Talk:Kurgan hypothesis/Archive 1

Archive 1

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In the second image, the assertion that the Anatolians came via the Balkans rather than across the Caucasus is quite unfounded; it would have to be based on the Pelasgian substrate, and afaik that is not conclusive, let alone part of the Kurgan hypothesis, so the arrow may be best omitted (they reached Anatolia somehow, either through the Balkans, or via the Caucasus, or sailing the Black Sea, it doesn't matter). See Cimmerians for a precedent (ok, a post-cedent) of an invasion of Anatolia via the Caucasus. 22:09, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the proto-Anatolians are commonly identified with the Ezero culture that appears on the upper map in Thrace, which would mean they came via a route that passes near or through the Balkans. This is not confirmed, so it is also possible they came via the Caucasus, although the Balkans hypothesis seems to be cited slightly more frequently.--Rob117 04:34, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Additionally, nobody proposes they were part of the Pelasgian substrate; that Pelasgian was non-IE is pretty much a given. They may have passed close by Pelasgian areas, but that's about it.--Rob117 23:55, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Deleted text

The following sourced text has been deleted by User:Nasz: "The haplogroup R1a1 is currently found in central and western Asia, India, and in Slavic populations of Eastern Europe, but it is not very common in some countries of Western Europe (e.g. France, or some parts of Great Britain) (see [1] [2]). However, 23.6% of Norwegians, 18.4% of Swedes, 16.5% of Danes, 11% of Saami share this lineage ([3])." Please vet these deletions. Noted by Wetman 08:23, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Genetics

There somewhere was data, that somewhere about 10% ashkenazi jews have R1a1 haplotype.

Why shouldn'they have? Simply by admixture! userHJJHolm 16:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Appearance

I didn't find any information in the article how the first PIE speaking peoples appeared in those Kurgans if they spread out of there. Somebody could explain how then they «occured» there? Roberts7 00:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Nobody really knows how Indo Europeans arrived in the Kurgan area, all we know is the Indo-Iranian subdivision to have emerged there and to show an undeniable link and local continuity to this people. Archeologists tend to be critical to the Kurgan hypothesis, but especially linguists are very happy with it. By absence of a clear cut and credible theory linking the language of this people to foreign influences (for instance, Mallory think it is hard to imagine the small Baalberge TRB groups using tumulus could traverse 500km), the theory of local continuity seems to be all we have. Rokus01 08:09, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

"how the first PIE speaking peoples appeared in those Kurgans"? They were buried in them? The PIEans didn't "arrive", they developed out of a pre-PIE stage (ultimately from some LGM refuge population, the LGM is really the cutoff beyond which historical linguistics cannot aspire to look) dab (𒁳) 08:51, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

"They were buried in them?" - Do they appeared on those Kurgans? Do they landed down on them? Do not mix up Kurgans (Kurgan area) and kurgans (Burial mounds). "[..] historical linguistics cannot aspire to look" - do can aspire to look, see Nostratic languages and Proto-World language. Roberts7 00:57, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Removed Paragraph

I removed the following text from the genetics section. If anyone can make some sense of it, please do add it back:

Another study [4] concludes that the Indian population received "limited" gene flow from external sources since the Holocene and suggests R1a1 originates from South or West Asia . The work do not even summary R1a1 frequency, but it show data for H1(M52),L(M11) and R2(M124) inded there is a quote " Further details about these populations will be published elsewhere." The work go to dip conclusion but the only data for R1A1 is 26% frequency in Dravidian-speaking Chenchus.

86.135.62.180 09:21, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Is Kurgan a Russian or a Turkish word?

According to Kurgan it's Turkish; according to this article it's Russian. Anybody? Floris V 21:24, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

