Indo-European Origins

by Jean Haudry

Jean Haudry explains what we know about the Indo-Europeans through reconstructed words, transmitted formulas, conceptual schemas, and physical types, providing insights into their ideals, values, and origins.

What do we know about the Indo-Europeans, and how do we know it?

We have two sources of information: an indirect source, which is linguistic palaeontology, and a direct source, which is the ‘Indo-European tradition’.

Linguistic Palaeontology

This involves deducing knowledge of a corresponding reality from the existence of a reconstructed word. For a long time, it was considered our only source of information. In reality, it is the least reliable. It requires constant verification and generally holds only provisional value. For example, we reconstruct (without difficulty in terms of form) a neuter *áye/os- based on Old Indian áyas-, Avestan ayah-, Latin es, and Gothic aiz. But what meaning should it retain? The Latin and Germanic forms denote bronze, the Iranian form refers to metal in general and iron in particular, and the original meaning of the Indian form is disputed. Since placing the Indo-European community in the Iron Age or even the Bronze Age is ruled out for other reasons, the prevailing view is that the form *áye/os- denotes copper. From this, we see that linguistic data alone cannot provide decisive information and must be constantly verified through archaeological evidence. Once the meaning is established, another question arises. The form *áye/os-, like other neuters in *-e/os-, was undoubtedly a derivative. There is a root *ay-, meaning ‘to shine’ or ‘to heat, to burn’. In the sense of ‘to shine’, it refers to native hammered metal; from the second meaning, it refers to metal worked hot. This example illustrates both the importance and uncertainties of linguistic palaeontology.

The Transmitted Formula Collection

Several hundred formulas, meticulously compiled by Rüdiger Schmitt¹, are articulated by word chains that coincide in two or more Indo-European poetries (mostly in the Vedas and Homer, but also in the Avesta, old Germanic poetry, etc.). These formulas are mostly nominal phrases composed of a noun and an epithet, like *kléwos ndhghwitom, ‘undying fame’, or a noun with a genitive complement, like *kléwos nérom, ‘fame of the lords’. Compounds also belong to this category: this is true for proper names, which also form a kind of traditional formulas.

The Conceptual Schemas

A group of conceptual schemas can also be reconstructed, such as the schema Thinking-Acting-Speaking². Some of these schemas can appear in narrative form, like G. Dumézil’s tripartite schema or ‘the crossing of the water of winter darkness’ that I recently studied³: in particular Germanic legends, a hero crosses a body of water (river, sea, etc.) at night and in winter (at a shallow spot, swimming, etc.). Here, syntagms are not formally superimposed; rather, word connections and structures are equated independently of their expression. This tradition, which can be called ‘literary’ (though it is an oral literature), provides us directly or through interpretative effort with the ideals, values, main aspirations, and concerns of the Indo-Europeans.

The Physical Type of the Indo-Europeans

The tradition also informs us about the main physical type of the Indo-Europeans. Throughout the Indo-European world, the ideal physical type corresponds to the Nordic type. The significance attributed to the physical type is highlighted by the symbolism associated with it. In Greece, for example, the hero destined for solar immortality in Elysium (Isle of the Blessed) is inevitably blond. Conversely, the lower elements of the population and hostile neighbours are dark like the earth and the night. Such symbolism would be hard to imagine if the upper class of the population — for whom the poets work and from whom they receive their rewards — did not have fair skin and blond hair. We can confidently conclude that this type was most prevalent in the upper echelons of society, especially since iconography fully supports this conclusion. Comparing three representatives of physical types from classical Greece (Pericles, Socrates, and Chrysippus), it is not difficult to determine which of the three comes closest to the Nordic type. We know that Pericles came from one of Athens’ two most prominent noble houses, Socrates was of humble origin, and Chrysippus, like several other Stoics, came from Asia Minor.⁴

The Last Common Homeland of the Indo-Europeans

If we apply the insights of linguistic palaeontology after rigorous scrutiny, it is possible to formulate more or less verifiable hypotheses about the structure and activities of the community, the family structure and living rules, the divisions of the ethnicity, the social hierarchy, the role of the king, his duties and those of other leaders; about religion, warfare, production, lifestyle, and environment.

At the end of the investigation, prehistoric archaeology can be consulted to spatially and temporally determine the last common homeland of the Indo-Europeans, the core area in which all realities evidenced by linguistic palaeontology must exist. However, the question remains open. For a hundred years, the Danube lands (Central European farmers in the fifth millennium) have been considered; the people of the Ochre Grave culture (Ukraine, fourth or third millennium), a thesis defended by O. Schrader⁵ and revived today by M. Gimbutas⁶; the people of the Funnel Beaker culture, an old thesis revived by L. Kilian⁷, who views this civilisation as an extension of the local Epipalaeolithic. Finally, in a forthcoming work, Ivanov and Gamkrelidze advocate the thesis of a Transcaucasian origin⁸. In this regard, tradition gives us no clue.

