The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a hypothetical prehistoric ethnolinguistic group of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family.
Knowledge of them comes chiefly from that linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics. The Proto-Indo-Europeans likely lived during the Late Neolithic period (6,400–3,500 BC). Mainstream scholars place them in the Pontic–Caspian steppe across Eurasia (this steppe extends from northeastern Bulgaria and southeastern Romania, through Moldova, and southern and eastern Ukraine, through the Northern Caucasus of southern Russia, and into the Lower Volga region of western Kazakhstan, adjacent to the Kazakh steppe to the east, both forming part of the larger Eurasian Steppe).[1] Some archaeologists would extend the time depth of PIE to the Middle Neolithic period (5500 to 4500 BC) or even the Early Neolithic period (7500 to 5500 BC) and suggest alternative origin hypotheses.
By the early second millennium BC, descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans had reached far and wide across Eurasia, including Anatolia (Hittites), the Aegean (the linguistic ancestors of Mycenaean Greece), the north of Europe (Corded Ware culture), the edges of Central Asia (Yamnaya culture), and southern Siberia (Afanasievo culture).[2]
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- ^ Anthony, David W. (26 July 2010). The horse, the wheel, and language: how Bronze-Age riders from the Eurasian steppes shaped the modern world. Princeton, N.J. ISBN 9781400831104. OCLC 496275617.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Mallory, J. P.; Adams, Douglas Q. (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture. Taylor & Francis. pp. 4 and 6 (Afanasevo), 13 and 16 (Anatolia), 243 (Greece), 127–128 (Corded Ware), and 653 (Yamna). ISBN 978-1-884964-98-5. Retrieved 24 March 2012.