere 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 nineteenth 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. So the growth of German patriotism stimulated the popularity of the concept of the origin of e-e from the territory of Germany.

Referring to the temperate climate of the ancestral home established by linguists, they begin to localize it precisely in Germany... An additional argument was the northern European appearance of the most ancient Indo-Europeans. Blond hair and blue eyes are a sign of aristocracy both among the Aryans of the Rig Veda and the ancient Greeks, judging by their mythology. In addition, German archaeologists came to the conclusion about uninterrupted ethnocultural development in Germany from the archaeological culture of linear-tape ceramics of the 6th millennium BC to to modern Germans.

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

The famous German philologist Hermann Hirt made a significant contribution to the development of the Central European hypothesis of the origin of i-e. He concluded that German is a direct descendant of Proto-Indo-European. The languages \u200b\u200bof other i-e 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 \u200b\u200bof the aborigines (Hirt 1892).

The ideas of L. Geiger and G. Hirt were substantially developed by Gustav Kosinna. A philologist by education G.Kosinna analyzed a huge archaeological material and in 1926 published the book "The Origin and Distribution of the Germans in Prehistoric and Early Historical Times" (Kossinna 1926), which the Nazis used as a scientific justification for their aggression to the east. G. Kosinna traces the archaeological materials of the Neolithic and Bronze Age "14 colonial campaigns of the megalithic Indo-Europeans to the east through Central Europe to the Black Sea." It is clear that this politicized pseudoscientific version of settlement and-e collapsed along with the Third Reich.

In the 70s of the twentieth century. P.Bosch-Zhimper (1961) and G. Devoto (1962) derived i-e from the culture of linear-tape ceramics. They made an attempt to trace the phases of development i-e from the Danube Neolithic of the 5th millennium BC. before the Bronze Age and even before the historical and-e 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-tape ceramics.

Fig. 3. Steppe mound

Almost together with central European concept of origin i-e was born and steppe... Its supporters consider the ancestral home of the steppe from the Lower Danube to the Volga. Oswald Schrader, an outstanding German scientist and encyclopedist of Indo-European studies, is rightfully considered the founder of this concept. 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 those from the Black Sea steppes. The linguistic reconstruction of the pastoralist society of the ancient Indo-Europeans has been brilliantly confirmed by archeology. O. Schrader considered the pastoralists of the Eastern European steppe in the 3rd – 2nd millennium BC to be proto-Indo-Europeans, who left thousands of mounds in the South of Eastern Europe (Fig. 3). Since i-e languages \u200b\u200bare 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 Child in his book "Aryans" in 1926 significantly developed the ideas of O. Schrader, narrowing the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans to the steppes of Ukraine. On the basis of new archaeological materials, he showed that burials under the kurgan with ocher in the south of Ukraine (Fig. 4) were left by the most ancient Indo-European cattle breeders who began to settle in Eurasia from here.

Being a follower of G. Child, T. Sulimirsky (1933; 1968) expressed the idea that the other cultures of Corded Ware in Central Europe were formed as a result of the migration of holes from the Black Sea steppes to the west.

In his 1950 book, G. Child supported T. Sulimirsky and concluded that the Yamniks migrated from the south of Ukraine through the Danube to Central Europe, where they laid the foundation for the Corded Ware cultures, from which most researchers derive the Celts, Germans, Balts, Slavs. The researcher considered the Yamnaya culture of southern Eastern Europe to be undivided and-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 e-e.

A radical follower of Gordon Child was Maria Gimbutas (1970, p. 483; 1985), who considered the Yamniks to be proto-Indo-Europeans, “who moved west and south in the 5th-4th millennia BC. from the lower Don and the Lower Volga ”. By Indo-Europeanization of Europe, the researcher understood the resettlement of militant carriers of the Kurgan culture of the steppes of Eastern Europe in the Balkans and in Western Europe, inhabited at that time by non-Indo-European groups of the Balkan-Danube Neolithic and the culture of funnel beakers.

Due to schematism, ignorance of linguistic data and some radicalism, M. Gimbutas's works 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 Indo-Europeans remains quite convincing. Among her followers, one should recall 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 p. G.Link and F.Miller placed their homeland in Transcaucasia. Under the influence of Pan-Babylonism, T. Momsen believed that they come from Mesopotamia. However, the most detailed argumentation of the origin of i-s from the Middle East, more precisely from the Armenian Highlands, was presented in their two-volume encyclopedic work in 1984 by G.T. Gamkrelidze and V.V. Ivanov. Based on a deep analysis of a huge array of linguistic material and generalization of the achievements 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 placement of the ancestral home on Armenian highlands and the attempt to argue the way of settling Europe by the 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), which are characteristic of their homeland, are not characteristic of Transcaucasia. The corresponding hydronymics are also very few in number. Not confirmed by archaeological material and travel around the Caspian Sea through Central Asia, the Lower Volga region and the steppes of Ukraine to the west.

Colin Renfrew (1987) places their 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 the early farmers of the Middle East westward to Europe and eastward to Asia. The researcher pushed away from the Nostratic concept of V. Illich-Svitych (1964, 1971), according to which the linguistic kinship of the I-e with the peoples of the Afrasian, Elamo-Dravidian, Ural and Sino-Caucasian families is explained by their common ancestral home in the Middle East. Pointing out that the speakers of these languages \u200b\u200bare also genetically related, K. Renfrew claims that their resettlement from the common ancestral home took place in the 8th-5th millennium BC. during the expansion of the reproduction economy (Renfrew, 1987). Without refuting the very fact of these 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 protocivilization VII-V millennium BC It was from here, according to archeology, that the Neolithization of Europe took place. This gave the basis for B. Gornung (1956) and V. Georgiev (1966) to suggest that the Proto-Indo-Europeans formed on the Lower Danube as a result of the mixing of local Mesolithic hunters with Neolithic migrants from the Balkans. The weak point of the concept is the extreme poverty of the Mesolithic of the Lower Danube. I. Dyakonov also considered the Balkans to be the ancestral home of and-e (1982).

The ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans according to paleolinguistics

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

The nineteenth century was an era of bold reconstructions of society, economy, culture, the spiritual world, the natural environment of the early Indo-Europeans using the so-called linguistic paleontology. 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 the strict rules of comparative analysis of i-e languages. Criticism of attempts to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European realities using linguistic analysis made it possible for A. Schleicher (1863) to introduce such reconstructions into the framework of strict rules. However, the present discovery of the world of the Proto-Indo-Europeans belongs to O. Schrader (1886), who generalized the results of the reconstructions of his predecessors, clarifying and checking them using materials from the Bronze Age, which at that time appeared at the disposal of researchers.

Using the method of linguistic paleontology, scientists have succeeded in reconstructing the stages of the formation of a proto-language. Based on the development 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.

Proto-language reconstructed on the basis of general i-e vocabulary at the stage preceding its disintegration in the 4th millennium BC. T.V. Gamkrelidze and V.V. Ivanov (1984) analyzed individual language groups. The Pra-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 both in 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 had a cattle-breeding and agricultural character. However, the significant development of cattle-breeding terminology testifies to 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. Dominated by distant-pasture cattle breeding of meat and dairy direction. The Proto-Indo-Europeans possessed perfect methods of processing animal 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. The transition from hoe to the early form of arable farming was accomplished, with the use of a roller and a plow, which was pulled by a pair of oxen. They grew barley, wheat, flax. The harvest was harvested with sickles and threshed, the grain was ground with grain graters and millstones. They baked bread. They knew gardening (apples, cherries, grapes) and beekeeping. They made a variety of pottery. Were familiar with the metallurgy of copper, bronze, silver, gold. Wheeled transport played a special role: bulls and horses were harnessed to carts. They knew how to ride.

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 militancy. Society was divided into three strata: priests, the military aristocracy and ordinary members of the community (shepherds, farmers, warriors). The warlike spirit of the era was reflected in the construction of the first fortified settlements - fortresses. The peculiarity of the spiritual world consisted in the sacralization of war, the supreme warrior god. They worshiped weapons, a horse, a war chariot (Fig. 5), fire, a sun-wheel, the symbol of which was the swastika.

An important element of i-e mythology is the world tree. By the way, this indicates that the ancestral home was a fairly wooded region. Plants and animals, the names of which 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 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 a leopard, lion, monkey and elephant, in their proto-language, came from the Middle East, most likely from the Afrasians of the Levant (Gamkrelidze, Ivanov 1984: 506, 510).

Thus, the flora and fauna and-e ancestral home corresponds to the temperate zone of Europe. This gave the reason 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 2007.

