Europe, Dravidian toward Pakistan and India, and Afro-Asiatic toward
Arabia and North Africa.
According to Renfrew (2004), the spread of Indo-European proceeded
in the following steps:[ citation needed ]
Around 6500 BC: Pre-Proto-Indo-European , located in Anatolia,
splits into Anatolian and Archaic Proto-Indo-European , the
language of those Pre-Proto-Indo-European farmers who migrate
to Europe in the initial farming dispersal. Archaic Proto-Indo-
European languages occur in the Balkans (Starčevo-Körös-Cris
culture), in the Danube valley (Linear Pottery culture), and
possibly in the Bug-Dniestr area (Eastern Linear pottery culture).
Around 5000 BC: Archaic Proto-Indo-European splits
into Northwestern Indo-European (the ancestor of Italic, Celtic,
and Germanic), located in the Danube valley, Balkan Proto-Indo-
European (corresponding to Gimbutas' Old European culture),
and Early Steppe Proto-Indo-European (the ancestor of
Tocharian).Reacting to criticism, Renfrew revised his proposal to the effect of
taking a pronounced Indo-Hittite position. Renfrew's revised views
place only Pre-Proto-Indo-European in 7th millennium BCE Anatolia,
proposing as the homeland of Proto-Indo-European proper
the Balkans around 5,000 BCE, explicitly identified as the "Old European
culture" proposed by Marija Gimbutas. He thus still situates the original
source of the Indo-European language family in Anatolia c. 7,000 BCE.
Reconstructions of a Bronze Age PIE society based on vocabulary items
like "wheel" do not necessarily hold for the Anatolian branch, which
appears to have separated from PIE at an early stage, prior to the
invention of wheeled vehicles.[63]