Talk:Indo-European

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Peer review Indo-European has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

Because the page was moved, the peer review is really here: Wikipedia:Peer review/Indo-European

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[edit] Indo European Language Tree Picture

The picture I uploaded seems to have been deleted from the page because of copyright infringe. I think, of all the charts and pictures of Indo European relations I've come across, this was the best. Is there someway we can keep it? I'm not sure how to approach this or what to do. Any options? The image page is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IndoEuro.jpg

[edit] reworking into summary article

  • due to a suggestion on WP:PR, I'm reworking this article into a summary, pointing to several sub-articles, as listed in Template:Indo-European
  • Indo-European (linguistics) is supposed to give background on the history of research. Maybe someone can think of a better title?
  • most of the material, links etc. of this article was actually related to the Proto-Indo-Europeans an has been moved there.

dab 09:43, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Re: "PTC": Does this stand? Does anybody have some background for this (e.g. geneticists' views)? My suspicion is that this is just a random theory picked off the net (continuitas.com seems to be mainly about two italian authors). Regarding the theory itself, my suspicion is that genetic analysis of *any* region (except obvious "melting pot"/crossroads, such as Malta etc.) would show strong continuity, since large-scale long-distance migrations are very rare (in pre-modern times, of course), and genetical traces of "invaders" will be very scarce, which does not mean that the language was not completely replaced at one point.

Even minor migrations, minor compared to the population total, may incuce major linguistic change. "Migrations" that go on over several generations are better described as diffusion to avoid mental images of warlike conquering horsemen looting, raping and burning etc.

Anyway, I have created a separate article for PTC for now. Some smoothing of this (Indo-European) article is certainly still necessary. I'm trying to make it more coherent, but at some point, somebody else should check my edits for POV. Dbachmann 09:57, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)


The article needed serious NPOVing: it did not have one particular bent, but there were lots of little paragraphs, partly redundant, that were at odds with each other. have a look at the top of The Search for Indo European Origins where I tried to neutrally mention the different "emotional" issues. Some more integration work is still needed, though. Some POV claims I removed, for instance the assertion that 19th century research was tainted by racism from the outset. This simply doesn't do justice to the bulk of serious research. It's true that the Nazis made a big fuss of the 'Aryans', but the scholarly literature was only very marginally affected by this, so that the history of these distortions have a more adequate home in an article on the Nazis. Similarly, RSS style nationalistic views may be linked, but should be constrained to articles such as Aryan invasion theory. Dbachmann 08:57, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)


Can somebody explain to me how a philosopher like Friedrich Nietzsche can have contributed to the discovery of the Indo-Europeans? It seems implausible to me. Thanks in advance. Andries 23:17, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't know anything about this in particular, but Nietzche was originally trained as a philologist, not as a philosopher, you know, so it's not at all beyond reason that he might have dabbled in this territory. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 00:20, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

Wow, is Indogermanen really the German word for "Indo-European"? Those wacky, wacky Germans. [1] I thought the "Indo-Germanic" thing was long dead... -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 17:18, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

-- Look,

  • Nietzsche was trained as a classical philologist. This doesn't mean he has the slightest involvement with PIE. It is ridiculous to mention Nietzsche in this article, and to leave out people like Jones and Sommer etc. Mentioning Dumezil may be in order, even though his theories are badly outdated, and the controversies should be alluded to.
  • "Indogermanisch" is a technical term and has no Nazi bent whatsoever! I don't know what people are thinking. Probably the fact that some steppe tribe called themselves "arya" in 2000 BC makes them Nazis, according to this argument? "Indo-Germanic" as originally intended in the 19th century was a linguistic term supposed to express the geographical range of the language family, as it were a bracket, including the most eastern and the most northern, to avoid having to call it "indo-aryan-graeco-armeno-italo-celto-albano-germanic" or something. It was never meant to express dominance of germanic (or indic) languages of any sort. After the discovery of Tocharian, we would have to switch to "Tocharo-Germanic", but of course the confusion would not be worth it.

I will try to modify the article accordingly, as gently as I can manage.

Dbachmann 13:18, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I have removed "Mostly for political reasons" before "their very existence is also questioned by scholars". George Feuerstein's book In Search of the Cradle of Civilization gives many cogent arguments for India as the origin of Sanskrit, and perhaps of other Indo-European languages. In his book, Hinduism: a Short Introduction, Klaus Klostermaier summarizes and seems to accept these arguments.