Reconstruction of the unified vocabulary of the Proto-Indo-Europeans gave grounds to assert that before their disintegration they already knew agriculture, cattle breeding, pottery, copper and gold metallurgy, the wheel, that is, they were at the Eneolithic stage. In other words, the decay took place no later than the 4th - 3rd millennium BC. (Gamkrelidze, Ivanov, 1984: 667-738, 868-870). The same is evidenced by the discovery of the Hittite, Palai, Luwian separate i-e languages \u200b\u200bas a result of deciphering texts from the library of the Hittite kingdom capital Hatusa II millennium BC. Since there is convincing archaeological evidence that the Hittites came to Anatolia at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, the disintegration of the Proto-Indo-Europeans into separate branches began no later than the 4th millennium BC.

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

Linguistic contacts of the Proto-Indo-Europeans

Archaic i-e hydronymics 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 traces of contacts with the Finno-Ugrians, Kartvelians and the peoples of the Middle East (Prahatts, Prahuritts, Afrasians, Sumerians, Elamites), revealed in i-th languages, allow more precisely to localize the ancestral home. Linguistic analysis shows that the Praffin-Ugrians before their disintegration in the 3rd millennium BC. borrowed from i-e a significant amount of agricultural terminology (pig, piglet, goat, grain, hay, ax-hammer, etc.). Diverse i-e vocabulary is present in the Kartvelian languages \u200b\u200b(Georgian, Mingrelian, Svan) (Gamkrelidze, Ivanov, 1984: 877). Particularly important for the localization of the i-e ancestral homeland is the presence in their languages \u200b\u200bof parallels with the languages \u200b\u200bof the peoples of the Middle East.

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

However, especially a lot of agricultural and livestock terminology, names of food products, household items, and-e were borrowed from the prahatts and prachurites, whose ancestral home is located in Anatolia and in the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates. SA Starostin (1988, pp. 112–163) believes that the roots of klau, medu, akgo, bar and some others cited by V. Illich-Svitych are not at all Prosemitic or Sumerian, but Hutto-Hurite. In addition, he suggests numerous examples of Hutto-Hurite vocabulary in other languages. Here are just a few of them: ekuo - horse, kago - goat, porko - piglet, hvelena - wave, ouig - oats, hag - berry, rughio - rye, lino - lion, kulo - stake, spis, gueran - millstone, sel - village, dholo - valley, arho - space, area, tuer - cottage cheese, sur - cheese, bhar - barley, penkue - five and many others. An 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 with the Proto-Ugric, Pro-Kartvelian, languages \u200b\u200bof the mentioned peoples of the Middle East, on the other, indicates that they are a consequence of the close contacts of the Proto-Indo-Europeans with these peoples. That is, the sought-after ancestral home should have been located somewhere between the homelands of these ethnic groups, which makes it possible to more accurately localize it. It is known that the ancestral home of the Finno-Ugrians is the forest-steppe between the Don and the Urals, the Kartvelians are the Central Caucasus. Regarding the mentioned Middle Eastern borrowings in i-th languages, their source, in our opinion, could be the Balkan-Danube Neolithic, including the carriers of the Trypillian culture of the Right-Bank Ukraine. After all, the Neolithic colonization of the Balkans and the Danube took place in the 6th - 6th millennia BC. from Asia Minor, the homeland of the Hatto-Hurites.

Analysis of modern versions of i-e ancestral home

Nowadays, five regions claim the honorary right to be called their ancestral home: Central Europe between the Rhine and the Vistula (I. Geiger, G. Hirt, G. Kosinna, P. Bosch-Jimpera, 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 the Volga (O. Shrader, G. Child, T. Sulimirsky, V. Danilenko , M. Gimbutas, D. Mallory, D. Anthony, Y. Pavlenko). Some researchers unite Central Europe with the Eastern European steppes up to the Volga into their ancestral homeland (A. Hoisler, L. Zaliznyak, S. Koncha). Which of these versions is more plausible?

Concept of origin of i-e s Central Europe (lands between the Rhine, Vistula and the 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 aforementioned German researchers are based on the coincidence of the natural and climatic realities of the Proto-Indo-European dictionary with the nature and temperate climate of Central Europe, as well as the North-European appearance of the early-e (Fig. 6). The fact of the coincidence of the main area of \u200b\u200bhydronymics and the territories of several archaeological cultures is also important. This refers to the cultures of linear-ribbon ceramics, funnel-shaped cups, spherical amphorae, corded ceramics, which from the 6th to the 2nd millennium BC. successively replaced each other in the indicated territories of Central Europe.

No one doubts the Indo-European character of Corded Ware cultures now. Their genetic precursors were the funnel beaker and globular amphora cultures. However, there is no reason to call the Indo-European culture of linear-tape ceramics, since it lacks the defining features reconstructed by linguists: the cattle-breeding direction of the economy, the dominance of men in society, the warlike nature of the latter - the presence of the military elite, fortresses, the cult of war, weapons, a war chariot, horse, sun, fire, etc. In our opinion, the carriers of the traditions of the culture of linear tape ceramics belonged to the Neolithic circle of the Balkans, the non-Indo-European character of which is recognized by most researchers.

The placement of the ancestral home in Central Europe is hindered by the presence in the i-th languages \u200b\u200bof traces of close linguistic contacts with the Proto-Kartvelians of the Caucasus and the Finno-Ugrians, whose homeland was the forest-steppe between the Don and the Southern Urals. If the Proto-Indo-Europeans lived in Central Europe, how could they contact the inhabitants of the Caucasus and the Don region?

Most modern scientists consider Central Europe to be the homeland of the corded cultures of the 3rd-2nd millennia BC, the carriers of which were the ancestors of the northern branches and-e: 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 cords either linguistically or archaeologically. ... In addition, in the forest-steppes and steppes of Ukraine, u-e appeared earlier than the most ancient cords - no later than the end of the 5th millennium BC (srednestogovtsy).

Near Eastalso, it could not have been the ancestral home, because here was the homeland of non-Indo-European ethnic groups: the Hutt, Hurite, Elamite, Afrasian linguistic communities. Mapping of i-e languages \u200b\u200bshows that this region was the southern periphery of their ecumene. I-e Hittites, Luwians, Palaians, Phrygians, Armenians appear here quite late - in the III-II millennium BC, that is, after the disintegration of the Proto-Indo-European language in the IV millennium BC. Unlike Europe, there is almost no hydronymics 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 i-th language (aspen, hornbeam, linden, heather, beaver, black grouse, lynx, etc.) are missing here. On the other hand, the i-e dictionary lacks 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 were borrowed from the Prosemitic language. If these animals were typical for their ancestral home, then why were they borrowed from their southern neighbors? The Pro-Indo-Europeans could not live in the Middle East because the strong influence of their language was traced among the Finno-Ugrians, whose homeland is located too far north of the Middle East, which excludes the possibility of contact with them.

Assuming that i-e happens to Balkan, we will ignore their linguistic ties not only with the Finno-Ugric peoples, but also with the Kartvelians of the Caucasus. It is impossible to withdraw from the Balkans and their eastern branch - the Indo-Iranians. This is contradicted by the data of both archeology and linguistics. I-e 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 of 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 in 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 branch and its spread over the gigantic expanses of Eurasia, and, finally, with the collapse of the agricultural Neolithic period of the Balkans and the Danube. What gives reason to some researchers to consider the Balkan Peninsula as an ancestral home?

The well-known researcher Colin Renfrew rightly believes that the grandiose linguistic phenomenon of the spread of i-e languages \u200b\u200bshould correspond to 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 resettlement of ancient farmers and livestock breeders from the Middle East to the Balkans and further to Europe.

R. Sollaris (1998, pp. 128, 129) gave a reasoned criticism of K. Renfrew's attempts to derive i-e from the Middle East from the standpoint of new genetic research. Biomolecular analysis of paleoanthropological and paleozoological remains demonstrates the correspondence of changes in the genome of Europeans and domesticated animals of Middle Eastern origin. This is convincing evidence of the colonization of Europe by the Neolithic population from the Middle East. However, substratum phenomena in Greek and other i-e languages \u200b\u200btestify that they came to the Balkans after their development by the Neolithic colonists from Anatolia. The genetic kinship of the peoples of the Nostratic family of languages \u200b\u200bof Eurasia is explained, according to R. Sollaris (1988: 132), by the existence of common ancestors of the population of Eurasia, who, at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, 40 thousand years ago, settled from the Western Mediterranean to the west and east.

The fact that the "surplus" of the early agricultural population was flowing 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 producing economy in the south of Anatolia, in Syria, Palestine, in the Zagros mountains, not i-e grows, but Elamite, Hatti, Huritic, Sumerian and Afrasian communities. 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 the Neolithic inhabitants of the Near 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-steppe between the Dnieper and Volga (Sredniy Stog and Yamnaya cultures). If the Neolithic population of the Balkans and the Near East was a carrier of the South European or Mediterranean anthropological type (gracile, short Caucasians), then the Indo-Europeans mentioned were massive, tall northern Caucasians (Potekhina 1992) (Fig. 6). Clay figurines from the Balkans depict people with a large nose of a specific shape (Zaliznyak, 1994: 85), which is an important defining feature of the Eastern Mediterranean anthropological type, according to V.P. Alekseev (1974: 224, 225).

