Ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans. A. G. Vinogradov

How their descendants, the Indo-Europeans of modern times, dug the New World, so the Indo-Europeans of the Ancient World revealed to mankind the knowledge of the integrity of the earthly home, the unity of our planet… These discoveries would remain nameless if the echoes of the great wanderings were not kept in the Indo-European literature separated from us and from these events by millennia… Indo-European travels became possible due to the invention of wheeled transport (4 thousand BC) among Indo-Europeans.» And we add, due to the domestication of a wild horse in the southern Russian steppes already on the borderline 7—6 thousand BC As N. N. Cherednichenko notes: «The spread of a horse from the Eurasian steppes is now beyond doubt… the process of taming a horse is carried out on the distant plains of the Eurasian steppe region… Thus, at present, we can only talk about the ways the penetration of the Indo-European horse breeding tribes of Eurasia to the East and the Mediterranean… Eurasia, therefore, was the territory from where the chariots were brought by the Indo-European tribes to various regions of the Old World, which is very significant but was reflected in the political life of the Ancient East.»

      V. A. Safronov writes: «The period of the general development of the Indo-European peoples – the pre-Indo-European period – was reflected in the amazing convergence of the great literatures of antiquity, like the Avesta, Vedas, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Iliad, Odyssey, in the epics of the Scandinavians and Germans, Ossetians, legends and fairy tales Slavic peoples. These reflections of the most complex motives and plots of common Indo-European history in ancient literature and folklore, separated by millennia, fascinate and await their interpretation. However, the appearance of this literature has become possible only thanks to the creation by the Indo-Europeans of the metric of poetry and the art of poetic speech, which is the oldest in the world and dates back no later than the 4th millennium BC… Having created their own system of knowledge about the universe, which opened the way for civilization to humanity, the Indo-Europeans became creators of the most ancient world civilization, which is 1000 years older than the civilizations of the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia. There is a paradox: linguists, having recreated, according to linguistics, the appearance of the pre-Indo-European culture, by all the signs of the corresponding civilization, and determined its oldest in the series of famous civilizations (5—4 millennium BC) could not cross the Rubicon of prevailing historical stereotypes that „light always comes from the East“, and limited themselves to finding the equivalent of such a culture in the areas of the Ancient East (Gamkrelidze, Ivanov, 1984), leaving Europe as a „periphery of Middle Eastern civilizations“… The civilization of the great Indo-Europeans turned out to be so high, stable and flexible that it survived and remained, despite the global cataclysms.»

      V. A. Safronov emphasizes that «It was the late Indo-European civilization that gave the world a great invention – wheel and wheeled transport, that it was the Indo-Europeans who created the nomadic economy,» which allowed them to go through the vast expanses of the Eurasian steppes, to reach China and India… We believe that the guarantee The sustainability of Indo-European culture was created by the Indo-Europeans. It is expressed in the model of the existence of culture as an open system with the inclusion of innovations that do not offend the foundations of its structure… As a form of existence with the world, the Indo-Europeans proposed a model that remained in all historical times – introducing factorial colonies into an indo-speaking and foreign culture environment and bringing them to the level of development of the metropolis. The combination of openness with tradition and innovation, the formula of which was found for each historical period of the development of Indo-European culture, ensured the preservation of Indo-European and universal values. «We allowed ourselves such a long quotation, since it is difficult to more clearly, compactly and comprehensively determine the significance of pra-Indo-European and early Indo-European culture for the fate of mankind, than this is done in the work of V. A. Safronov «Indo-European ancestral home.»

      Chapter 2 «Indo-European language and Indo-Europeans»

      The next fundamental work devoted to the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans, the main provisions of which I would like to dwell on, is the work of T. V. Gamkrelidze and Vyach. V. Ivanov’s «Indo-European language and Indo-Europeans», where the idea of a common Indo-European ancestral homeland on the territory of the Armenian Highlands and the adjacent areas of Western Asia, from where part of the Indo-European tribes then advanced into the Black Sea-Caspian steppes, develops and is thoroughly argued.

      Paying tribute to the very high level of this encyclopedic work, which collected and analyzed a huge number of linguistic, historical facts, data from archeology and other related sciences, I would like to note that a number of provisions postulated by T. V. Gamkrelidze and Vyach. Ivanov, causes very serious doubts. So V. A. Safronov notes that: «The linguistic facts cited by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov in favor of localizing the Indo-European ancestral homeland on the territory of the Armenian Highlands can also receive other explanations. The absence of ie hydronymy in this area can only indicate against localization in it Indo-European ancestral home. Environmental data presented in the parsed work even more contradict such localization.In the territory of the Armenian Highlands there are almost half the animals, trees and plants listed in the list of flora and s listed Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, reconstructed in Indo-European (aspen, hornbeam, yew, linden, heather, beaver, lynx, grouse, salmon, elephant, monkey, crab).»

      It is on these environmental data cited in the work of T. V. Gamkrelidze and Vyach. Ivanov, I would like to dwell in more detail. The authors of the «Indo-European language and Indo-Europeans» in confirmation of their concept, indicate the oldest names of trees recorded in the ancient Indo-European parent language.

      These are birch, oak, beech, hornbeam, ash, aspen, poplar, yew, willow, branches, spruce, pine, fir, alder, walnut, apple, cherry, and dogwood.

      As for the Armenian Highlands, at present it is a combination of folded-block ridges and tectonic depressions, often occupied by lakes – closed saline (Van, Urmia), and less commonly – flowing fresh (Sevan). The semi-desert and even desert landscapes are characteristic of the deepest depressions.» Here there are dry feather-grass fescue steppes turning into herbaceous grasses,» in some places in the middle reaches (between 1000 m and 2300 m.) There are dry rare-standing forests of deciduous oaks, pine and juniper.»

      In the Iranian highlands, in the mountains of Zagros (on the western slopes and in the wetter northern part, between 1000 m and 1800 m), park oak forests with elm and maple are common, and wild mulberries, poplar, wall oak, and figs are found in the valleys. Due to the fact that in the middle period 1 thousand BC hitherto defined by climatologists as the period of cooling and moistening with respect to the climatic optimum of the Holocene (4—3 thousand BC) and the previous time (7—5 thousand BC), there is no reason to assume in these southern territories there is a much more humid and colder climate of 7—3 thousand BC, the time in question in the work of T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov.

      It should be noted that the significant fact is that in the common Indo-European vocabulary there are no names for many trees that are widespread in the Near East and Asia Minor from ancient times. These are:

      olive (the primary focus of shaping in Asia Minor);

      apricot (which was grown in 4 thousand BC even by residents of Tripoli settlements);

      edible chestnuts, known in these territories from the Tertiary period;

      quinces, which grows wild in northern Iran, Asia Minor and the Caucasus, where the primary centers of morphogenesis and introduction to culture were located;

      loquat, in the wild distributed in the Caucasus, the Crimea and the North. Iran (the primary focus of shaping and introducing into the culture of Asia Minor);

      almonds (the primary focus of forming Asia and the surrounding areas);

      figs or figs, fig trees, found wild in the Near East, Asia Minor and the Mediterranean; and, finally, a date, the primary focus of domestication of which is Southern Iran