Pre-Indo-European

Old Europe is a term coined by Marija Gimbutas to describe what she perceives as a relatively homogeneous and widespread pre-Indo-European Neolithic culture in Europe. In her major work, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: 6500–3500 B.C. (1982), she refers to these Neolithic cultures as Old Europe. Archaeologists and ethnographers working within her framework believe that the evidence points to migrations of the peoples who spoke Indo-European languages at the beginning of the Bronze age (the Kurgan hypothesis). For this reason, Gimbutas and her associates regard the terms Neolithic Europe, Old Europe, and Pre-Indo-European as synonymous.

Old Europe

Old Europe, or Neolithic Europe, refers to the time between the Mesolithic and Bronze Age periods in Europe, roughly from 7000 BCE (the approximate time of the first farming societies in Greece) to ca. 1700 BCE (the beginning of the Bronze Age in northwest Europe). The duration of the Neolithic varies from place to place: in southeast Europe it is approximately 4000 years (i.e., 7000–3000 BCE); in North-West Europe it is just under 3000 years (ca. 4500–1700 BCE).

Regardless of specific chronology, many European Neolithic groups share basic characteristics, such as living in small-scale, presumably egalitarian, family-based communities, subsisting on domestic plants and animals supplemented with the collection of wild plant foods and hunting, and producing hand-made pottery. There are also many differences, with some Neolithic communities in southeastern Europe living in heavily fortified settlements of 3,000-4,000 people (e.g., Sesklo in Greece) whereas Neolithic groups in England were small (possibly 50-100 people) and highly mobile cattle-herders.

Gimbutas investigated the Neolithic period in order to understand cultural developments in settled village culture in the southern Balkans, which she characterized as peaceful, matrilineal, and possessing a goddess-centered religion. In contrast, she characterizes the later Indo-European influences as warlike, nomadic, and patrilineal. Using evidence from pottery and sculpture, and combining the tools of archaeology, comparative mythology, linguistics, and, most controversially, folklore, Gimbutas invented a new interdisciplinary field, archaeomythology.

In historical times, some ethnonyms are believed to correspond to Pre-Indo-European peoples, assumed to be the descendants of the earlier Old European cultures: the Pelasgians, Minoans, Leleges, Iberians and Basques. Two of the three pre-Greek peoples of Sicily, the Sicans and the Elymians, may also have been pre-Indo-European. The status of the Etruscans is disputed; they are considered either Pre-Indo-European, or speakers of an Anatolian language. The term "Pre-Indo-European" is sometimes extended to refer to Asia Minor, Central Asia and India, in which case the Hurrians and Urartians, Dravidians may also be counted among them.

How many Pre-Indo-European languages existed is not known, nor whether the ancient names of peoples believed, in ancient times or now, to have descended from the pre-ancient population referred to speakers of distinct languages. Marija Gimbutas (1989), observing a unity of symbols marked especially on pots, but also on other objects, concluded that there may have been a single language spoken in Old Europe. She thought that decipherment would have to wait for the discovery of bilingual texts.

The idea of a Pre-Indo-European language in the region precedes Gimbutas. It went by other names, such as "Pelasgian" or "Mediterranean." Apart from the pot marks, the main evidence concerning it (or them) is the names: toponyms, ethnonyms, etc., and roots in other languages believed to be derived from one or more prior languages, possibly unrelated. Reconstruction from the evidence is an accepted, though somewhat speculative, field of study. For example, Sorin Paliga defined a possible Old European language, which he termed "Urian" or "Urbian."

The Kurgan hypothesis

According to the Kurgan hypothesis, Indo-European peoples arrived in the 4th millennium BC across the steppes north of the Black Sea. A warlike people, they imposed themselves as an elite on the Old European populations, who adopted their language. The hypothesis that Indo-European speakers reached Europe from the Pontic steppes in the Bronze Age was perhaps first clearly stated by V. Gordon Childe (1926). Many linguists favor this idea, since studies employing glottochronology appear to show that the common Proto-Indo-European language is unlikely to date before 4000 BCE to 5000 BCE. For instance, the prominent linguist J.P. Mallory has not only carefully assembled the evidence for an origin north of the Black Sea, but has also assembled a compelling collection of evidence showing that Indo-European linguistic influences first appeared in Anatolia around the Bosporus, with the earliest Indo-European traces spreading steadily thence southward and eastward through Anatolia over the centuries, thousands of years after the region had adopted agriculture.

Nevertheless, the Kurgan hypothesis recently fell out of favor with some archaeologists who, beginning with Colin Renfrew (1987), pointed out that there just isn't a Europe-wide archaeological horizon that corresponds to this putative cultural change. If the cultural imprint was strong enough to replace languages, then they claim it should have left some trace on material culture as well - although the actual correspondence between linguistic change and material culture is disputed. Peter Bellwood (2001, 2004) has developed a general hypothesis that major language phyla are likely to be associated with the Neolithic Revolution. His reasoning is first, that the spread of the Neolithic toolkit is more likely to occur through demic diffusion than through cultural diffusion, and second, that a sedentary population relying on domesticated plants and animals will grow much faster than a nomadic, foraging population. Thus, the populations located in the original hearth areas will grow and expand, carrying their language with them. Bellwood (2004) therefore maintains that the Indo-European languages were brought to Europe during the Neolithic, and not the Bronze Age. This theory is strongly disputed by linguistics evidence however, for example the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European words for the wheel and metal working, technological developments that arose much later than the Neolithic.

Notes

Though it should be noted that Nicolae Densuşianu, 1846–1911, used the same set of tools over a 40-year career to investigate the pre-historic times of Romania, as detailed in his book, Dacia Preistorică, published posthumously in 1913.

List of Old European Cultures

Early Neolithic
- Starcevo-Criş culture (Starčevo I, Körös, Criş, Central Balkans, 7th to 5th millennia)
- Dudeşti culture (6th millennium)
Middle Neolithic
- Vinča culture (6th to 3rd millennia)
- Linear Ceramic culture (6th to 5th millennia)
- Comb Ceramic culture (6th to 3rd millennia)
- Precucuteni culture
- Ertebølle culture (5th to 3rd milllennia)

Eneolithic
- Cucuteni culture (5th millennium)
- Lengyel culture (5th millennium)
- A culture in Central Europe produced monumental arrangements of circular ditches between 4800 BC and 4600 BC.
- Funnelbeaker culture (4th millennium)
- Beaker culture (3rd to 2nd millennia, early Bronze Age)

References

Bellwood, Peter. (2001). "Early Agriculturalist Population Diasporas? Farming, Languages, and Genes." Annual Review of Anthropology. 30:181-207.
Bellwood, Peter. (2004). First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0631205667
Childe, V. Gordon. (1926). The Aryans: A Study of Indo-European Origins. London: Paul, Trench, Trubner.
Gimbutas, Marija (1982). The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: 6500–3500 B.C.: Myths, and Cult Images Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520046552
Gimbutas, Marija (1989). The Language of the Goddess. Harper & Row, Publishers. ISBN 0-06-250356-1.
Gimbutas, Marija (1991). The Civilization of the Goddess. SanFrancisco: Harper. ISBN 0-06-250337-5.
Renfrew, Colin. (1987). Archaeology and Language. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0521386756.

External links

Pre-Indo-Europeans | Archaeological cultures | Ancient peoples | Neolithic