A direct descendant of the Neolithic proto-civilization of the Balkans was the 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, IV millennium BC. e. Attempts to decipher the Minoan texts 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 have been Indo-European in any way. Both archaeologists and linguists came to the conclusion that before the appearance of the first and-e in Greece in the II 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 Near East. It seems that the aforementioned significant number of agricultural terms of Middle Eastern origin in i-th languages \u200b\u200bis explained by the intense cultural influence of the Balkan farmers, genetically related to the Middle East, on the ancestors of i-e - the natives of Central and southern Eastern Europe.

Steppe version of the origin of the Indo-Europeans

The most reasoned and popular in our time versions of the location of the ancestral home of i-e peoples is the steppe, according to which 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 in the late XIX - early XX century. expressed the idea that the first impetus to the Indo-Europeanization of Eurasia came from the most 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). Yuri Pavlenko (1994) was her supporter.

According to this version, the most ancient and-e 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 agrarian colonization of the Balkans and the Danube by the Middle Eastern hoe farmers, the reserves of hoe agriculture in Central Europe were exhausted. Further expansion of the reproducing economy in the steppe and forest zones required an increase in the role of livestock raising. This was facilitated by the progressive aridization of the climate, which led to a crisis in the agricultural economies of the Balkans and the Danube, at the same time creating favorable conditions for the spread of various forms of animal husbandry. The same was facilitated by the clearing of deciduous forests of Central Europe and Right-Bank Ukraine by Neolithic farmers in the IV-V millennia BC. e., since the wastelands on the site of the former fields became potential pastures.

Neolithic hoe farmers grazed their few animals near villages. During the ripening of the crop, they were driven away from the crops. So, the most ancient distant-pasture form of cattle breeding was born. She tends to graze animals in the summer on pastures far from permanent settlements. It was this very ancient type of cattle breeding that made it possible for societies with a reproducing economy to colonize not only the Eurasian steppes, but also advance 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 soil occupied by hoe farmers on the right bank of the Dnieper and the Eurasian steppes, which have since become the home of mobile and warlike pastoral peoples. Thus, in the IV millennium BC. e. the territory of Ukraine became a border between the sedentary peace-loving farmers of the Danube region and the mobile, warlike herders of the Eurasian steppes.

It was in the south of Ukraine that the agricultural protocivilization of the Balkans and the Danube 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-steppe basins of the Dnieper and Seversky Donets. The latter received from the Balkan-Danube descendants of the most ancient farmers and pastoralists of the Near East not only the skills of a reproduction economy, but also the Middle Eastern agricultural terminology traced by linguists in other languages \u200b\u200b(Illich-Svitych 1964; 1971; Starostin, 1988). Localization in the steppes and forest-steppe between the Dniester, the Lower Don and the Kuban of the first shepherds-herders is in good agreement with the three main areas of Proto-Indo-European linguistic contacts. In the west, they directly bordered on the carriers of agricultural vocabulary of Middle Eastern origin (Trypillians), in the northeast - the Finno-Ugric, and in the southeast - the Kartvelian vocabulary of the Caucasus (Fig. 2).

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

There was nothing of the kind in the Volga region. The closest center of agriculture lay 800 km south of the Middle Volga region beyond the Great Caucasus Range in the basins of the Kura and Araks rivers. If the first pastoralists had borrowed the production economy together with the agrarian terminology from there, the latter would have been mainly Kartvelian. However, a significant number of common Indo-European cattle-breeding 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 the Danube - the direct descendants of the Neolithic colonists from Anatolia, most likely the Prahatto-Hurites.

The cattle-breeding skills received from the Trypillians took root and quickly developed into a separate industry in the favorable conditions of the steppes and forest-steppes of the Left-Bank Ukraine. Herds of cows and flocks of sheep moved intensively in search of pastures, which required a mobile way of life from herders. 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. The pastoral economy turned out to be very productive. One shepherd grazed a flock that could feed many people. In the conditions of constant conflicts over pastures and cows, the surplus of male workers was transformed into professional warriors.

For pastoralists, unlike farmers, not a woman, but a man became the main figure in the family and community, since all the livelihoods lay with the shepherds and warriors. The possibility of accumulating livestock in the same hands created conditions for the property differentiation of society. The military elite appears. The militarization of society determined the construction of the most ancient fortresses, the spread of the cults of the supreme god of the warrior and shepherd, war chariot, weapons, horse, sun-wheel (swastika), fire.

Figure: 7. Pottery of the pit (1-4), as well as dishes and war hammers (vajras) of the catacomb cultures of the 3rd-2nd millennia BC. South of Ukraine. Catacomb vessels and axes - Ingul culture

These ancient cattle breeders of the south of Eastern Europe ІV-ІІІ thousand BC. e. were not yet real nomads who spent their whole lives on horseback or on a cart in constant migrations behind herds and herds of animals. Nomadism, as a way of nomadic life and a developed form of cattle-breeding economy, was finally formed in the steppes only at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. At the heart of the economy of the steppe inhabitants of the IV-III millennium BC. e. there was less mobile distant-pasture cattle breeding. It provided for a more or less settled residence of women and children in stationary settlements in the river valleys, where barley, wheat were grown, pigs, goats were raised, and fish were caught. The male population spent more and more time with herds of cows, sheep and horses on summer steppe pastures. In the spring, the animals, accompanied by shepherds and armed guards, were driven far into the steppe and only in the fall were returned home for the winter. This semi-sedentary way of life quickly acquired more and more mobile forms due to the growing role of livestock raising.

These early semi-nomadic pastoralists left few settlements, but a large number of mounds. Especially a lot of them were poured by holes (hundreds of thousands) in the 3rd millennium BC. e. Archaeologists recognize them by the so-called steppe burial complex. Its most important elements are a burial mound, placing the deceased in a grave pit in a crumpled position, filling the buried with red ocher powder. Rough clay pots, often ornamented with cord prints and pricks, and weapons (stone war hammers and clubs) were placed in the grave (Fig. 7). In the corners of the pit, wheels were placed, symbolizing the funeral carriage, and often its parts (Fig. 4). Stone anthropomorphic steles are found in the mounds, which depict the patriarch of the family with the corresponding attributes of a warrior-leader and a shepherd (Fig. 8). An important sign of the first and-e of the south of Ukraine is the domestication of the horse, traces of which can be traced in the forest-steppe Dnieper region from the IV-III millennium BC. e. (Telegin 1973).

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

From the Rhine to the Donets

However, the limitation of i-e ancestral home only to the steppes and forest-steppes of Ukraine does not explain why the main body of the most ancient i-e hydronymics lies in Central Europe between the Rhine and the Dnieper. Natural realities such as mountains, swamps, the spread of aspen, beech, yew, heather, beavers, black grouses, etc. do not fit in 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 North Caucasian appearance of the first and-e, as evidenced by the most ancient written sources, does not fit with the Black Sea region.

These contradictions are removed if we assume the existence of a single ethnocultural substrate between the Lower Rhine and the Donets, on which in the V-IV millennium BC. the most ancient Indo-Europeans of the Black Sea and Central Europe began to form. Such a substrate began to emerge in the last third of the 20th century. in the course of research of Mesolithic monuments in the North German, Polish, Polesskaya lowlands, in the basins of the Neman and Donets.

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

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

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

The migration in the Atlantic period of the Holocene of the carriers of the Maglemose culture traditions of the Southwest Baltic was especially powerful. In the Boreal, in the 7th millennium BC. Maglemose was transformed into the Swadborg culture of Jutland, whose population due to the transgression of the Baltic around 6000 BC. migrated to the east, where it took part in the formation of the Yanislavsky 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. the carriers of the Yanislavsky traditions moved along the Dnieper valley to the Nadporozhye and further east to the Seversky Donets basin (Fig. 15). This is evidenced by the map of the distribution of typical Yanislawice points (Fig. 14).

Figure: 13. Map of the distribution of the monuments of the Yanislavsky culture of the 6th-5th millennia BC. The Nemunas basin (Zaliznyak, 1991: 29)

Figure: 14. Map of the distribution of points with a micro-incisor chip on the plates in the territory of Ukraine. (Zaliznyak, 2005, p.109) Symbols: 1-sites with a series of points, 2-points with 1-3 points, 3-direction of migration from the South Baltic in VII-V millennia BC, 4-border Polesie, 5-southern border of forests in Atlanticum.

Figure: 15. Rips on plates with micro-incisor chips from sites in Ukraine. Type Janislavitsa and the like. (Zaliznyak, 2005, p. 110)

The process of the penetration of forest hunters of the Maglemose cultural traditions from Polesie to the south was probably stimulated by a shift southward along the river valleys of deciduous forests due to 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 the river valleys up to the Black and Azov Seas, conditions have been created for the advancement of forest hunters of the Yanislavsky culture to the south and southeast of Ukraine.