It is a Turkic (Tatar) word which passed into Russian in the late middle ages, and was borrowed into other languages of Europe from Russian at a later date. Turkic is not the same as Turkish. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 16:51, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm afrain my English-Dutch dictionary doesn't really distinguish very well between Turkish and Turkic, largely because Dutch doesn't, it just hints that Turkic refers to the language aspect. But what about the inconsistency between a Turkic or Russian origin or is that okay with you? Floris V 20:25, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

although it means "fortress" in Turkic afaik -- thus kurgan in the sense of "barrow" is definitely a Russian word, albeit of course loaned from Turkic (much like standard is an English word, even if borrowed from the Frankish for "battle flag"). dab (ᛏ) 10:00, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Simply have a look at the Kurgan-article and stop this uniformed talk. user HJJHolm 16:46, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Hí Man! 'Kur' is hungarian kör (circle!). 'g' is the hungarian 'ég' (sky) and 'an' is (like in sumerian) the supreme (hungarian -on, -en, -ön). The 'Kun halom's are the archeological findings in Hungary. Find on Google! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.228.230.151 (talk) 18:26, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

There needs to be a criticism

New archeological and genetic data seem to be pointing away from the supremacist Kurgan hypothesis toward the more realistic Indo-European Continuity theory

To call other views rediculous and simply utter personal views without any arguments is of NO HELP for anybody. This should be cancelled. user HJJHolm 16:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, genetics doesn't help us much. The presence of Anatolian Y-haplogroups (E3b1, J2, G) is very marked in the southern Balkans and southern Italy, decreases to ca. 15% in the Carpathian basin and then to 5% or less in the rest of Europe. Hence the influence of Anatolian agriculturalists was not small, although only in south-eastern Europe. This migration wave could be sufficient for the replacement of the old European languages, especially if we assume that further in the Carpathian basin, the Indo-European languages may have been already spread by Indo-Europeanized Paleolithic Europeans theirselves.

But there is one problem: Y-lineages of Aryans in India don't show virtually any presence of Anatolian lineages. The Aryan wave obviously consisted of "Ukrainian"/Eastern European R1a1 (as a note of caution, the current evidence does suggest that R1a1 originated in South Asia, see the wiki page on R1a1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1a_(Y-DNA) and the intresting papers referenced, so the consensus currently seems to be that the haplogroup is indegionous to the Indo-Gangetic plain. Besides that, R1a1 also happens to be widespread amoungst Indian tribals who are supposedly "pure" South Asians with no "Indo-Aryan" admixture) and (possibly) Central Asian R2 that was added on the way through Central Asia. Besides that, the only "Anatolian" lineage that is typical for Indian upper castes (J2a) - and thus could come to India with Aryans - got to southern Russia/Ukraine rather through the Caucasus mountains than through the Balkans - as a map in this study suggests: :http://hpgl.stanford.edu/publications/AJHG_2006_v78_p202-221.pdf

(But the map shows anyway that it almost certainly got to India with the Dravidians). Hence the original Y-lineages of Aryans were absolutely untouched by Anatolian agriculturalists. This doesn't exclude the possibility of a language replacement, but still, it is very strange. Further, the Aryan lineages also don't contain any other lineages typical for today's Ukrainians, like e.g. I (I1b1). I would say that this all suggests that the source of the Aryan invasion was somewhere north of the Caucasus, perhaps in the Kuban region, or somewhere around the Caspic Sea. 82.100.61.114 00:41, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Problem is the IE question is answered from three different fields of investigation: archeology, linguistics and genetics. Archeologists would point at the continuity of European cultures of the agricultural Funnelbeakers through Corded Ware to present in northern and western europe, and at the continuity of Sredni Stog through Yamna to Indo-Iranian people to the east, thus pushing back the breaking up of PIE into different branches to at least 4500 BC. Linguists would say such a slow evolution is not supported by the linguistic processes we know of (would modern processes like deflexion be taken into account anyway?) and would not agree to any such thing to have happened a lot before 2500 BC. Genetic studies are still too recent for being fully understood by all parties. It is too easy to say that genetics do not help, since we still don't know at what gene (or genes) we have to look at. Did the first IE come from the steppes? Then certainly we have to look at R1a1 (as a matter of fact I don't see so much here as others seem to do). Do they originate from the Baalberge culture in East Germany? Then Hg I1c would certainly do. Or did they move even more slowly, like Renfrew says? Then we have to take into consideration some genes that mutated during the voyage. Most logical conclusions and findings would be discarded as OR since decent studies combining all fields are hard to get. In Holland I found leading archeological publications sayings the Kurgan theory is obsolete ("Kurgan intrusions did not happen and are not needed to explain the development of IE in Europe from a date well before the Kurgans onwards") and also leading linguistic publications still defending the Kurgan theory. I think it is best to continue gathering sources from different disciplines and to put the views next to each other. Yes, the article has to be written in a different way to be more neutral. Rokus01 22:29, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