The Original Homeland of the Indo-Europeans

Tradition, on the other hand, makes a decisive contribution regarding the oldest, traceable common homeland, possibly the origin of the ethnicity. Its testimony has been carelessly dismissed. It has long been observed⁹ that India, Iran, and the Celtic world retain the memory of an Arctic origin of their ethnicity, a homeland in the land of the all-year-long night. ‘Originally, the Tuatha de Danann were on the islands of the northern world and learned science and magic, druidism, wisdom, and art.’ An Irish text about the Arctic origin of the Celtic tradition cannot be more explicit.

According to the Avesta, the homeland of the Aryans was once ‘the first of all excellent countries’, but today winter lasts there for ten months, summer for two, and these two summer months are cold. Such a climate near Iran would be sought in vain. The Brahmanic homology between year and day (the year of humans is a day of the gods and consists of a daily and a nightly part) is only understandable if the year indeed consisted of a long day and a long night, as in circumpolar regions. The formal correspondence of the Germanic *dagaz (day) with the Lithuanian term for the warm season, dagas, also makes sense in such a homology.

This ‘old record’ is supplemented by Greek data. The Ethiopians, whom Homer locates at both — eastern and western — ends of the world, by the ocean, are not African negroes but ‘people with bright faces’ reminiscent of those Whites from the White Continent in the Indian tradition. It is with them that Zeus feasts for twelve days with all the gods at the beginning and end of the Iliad. Naturally, one thinks of the twelve days that separate Christmas from Epiphany in the Christian West, as well as the twelve days when the Vedic Rbhus (corresponding to the Germanic Alfar, celebrated at the winter solstice) sleep at Agohya (‘the one who must not remain hidden’ = the sun). The name Zeus originally means ‘heavenly light’, ‘sky of the day’¹⁰, and his absence can only mean an annual twelve-day night, like the sleep of the Rbhus. Furthermore, the old Indo-European term for ‘the beautiful season’ *ye/or-, from which the name of the Horae, *yora-, spring goddesses is derived, underlies the name of Zeus’ wife, Hera (*yer-a-). The sacred marriage (hieros gamos) of Zeus and Hera thus symbolises the cyclical reunion of ‘heavenly light’ or ‘day sky’ with the year, the annual return of light at the end of the long winter night.

Additionally, Hera is originally the patroness of heroes, as her name reveals: heroes are those who, according to the Brahmanic formula, ‘reach the year’, i.e. ‘achieve solar immortality by passing through the night of winter, that is, the second death’. Therefore, the North is the abode of the blessed: according to the Celts, as Plutarch reports, ‘Cronus’ residence’ was located there. The White Continent of the Indian tradition extends to the ‘northern part of the Milky Ocean’. In the Vedas, the North, defined by the constellation of the Great Bear, is the seat of Brahman¹¹. The circular movement of the firmament around this celestial pole possibly symbolises the swastika, which was later reinterpreted as a symbol of the lunar year, then the solar year, and the benefits of the year (hence its name). According to Plutarch, the North is ‘the upright, upper part of the world’ and, according to Servius¹², ‘the highest part, closest to Jupiter’s residence’¹³. In the Great North, we must seek our deepest roots; from there come our oldest and most sacred traditions.

(translated by Constantin von Hoffmeister)

1. Dichtung und Dichtersprache in indogermanischer Zeit, Wiesbaden, 1967.

2. ‘Gedanke, Wort und Werk im Veda und im Awesta’, Antiquitates Indo-germanicae: Gedenkschrift für Hermann Güntert, Innsbruck 1974, pp. 201-221.

3. ‘Traverser l’eau de la ténebre hivernale’, Etudes Indo-Européennes, 13 June 1985, pp. 33-62.

4. See R. Peterson, ‘The Greek Face’, in The Journal of Indo-European Studies, 2, 4, Winter 1974, pp. 385-406; the article includes, among other things, informative illustrations of these three personalities.

5. Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte, Jena, 1907.

6. See, among others, the summary presentation in The Journal of Indo-European Studies, 2, 3, Fall 1974, under the title ‘An Archaeologist’s View of PIE in 1975’.

7. Zum Ursprung der Indogermanen, Bonn, 1983.

8. B. Oguibenine published a summary presentation of her earlier writings in Etudes Indo-Europeennes, 4, January 1983, pp. 63-74.

9. B. G. Tilak, The Arctic Home in the Vedas, 1903.

10. Indo-European contains a concept that has no equivalent in our modern languages: *dyew- the ‘daytime sky’, which later gave rise to either the term for ‘sky’ or ‘day’.

11. Rigveda, 10.82.2

12. Servius, in his commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid, 2, 693.

13. Both passages have been cited and translated by F. Guillaumont, in R. Bloch, D’Hérakles á Poséidon: Mythologie et Préhistoire, Paris 1985, p. 174.