So, in the VI-V millennium BC. the late Mesolithic cultural community of postmaglemose was formed, which covered the lowlands from Jutland to the Seversky Donets (Fig. 16). It included the Mesolithic cultures of postmaglemose in the Western and Southern Baltic, Yanislavitsa of the Vistula, Neman, 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 of the Baltic and Polesye in the Nadporozhye and even on the Seversky Donets indicate that migrants from the Baltic reached the Donets (Zaliznyak, 1991: 40, 41; 2005: 109–111).

In the 5th millennium BC. on the basis of postmaglemose, but under the southern influence of cultural communities of the Balkan-Danube Neolithic, a group of forest Neolithic cultures was formed: Ertebelle of the South-Western and Tsedmar of the Southern Baltic, Dubichai of the Neman basin, Volyn basin of the Pripyat and Neman, Dnieper-Donets of the Middle Dnieper and Donetsk Seversky Donets (Fig. . sixteen). Among the Neolithic donors of the above cultures of the forest Neolithic of the German, Polish, Polosskaya lowlands and the Middle Dnieper region, the cultures of linear-tape ceramics and Cucuteni-Tripolye played a special role.

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 linked 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 the South-East of Ukraine in the Mesolithic and Neolithic (Gokhman 1966, Konduktorova 1973). Comparison of materials from the Mesolithic and Neolithic burial grounds of the Dnieper region of the 6th-4th millennium BC. with synchronous burials in Jutland testifies to both a certain cultural and genetic relationship of the population that left them. Not only the funeral rite, but also the anthropological type of the buried were similar (Fig. 4). They 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 belt to the Left-Bank Ukraine and to the east of the Middle Volga region (Sezzhee burial ground), forming the Mariupol cultural community, represented by numerous Mariupol-type burial grounds with numerous osteological remains of massive northern Caucasians (Telegin, 1991). The population of the early Indo-European communities of the 4th millennium BC originated from this anthropological massif. - Sredny Stog and Yamnaya cultures of the forest-steppe Ukraine.

Thus, in the VI-V millennium BC. The northern European hunting population, which from the end of the Ice Age lived in the low-lying forest expanses of the South Baltic and Polesie, moved along the left bank of the Dnieper into 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, the post-Maglemese Mesolithic community moved from the south to the Neolithic stage of development. Due to the spread of the steppes due to the aridization of the climate, these aboriginal societies of northern Caucasians began to switch to cattle breeding and were transformed into the most ancient and-e cultures of the 4th millennium BC. (srednestogovskaya on the left bank of the Dnieper and funnel-shaped cups in Central Europe).

Thus, the most ancient Indo-Europeans IV-III millennium BC. carriers of the Sredniy Stog and Yamnaya cultures (arose on the basis of the Dnieper-Donetsk and Mariupol cultures) in the east and the cultures of funnel-shaped cups and spherical amphorae (descendants of the Ertebelle culture) in the west belonged to the Northern European anthropological type. At the same time, the carriers of these early Indo-European cultures exhibit a certain 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 gracile non-Indo-European population from the Danube colonized by farmers. Massive northern Caucasians, according to EE Kuzmina (1994, pp. 244-247), were also the carriers of the Andronov culture of Central Asia (Fig. 9).

The North European appearance of the early and-e is confirmed by written sources and mythology, which testify to the light pigmentation of the Indo-Europeans of the 2nd millennium BC. So, 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 of "blue lotus" color. According to Vedic tradition, a real brahmana should have brown hair and gray eyes. In the Iliad, Achaeans have golden-haired blondes (Achilles, Menelaus, Odysseus), Achaean women and even the goddess Hera are blonde. The god Apollo was also depicted as golden-haired. On Egyptian reliefs from the time of Thutmose IV (1420-1411 BC), Hittite charioteers (mariana) have a Nordic appearance, in contrast to their Armenoid squires. In the middle of the 1st millennium BC. to the king of Persia from India supposedly came the blond descendants of the Aryans (Lelekov, 1982, p. 33). According to ancient authors, the Celts of Central and Western Europe were tall blondes. In addition, the legendary Tochars of Shinjiang in Western China belonged to the Northern European type. This is evidenced by their mummified bodies, which date back to around 1200 BC. and Tocharian wall paintings VII-VI century. AD Ancient Chinese chronicles also testify to blue-eyed blondes who in ancient times lived in the deserts of Central Asia.

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

Summing up, it can be assumed 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 VI-V millennium BC. these territories were inhabited by massive northern Caucasians from the Baltics. 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 protocivilization of the Balkans. As a result of contacts with the latter, in the conditions of aridization of the climate and expansion of the steppes, there was a transformation of the autochthons of the Proto-Indo-Europeans into a proper Indo-European early pastoralist mobile society (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 the formation in the Azov and Black Sea steppes at the end of the 5th – 4th millennium BC. cattle-breeding barrow burial rite (barrow, burials with skeletons twisted and painted with ocher, anthropomorphic steles with images of weapons and shepherd's attributes, traces of the cult of a horse, bull, wheeled transport, weapons, etc.).

If the author of these lines considers the post-Maglemese ethnocultural community identified by him in the 6th-5th millennia BC. (Fig. 16) by the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the substrate on which the Indo-Europeans themselves were formed, then another Ukrainian researcher S. V. Koncha considers the carriers of postmaglemose as already formed Indo-Europeans before their disintegration into separate ethno-linguistic branches. According to S.V. Konchi, “there are good reasons to date the Indo-European community to the Early Mesolithic (VIII-VII millennium BC), and the beginning of its decay is associated with the settlement of the Yanislavitsk population to the east, in Polesie, and further, to the Donets basin in the 6th – 5th millennium BC. " The researcher believes that the defining cultural complex for the early i-e (mobile pastoral cattle breeding, burial mound rites, cults of a horse, bull, sun wheel, weapon, patriarch, shepherd warrior, etc.) was acquired later, already after the collapse of the Proto-Indo-European community in the IV-III millennium BC. (Koncha, 2004: 191-203).

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

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

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One of the characteristic features of the pre-Roman and partly Roman history of Spain is its linguistic duality, to a large extent corresponding to the duality of socio-political. It has already been noted that the country was divided into two main zones - Indo-European and non-Indo-European. The first covered the inner, northern and western parts of the Iberian Peninsula. It was formed gradually, but its appearance dates back to the end of the 2nd millennium BC. e.

The first peoples who spoke Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bbegan to penetrate through the Pyrenees, most likely at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Ultimately, they were associated with the cultures of the Bronze Age that developed in Central Europe, primarily with the so-called culture of urn fields 1. General changes taking place throughout the Old World affected this culture as well. Under the influence of internal impulses, and perhaps under pressure from other peoples who came from the East, some of the peoples - carriers of this culture - began to move in various directions, including to the southwest. The result was the spread of this culture over vast areas of Europe. The question of the linguistic and ethnicity of the bearers of the culture of the urn fields is complex and has not yet been resolved. It is assumed that in the vast area of \u200b\u200bthe settlement of the bearers of the culture of the urn fields, an as yet undivided "ancient European" language was formed, from which the Celtic, Illyrian, Italic and Germanic (possibly Ligurian) languages \u200b\u200bwere later isolated 2. But it is possible that at this time, within the framework of the earliest stages of the Gallstatt culture (the so-called Hallstatt A and B), dating back to the Bronze Age and associated with the culture of the urn burial fields, the Celtic ethnos was already forming 3.

Relatively recently, the penetration of the Indo-Europeans into the Iberian Peninsula was attributed to the first centuries of the 1st millennium BC. e. 4 However, new methods of analysis and new finds made it possible to date some localities clearly related to the culture of the fields of urn burials at the beginning of the 11th and even 12th centuries. BC e. 5 Consequently, the beginning of the emergence of Indo-Europeans in Spain can be attributed to the time ca. 1200 BC e. 6 Relatively quickly, the newcomers occupied the northeastern part of the Iberian Peninsula (modern. Catalonia) 7, from where already in the X-IX centuries. BC e. penetrated south, west, and southwest of this area. However, the old population also survived in the northeast. Archaeologists note the coexistence of two burial rites in this area: the old one - inhumation in caves and the new one - cremation in urns placed under very low mounds. Perhaps, the preservation of the old population was the reason that later in present-day Catalonia there is a secondary absorption of Indo-European newcomers by the old population and the Iberization of this territory.

In other areas of Spain, Indo-Europeanization proved to be much more solid. The Indo-Europeans gradually occupied vast areas of the Iberian Peninsula. For a while, almost all of it turned out to be Indo-European. At least in the 4th century. BC e. Ephorus (Fr. Gr. Hist., Fr. 131) asserted that Celtica extended as far as Hades. Perhaps this message reflects an earlier state of ethnic relations in southern Spain, 9 but it does indicate a time when the Celtic presence was indeed quite felt in the extreme south of the Iberian Peninsula. Later, the Indo-Europeans were largely displaced or assimilated from there by non-Indo-Europeans.