A thing that recently drew my attention was the distribution of Indo-European hydronymy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_European_hydronymy

According to this article, non-Indo-European hydronymy is not present in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans. I don't know, how it is with toponymy, but I was told that Anatolian place names are not of Indo-European origin. These facts could somewhat limit the area of the Indo-European expansion, but they don't solve anything fundamentally. At least, we could say that Indo-European languages were present in Eastern Europe and the Balkans since the Neolithic, when people became sedentary and local names began to be "inherited" from population to population. By the way, these facts could actually solve the biggest problem that I see in the Kurgan hypothesis: the Indo-Europeanization of the Balkans. I could understand that Northern and Central Europe was Indo-Europeanized by the Corded people, but I still don't understand, how the whole Balkans - including mountaneous areas - could adopt Indo-European language without any significant gene flow from the Indo-European speakers. 82.100.61.114 12:38, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

"According to this article, non-Indo-European hydronymy is not present in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans." It says no such thing. It says Old Indo-European hydronymy is not found in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.70.198.48 (talk) 09:15, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Unsigned hypotheses on hypothetical kurgan populations and hypothetical gene flows

"Ornella Semino et al. (see [9]) propose this postglacial spread of the R1a1 gene from the Ukrainian LGM refuge was magnified by the expansion of the Kurgan culture into Europe and eastward. R1a1 is most prevalent in Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary and is also observed in Pakistan, India, and central Asia."

And why is it so favorable for the West to propose a post-glacial diffusion from an area which we know was covered in ice throughout the last ice age. In West Asia, Iran and Turkey, population densities were far higher (climate maps indicate that West Asia was a cold savannah through the LGM). And as the earth warmed from south to north, it seems far more likely that populations near the Iranian plateau would have emmigrated northwards into central asia and Europe. The fact that r1a1 shows high frequencies in eastern europe, does not neccecarily mean that it originated there. Indeed, the immediate ancestor to r1a1, r1a*, is found with high diversity in eastern iran (not to mention higher diversity r1a1). This lends credit to the idea of a post-LGM northwardly migration (not to mention later neolithic migrations from west asia). The Kurgan model is off. Not only in the speculated migration dates, but in the direction of gene flow. The Kurgan's (scythians)were late descendents of neolithic peoples. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.198.200.120 (talk) 19:15, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Hypothesis or theory

In scientific speech a hypothesis is a guess, something that it's still too raw and needs further research or something that has not accumulated enough evidence to make it a solid proposal. A theory instead is much more: it's a consistent proposal that has enough evidence to be taken seriously.

The Kurgan model is the only model of IE expansion that is very consistent and widely accepted. Calling it hypothesis is ridiculous and implies a bias in favor of other not proven and much less likely models (that are clearly nothing more han hypothesis, at least so far).

