ABEL 111

• The Indo-European family of languages has developed from some single language spoken thousands of years ago by a relatively small group of people in a restricted geographical area
• People who spoke Proto-Indo-European are referred to as Indo-Europeans, which is related to language and not race or culture
• Modern speakers of Indo-European languages

  • Indians
  • Afghans
  • Iranians
  • Greeks
  • Irishmen
  • Russians
  • Mexicans
  • Brazilians
  • Norwegians
• The traditional view suggests that Indo-Europeans were nomadic or semi-nomadic people who imposed their language on neighboring agricultural or urban areas
• Archaeologist Colin Renfrew argues that the initial expansion of Indo-Europeans was the pushing out of agricultural frontiers, introducing agriculture to less populated areas
• Geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer shows a large genetic influence in the British Isles from Neolithic movements, supporting Renfrew's dating of Indo-European expansion
• Languages can spread to new areas without large-scale migrations
• Indo-Europeans did not originate from advanced cultural centers like the Nile valley, Mesopotamia, or the Indus valley
• Indo-European speakers appeared as intruders in places like the Mesopotamian area around 1500 BC
• Hittite was used in Anatolia around 1500 BC
• Aryas, belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European, were in north-west India around 1500 BC
• Greek language was in use in Crete and the Greek mainland by 1400 BC
• Italic-speaking peoples appeared in northern Italy around 1500 BC and spread southwards
• Celtic-speaking peoples became visible in the region of the Alps around the fifth century BC
• The Celtic-speaking peoples first become visible in the region of the Alps, with inscriptions from around the fifth century BC onwards
• The Germanic-speaking peoples were first heard about from Greek and Roman authors during the first century BC, living mainly east of the Rhine in parts of what are now Germany and the Netherlands, and also in Scandinavia
• Our earliest records of Germanic languages come in the form of inscriptions in the runic alphabet, mainly from the fourth century AD onwards, with a handful of earlier examples dating back perhaps as far as the first century AD
• Germanic personal names and placenames were recorded in Latin texts and inscriptions of the Roman imperial period
• Slavic-speaking groups were living north of the Carpathians, mainly between the Vistula and the Dnieper, before they began to expand in the early years of the Christian era, but significant written records of the Slavic languages are not available before the central Middle Ages
• The Indo-European languages had already diverged markedly from one another by the time of early records
• The divergence of Indo-European languages likely began by 3000 BC at the latest
• Words occurring in a large number of Indo-European languages, and which cannot be shown to be loanwords, were presumably part of the vocabulary of Proto-Indo-European
• Loss of words is a common happening in all languages, and when peoples have been widely dispersed and met widely different conditions, many of them will lose large numbers of words
• Loanwords pose a danger in deducing the original vocabulary of Proto-Indo-European
• Common vocabulary supports the traditional view that the Indo-Europeans, before their dispersal, were a nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoral people
• Related words


  • sh, Sanskrit uksan-, Tocharian okso, ewe related to Latin ovis and Sanskrit avi-
• Cattle were highly prized
• Words for cattle and wealth

  • Old English feoh, Sanskrit pacu-, Latin pecu
• Latin word for 'money, wealth' was pecunia
• Cattle figure prominently in the early writings of Indo-European peoples
• Other domestic animals


  • dog, possibly pig, possibly goose
• No common word for the ass or the camel
• Indo-Europeans had horses
• Words for vehicles


  • wheel, axle, nave, yoke
• Food items


  • cheese, butter
• No common word for milk has survived
• No large common vocabulary has survived for agriculture
• Common words for grain
• Greek and Sanskrit have cognate words for plough and furrow
• No common word for beer