Studies of the few traces of Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bin Spanish territory show that they have significant Illyrian and Ligurian features 10. Does this mean that the early Indo-Europeans on the peninsula were Ligurs and Illyrians, or that we have before us the remnants of that linguistic state when there was an ancient European community that preceded the separation of separate languages \u200b\u200band ethnic groups? It is still impossible to answer this question unambiguously. In any case, we can confidently say that the later incursions of the Indo-Europeans into Spain were already undoubtedly Celtic, although, perhaps, they also brought with them part of the pre-Celtic population of the Atlantic coast of Gaul 11. However, the term "invasion" is hardly generally applicable to these events. Rather, it should be about infiltration, the penetration of ethnic groups through the Pyrenees into the territory of the peninsula 12. Of course, such groups had to be relatively significant, quite strong and active enough to either displace or subjugate and assimilate the former "Mediterranean" population, imposing their own language, material culture, religious and other ideas, best expressed in the funeral rite. Now it is difficult to decide whether it is necessary to talk about several waves of such infiltrations or about the constant penetration of Indo-Europeans, in particular the Celts, through the Pyrenees.

The Celts were generally a mobile people. During their great movements, they spread over a vast territory - from Ireland in the northwest to the interior of Asia Minor in the southeast. However, the Spanish Celts have nothing to do with these great migrations. Their appearance and settlement in the Iberian Peninsula dates back to an earlier time. Although separate groups of Celts from Gaul probably appeared on the peninsula at the end of the 1st millennium BC. BC, in general, the penetration of the Pyrenean passages and the settlement of Spain from continental Europe was completed by about 500 BC. e. 13 By this time, important changes are taking place in the Celtic world. The first culture of the Western European Iron Age - Gallstatt - is replaced by the Laten. Some researchers even generally consider it possible to speak of the Celts proper only as carriers of the La Tene culture 14. This, of course, is an exaggeration, for the Celtic ethnos was formed much earlier. And although some traces of La Tène influence are felt in Spain, for example, in weapons, explained by the preservation of trade relations through the Pyrenees, in general there is no La Tene culture there, and the material culture of the Spanish Indo-Europeans continues the Hallstatt (the so-called post-Hallstatt culture) 15. Of the three types of Celtic place names (ending in -briga, -dunum and -magus) in Spain, only the first is attested, belonging to an earlier layer of Celtic toponymy 16. Similar toponyms, as well as some theonyms (for example, the name of the god Lugh), are attested in Gaul, but do not occur elsewhere in the Celtic world. Apparently, we can talk about a closer ethnic relationship with the Celts of Gaul, while ties with the Celts of other countries, including the British Isles, were weaker and, probably, indirect.

Although traces of Ligurians and Illyrians have been found in Spain, the bulk of the Indo-Europeans in it were Celtic. Therefore, the Indo-European zone of the Iberian Peninsula can be called Celtic with some reservations. It took some time to form. Various movements took place inside it. So, Strabo (III, 3.5) speaks of the movement of the Celts, initially together with the Turduls, having quarreled with whom, they then settled in Northwestern Spain. At the same time, the geographer notes that the northwestern Celts are related to those who live around the Anas River (modern Guadiana). This suggests the movement of the future inhabitants of Galletia from south to north along the Atlantic façade of the Iberian Peninsula. If this is not a scientific construction of Strabo himself or his source (most likely, Poseidonia), then we have a reflection of movements already inside the Celtic world. In principle, there is nothing unnatural in this, especially since this path was already mastered by the carriers of the megalithic culture of the late Neolithic and Eneolithic.

Ultimately, by the time Spain came to the attention of ancient historians and geographers, most of the country was inhabited by Indo-European peoples, mainly Celts. Their range covered the inner, northern (except for the extreme northeast), northwestern and western parts of the peninsula. Non-Indo-Europeans probably also lived within this zone. Perhaps they included the Varduls (or barduls) and, perhaps, some other tribes close to them, who inhabited the eastern part of Cantabria and the adjacent eastern regions with their narrow and closed valleys, preventing the penetration of strangers 17. If so, then in these tribes one should see the ancestors of the modern Basques 18. On the other hand, Pliny (III, 13-14) and Ptolemy (I, 5,5) mention the Celts who live near the Stourdetans, and Pliny (IV, 111) mentions the Celtics again in the north-west of the peninsula, where they still have a special nickname Nera. Perhaps we have before us the remnants of one ethnic group (and is this not a trace of this or similar movement of the Celts, about which Strabo speaks?). Some of the Oretans (obviously non-Indo-Europeans), according to Pliny (III, 25), are also called Germans, in which, undoubtedly, one should see traces of their mixing with Indo-Europeans 19. And yet, in general, the two zones of the Iberian Peninsula stand out quite clearly, and this began around 1200 BC. BC, when the bearers of the culture of the fields of urn burials began to penetrate through the passages of the Pyrenees into Spain.

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2 History of Europe. M., 1988.T. 1.S. 123-124.
3 Piggot S. Ancient Europe. Edinbourgh 1965 P. 173; Crossland R. A. Immigrants from the North // SAN. 1971. Vol. 1, 2. P. 853; Shirokova H. S. Ancient Celts at the turn of the old and new era. L., 1989.S. 81-84.
4 Philip J. Celtic civilization and its heritage. Prague, 1961, p. 20; Piggot S. Ancient Europe. P. 173; Daniel C, Evans J. D. The Western Mediterranien. P. 765; Savory H. N. Ancient Europe P. 227.
5 Cerdeno M. L., Vega C. Espana de Altamira. P. 122.
6 Montenegro A. Introduction. P. 22; idem. Las invasiones indoeuropeas en la Peninsula Iberica // HE. T. II. P. 219-221.
7 Sanmarti J. From local groups in early states: the development of complexity in protohis-loric Catalonia // Pyrenae. 2004. No. 35, I. P. 13. However, some archaeologists believe that, despite the attractiveness of this theory, there is not enough archaeological evidence to confirm it (ibid.).
8 Montenegro A. Las invasiones ... P. 220-221.
9 Lomas F. J. Las fuentes historicas mas antiguos para el conocimiento de los celtos peninsularcs // Historia de Espana antigua. P. 56.
10 Ibid. P. 59-63, 77-78.
11 Piggot S. Ancient Europe. P. 188.
12 Cerdeno M. L., Vega C. Espana de Altamira. P. 122.
13 Montenegro A. Las invasiones ... P. 229-230.
14 Cf .: Archeology of France: Exhibition catalog. L., 1982.S. 46.
15 James S. Exploring the World of the Celts. London, 1993. P. 72; Savory H. N. Spain and Portugal. P. 246-252.
16 Piggot S. Ancient Europe. P. 173-174; Savory H. N. Spain and Portugal. P. 240; Sangmeister E. Die Kelten in Spanien // MM. I960. Bd. 1.S. 95.
17 Lomas F. J. Pueblos celtasde la Peninsula Iberica // Historia de Espana antigua. P. 96-98.
18 Alvar J. De Argantonio ... P. 71.
19 Iniesta A. Pueblos del cuadrante sudoriental de la Peninsula Iberica // HE. T. II. P. 339.

To imagine where the Indo-Europeans could have come from and in what ways they spread across Eurasia, it is necessary to use the knowledge of archeology, history, linguistics, genetics, and religious studies.

The most common territory among researchers, which is taken for the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans, is the region of the Middle Volga and the Dnieper. The authoritative archaeologist and culturologist Maria Gimbutas places the starting point of the distribution of Indo-Europeans in the Samarskaya Luka region at the beginning of the 5th millennium BC. Let us take this place as a conventional starting point for Indo-European settlement in Eurasia.

South!

Let's turn to linguistics. Hittite is considered to be the first of the historically known Indo-European languages. The Hittites can be clearly traced in Anatolia from around 1650 BC. Before them, the Hatti people existed on this territory (in Anatolia from about 2300 BC), whose language has not yet been assigned to any language group. Since the Indo-Europeans of the Hittites replaced the Hatti, taking their territory, statehood and elements of religion, it can be assumed that the Hittites began to penetrate Anatolia during the reign of the Hatti. Thus, it can be assumed that one of the first Indo-Europeans in the historical arena appears in Anatolia. Why exactly here? Indeed, the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian Sea stand on the way of migration here from the Middle Volga. We will offer an answer to this question below.