I propose to move the page to Kurgan theory. --Sugaar (talk) 20:48, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Coming from a scientific background myself I understand what you are trying to say. However, overall, I would have to say, this ain't science, it is art. I don't deny plenty of science has been brought in in service of art - you can chemically analyze pottery for instance all you like. But, its classification is still an art; moreover, the synthesis is not amenable to scientifc classification. That is what makes us different. There is no way to mathematically state, "this style is early", "that style is later." So, what I am trying to say is, and all these words are prelude to - we don't use those words in a scientific sense. There is no difference in the liberal arts between a hypothesis, a theory and a model. Most of those entities have nothing at all to do with their scientific counterparts, are not physical principles, are not repeatable phenomena that can be verified by any experimenter, cannot be described mathematically, do not concern specifics but concern only particulars. Kurgan I is a particular syndrome of events, never to be repeated, not repeatable. You can't recreate one in the laboratory to see how it works or formulate any principles about how Kurgans I or any kurgan societies may be expected to behave. That being so; that is, seeing that we are in no way dealing with real theories and hypotheses, I much prefer the term model as it implies reconstruction. But again it is not a scientific or true model - no principles are being tested by a model. "Model" here would mean an attempted recreating of singular particular events. We are not concerned with type or typology. There is no type. Sugar and Botteville are not types they are individuals and as such are beyond the range of science and so is Kurgan I, Kurgan II and Kurgan III. Sorry, that is the liberal arts, which often borrows a patina of scientific words to look scientific. It is all subjective, all interpretive: science in the service of art. It should not be denigrated as a method. But, it is mainly an intuitive, speculative, non-verifiable method in a scientific sense. So, what does it matter what you call this thing? The initial author preferred hypothesis. That is no more or less ridiculous than any other word. It's an outlook, a view, an interpetation, an attempt to explain certain cultural objects by the supposition of individual events. Bye now.Dave (talk) 01:27, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry, Dave, but since when are archaeology and historical linguistics and archaeogenetics part of the canon of liberal arts? You can't "recreate" the Big Bang in the laboratory. Does that make Big Bang cosmology a subject of the "liberal arts"? I am afraid I cannot agree with a single point of what you state above. It's simplistic at best, and in some instances plain wrong. But this is beside the point. The question is, what does the relevant literature call it (a.k.a. WP:RS or WP:NOR). On google scholar, I get 52 hits for "Kurgan hypothesis" and 35 hits for "Kurgan theory". On google books, the ratio is 47 : 37. From this, I would conclude that both terms are current, but that "hypothesis" would appear to have somewhat more currency. dab (𒁳) 15:18, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Restructure tag

The restructure tag calls for some action. It refers us to this page for the discussion but here structure is not discussed. In reading thru the comments I see that many seem to verify my own impressions. The article jumps into rather technical things without much intro as to who, when, where, what. In that sense it relies on name-dropping rather than continuous prose. I would like to try my hand at smoothing it down a little. That means I may have to move some text around or add transitional sentences here and there or concern myself with the substructure. The goal is continuous readable prose that doesn't assume the reader already knows all about the topic and is familiar with the work and theories of the big names mentioned. If you don't like this just put it back. I am not going to make any disputations here. Those have already been covered. I do see this tag and I do see text that makes assumptions perhaps too steep for the reader.Dave (talk) 02:56, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

PS I've done some work on the intro and I took a good look at the subsequent section. Now I know why it isn't being discussed here. There are in essence two different chronologies being used. There are a couple of ways to handle it. One is to keep the two chronologies, the first being presented as the original model (although we will find that she varied that model) and the second being the updated model. The C-14 dates kept on being taken so now we have a scheme even earlier than Gimbutiene envisaged. The second way to handle it is to combine the schemes stating both original and contemporaneous dates. There is another glaring fact I noticed as well. Gimbutiene as far as I can see is not cited here so we are to depend on the reports of others for what she said. As a matter of fact on the stages there are no citations at all! Tsk tsk tsk. Wouldn't it be a good idea to first present the material before you try to tear it to shreds? Well, so these are some of the things I see on closer examination. What's to be done. I am going to start with some Gimbutiene refs and maybe then what has to be done will become more evident. I only work in sessions so I am not sure what I can get done this session, but that is what needs to be done.Dave (talk) 17:20, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

PPS I thought this over and what seems best to me is a table which I am working up in my sandbox page 3. This table will combine the two lists of the article and go in the timeline section. It will correct errors - there are some - and cite Gimbutas a lot. Also some of the material is not Gimbutas but her modified or supplemented. I need to see some refs on that which I will try to find myself - I got a copy of Mallory - but if I can't out they go. It is tempting for editors to fill in someone else's structure but we don't want that. The table will include all the links currently in the two lists and any more I can find as there are starting to be a lot of relevant articles. Some of those articles are terrible and need clean-up but that will have to come later.Dave (talk) 04:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

PPPS Well, working with a line or two of a table I found it was really too cumbersome. So, here is what I think. This is really a merger of two sections. So I will create one section, "Timeline", divided into early, middle and late kurgan and each subsection will merge the material from the current two sections.

