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

USSR, 9 types of hazelnut are common: ordinary, variegated, Manchurian, short-tubular, large-fruited, Pontic, Colchis, Imereti and bear nuts.

      Variegated, short-tubular and Manchu hazel grow in the Far East. Pontic, Colchis, Imereti hazel grow in Transcaucasia. Large hazel, or hazelnuts, has become one of the founders of large-fruited garden forms. All of the listed hazel species, except for a bear nut, are tree-like shrubs 5 to 8 meters high.

      The bear nut develops into a mighty tree up to 25 meters high. It competes with beech in beauty and power, lives up to 200 years. A bear nut gives up to 20 tonn of fruit. The wood of this tree, growing in the Caucasus and in the southwestern regions of the USSR, is highly regarded.

      In forestry, hazel, or hazel, is of greatest importance. This multi-branched shrub 5—8 meters high grows in coniferous-deciduous and broad-leaved forests of the European part of the USSR. Fruits are single-seeded nuts with a tight shell.

      Nuts ripen in August-September. Separate bushes give up to 10 kilograms. Almost the yield of thickets is up to 500 kilograms of nuts per hectare. Harvest years are constantly alternating with low-yielding.

      Hazel is easily propagated by mature nuts, rooting of shoot branches, perennial shoots and dividing bushes. Nuts during autumn sowing to a depth of 5 centimeters rise well next spring. The kernel of the nut contains 55—70% fat, 14—18% easily digestible proteins, 2—5% sucrose, B and C vitamins, iron salts and trace elements. Kernels are eaten raw, dried and fried. Flour from nuts has been stored for more than 2 years, without losing its taste and nutrition.

      By caloric content, kernels are superior to white bread and meat. (1 kg. Hazel kernels – 5840, pork – 3860, rye bread – 1960, potatoes – 860 kcal). In peanut butter, 65% oleic, 9% palmetic and 1% stearic acid. The vitamin content is also high.

      The hazelnut oil is delicious, reminiscent of almond. It is used for the production of cosmetics, as well as in painting.

      Hazel wood is light, flexible, strong, and white with a pinkish tint, small-layer, and glossy. Coal from wood is suitable for the manufacture of gunpowder.

      Winemakers need sawdust. Bark and leaves are used in the leather industry.

      Hazel pollen is a good bribe for bees.

      Already 7—6 thousand years ago (the Atlantic period) in the northern and central part of Eastern Europe, «a large distribution of oak forests with linden, elm and hazel.» «In the loch-like loam of Likhvin there were pollen grains of hazel, but this time is 10—11 millennia from us, that is, VIII – IX millennium BC…»

      Paleoclimatologists note that in the second half of the boreal period (which ended 7700 years ago), i.e. at the beginning of 6 thousand BC in these areas, a significant amount of hazel pollen appears, the culmination of which refers to the Middle Holocene (5700—5000 BC), and hazel accounts for 5% of the total species composition.

      The assertion of T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov that the name of the nut in the common Indo-European vocabulary is related specifically to walnuts does not seem very convincing. Although the walnut is endemic to the south, the ancient Romans called it Jovis glans, i.e. Jupiter’s Acorn. And, although the walnut grows wild in Greece, it is believed that it went wild there. The range of wild walnuts is southern Kazakhstan, Central Asia, Iran, Afghanistan, the western parts of the Himalayas and Tibet, and southeast Transcaucasia (Talysh).

      N. I. Vavilov wrote that: «Afghanistan as a whole is included in the general range of wild walnuts… in Asia Minor and Europe, wild walnuts should be considered descendants of wild cultivated plants… In western Georgia, huge walnut forests are rightly regarded as overgrown ancient gardens abandoned during the «Georgian-Persian and Georgian-Turkish wars.»

      At the same time, wild hazel in Russia today occupies 3 million hectares, and gives a total yield of nuts from 6 to 12 million tons per year. As for the walnut, in its original area (Central Asia), it occupies only 100 thousand hectares. In addition, Pontic Hazel is an endemic of the Pontus Mountains in Asia Minor, where it has been known since ancient Greece as a nut culture («Heracles nut») and is the ancestor of the famous Turkish («Byzantine») walnut varieties.»

      Thus, it is hardly possible to postulate the name of a nut in the common Indo-European language as walnut, given the concept of the Near-Asian ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans, because Front Asia is not the original habitat of its wild forms. It can be assumed that the name of the nut in the common Indo-European language is not associated with «walnut», but with the hazelnut plant native to Europe.

      Pontic Hazel

      Variegated Hazel

      Common hazel

      Large hazel

      Mulberry, mulberry tree (Morus) (map No. 7), genus of trees of the mulberry family (Moraceae). Height 35 m., Crown spherical, broadly egg-shaped, very dense. The bark is brown, fissured. The fruit is a false, complex, juicy drupe, mulberry, up to 5 cm long, white, pink, dark violet, almost black. About 24 species, in East and Southeast Asia, and in southern Europe, in southern North America and northwestern part of South America, partly in Africa; in the USSR – 4 species in the south of the European part and in Central Asia.

      Grown for the sake of obtaining leaves for feeding silkworm, as well as fruits.

      The fruits are sweet or sweet and sour (10% sugar), used for food in fresh and dried form, as well as for making wines. The wood is dense, elastic, heavy, and is used as a building and ornamental material in carpentry and cooperage. To feed the mulberry silkworm, white mulberry (M.alba), silkworm (M. bombycus), multilobular mulberry (M.multicaulus) are cultivated, and black mulberry (M.nigra) is also used to produce fruits. Mulberry is drought-resistant, relatively undemanding to soils, salt-tolerant, and resistant to waterlogging.

      White Mulberry

      Mulberry black

      Mulberry silkworm

      A very interesting situation is developing among the authors of the Indo-European language and Indo-Europeans and with the name of the mulberry tree. T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov note that the «mulberry tree» with dark fruits is a characteristic fruit tree of the Mediterranean and South-West Asia; Western Asia is considered its ancient homeland. Large fruits… in a number of highlands of Central Asia and Central Asia (in the Pamirs) are used for food (flour is replaced from dried mulberry fruits, replacing flour from grain), leaves are used for livestock feed, and wood is valued as a building material.» But in a number of Indo-European dialects that have lost the old word (like Indo-Iranian languages), the name of the mulberry tree is transferred to blackberries. So in Greece (where both mulberry and blackberry grow) they have one name – moroy (already at Homer), and in Armenia mor, mori, moreni – blackberry (although the mulberry grows here too), Latin (morus – mulberry, morun – the fruit of the mulberry tree and blackberry).»

      The strange thing about this situation is that if the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans was Asia Minor (the ancient homeland of the mulberry tree), then in the new territories the Indo-Europeans did not make sense to call this name anything else besides the well-known plant that grew on their ancestral home. And, nevertheless, despite the fact that mulberry is a tree of the «Near Asian ancestral home», that flour is made from its