Another language that took shape from Proto-Indo-European is Greek. From Anatolia, we are transported to the west and see that around 1850, the Ahai invade the territory of modern Greece from the north. They crowd out the local Pelasgians, who, under the pressure of the Ahai, migrate to the south and east (to Western Anatolia). Let's notice an interesting detail. The name of the Ahaians (Ἀχαιοί) is consonant with the name of the Aryans (ahaya - araya). Having settled in Greece, the Ahaians established close ties with the Hittites. This is not surprising, since they were related by language, genetics and religion. We will talk about genes and beliefs below.

The next branch was the Indo-Iranian languages. In the territory of modern Iran and Pakistan, the Indo-Europeans invade in separate streams around 1700 BC. If practically nothing is known about Iranian expansion, then in Hindustan the Indo-Europeans caused the decline of the Harappan civilization. Such large and surprisingly highly developed cities like Harappa and Mozhenjo-Daro died out sharply at this time. Then there was a gradual penetration into the territory of modern India. In Hindustan, the Indo-Europeans have still formed an oral corpus of religious hymns "Vedas", the ordering of which dates back to around 1700 BC. Indo-Europeans in the territory of modern Iran, Pakistan and India called themselves Aryans.

Here it is necessary to chronologically return to the Greek linguistic community, since around 1200 BC, the Indo-Europeans Dorians invaded Greece from the north. Now the Ahais had to make room. All these movements seem to have caused a lot of problems. Among them are the Trojan War and the movement of the Sea Peoples southward into Palestine. Note that the Dorians are also consonant with the Aryans and not only in Russian.

Here the Greek-Anatolian expansion stopped and closed on itself, and then on the Iranian expansion. The Dorians pushed with the Ahais, and the Ahaians with the Anatolian Hittites. Why didn't the Indo-Europeans go further south? The fact is that there were powerful Egypt and Mesopotamia, in which culturally (and genetically) more ancient and more developed peoples lived. Therefore, here Indo-European expansion ran into an insurmountable obstacle.

So the Indo-Aryan branch rested on a more cultured and ancient people in Hindustan - the Dravids. Further advance into the interior of Hindustan was extremely slow and painful. The local population was pushed to the south and east extremely reluctantly.

The next branch is Italian. Mythology says that when the warrior of Troy, devastated by the Ahaians, Aeneas, arrived on the territory of modern Italy, he found a tribe of Latins here. Etruscans and Sabines also lived here. All these tribes are counted among the Indo-Europeans, who came here somewhere between the invasions of the Ahai and Dorians into Greece. The descendants of Aeneas and the Latin woman he married founded Rome and the dynasty of its rulers. Therefore, the Latin language from the time of the military expansion of Rome in the Apennine Peninsula began to dominate. The tribes of the Indo-Europeans who settled in Italy had to go further from their ancestral home than the Hittites, Ahai, Dorians and Aryans. Therefore, their sedentary culture was formed later and they entered the historical arena belatedly, but no less triumphantly. In Italy, the Indo-Europeans ran into a natural obstacle - the sea. The water element stopped them. They were forced to master the sea much later, when they fought with the Semites Phoenicians of Carthage.

Drankh nah veden

The Celtic branch may have formed around the time the Italic branch was formed. The speakers of the Celtic languages \u200b\u200bdid not meet in Europe neither natural obstacles, nor strong peoples opposing them. Therefore, they walked for a long time, until they reached the Atlantic coast of Europe and up to modern Britain. They stopped there, but did not manage to develop in the same way as their Indo-European cousins, who followed a shorter route to areas where they could develop and culturally enrich themselves for a longer time from the more ancient neighboring peoples.

The speakers of the Balto-Slavic branch also moved westward, but the bulk of the speakers of these languages \u200b\u200bdid not go further than Central Europe. Researchers are inclined to attribute the approximate time of the formation of the Balto-Slavic languages \u200b\u200bto about the 3rd or 2nd millennium BC. This branch is older than the Celtic. That is, we have a picture when "younger" and more active cultures are moving westward beyond the "older" cultures.

Germanic languages \u200b\u200bcan be attributed to young Indo-European linguistic cultures. Their beginning is usually attributed to the middle of the 1st millennium BC. The representatives of these languages \u200b\u200bwent from the north of Central Europe to the south between the representatives of the Celtic languages \u200b\u200bin the west and the representatives of the Balto-Slavic languages \u200b\u200bin the east. But this already concerns our time.

The main migration flows of the Indo-Europeans went west, south and southeast. If in the south and southeast they met powerful cultures that left a memory of themselves, in the west, in Europe, apparently, the cultures were weak, or their representatives were small in number. Therefore, pre-Indo-European Europeans were culturally assimilated.

Since culture is closely related to language, it is the remnants of pre-Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bin preliterate Europe that are of greatest interest. And these remnants are scarce.

In the west, it is Basque. Basques live in the mountainous regions of the Western Pyrenees. That is, the speakers of the non-Indo-European Basque language were actually pinned to the ocean and driven into the mountains. The conquest of Europe by the Indo-Europeans was so intense. Basques, by the way, gave the name to the Gascons. d'Artagnan was a descendant of the Basques.

In the north, these are the non-Indo-European Finno-Ugric languages \u200b\u200bof the Uralic language family. But, as we can see, migration to the north was not a priority for the Indo-Europeans. The speakers of the languages \u200b\u200bof the Uralic language group are now the northern neighbors of foreign Europeans all over Eurasia from Finland to Siberia.

In the south, these are the Kartvelian languages, localized in the mountainous regions of the Caucasus, mainly in Georgia. All other languages \u200b\u200bof Europe are Indo-European languages.

Thus, we see that all non-Indo-Europeans were culturally assimilated by the Indo-Europeans in Europe, either pressed to the sea, driven into the mountains or left in the cold. This is how they carried out an aggressive "drankh nakh veten".

Tokhars

We see a different picture in the east of the supposed ancestral home. If in Europe the Indo-Europeans still run the show, then in the Far East they left several vivid traces of their stay and literally disappeared into the local peoples. About 3000 BC in Altai, on the border with the Far East, the carriers of the Afanasyevka archaeological culture are declared, which is identified with the Indo-Europeans. On the territory of modern China, the Tarim mummies of red-haired and fair-haired people of European appearance are dated to the middle of the 2nd millennium. In the 1st millennium, this territory was inhabited by the Rong tribe, whose ancestors, according to ancient Chinese historians, were blue-eyed and fair-haired. It is noteworthy that around this time, the Chinese rulers in the army appeared war chariots, which were not there before. Researchers associate the appearance of chariots in China with the Indo-Europeans. It is known that on the territory of the Tarim Depression, people spoke Indo-European Tocharian languages \u200b\u200bsomewhere from the 1st millennium BC until almost the time of Genghis Khan - until the 1st millennium AD.

Thus, we see what different fate befell the Indo-Europeans who settled in Eurasia.

Genetics

Now let's see if genetic data confirm this picture. We will be interested in Y-chromosome haplogroups of the modern population of Eurasia. Haplorguppa show the relationship of people to each other in the male line by identifying gene mutations. Haplogroups are related to each other by kinship. We roughly know which haplogroups (mutations) appeared when, but we do not know where. Therefore, if we combine the data of linguistics, history and genetics, we must

get a more or less objective picture. These data will complement each other. So, closely related haplogroups R1b and R1a are usually associated with the native speakers of Indo-European languages. The distribution of these haplogroups among people on the territory of Eurasia coincides with the distribution of Indo-European languages.

R1a

The oldest haplogroup R1a, which originated around 16500 BC, is distributed from Central Europe to China and India. R1a has the highest concentration among the population in Eastern Europe and in the Pamir and Tien Shan mountains. The greatest concentration among modern peoples of R1a is among the Slavs, especially among the Lusatian Slavs in Germany, as well as among the higher castes of Northern Hindustan and among some Iranian peoples.

That is, the spread of R1a today just covers the area where the oldest Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bdominate, with the center at our conditional point of migration reference. But why the highest concentration of these haplogroups today is observed in the population at the edges of this area. Why is there no concentration in the center? History and geography can answer this question. Between Eastern Europe and the mountains of western South Asia lie steppes, deserts and semi-deserts, along which there was a brisk trade (the Silk Road) and conquering trans-Eurasian raids (Huns, Genghis Khan, Turks, Chinese, etc.). All this activity “trampled down” and diluted the concentration of R1a in the center of the area of \u200b\u200bits modern distribution. That is, the later historical activity, as it were, drove the Eastern Indo-Europeans R1a in the south into the mountains, cutting them off from the Western Indo-Europeans, who settled in the dense and impenetrable forests of Eastern Europe.

R1b

The distribution of the haplogroup R1b, related to R1a, also coincides with the distribution of Indo-European languages. Therefore, R1b is also ranked among the ancient Indo-Europeans. R1b appeared around 14500 BC. It is two millennia younger than R1a. But representatives of this haplogroup went to the west much farther than representatives of R1a. The highest concentration of R1b is observed among the peoples of the Ural Mountains and the population of Western Europe. That is, the carriers of this younger mutation turned out to be the most active in matters of territorial expansion in the western direction. Someone stayed in the area of \u200b\u200bthe beginning of settlement, and someone went on a long journey.