The length it appears may be a problem. But, I just discovered that much of the genetic and other material is duplicated in an article covering IE homeland theories. Some space can be saved by merging it out of here into there. Looks like I will be on this for a while.Dave (talk) 03:00, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I must alert you that I do not consider this edit an improvement, but I do not have the time to address it in detail and politely at this moment, and I do not want to do a summary revert of your work. dab (𒁳) 15:24, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

PIE vs Kurgan

I haven't started yet; I'm still looking at Gimbutas. One problem I see right away. Gimbutas did not generally do the language assignments; that was done by others such as Mallory. The key article is the 1970 one in which she revised the dates upward based on new calibration evidence. At that time she reaffirmed the early, middle and late scheme, which I believe I will incorporate. Now, she called the article "Proto-Indo-European Culture" but she nowhere uses early, middle and late PIE, it is always Kurgan. As far as I can see that was true right up to the end. So, whoever put the early PIE, etc, in there was not relying on Gimbutas for that. And, for a good reason, which I am sure Gimbutiene knew quite well. Not ALL that whole long time can be assigned to the proto-language, especially toward the end. As for matching specific language phases to archaeological horizons I am not sure that can be done completely at all, or if it can be, has not been. The Indo-Europeans were prehistoric for quite some time after that so it is very hard to say once known language phases start to appear just where in the tunnel they started. I think that editor presumes too much (nothing personal) so unless that terminology in just the way it appears in the article can be confirmed and the theorist identified I am going to drop it and use Gimbutiene's terminology, which will of course be cited. I'm already setting up for that in the reference section. Gimbutiene said early KURGAN is I, middle is II and III and late is IV. By IV it is unlikely the PIE existed any more though what did exist is up for grabs.Dave (talk) 15:05, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

hm, just to be sure, we agree, of course, that this article isn't about "the Kurgan theory according to Gimbutas"? Gimbutas just had the original idea, which has been significantly refined and revised since. Writing an article on "Kurgan theory" using only Gimbutas' work would be like writing an article on Darwinism using only Darwin's own work. --dab (𒁳) 15:11, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

quick interjection: no, that's not the point. This is trying to do Darwinism without Darwin. I don't mind others after Gimbutas - where are they to be found? Cites please. See discussion below.Dave (talk) 02:40, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

upon further review, Botteville: I know this article needs cleanup, but you just seem to add to the confusion. This isn't the Kurgan culture article. This is the article on the hypothesis that the Kurgan culture corresponds to PIE. The archaeological culture has an existence quite independent of this hypothesis. The Kurgan culture proper is the Yamna culture. I know that the predecessor culture, Sredny Stog culture, is called "Kurgan II" in the hypothesis, but it is properly pre-kurgan, for the simple reason that there were not yet any kurgans. It is important to distinguish:

1. kurgans: tumuli.
2. the Kurgan culture: the chalcolithic culture of the Pontic steppe which produced kurgan burials.
3. the Kurgan hypothesis: the hypothesis that the bearers of said culture spoke PIE.

that's three completely separate items, of course hierarchically depending on one another. This article is in a confused state because it was under attack by various crypto-nationalism or other types of fringe ideas. We need to clean it up. But you do not seem to be making matters any easier. You are most welcome to work on this article, and to cite Gimbutas' work in detail, but you need to stop your implication that the hypothesis somehow shut down at her death. The current scenarios sketched by Mallory et al. (the JIES crowd) are not slavishly following Gimbutas per ipse dixit, they are just building on her central insight that PIE corresponded to chalcolithic steppe culture. dab (𒁳) 17:51, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I appreciate your input but I do have a few problems with your views and your changes. I believe you are wrong on a couple of points.

1. Kurgan I and II is Srednij Stog II. Srednij Stog I is unrelated. Srednij Stog II is a "kurganized culture" - Kurgan I moved into Srednij Stog I and took it over making it into II.
2. Second, Yamna Culture is not identical to Kurgan Culture. More cultures than just Yamna had kurgans and were related to the IE (in this hypothesis).
3. Third, Gimbutas was the first to use "Kurgan Culture". If someone else is using it in a different sense then we need to say that so-and-so is using it in that sense or so-snd-so updated the term to mean bla-bla-bla (I presume Yamna Culture).
4. Fourth, the archaeological culture has no existence apart from the hypothesis. Gimbutas invented it to mean the blanket hypothetical culture. If the hypothesis is to be denied why should anyone see any unity in the various steppe cultures? They must still be the Yamna culture, the Srednij Stog II culture, etc. The quote I gave proves that. I think you were wrong to delete it.

