Back الهجرات الهندية الأوروبية Arabic ইন্দো-ইউরোপীয় অভিপ্রয়াণ Bengali/Bangla Migracions indoeuropees Catalan Migraciones indoeuropeas Spanish مهاجرتهای هندواروپاییان Persian Migrasi Indo-Eropa ID Migrasi Indo-Eropa MIN ہند-یورپی ہجرتاں PNB Migrações indo-europeias Portuguese Migrațiile indo-europene Romanian
– Center: Steppe cultures
1 (black): Anatolian languages (archaic PIE)
2 (black): Afanasievo culture (early PIE)
3 (black): Yamnaya culture expansion (Pontic-Caspian steppe, Danube Valley) (late PIE)
4A (black): Western Corded Ware
4B-C (blue & dark blue): Bell Beaker; adopted by Indo-European speakers
5A-B (red): Eastern Corded ware
5C (red): Sintashta (proto-Indo-Iranian)
6 (magenta): Andronovo
7A (purple): Indo-Aryans (Mittani)
7B (purple): Indo-Aryans (India)
[NN] (dark yellow): proto-Balto-Slavic
8 (grey): Greek
9 (yellow): Iranians
– [not drawn]: Armenian, expanding from Catacomb culture into the South Caucasus
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The Indo-European migrations are hypothesized migrations of Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) speakers, and subsequent migrations of people speaking derived Indo-European languages, which took place approx. 4000 to 1000 BCE, potentially explaining how these languages came to be spoken across a large area of Eurasia, spanning from the Indian subcontinent and Iranian plateau to Atlantic Europe, in a process of cultural diffusion.
While there can be no direct evidence of prehistoric languages (languages that have not been documented), a synthesis of linguistics, archaeology, anthropology and genetics establishes both the existence of Proto-Indo-European and the spread of its daughter dialects through migrations of large populations of its speakers, as well as the recruitment of new speakers through emulation of conquering elites. Comparative linguistics describes the similarities between various languages and the laws of systematic change, which allow the reconstruction of ancestral speech (see Indo-European studies). Archaeology traces the spread of artifacts, habitations, and burial sites presumed to be created by speakers of Proto-Indo-European in several stages: from the hypothesized locations of the Proto-Indo-European homeland, into their later locations of Western Europe as well as Central, South and Eastern Asia. These changes occurred by migrations and by language shift through elite-recruitment as described by anthropological research.[1][2] Recent genetic research has increasingly contributed to understanding the kinship relations among prehistoric cultures.
According to the widely held Kurgan hypothesis, or renewed Steppe hypothesis, the oldest migration branch produced the Anatolian languages (Hittite language and Luwian language) which split from the earliest proto-Indo-European speech community (archaic PIE) inhabiting the Volga basin. The second-oldest branch language group, Tocharian, was spoken in the Tarim Basin (now western China), after splitting from early PIE spoken on the eastern Pontic steppe. The bulk of the Indo-European languages developed from late PIE, which according to this hypothesis was spoken within the Yamnaya horizon on the Pontic–Caspian steppe around 3000 BCE.