This can be explained by the fact that the younger genera wanted more free space for life, so they went further than the older genera, which more quickly occupied good spaces near the conditional settlement point. For some reason, R1b did not go East. Haplogroup of Tarim mummies - R1a. Maybe the young R1b genera received information from the elders R1a that it is not worth going to the east (snow will fall into the head), but to the west it is. There they went, eventually resting on the Atlantic.

Who they met in Western Europe is not known. R1b, apparently, married girls from local tribes, but did not give their girls to the locals. That is, they treated the local population rudely. Therefore, the haplogroups of the original ancient Western Europeans have not survived. Even the Basques, the only people in Western Europe who speak a non-Indo-European language, also have a predominant haplogroup R1b. That is, the Indo-Europeans in Western Europe pressed their own descendants to the sea and drove into the mountains, who assimilated into the culture of local residents, but passed on to them their dominant genetics.

The Indo-Europeans reached modern Spain, France and Britain in the form of the Celts in the first millennium BC.

Ungrateful Euro-natives at the dawn of history

Indo-Europeans R1a in Europe with the local population, apparently, treated more respectfully. In Northern and Southern Europe, representatives of the ancient haplogroup I remained, which is 5-10 thousand years older than the haplogroups R1a and R1b. A high concentration of the population with this haplogroup is now observed in Scandinavia and in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula. These people speak Indo-European languages, but their genes tell us that they are descendants of the pre-Indo-European population of Europe.

Indo-Europeans R1a felt sorry for I, but representatives of this haplogroup turned out to be ungrateful. In Scandinavia and Northern Germany in the 1st millennium BC, three genera groups merged with haplogroups R1b, I and R1a. The product of the merger was a new genus, which is called the ancient Germans. At the turn of the eras, they began their movement west, south and east. In the west, they pushed the Celts back, in the south they entered into military interaction with the Italians, and in the east they pressed the R1a Slavs, who since then until our days have constantly experienced military pressure from the aggressive Germans.

Nevertheless, all of Europe became the property of the Indo-Europeans. The same cannot be said about all other regions of Eurasia, where the settlers were opposed by ancient, highly developed civilizations with a strong culture and economy.

Opponents of the Indo-Europeans

Earlier we looked at the Hittites (descendants of the Hatti) in Anatolia, the Ahaians and Dorians in Greece, and the ancient Iranians, the ancestors of the Persians in Iran. These peoples were forced to close on themselves, as they were opposed by powerful civilizations in the south - Egypt and Mesopotamia. There already existed a written language and a developed economy by the time of contact with the Indo-Europeans who came from the north. A brisk trade, a developed culture with writing - perhaps this attracted the Indo-Europeans to the south. From our conditional point of migration to Anatolia, the ancestors of the Hittites could go down the Volga and further through the Caucasus.

In North Africa (including Egypt), the oldest haplogroup E dominates, which arose 55-50 thousand years ago in Africa. The Egyptians already had pyramids, writing, developed relations with Crete, Santorini, Palestine and Mesopotamia. It was the territory of Palestine that became the battlefield of the Indo-Europeans and the Egyptians. It was from the Indo-Europeans, directly or through intermediaries, that the ancient Egyptians, like the Chinese, adopted the chariots.

Mesopotamia also had writing, culture and economics. Haplogroup J dominated there (Assyrians, Phoenicians, Semites). The age of this haplogroup is about 30 thousand years. She is about the same age as haplogroup I, much younger than E, but older than R1a and R1b. Therefore, the Indo-Europeans also ran into Mesopotamia as an insurmountable obstacle. Even the Ahmenid Persians in the 1st century BC were forced to have four imperial languages, two of which were Semitic, one Afrasian. And only one of the imperial languages \u200b\u200bwas ancient Persian. There was also no cultural and religious uniformity in the Persian Empire.

In Hindustan, the Indo-Europeans R1a met with representatives of the haplogroup L and H. They were also much older than R1a. Haplogroup L today has a maximum concentration in the northern mountainous regions of Hindustan and near the mouth of the Indus. Indo-Europeans R1a passed between these areas. Some L were driven into the mountains, while others L were pushed to the sea. Haplogroup H (Gypsies, Bangladeshis) was forced out to South India. Mobile H islands still roam the world in the form of gypsies.

Representatives of haplogroup L were Dravidians who created the Harappan civilization, swept away by the Indo-Europeans by the Aryans in the territory of modern Pakistan. True, many elements of the culture of this civilization were borrowed by the Aryans and became part of Hinduism, which was already forming on the territory of Hindustan.

In the Far East, the Indo-Europeans were the least fortunate. They donated their cultural achievements, but apparently did not receive local women. But the Indo-European women, apparently, went to the Far Eastern men. Therefore, the Indo-European genetics of patrilineal haplogroups did not take root here.

Common features of Indo-Europeans

Of course, the linguistic community makes all the considered Indo-Europeans related. Language is an element of culture, which cannot be reduced to language. There must be some common features in sociology and religion.

Three strata

It is known that when the Aryans came to Hindustan, they separated from the local population, and formed three castes of their own: brahmanas, kshatriyas, vaisyas. The brahmanas were few in the spiritual and intellectual pursuits. The Kshatriyas were engaged in public administration and warfare. They were also few in number. The Vaisyas were the remaining members of the community who were supposed to prosper under the spiritual protection of the brahmanas and the physical protection of the kshatriyas. The vaisyas were supposed to create material wealth and enjoy a happy family life. In the fourth caste of the Shudras were the Gentiles, that is, the local population of Hindustan. The rest of the lower castes appeared even later.

Thus, it can be assumed that the three-member own structure of the Aryans was transferred from the ancestral home. Was there a similar structure among the Indo-Europeans, who diverged from their ancestral home in other directions?

The social division of the Indo-Europeans who came to the territory of modern Iran can be judged by the estate structure of the state under the Persian ruler Ardashir I at the beginning of the first millennium of our era. The society was divided into four classes: priests (priests, magicians, judges), warriors, scribes, people (peasants, artisans). If we consider that the Indo-Europeans who came to the modern territory of Iran did not have a written language, then the scribes can be removed from the estates. Three estates remain: priests, warriors, people.

In ancient Greece, the clan community was called the phylum. It was a community in which there were their own priests and their warriors, led by the Philarch. A separate group of Phila warriors in the general army was also called Phila. Therefore, the phylum can be represented as a society, which is divided into three parts: priests, warriors and all the rest. Subsequently, the fila became the territorial division of Greece.

There were tribes in Rome. It must be remembered that in all Indo-European languages \u200b\u200bthe number "three" sounds the same. From the word "tribe" comes the Latin word tribuo (to divide). Perhaps the tribe originally meant a community divided into three parts: priests, warriors, people. Therefore, the name of this division was given to the word, which began to denote the very action of division.

All of the above Indo-Europeans met with societies that were superior to them economically and had a written language. Perhaps this made it possible to preserve its ancient culture in a more or less intact form.

But the early Slavs and Celts in Europe did not meet anything like that, they stayed outside of history for too long and “forgot” themselves. But the Celts were "helped" by distant relatives.

At the turn of the eras, the still young Roman adventurer-commander Julius Caesar, who attacked the Gauls (Celts), described their three classes: druides, equites and plebs. Priests, warriors and people. Gaul warriors could also be called "fillets". From this word comes the English field (battlefield). Compare with the warrior Philae of the Greeks. Julius Caesar did not know that he was crushing his distant relatives.

It is difficult to say anything about the Slavs and Germans in relation to the social structure dating back to the times of the Indo-European ancestral homeland. The Slavs have long and comfortably settled in the impenetrable forests without writing and did not come into close contact with the literate and active sea peoples. Lazy and "run wild." The Germans themselves formed very late from the Slavs, Celts and the local pre-Indo-European Scandinavian population. Therefore, their sociological memory was even worse than that of the Slavs.

In relation to the Slavs and Germans, one can only make rough guesses. For example, it can be assumed that for some reason the originally three-part (three-stratum) society was divided. Warriors with a minimum number of priests and representatives of the people went north and united with the local Scandinavians, giving the Germans. And the people, who were accustomed to living safely and engaging in a peaceful life, remained in comfortable forests on the banks of convenient rivers and lakes. If everything happened exactly like this, then the episode with the vocation of the Varangians by the Slavs is understandable. Our land is abundant, we are fattening here, but everyone quarreled, since we do not have rulers-administrators (warriors) who would exercise control over society. Therefore, the Slavs turned to the Varangians. The Vaisya caste appealed to the Kshatriyas, who had long gone to the west, to come and order their life together, as in the old days.

This can also explain the extreme militancy of the Germans and the calm, peaceful disposition of the Slavs.