I think we can agree that the hypothesis did not shut down at her death. However, her part of it did and she is the founder. We have to make that clear otherwise the whole original theory will be occluded and people will think the subsequent modifications were it. The way it is now steals her theory away from her and makes it into something else. Now of course we do not want to slavishly follow Gimbutas. I do not think she would have wanted anyone slavishly to follow her. In a word though, what I propose is not slavery. It is only to present the Kurgan hypothesis as it was first presented. Are we denying Gimbutas? If so why are we using her terminology? Wave I, Wave II, etc., Kurgan I, Kurgan II etc. are all Gimbutas.

Now, the article is confusing and has a tag on it because there was more than one editor and the editors disagreed or else the editor was confused. To be perfectly honest with you I find the double chronology confusing and your ideas on the subject not accurate. What I am proposing here is to merge the two chronology sections. As this is about the Kurgan hypothesis the other theories on the PIE no matter what anyone thinks of them should have only passing mention. I am sorry, I don't mean to get you upset. There have been times when you and I have seen more or less eye to eye. At other times I really have to wonder what you are at. I don't see any crypto-nationalism in there right now, do you? If there was some and it was removed then the remover should have fixed the article.

Well I am pleased you are welcoming me to work on the article. I only work on articles I can fix. You've removed some important clues such as the quote from Gimbutas. What bothers me is this. The article needed a tag asking for in-line citations. If Mallory says something let's have a note on what Mallory says. I for one would like to know whose language assignments those are and I hope there is someone credible behind it because it would be valuable information to know if in fact we know it. I would have and may still get to researching it. But, if you are going to be changing everything I say even though I give credible references what's the point? You left some stuff in - if you want to write or rewrite it your way I don't mind at all, but I'm not going to waste my time in excessive conflict over fundamental points. Someone else eventually will fix it. I've noticed some bad articles that couldn't get fixed because personalities stood in the way but eventually enough people brought them to our attention so that they finally got fixed and I think this article will be the same way. I've had people eventually ask me to fix articles I couldn't get fixed before.

In summary, no, I don't think I'm adding confusion, I think you should put back the quote, no, I'm not slavishly following Gimbutas, only getting the initial theory right, yes, if I go on this session I will be putting in modifications by others, yes, the detailed cites should be in there. If you want to help I would suggest getting the missing cites on the timeline - I can get them shortly on the first chronology. The most important thing is my plan to merge the two chronologies. Also can you put the redirects back? The Kurgan Culture is NOT identical to the Yamna Culture.

What's it going to be, dab? Are we going to work together on this?Dave (talk) 23:06, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

