Cradle of Civilization

A Blog about the Birth of Our Civilisation and Development

The Indo-Europeans

Posted by Fredsvenn on July 4, 2015

Funnel(-neck-)beaker culture






While the Funnel(-neck-)beaker culture (short TRB or TBK from (German) Trichter(-rand-)becherkultur, ca 4300 – 2800 BC), an archaeological culture in north-central Europe, isn’t exactly the LBK, the TRB origins have to be sought rather in the central European LBK than in the Mediterranean Cardium pottery. According to a craniometrical cluster analysis by Ilse Schwidetzky, the Swedish neolithic is very similar to the central European middle neolithic Rössen culture, and both are close to LBK.

The main difference between the Danubian cultures and the Cardium derived cultures is that the latter seem more strongly dominated by haplogroup G, which in turn seems to imply a stronger presence of the (Southern part of the) Caucasus component, while the former may have had more haplogoup I and Haplogroup R1b3.

Aratta (Arta)/Urartu/Ararat/Armenia

Aratta (becoming Urartu/Ararat then Armenia) is a land that appears in Sumerian myths surrounding Enmerkar and Lugalbanda, two early and possibly mythical kings of Uruk also mentioned on the Sumerian king list.

The name is connected to the Indo-European root Ar- meaning “assemble/create” which is vastly used in names of or regarding the Sun, light, or fire, found in Ararat, Aryan, Arta etc. The Proto-Indo-Europeans were in the past referred to by many scholars as Aryans. This term, however, has fallen out of favor due to its association with racist theories.

Asha is the Avestan language term (corresponding to Vedic language ṛta) for a concept of cardinal importance to Zoroastrian theology and doctrine. Its Old Persian equivalent is arta-.[c] In Middle Iranian languages the term appears as ard-. In the moral sphere, aša/arta represents what has been called “the decisive confessional concept of Zoroastrianism.” The opposite of Avestan aša is druj, “lie.”

Aratta is described in Sumerian literature as a fabulously wealthy place full of gold, silver, lapis lazuli and other precious materials, as well as the artisans to craft them. It is remote and difficult to reach and home to the goddess Inana, who transfers her allegiance from Aratta to Uruk after Aratta being conquered by Enmerkar of Uruk.


Armani, (also given as Armanum) was an ancient kingdom mentioned by Sargon of Akkad, a Semitic Akkadian emperor famous for his conquest of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, and his grandson Naram-Sin of Akkad as stretching from Ibla to Bit-Nanib, its location is heavily debated, and it continued to be mentioned in the later Assyrian inscriptions.


Another mention by pharaoh Thutmose III of Egypt in the 33rd year of his reign (1446 BC) as the people of Ermenen, and says in their land “heaven rests upon its four pillars”. Mitanni (Mi-ta-an-ni; Mittani Mi-it-ta-ni), also called Hanigalbat (Hanigalbat, Khanigalbat cuneiform Ḫa-ni-gal-bat) in Assyrian or Naharin from the Assyro-Akkadian word for “river”, cf. Aram-Naharaim in Egyptian texts was a Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and southeast Anatolia from ca. 1500 BC–1300 BC.



The Mitanni warriors were called marya, the term for warrior in Sanskrit. Maryannu is an ancient word for the caste of chariot-mounted hereditary warrior nobility which existed in many of the societies of the Middle East during the Bronze Age.



Armenian hypothesis


























The earliest remains in Eastern Europe of a wheeled cart were found in the “Storozhova mohyla” kurgan (Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, excavated by Trenozhkin A.I.) associated with the Yamna culture (“Pit [Grave] Culture”), a late copper age/early Bronze Age culture of the Southern Bug/Dniester/Ural region (the Pontic steppe), dating to the 36th–23rd centuries BC. The name also appears in English as Pit Grave Culture or Ochre Grave Culture.




DNA from the remains of nine individuals associated with the Yamna culture from Samara Oblast and Orenburg Oblast has been analyzed. The remains have been dated to 2700–3339 BCE. Y-chromosome sequencing revealed that one of the individuals belonged to haplogroup R1b1-P25 (the subclade could not be determined), one individual belonged to haplogroup R1b1a2a-L23 (and to neither the Z2103 nor the L51 subclades), and five individuals belonged to R1b1a2a2-Z2103. The individuals belonged to mtDNA haplogroups U4a1, W6, H13a1a1a, T2c1a2, U5a1a1, H2b, W3a1a and H6a1b.

A 2015 genome wide study of 94 ancient skeletons from Europe and Russia concluded that Yamnaya autosomal characteristics are very close to the Corded Ware culture people with an estimated a 73% ancestral contribution from the Yamnaya DNA in the DNA of Corded Ware skeletons from Germany.

The same study estimated a 40–54% ancestral contribution of the Yamnaya in the DNA of modern Central & Northern Europeans, and a 20–32% contribution in modern Southern Europeans, excluding Sardinians (7.1% or less) and to a lesser extent Sicilians (11.6% or less).