It is true that tools of the right-wing BJP have made similar arguments for political reasons, but the inclusion of this clause may lead right-thinking readers to unnecessarily reject these lines of inquiry.


Does BJP mean what I think it does!!??
If you were thinking Bharatiya Janata Party ("Indian People's Party"), then yes!Goethean 17:35, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
apparently BJP means "Blowjob principle" on Usenet (though not widely used, it seems). This would make for a cool disambiguation page!
BJP
  • British Journal of Photography
  • Blowjob principle, principle of tit-for-tat or something
  • Bharatiya Janata Party ("Indian People's Party"), right-wing nationalistic party of India
 :-) Dbachmann 09:48, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Indo-European existence

I object to the fact that Indo-Europeans really existed. Not only are they a theory that was created by linguists, but there has been no proof (other than linguistic theories) to support it. On the other hand, there has been ample Archaeological and Anthropological facts to support just the opposite, that a Indo-European nomadic tribe never existed. Also, the indo-european theory is based on the fact that the human race was created by monogenesis. There is another school of thought that supports polygenesis (that the human race evolved in different parts of the planet at the same time) The indo-european theory is just not viable under the polygenesis theory (the one I am supporting) However neither the monogenesis or the polygenesis theory have been proven without a shadow of a doubt, so I cannot prove for certain that indo-europeans never existed until that matter is cleared up.

However the indo-european theory has been changed many times since its original conception. It has been thrown back from 1200 bc, to 1800 to 3000. Greek Mythology does not mention in any place that a nomadic tribe conquered them or that they conquered the native tribes when they moved into the Aegean territory, on the contrary, they mention that they (The Greeks) always lived there.

There are so many facts to discredit the theory that I wonder why it still survives. DB0 16:03, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)


1. Show us this archaeological and anthropological proof you mentioned that shows the Indo-European theory isn't true,

2. As of now, there are more discoveries supporting monogenesis than polygenesis,

3. Even with polygenesis, the Indo-European theory is totally possible; all the groups in the Indo-European group have for a long time been said to all be Caucasian, one of the supposed races for polygenesis,

4. It is no coincidence that languages like Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit have related words; languages (and genes) do not become closer to each other again, they only diverge, except when there is later influence, like Latin on English, and there doesn't seem to be enough of that possible to explain all the relationships seen in the Indo-European theory,

5. I have always read that in around 1200 BC, there was some group, usually called the Dorians, who invaded or entered the Greek Peninsula, which at that time was already inhabited by the Myceneans - who are not thought to be Indo-European, and who also happened to like to make Earth goddess statues something like what Marija Gimbutas said in her Kurgan hypothesis,

6. Every culture around the world has some mythological story for creation of the world and the origin of the people they happen to identify themselves to be at that moment; you have to look a little deeper to see any relics of truth in those stories,

spettro9 5 Jan 2005

---

Ummm, please get your facts straight. The Mycenaens were Indo-European AND Greek. Before entering the Balkans, the Greeks seperated into the Mycenaens, who migrated to the south, c. 2000 BC, and the Dorians, who remained in the northern part of the Balkans. Approximately 1000 years later, the Dorians joined them, or rather, carried out an invasion on them and plunged Greece into a "dark age". Nonetheless, their linguistic influence was low, and both Modern and Ancient Greek are descended from primitive Mycenaean. Dorian dialects still exist, with a small number of speakers. ~ Eiríkr Rauði 12:38, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
Cite sources, not opinions. Zosodada 05:10, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Albanian, Tochranian, Anatolian not Centum/Satem?

The article states that there is some evidence that Tochranian, Anatolian, and Albanian don't belong to either Centum or Satem, yet no evidence is given that help coroborate this. Whoever wrote that (or anyone else that's familiar with the theory) should write what evidence there is for this theory, otherwise there may as well be no point in having it there. (Stamford).

[edit] Silly paragraph removed

I have removed this paragraph:

These kings were ragarded as being able to "reach out and defend their
people". This is an important fact, as the word reach is the only
Germanic word to maintain a very well-known Indo-European root,
meaning king, that can be seen in Latin rex, Irish rí, and
Sanskrit raj.

