Scheme of Indo-European language dispersals from
c. 4000 to 1000 BC according to the widely held Kurgan hypothesis.
- 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)
4 A (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 western steppe
Urheimat hypotheses
According to some archaeologists, PIE speakers cannot be assumed to have been a single, identifiable
people or tribe, but were a group of loosely related populations ancestral to the later, still partially
prehistoric, Bronze Age Indo-Europeans. This view is held especially by those archaeologists who posit
an original homeland of vast extent and immense time depth. However, this view is not shared by
linguists, as proto-languages, like all languages before modern transport and communication, occupied
small geographical areas over a limited time span, and were spoken by a set of close-knit communities—
a tribe in the broad sense.[20]
Researchers have put forward a great variety of proposed locations for the first speakers of Proto-Indo-
European. Few of these hypotheses have survived scrutiny by academic specialists in Indo-European
studies.
Pontic-Caspian steppe hypothesis
The Kurgan (or Steppe) hypothesis was first formulated by Otto Schrader (1883) and V. Gordon
Childe (1926),[22][23] and was later systematized by Marija Gimbutas from 1956 onwards. The name
originates from the kurgans (burial mounds) of the Eurasian steppes. The hypothesis suggests that the
Indo-Europeans, a patriarchal, patrilinear, and nomadic culture of the Pontic–Caspian steppe (now part
of Eastern Ukraine and Southern Russia), expanded in several waves during the 3rd millennium BC,
coinciding with the taming of the horse. Leaving archaeological signs of their presence (see Corded Ware