Neolithic creolisation hypothesis

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The Neolithic creolisation hypothesis, first forwarded by Marek Zvelebil in 1995, ^[1] contributes to the Proto-Indo-European Urheimat issue and proposes a cultural melting pot in the Neolithic of Northern Europe of foreign Neolithic farmers and indigeous Mesolithic hunter-gatherer communities, that resulted into the genesis of the Indo-European language family.

The hypothesis holds the linguistic and cultural influence of the Neolithic farmers far greater than the persistence of their foreign gene pool. While according to Zvelebil, like in the Broad Homeland hypothesis, the linguistic influence of indigenous hunter-gatherers predominate, other archeologists such as Marek Nowak^[2] favor a scenario compatible to Colin Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis in attributing the leading linguistic role to the foreign farmers.

A study of strontium isotope signatures among the Neolithic farmers in south-west Germany indicated that the first Linear Pottery culture (LBK) farmers received their partners from a wide catchment, were patrilocal, and inter-married with hunter-gatherer women along the agricultural frontier.^[3] The appearance of Mesolithic motifs on the first Funnel Beaker culture (TRB) pottery, and of other elements in the material culture, has been adduced in support of this results.^[4]

It was theorized this inter-marriage between the two communities resulted in the breakdown of the early farming Linear Pottery culture (LBK) and Lengyel culture social and ideological structure, and a subsequent development of a new foraging-farming community, identified archeologically as TRB, such as to cause the combination of cultural traditions of earlier foraging and farming generations to be accomplished in an act of cultural creolisation. In the Polish Plain this pattern persisted during some 2500 years between 4400 and 1800 bc (2200 BC), until the last hunter-gatherer communities finally became part of the Globular Amphorae/Corded Ware cultural horizon, leading to a cognitive structure more familiar to the indigenous hunter-gatherer community while retaining certain earlier routine practices of both the ancestral Neolithic and Mesolithic traditions. The cultural variability of the Funnel Beaker culture (TRB) horizon and of the later Globular Amphorae and Corded Ware traditions was proposed to be due at least partly to this process.

A more anthropological perspective is proposed to confirm the concept of farmer communities being "acculturated" by neighboring foragers.^[5] Investigations revealed low paleaodemographic values of Linear Pottery farmers as well as Corded Ware culture populations with dominant agricultural occupations. The highest values correspond to Corded Ware culture populations using a husbandry mode of production.^[6]

Frederik Kortlandt's assessment takes into account the typological similarity of Proto-Indo-European to the North-West Caucasian languages. Assuming this similarity can be attributed to areal factors, Frederik Kortlandt thought of Indo-European as a branch of Uralo-Altaic which was transformed under the influence of a Caucasian-like substratum.^[7]. Even though Kortlandt had in mind areal factors that would be essentially in agreement with the Kurgan hypothesis and an origin in the eastern part of the Great European Plain, linguist Peter Schrijver likewise speculates on the reminiscent lexical and typological features of a family of languages featuring complex verbs, of which the Northwest Caucasian languages might have been the sole survivors,^[8] and link these to the archeological Linear Pottery culture.

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