It's silly, I've seen no evidence that "reach" is from the PIE for "king", and there are plenty of other Germanic words that are descended from the root in question. Crculver 17:59, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

And rightly so. Judging from the style of it and the kind of article this is, I suspect it was written by User:Kenneth Alansson who has been banned for adding (and highly aggressively defending) pseudo-scientific utter nonsense. Fedor 13:07, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] hi

" the Proto-Indo-Europeans, possibly originating from somewhere around the Black Sea region from the 5th millennium BC onward."

I think this theory is very likely to be nonsence.

Nonetheless, it is the most widely accepted hypothesis. The only real alternative, Renfrew's theory of an origin in Anatolia, is held by few and is becoming increasingly abandoned. Wikipedia's goal is to represent the current thought in scholarship. Why do you protest the common theory, and do you hold the qualifications necessary to back up your assertion? Crculver 20:26, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The last time I checked, Anatolia was in the Black Sea Region, namely directly under it. So I don't sea how Renfrew's views are contradictory to the commonly held view, or how it is becoming 'abandoned'. Fedor 10:00, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Oops, I misread the poster above in thinking that "north of the Black Sea" was written. That is the mainstream view, with an origin south of the Black Sea being proposed by Renfrew and held by ever less. Sorry for the misreading. However, the anonymous poster who began this thread didn't offer anything constructive. Crculver 10:16, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
True. And I do not wish to contend what the mainstream believes, but wonder how they can pin-point it so exactly. Sounds a bit speculative to me, maybe that is what the previous poster hooked on. In any case, the present formulation is good as it covers both views, mainstream's and Renfrew's. Fedor 11:16, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Notes for map of Indo-European expansion

There is good map. But there are several mistakes:

1) Corsica and Sardinia were not Indo-European up to 1000 BC, because its population (Corses and Sardes) are described by ancient authors as relatives of non-Indoeuropean Hispanic Iberes. Romanisation of these islands was made to 1st cent. AD.

2) Eastern Spain was home of non-Indoeuropean Iberes and this area was romanisated up to 1st cent. AD.

3) In Scandinavia Northern Bronze Age culture which associated with Indo-Europeans spread to Norway and more large part of Sweden.

4) Estonia had no significant Indo-European population and generally border between Finnic and Baltic populations was Daugava (Dvina River) in today Latvia.

5) It is believed that in migration in Europe Indo-Europeans is divided to 2 branch: northern (Paleoeuropeans - ancesors of Celts, Illyrians, Italics, Venets, Germans, Slavs and Balts) and southern (ancesors of Greeks, Thracians, Phrygyans and Armenians). Border between these two branch was Carpatian mountains.

6) Up to 1000 BC nor Crete nor Cyprus were not Indo-European which is fixed in historical accounts.

7) It is believed in Kurgan hypothesis and is evidenced from historical and linguistical data that Anatolians came from Agean Sea basin (for example Carians).

8) Armenian Highlands was not Indo-European up to 800 BC. Its population were predominantly Caucasian-speaking Hurrians and Urartians.

9) About Tocharians: from linguistical data is known that Tocharians is strongly contacted with Finno-Ugric tribes. From this and archeological accounts it is believed that ancesors of Tocharians were population of Fatyanovo culture (central Russia). When and by which way Tocharians came to Sinkiang (Western China) is not known, but because slightly linguistical contacts between Tocharian and Iranic languages proposed that migration went through forest zone (not steppe).

Generally I think that it will better correct map.

Dmitry Krotko (til@bigmir.net).

Good points, and I'll try to take them into consideration when I update the map. Of course, it can only ever be very approximate in any case (except for your point (9) which is news to me; do you have a reference? I am also not familiar with your terminology in (5).) thanks, dab (ᛏ) 18:08, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] back to dab page

I think I originally started this page as an overview of the articles linked by {{Indo-European}}. By now, it has become difficult to keep it aligned with its sub articles, and I propose cutting it down to a disambiguation page (along the lines of English or German), i.e. linking to Indo-European languages, Proto-Indo-European language and Proto-Indo-Europeans (of course without loss of data, exporting everything not already covered there). dab (ᛏ) 18:13, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

did it. dab (ᛏ) 16:34, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation Link Repair

I've re-pointed or removed the links to this page from all but three of the hundreds of pages that used to point to it. The three that remain are

I'm declaring it done for now. Dpv 23:06, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

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