The Catacomb culture

The Catacomb culture (ca. 2800–2200 BC), a group of related cultures in the early Bronze Age occupying essentially what is present-day Ukraine, was the first to introduce corded pottery decorations into the steppes and shows a profuse use of the polished battle axe, providing a link to the West. Parallels with the Afanasevo culture, including provoked cranial deformations, provide a link to the East. It was preceded by the Yamna culture and was succeeded by the Srubna culture in the Pontic steppe from ca. the 17th century BC.





The Poltavka culture

The Poltavka culture, an early to middle Bronze Age archaeological culture of the middle Volga from about where the Don-Volga canal begins up to the Samara bend, with an easterly extension north of present Kazakhstan along the Samara River valley to somewhat west of Orenburg, is like the Catacomb culture preceded by the Yamna culture, while succeeded by the Sintashta culture. There is evidence of influence from the Maykop culture to its south.

The Poltavka culture seems to be seen as an early manifestation of the Srubna culture/Timber-grave culture (18th–12th centuries BC), a successor to the Yamna culture (Pit Grave culture) and the Poltavka culture occupying the area along and above the north shore of the Black Sea from the Dnieper eastwards along the northern base of the Caucasus to the area abutting the north shore of the Caspian Sea, west of the Ural Mountains.

The Poltavka culture is presumptively early Indo-Iranian (Proto-Indo-Iranian). Several Sintashta towns were built over older Poltovka settlements or close to Poltovka cemeteries, and Poltovka motifs are common on Sintashta pottery.

Sintashta culture


Sintashta material culture also shows the influence of the late Abashevo culture (2500–1900 BCE), a collection of settlements in the forest steppe zone north of the Sintashta region that were also predominantly pastoralist found in the valleys of the Volga and Kama River north of the Samara bend and into the southern Ural Mountains.

It receives its name from the village of Abashevo in Chuvashia. Artifacts are kurgans and remnants of settlements. The Abashevo was the easternmost of the Russian forest zone cultures that descended from Corded Ware ceramic traditions in Middle Europe that begins in the late Neolithic, flourishes through the Copper Age and culminates in the early Bronze Age dated to 2900–2450/2350 BC.

Because of the difficulty of identifying the remains of Sintashta sites beneath those of later settlements the culture was only recently distinguished from the Andronovo culture, a collection of similar local Bronze Age cultures that flourished in western Siberia and the west Asiatic steppe dated to 2000–900 BCE. It is now recognised as a separate entity forming part of the ‘Andronovo horizon’.

The Sintashta culture emerged from the interaction of two antecedent cultures. Its immediate predecessor in the Ural-Tobol steppe was the Poltavka culture (2700—2100 BC), an offshoot of the cattle-herding Yamnaya horizon/Pit [Grave] Culture (3600–2300 BC), a late copper age/early Bronze Age culture of the Southern Bug/Dniester/Ural region (the Pontic steppe), that moved east into the region between 2800 and 2600 BCE.

Corded Ware culture

The Corded Ware culture, alternatively characterized as the Battle Axe culture or Single Grave culture, does not pertain to the Andronovo culture and genetically belongs to the circle of Central European cultures of the Fatyanovo culture type corded ware ceramics.

Because of their possession of both the horse and wheeled vehicles, apparent warlike propensities, wide area of distribution and rapid intrusive expansion at the assumed time of the dispersal of Indo-European languages, the Corded Ware culture was originally suggested as the Urheimat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans.

Today, a Corded Ware origin of these characteristics has lost currency in favour of an origin in the Black Sea-Caspian region, although this has been criticized. Corded Ware is however still generally considered ancestral to the Celts, Germanic peoples, Balts and Slavs. According to J. P. Mallory the origins and dispersal of Corded Ware culture is one of the pivotal unresolved issues of the Indo-European Urheimat problem.







Major Chalcolithic settlements sprang up at Kara-Depe and Namazga-Depe. In addition there were smaller settlements at Anau, Dashlyji, and Yassy-depe. Settlements similar to the early level at Anau also appeared further east – in the ancient delta of the River Tedzen, the site of the Geoksiur Oasis.





It is this Bronze Age culture which has been known as the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (or BMAC, also known as the Oxus civilization), the modern archaeological designation for a Bronze Age civilisation of Central Asia, dated to ca. 2300–1700 BCE, located in present day northern Afghanistan, eastern Turkmenistan, southern Uzbekistan and western Tajikistan, centered on the upper Amu Darya (Oxus River), in area covering ancient Bactria.

Indus civilisation



The relationship between Altyn-Depe and the Indus Valley seems to have been particularly strong. Among the finds there were two Harappan seals and ivory objects. The Harappan settlement of Shortugai in Northern Afghanistan on the banks of the Amu Darya probably served as a trading station. The complex of the BMAC can be compared to proto-urban settlements in the Helmand basin at Mundigak in western Afghanistan and Shahr-i Shōkhta in eastern Iran, or at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley.

Andronovo Culture




New archaeobotanical analysis from Central Eurasian pastoralist campsites in the mountain and desert regions of Central Eurasia documents the oldest known evidence for domesticated grains and farming among seasonally mobile herders that have major implications for our understanding of late prehistoric agriculture across Asia.