A little later. I've given it more thought. You know, I think you did this assessment and changes a bit too hastily. That can happen when you spend a lot of time on Wikipedia. The key point you missed is that the Kurgan Culture and the identification ARE Gimbutas, there was no previously existing kurgan culture that Gimbutas along with others happened to utilize. The whole thing IS Gimbutas. As far as I can see Mallory, who was a student of Gimbutas, is not significantly changing her hypothesis. That's the key point. A close runner up is the assignment of languages to stages. That is just a great can of worms. To see blithe assignments made here without refs should have been a warning flag: an article too hastily done. So I have got a firmer, more unequivocal Gimbutas quote and reasserted what I was trying to say. Those are the essential points at this point; you can have all your other changes. They are a matter of opinion but I'm not concenred about opinion mainly accuracy. You can't talk about Wave 1 Wave II, etc. without talking Gimbutas; they ARE her work and hers alone. Maybe you should slow down a little. Cheers.Dave (talk) 02:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Botteville, I am happy to work together with you on this. I am sure we can find an acceptable solution, but it will require some effort. Well, there is no deadline. The current state of the article is confused because various editors have heaped up material without building some sort of coherent structure. The first thing we need to do is figure out the rough shape the article is going to take. We can still debate about this idea of Gimbutas', or that statement of Mallory's, once the general shape is stable. In my view, you are focussing on Gimbutas far too much in the lead. The "Kurgan hypothesis" does not rely on Gimbutas' specific classification of cultures as "Kurgan I-IV". But we will, of course, need to document the evolution of her ideas. The artilcle lead just isn't the proper place for this. We can also have a section titled "Kurgan culture". I repeat that the term refers to "Yamna culture plus associates". It is evident, Gimbutas or no Gimbutas, that the Sredny Stog culture is somehow related to that, but the precise position of Sredny Stog wrt PIE and Yamna is a detail to be discussed further down, but without central importance of the Kurgan hypothesis as a whole. I suggest we begin by checking other encyclopedic sources' treatment of the heading "Kurgan hypothesis". First of all, we'll need to consider the EIEC. dab (𒁳) 11:39, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I just reread it. You did delete my solution but you must have fixed the article as I do not see the problem now. It looks fine now; that is, it does not suppose the term Kurgan culture preceded Gimbutas, or that the Yamna culture is identical to the Kurgan culture and it gives due credit to Gimbutas' theory without implying the whole thing is obsolete. No doubt others might have some points but the things on which we collided have been fixed. You know, this is often fairly painful, but unlike a few other painful relationships I have on Wikipedia this one seems to have results. I think I goad you to think. Other things that struck my attention are the double chronologies. One obviously gives the original and the second a timeline. Ideally I'd like to see one chronology but I can see some merit in the other, as it allows new ideas to be inserted without infringing on the original. It's something to think over, as you say. The second thing was all the genetic material. Most of the Internet genetic studies you see don't "prove" anything like what the authors say they do. The main problem is the chronology. They have no idea when a specific gene complex might have been introduced and without that the whole "proof" vanishes. But I'm not ready to read this critically in detail, so stet for now. Well I'll be back over all these articles looking mainly to clean up and verifying accuracy but for now I am following my policy of moving around so I don't get fixated on one article or situation. When I return to an article I have no idea what I will see. Anything can happen. When I get back here the first thing I will look at is where those language attributions came from if that is still relevant. And finally I would like to say that where I appreciate the desire not to clutter an article we don't want to make it simple but wrong by cutting out all objections and everything right; not that you do that, but it is a tendency to avoid as much as unnecessary clutter.24.63.185.195 (talk) 17:51, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

contradictory edit

This whole edit is a mess. First, this sentence is introduced as "There are a number of competing hypotheses", which means it should discuss hypotheses other than Kurgan, which is the subject of the article. Second, saying Homeland H is "widely accepted" appears to contradict the preceding text, which is now a direct quote, that Kurgan H is "the single most popular" model. Can you provide a complete quote from the Oxford source that demonstrates it is being quoted accurately and not out-of-context? Then it can be integrated into the text in an appropriately NPOV manner. - Merzbow (talk) 16:18, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

This has been discussed previously at Talk:Indo-European_languages#No_more_reference_to_mainstream_please I agree the edit is not a beauty, this article never was: for instance, what about the three references to the homeland-article in the first two sentences? Still, what can you expect of an article that most of all reflects the careful and deliberate forging of Wikipedia myth by unnamed forces during at least four years of bad administration. Merzbow, contrary to what Kurgan-pushers have been telling you, there is no consensus and less a mainstream or predominant homeland model incarnated by a Kurgan hypothesis. This Wikipedia claim has never been sourced, even though I asked explicitly for it several times and nobody acted. The broader homeland theory is not a hype, it was there all along in some way or the other and has never been abandoned. Instead, it is getting more important. Still, it has been consequently filtered out. Why? POV pushing by people that think they are entitled to. So please, let us invoke the opinion of the most respected authority (still J.P Mallory it seems) and take this into serious consideration. Beware, this are lengthy quotes and already cause a numbness in my fingers by the mere thought of typing that it feels like strangling someone. Take a special look at how the different theories are qualified.

P348:

• "One widely accepted theory is that during the Mesolithic, populations in central Europe and on the Russian -Ukranian steppe shared a common linguistic ancestry and by the Neolithic Period emerged as two linguistically related but culturally different zones of Indo-European speakers, those in Europe providing ancestral to the European languages, while those on the Eurasian steppe expanded southeastward to become the Indo-Europeans of Asia." (note this theory is qualified "widely accepted" by Mallory.)
• "The second theory, with a number of variations, assigns the earliest Indo-Europeans to Anatolia and identifies their expansion with the spread of agriculture ..." (note here Mallory does not indicate acceptance or popularity, as if this scenario is relevant only to academic viewpoints and investigation)
• "The third theory attributes the expansions of the Indo-Europeans to movements of the so-called Kurgan culture (...) from the Eurasian steppe that are archeologically traced to the fourth and third milleninnia B.C. This theory enjoys widespread support, since (...)"

