Proto-Indo-European homeland

The Proto-Indo-European homeland was the prehistoric homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), meaning it was the region where the proto-language was spoken before it split into the dialects from which the earliest Indo-European language later evolved.

The most widely accepted proposal about the location of the Proto-Indo-European homeland was called the steppe hypothesis. It puts the archaic, early, and late PIE homeland in the Pontic–Caspian steppe around 4000 BCE. A notable second possibility, which has gained renewed attention during the 2010s and 2020s due to aDNA research, is the Armenian hypothesis, which situates the homeland for archaic PIE ('Indo-Hittite') south of the Caucasus mountains. A third contender is the Anatolian hypothesis, which puts it in Anatolia c. 8000 BCE. Several other explanations have been proposed, including the outdated but historically prominent North European hypothesis, the Neolithic creolisation hypothesis, the Paleolithic continuity paradigm, the Arctic theory, and the "indigenous Aryans" (or "out of India") hypothesis. These are not widely accepted, and are considered to be fringe theories.

The search for the homeland of the Indo-Europeans began during the late 18th century with the discovery of the Indo-European language family. The methods used to establish the homeland have been drawn from the disciplines of historical linguistics, archaeology, physical anthropology and, more recently, human population genetics.

The steppe model, the Anatolian model, and the Near Eastern (or Armenian) model are the three main solutions for the Indo-European homeland. The steppe model, placing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) homeland in the Pontic-Caspian steppe about 4000 BCE, is the theory supported by most scholars.

According to linguist Allan R. Bomhard (2019), the steppe hypothesis proposed by archeologists Marija Gimbutas and David W. Anthony "is supported not only by linguistic evidence, but also by a growing body of archeological and genetic evidence. The Indo-Europeans have been identified with several cultural complexes existing in that area between 4500 and 3500 BCE. The literature supporting such a homeland is both extensive and persuasive [...]. Consequently, other scenarios regarding the possible Indo-European homeland, such as Anatolia, have now been mostly abandoned," although critical issues such as the way the proto-Greek, proto-Armenian, proto-Albanian,^{[citation needed]} proto-Celtic, and proto-Anatolian languages became spoken in their attested homeland are still debated within the context of the steppe model.

A notable second possibility, which has gained renewed attention since the 2010s, is the "Near Eastern model", also known as the Armenian hypothesis. It was proposed by linguists Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov in the early 1980s, postulating relationships between Indo-European and Caucasian languages based on the disputed glottalic theory and related to archaeological findings by Grogoriev. Some recent DNA research has resulted in renewed suggestions of the possibility of a Caucasian or northwest Iranian homeland for archaic or 'proto-proto-Indo-European' (also termed 'Indo-Anatolian' or 'Indo-Hittite' in the literature), the common ancestor of both Anatolian languages and early proto-IE (from which Tocharian and all other early branches divided). These suggestions are disputed in other recent publications, which still locate the origin of the ancestor of proto-Indo-European in the Eastern European/Eurasian steppe or from a hybridization of both steppe and Northwest-Caucasian languages, while "[a]mong comparative linguists, a Balkan route for the introduction of Anatolian IE is generally considered more likely than a passage through the Caucasus, due, for example, to greater Anatolian IE presence and language diversity in the west."

The Anatolian hypothesis proposed by archeologist Colin Renfrew places the pre-PIE homeland in Anatolia about 8000 BCE, and the homeland of Proto-Indo-European proper in the Balkans around 5000 BCE, with waves of linguistic expansion following the progression of agriculture in Europe. Although it has attracted substantive attention and discussions, the datings it proposes are at odds with the linguistic timeframe for Proto-Indo-European, and with genetic data which do not find evidence for Anatolian origins in the Indian gene pool.

Apart from DNA evidence (see below), Anthony and Ringe (2015) give a number of arguments against the Anatolian hypothesis. First, cognate words for "axle", "wheel", "wagon-pole", and "convey by vehicle" can be found in a number of Indo-European languages ranging from Irish to Tocharian, but not Anatolian. This suggests that Proto-European speakers, after the split with Anatolian, had wheeled vehicles, which the neolithic farmers did not. For various reasons, such as the regular sound-changes which the words exhibit, the suggestion that the words might have spread later by borrowing or have been introduced by parallel innovation in the different branches of Indo-European can be ruled out. Secondly, the words borrowed at an early date by Proto-Uralic, as well as those borrowed from Caucasian languages, indicate a homeland geographically between the Caucasus and the Urals. Thirdly, if the Indo-European languages had spread westwards from Anatolia, it might be expected that Greek would be closest to Anatolian, whereas in fact it is much closer to Indo-Aryan. In addition, the culture described in early poems such as Homer's – praise of warriors, feasting, reciprocal guest-friendship, and so on – more closely match what is known of the burial practices of the steppe peoples than the neolithic farmers.