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

      Blooming apricot

      Apricot

      Almond

      Figs

      Date fruit

      Mushmula

      Quince

      This list can be greatly expanded. But even in such a fragmented form, he confirms that neither Front, nor Asia Minor, nor the Armenian Highlands could be the oldest ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans. And here again I would like to refer to the conclusion of P. Friedrich that: «the Pre-Slavic best of all other groups of Indo-European languages retained the Indo-European system of tree designation», and «the speakers of the common Slavic language lived in the ecological Slavic period (in particular, defined by wood flora), similar or identical to the corresponding zone of the common Indo-European, and after the general Slavic period, the carriers of various Slavic dialects continued to a significant extent to live in a similar area.»

      Chapter 3 Plants of the Indo-European ancestral home

      Birch (Betula) (map No. 1), a genus of deciduous monoecious trees and shrubs of the birch family. The bark of the trunks is white or of a different color, up to black. It usually grows rapidly, especially at an early age. It easily populates the free vegetation of space, often being a pioneer breed.

      About 100 polymorphic species grow in the temperate and cold regions of the Northern Hemisphere and in the mountains of the subtropics; in the USSR – about 50 species. Many birches matter as valuable forest-forming species; especially warty birch (B. pendula, or B.verrucosa), fluffy birch (B. pubescens), flat birch (B.

      platyphylla), ribbed or yellow birch (B. costata), Schmidt or iron birch (B. schmidtii). Most species are photophilous, drought-resistant, frost-resistant, and undemanding to soils. Wood, as well as many types of birch bark, is used in various sectors of the economy. The buds and leaves of warty birch and fluffy birch are used for medicinal purposes.

      The most common species is warty birch. Trees reach 25 m. Tall. Birch tolerates some salinization of the soil and dry air, lives 150 years. It occurs in Western Europe up to 65° N., in the USSR throughout the forest and forest-steppe zone of the European part, in Western Siberia, Transbaikalia, Sayan Mountains, Altai and the Caucasus. It grows in a mixture with conifers and deciduous species or in places forms extensive birch forests, and in the forest-steppe zone of the Volga region and Western Siberia – birch spikes interspersed with fields and steppe spaces. Wood is appreciated in furniture production.

      Flat birch

      Yellow birch

      Warty birch

      Fluffy birch

      Birch Schmidt

      T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov believe that this tree grew on the Indo-European ancestral home. «Birch species are currently found throughout the temperate (northern) zone of Eurasia, as well as in the mountainous regions of the more southern zones, where it grows to a height of about 1,500 m. (In particular in the Caucasus, on the spurs of the Himalayas and in the mountainous regions of Southern Europe) In the subboreal period (about 3300—4000 BC), birch was also distributed in the more southerly belt… The presence of a common word for birch in the Indo-European suggests familiarity with the ancient Indo-European tribes, which was possible either in the zone temperate climate (in Europe at latitudes from the north of Spain to the north of the Balkans and further east to the lower reaches of the Volga), or in mountainous regions of the more southern area of the Near East.»

      However, academician L.S. Berg in 1947 emphasized that in the northern part of Eastern Europe 13—12 thousand years ago there were forests of birch and pine.

      In the warming that began 11—10 thousand years ago, the absolute maximum of birch was noted.

      These conclusions are also confirmed by materials prepared by domestic paleoclimatologists for the 12th INCW Congress (Canada. 1987), indicating that in the Vychegda and Verkhnyaya Pechora river basins in layers 45210 +1430 years ago pine and birch prevailed in combination with cereal forbs. In the forests, pine made up 44%, birch up to 24%, spruce up to 15%. In the north of the Pechersk lowland in the postglacial period, i.e. 10—9 thousand years ago, «woody vegetation developed territories» and these were forests of birch, spruce and pine. Data on the Belarusian Polesie indicate that 12,860 +110 years ago (at the beginning of 11th BC) pine-spruce forests and associations of pine-birch forests with an admixture of broad-leaved: oak, elm and linden were widespread here.

      Samples of peat from the marshes of the Yaroslavl, Leningrad, Novgorod and Tver regions, performed in the laboratory of the Institute. V. I. Vernadsky, confirm that the peak of birch distribution dates back to about 9800 years ago, 7700 years ago – the absolute dominance of birch.

      L. S. Berg wrote: «A study of the history of vegetation in the postglacial period, carried out by analyzing pollen from peat, showed that in the central part of the Union, immediately after the retreat of the glacier, birch and willow appeared in large numbers, and then, in the so-called subarctic time, prevalence passed to spruce and birch; in the next boreal era, birch and pine began to dominate.»

      I must say that birch is one of the most important forest-forming species in Eastern Europe since the time of the Mikulinsky interglacial (130—70 thousand years ago) and up to the present day. The authors of the «Paleography of Europe over the past hundred thousand years» note that: «Tracing the Holocene history of birch, we can think that in the modern forests of the European part of the USSR primary birch forests are much more widespread than is usually assumed.» At the same time, nothing testifies to the wide distribution of birch in antiquity in the Near East and on the Armenian Highlands. L. S. Berg emphasized that: «The climatic situation of Palestine at the northern border of palm culture and at the southern limit of grape cultivation has not changed since biblical times.»

      The authors of the Indo-European language and Indo-Europeans write: «The main economic value of birch is determined by the fact that it served in antiquity and still serves in separate traditions as material for the manufacture of a wide variety of objects from shoes, dishes, baskets, to writing material in individual cultures, in particular among the Eastern Slavs and in India until the sixteenth century.» A. A. Kachalov points out that: «the inhabitants of the Himalayas use birch bark useful for this purpose in our time.»

      The bark of trees has been used for many millennia among different peoples as writing material on which signs were originally left in the Mesolithic and Neolithic. The use of birch bark as writing material was common in antiquity. The emperors Domitian and Commodus had notebooks from this material, Pliny the Elder and Ulpian report that the bark of other trees was also used for writing. In Latin, the concepts of «book» and «woody bast» are expressed in one word «liber».

      Hundreds of Roman letters on birch bark were found during excavations of the Roman fort of Vindoland