Linguistics and Archaeology
istorii and have now presented it in full in two large volumes
(together running to more than thirteen hundred pages).l6
It is very clear that Gamkrelidze and Ivanov are at their
weakest in dealing with matters of chronology, history, and
archaeology. They speak confidently but vaguely about the
fourth and fifth millennia B.C. Perhaps because they did not
wish to deny entirely Gimbutas's "Kurgan hypothesis" they
proposed that Armenia was the Proto-Indo-European home-
land before some PIE speakers moved north across the Caucasus
and settled in the Pontic steppe. According to Gamkrelidze
and Ivanov, it was only the "European" branch of the Indo-
European family (this branch included Celtic, Italic, Ger-
manic, Baltic, and Slavic) that lived in the Pontic steppe in the
third millennium. In the fifth and fourth millennia (before the
"European" branch split off from its Hittite-Indo-Iranian-
Greek-Armenian fellows), the undivided PIE speakers lived in
- T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov, Indoevmpejskij jazyk i in-
doevropejcy (The Indo-European Language and the Indo-Europeans), 2 vols. (Tbi-
lisi: Tbilisi University, 1985). I am deeply indebted to my colleague, Pro-
fessor Alice Harris, for calling my attention to this important study and for
showing me the galley proofs of John Greppin's TLS review. An English
translation of the two-volume Russian edition is now being prepared. In
the meanwhile, for those of us who are unable to read Russian, the Journal
of Indo-European Studies devoted the spring and summer issues of its 1985
volume to the thesis, offering not only an English translation of the Vestnik
drevnej istorii articles, but also vigorous assaults by I. M. Diakonoff and
Marija Gimbutas. FromJIES 13 (1985) I shall make reference to Gamkre-
lidze and Ivanov, "The Ancient Near East and the Indo-European Question:
Temporal and Territorial Characteristics of Proto-Indo-European based on
Linguistic and Historico-Cultural Data," 3—48; Gamkrelidze and Ivanov,
"The Migrations of Tribes Speaking Indo-European Dialects from their
Original Homeland in the Near East to their Historical Habitations in Eur-
asia," 49-91; I. M. D'iakanov, "On the Original Home of the Speakers of
Indo-European," 92-174; Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, "The Problem of the
Original Homeland of the Speakers of Indo-European Languages in Re-
sponse to I. M. Diakonoff s Article," 175—84; M. Gimbutas, "Primary and
Secondary Homeland of the Indo-Europeans: Comments on the Gamkre-
lidze-Ivanov Articles," 185-202.
33