Elamo-Dravidian Hypothesis

Namazga V and Altyndepe were in contact with the Late Harappan culture (ca. 2000-1600 BC), and Vadim Mikhaĭlovich Masson (1988) views the culture as having a Proto-Dravidian affiliation. The Dravidian languages are a language family spoken mainly in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and overseas in other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore.

Southworth identifies late Proto-Dravidian with the Southern Neolithic culture in the lower Godavari River basin of South Central India, which first appeared ca. 2,500 BCE, based upon its agricultural vocabulary, while noting that this “would not preclude the possibility that speakers of an earlier stage of Dravidian entered the subcontinent from western or central Asia, as has often been suggested.”


The Elamo-Dravidian language family is a hypothesised language family that links the Dravidian languages of India to the extinct Elamite language of ancient Elam (present-day southwestern Iran). The extinct Harappan language (the language or languages of the Indus Valley Civilization) may also be part of this family.


Recent studies of the distribution of alleles on the Y chromosome, microsatellite DNA, and mitochondrial DNA in India have cast doubt for a biological Dravidian “race” distinct from non-Dravidians in the Indian subcontinent; other recent genetic studies have found evidence of Aryan, Dravidian and pre-Dravidian (original Asian) strata in South Asian populations. Geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza proposes that a Dravidian people were preceded in India by Austroasiatic people, and were present prior to the arrival of Indo-Aryan language speakers in India.

Partha and Majumder (2010) stated that: “In general, the Central Asian populations are genetically closer to the higher-ranking caste populations than to the middle- or lower-ranking caste populations. Among the higher-ranking caste populations, those of northern India are, however, genetically much closer (FST = 0.016) than those of southern India (FST = 0.031)”.


BMAC has attracted attention as a candidate for those looking for the material counterparts to the Indo-Iranians (Aryans), a major linguistic branch that split off from the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi affiliates the site with Indo Iranians.





According to some writers, Bactria was the homeland of Indo-Iranian tribes. The separation of Indo-Aryans proper from Indo-Iranians is commonly dated, on linguistic grounds, to roughly 1800 BCE. The Nuristani languages probably split in such early times, and are classified as either remote Indo-Aryan dialects or as an independent branch of Indo-Iranian.

Archaeologist J.P. Mallory (1998) finds it “extraordinarily difficult to make a case for expansions from this northern region to northern India” and remarks that the proposed migration routes “only [get] the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes, Persians or Indo-Aryans”. Therefore, he prefers to derive the Indo-Aryans from the intermediate stage of the BMAC culture, in terms of a “Kulturkugel” model of expansion.


Parpola elaborates the model and has “Proto-Rigvedic” Indo-Aryans intrude the BMAC around 1700 BCE. He assumes early Indo-Aryan presence in the Late Harappan horizon from about 1900 BCE, and “Proto-Rigvedic” (Proto-Dardic) intrusion to the Punjab as corresponding to the Swat culture from about 1700 BCE.



Christopher I. Beckwith suggests that the Wusun, an Indo-European Europoid people of Inner Asia in antiquity, were of Indo-Aryan origin. From the Chinese term Wusun, Beckwith reconstructs the Old Chinese *âswin, which he compares to the Old Indic aśvin “the horsemen,” the name of the Rigvedic twin equestrian gods. Beckwith suggests that the Wusun were an eastern remnant of the Indo-Aryans, who had been suddenly pushed to the extremeties of the Eurasian Steppe by the Iranian peoples in the 2nd millennium BC.

The Wusun are first mentioned by Chinese sources as vassals in the Tarim Basin of the Yuezhi, an Indo-European Europoid people of possible Tocharian stock. Around 170 BC, the Yuezhi were utterly defeated by the Xiongnu, also former vassals of the Yuezhi. The Yuezhi subsequently attacked the Wusun and killed their king Nandoumi, capturing the Ili Valley from the Saka (Scythians) shortly afterwards.

In return the Wusun settled in the former territories of the Yuezhi as vassals of the Xiongnu. The son of Nandoumi was adopted by the Xiongnu king and made leader of the Wusun. Around 130 bc he attacked and utterly defeated the Yuezhi, settling the Wusun in the Ili Valley.

Soon afterwards they became independent of the Xiongnu, becoming trusted vassals of the Han Dynasty and powerful force in the region for centuries. With the emerging steppe federations of the Rouran, the Wusun migrated into the Pamir Mountains in the 5th century ad. They are last mentioned in 938 ad when a Wusun chieftain paid tribute to the Liao dynasty.



According to B. B. Lal the relation between the BMAC and the Indo-Iranians is questionable, supporting instead the Indigenous Aryans perspective, which is discredited. According to Francfort there is insufficient evidence for any ethnic or linguistic identification of the BMAC solely based on material remains, in the absence of written records.

A significant section of the archaeologists are more inclined to see the culture as begun by farmers in the Near Eastern Neolithic tradition, but infiltrated by Indo-Iranian speakers from the Andronovo culture in its late phase, creating a hybrid. David Anthony also sees the BMAC as a area of contact between the Indo-Europeans and south-Asian cultures, and notes that the Indo-Aryans took dominance after the breakdown of the BMAC.




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