A similar situation can be observed in ancient Sparta. Where only soldiers were citizens. The military class existed separately from the people, who, moreover, were not related to them. That is, speaking in Hindu terms, there were no Vaisyas and Brahmans, but only Kshatriyas and Sudras (representatives of the conquered people). The Spartans called priests from neighboring Greek cities. In times of acute need, the role of a priest was played by the main warrior - the king. At the same time, the Spartans were excellent warriors (they staged the famous massacre of their distant relatives, the Persians in the Battle of Thermopylae), but lawless people. They organized deadly raids on their sudras and engaged in the most disgusting eugenics - they killed babies with bodily defects. That is, these valiant warriors clearly lacked spiritual and intellectual mentors who would teach them mercy and explain that their true purpose is not to kill, but, on the contrary, to protect (save lives).

Both the Spartans and the Germans may have "forgotten" their role in a three-stratum society and engaged in plunder and violence.

Religion

It is generally accepted that the Indo-Europeans were pagans. The pantheon of Indo-European gods is known, which have many parallels and similarities in different Indo-European cultures that are very far from each other in time and territory. But we are interested in the ancestral home and metamorphoses in the process of settling in Eurasia.

The most remarkable thing is that in different Indo-European cultures there are signs of the presence of the category of the Creator. One God who created everything, including many lower gods.

In the early Vedas, there are hymns about Heavenly Father (Dyaus Pita), who was the original creator of the world. God of light and day. He figured along with the female origin (Mother). The Slavic word "day" is related to the word "dyaus", since the day is characterized by a bright sky. The cult of the Heavenly Father at the time of the ordering of the Rig Veda in 1700 BC, when the Aryans came to modern Pakistan, was already fading away. This means that he was of greater importance where the Aryans came to Hindustan.

In the Avesta in the 1st millennium BC, the reformer of the Iranian religion Zarathustra speaks of Ahura Mazda (Originally Thinking) - the One God.

In Greece at the time of Homer, when there was already confusion and hesitation in the religion of the people, and there was no written language yet, Zeus was the main god. The kinship of the Greek "Zeus" and the Aryan "Dyaus" is firmly proven by linguists, historians and religious scholars.

In Rome, the main god, the sky god Jupiter, is none other than "Dyaus Pita". This is also proven and beyond doubt.

But the most interesting thing is that the Tochars, sunk into obscurity, left us a beacon here too. In the 1st century BC, on the territory of modern China, in the area next to the distribution area of \u200b\u200bthe Rong tribes (descendants of the Tochars), the category of Tian-di (Heaven of the First Ancestor) appears. Compare the words of Dyaus Pita and Tian-di. And the words "day" and "tyan". The meaning of this category absolutely coincides with the Indo-European Heavenly Father. The Tien-di category in the Eurasian steppe spaces later turned into the Tengri category, the Heavenly Father whom Genghis Khan worshiped.

It is extremely interesting that the haplogroup R1b was recorded in the pharaoh Akhenaten, who in the middle of the 2nd millennium, when Egypt was already in full contact with the Indo-Europeans in the north, tried (unsuccessfully) to establish monotheism. That is, the Pope of Pharaoh was either himself an Indo-European, or was their descendant. The presence of Indo-Europeans in Egypt may explain the high concentration of R1b in Cameroonians. The descendants of the Indo-Europeans, once in Egypt, could climb the Nile and for some reason move to the territory of modern Cameroon.

It is difficult to consider Slavic and Celtic deities in relation to the oldest categories. Since there was too long an unwritten period and a huge number of foreign cultural contacts and influences.

It can be assumed that during the beginning of the movement of the Indo-Europeans from their ancestral homeland, they had, if not monotheism, then stereotheism, when the Single Primordial Creator as a masculine principle was revered with a feminine principle, through which the world was created (born). The rest of the gods were revered as hypostases of these two principles, applicable to certain life situations. Many religious historians defend this position. In their opinion, the wild polytheism of paganism is the disintegration of the originally spiritually and intellectually harmonious, ancient high religious concept.

For example, the Israeli archaeologist Zeev Herzog in 1999 in his article "Deconstruction of the Walls of Jericho" in the weekly "Haaretz" writes that, according to his data, strict monotheism was finally formed among the Jews already during the kingdoms. Up to this point, "... the God of Israel, Jehovah, had a female spouse ..." Perhaps Herzog's archaeological data record the remnants of an ancient stereotheistic cult among the Jews. And only a strong centralized royal power was able to finally suppress the ancient cult inertia.

It is also noteworthy that there is only one step from such stereotheism to monotheism. It is necessary to remove the feminine principle from the religious system. This was exactly what Abraham did at the turn of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC in Northern Mesopotamia. Where there was an area of \u200b\u200bcontact between the ancient Semites and the Indo-Europeans who came from the north.

Why was this step taken? Because the ancient stereotheism by that time had degenerated everywhere into the most terrible bloody paganism. The main source of the destruction of religion was the sexual sphere, since the main religious symbols of that time were male and female genitals. Rituals and ceremonies had appropriate symbols and actions. The bloody sacrifices of children flourished. In the most terrible forms, this paganism manifested itself precisely among the representatives of highly developed peoples with more ancient haplogroups, in which younger and still more pious ancient Indo-Europeans "rested". There are hymns in the Rig Veda that openly condemn the "worshipers of members." Among the ancient Indo-Europeans, the sexual sphere was in a chaste state. Among the ancient Aryans, for example, murder and adultery were considered equivalent crimes and were punishable by death.

To end the pagan madness of the 2nd millennium BC, it is not enough to return to the ancient pious stereotheism, it was necessary to remove the feminine principle from rituals and religious images, along with sexual iconography and a reference to sexual intercourse as an act of world creation. This was done by the godly ancient Jews. The genital sphere has been moved from public ritual to the hidden area of \u200b\u200bfamily ordinance. That is why the One God-Creator in Judaism and Islam cannot be portrayed at all. Because before it was widely depicted as a phallus.

It is possible that one of the purposes of the ancient Indo-Europeans was to bring their relatively young pious religion to the area of \u200b\u200bmore ancient already degenerated cults, in order to impart a new bright impulse for the purification of the spiritual sphere of mankind.

After all, if this had not happened, then the era of atheism would have begun much earlier. This can be seen in Ancient Greece and the philosophy "born" there, as the movement of a light religion, through the rotting of paganism into atheism of denying the spiritual sphere and the transformation of a person into a lustful biorobot, that is, into an animal. It is no coincidence that the first sparks of atheism in Europe were the Renaissance, which is characterized by a return to the ideals of antiquity, which was in a state of transition from the horrors of occult paganism to atheism.

Fate

The spiritual fates of the Indo-Europeans are interesting in the places where they came and where they settled. The Aryans of India absorbed the elements of the degenerated paganism of the Dravidians, through the Shramanas they came, on the one hand, to extreme occultism (Shiva, Kali, Khajuraho), on the other, to Buddhism. The latter became the prototype of modern atheism, since it does not imply the category of God the Creator at all.

The Iranian branch tried to fix the original God in Ahura Mazda, but in this territory it was swallowed up by the more concrete young monotheism of Islam.

Greeks and many Palestinians and Syrians became Christians. Copts, the original Egyptians, also became Christians. All of Europe became Christian. Even some descendants of the newcomer Indo-Europeans on the territory of modern China and Mongolia became Christians. During the military strengthening of the young Genghis Khan, the Christian tribes in Mongolia came to an end. But Genghis Khan himself, like Moses, went to communicate with Heavenly Father (Tengri) on the Sacred Mountain (Burkhan Khaldun).

Apparently Christianity as a development of Judaism was especially close to the descendants of the ancient Indo-Europeans. It is tempting to assume that the reason for this is the influence of the newcomer ancient Indo-Europeans on the teachings of Abraham.

Today we see that monotheism is gradually losing ground.

The Jews became mothballed and ceased militantly to prove the correctness of their monotheism. Some Jews turned to the occult pagan corruption of Judaism - Kabbalah. Some Jews have become atheists. Even representatives of the chosen ancient Jewish priesthood of the Levites become militant atheists (K. Marx). Other Semites tend to practice Islam. But the latter are stubbornly pulled into the marginal area of \u200b\u200bfanatical terrorism, which in its essence is also paganism and occultism.

The carriers of the Indo-European haplogroup R1b and non-Indo-European I are trying to free themselves from the remnants of Christianity in Western Europe and fell into fanatical atheism. As if occult paganism was ripening in this territory in parallel with the flourishing of Christianity, in order to one day break out and plunge everyone in the end into extreme atheism. Having economically subjugated the whole world, they are also trying to aggressively impose their disbelief on all the peoples of the world.

Only lazy R1a in comfortable forests are still trying to resist the onslaught of atheism from the west and preserve the spiritual tradition of Orthodoxy. How long will the strength last?