Thus, you can't name the Anatolian viewpoint as only serious contender of the Kurgan hypothesis, nor present the Kurgan hypothesis as the one and only predominant or mainstream homeland theory: you should never marginalize a competing theory labelled "widely accepted." Rokus01 (talk) 22:18, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Point one I need to address immediately: "...there is no consensus and less a mainstream or predominant homeland model incarnated by a Kurgan hypothesis. This Wikipedia claim has never been sourced, even though I asked explicitly for it several times and nobody acted." Huh? This is sourced twice in the first paragraph of this article: "Mallory (1989:185). "The Kurgan solution is attractive and has been accepted by many archaeologists and linguists, in part or total. It is the solution one encounters in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Larousse." " Strazny (2000:163). "The single most popular proposal is the Pontic steppes (see the Kurgan hypothesis)..." - Merzbow (talk) 22:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

So given that, what we have is a 1996 Mallory source that does not take a stand on the issue, a 1989 Mallory source that gives Kurgan predominance, and a 2000 source (the most recent, BTW) by Strazny that strongly gives Kurgan predominance. By NPOV it's clear the article should present Kurgan as the predominant view. If you have other sources to produce that contradict this, please provide them. - Merzbow (talk) 22:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

A linguistic encyclopedia does not have any archeological meaning. I reject it as a notable source or authority on this issue. And now you are contradicting yourself also: you don't accept my statement about no consensus and you reject the opinion of Mallory for not taking a stand on the issue. My point: if Mallory does not take a stand, so why does Wikipedia. This is not appropiate. Rokus01 (talk) 22:42, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh come on. It's a book published by a professor in an academic press, and the entry being quoted from is explicitly named "Indo-European homeland problem". It seems that linguistic evidence is at least as important as archeological evidence in the analysis and production of theories in this subject area. The first sentence of the overview basically says this: "When it was first proposed in 1956, Marija Gimbutas's contribution to the search for Indo-European origins was a pioneering interdisciplinary synthesis of archaeology and linguistics." And Mallory does take a stand on this issue in favor of Kurgan; see the 1989 source; the fact that the 1996 source does not say one way or another which theory is more popular does not contradict the fact he said so elsewhere. - Merzbow (talk) 23:46, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't challenge the claim this theory is the "single most popular" one, especially since this comes from the pencil of a linguist. Life is more than archeological scientists alone, even though the Kurgan theory draws on archeology. Wikipedia should give an overview that reflects reality. Still, this also and especially includes attention to the actual achievements on the field. I am very curious to know how the Strazny encyclopedia dealt with the issue in 2005, since already in 2003 the quoted Concise Oxford dictionary of Archeology mainly refers to the Kurgan theory of "invasions from the steppe" in the past sense. It is time to rectify and put the happenings in its proper context, since all the attention given to a theory that has been incredible difficult to prove was at the cost of the attention to many other very important things that happened elsewhere, like by now you should know now you got involved in the Beaker fuzz: people are so unaquainted to what archeology really says what happened under their feet that they challenge sourced references. Please don't make the same mistake. Thank you. Rokus01 (talk) 06:04, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

(BTW the "Oxford Companion to Archaeology" that you quote is 1996). As I said, I await presentation of further references about these theories; if scholarly opinion has changed regarding which is now more accepted, references should be easy to find that say that. - Merzbow (talk) 17:40, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

(BTW the "Oxford Companion to Archaeology" of 1996 that I quote is not the same as the "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archeology" of 2003). Rokus01 (talk) 20:43, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

don't bother. Rokus is a SYNTH artist. He will grant that this is the mainstream view, and then embark on a contorted argument based on cherry-picked quotes and editorializing in order to present it as "obsolete" regardless. If he thinks that "It is time to rectify and put the happenings in its proper context", let him try and initiate such a paradigm shift in academic publishing, not on Wikipedia. --dab (𒁳) 18:21, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Dbachmann, again with his personal grudge and abusing Talkpages all over the domain for his malicious soapboxing. If you don't know him yet, he is notorious for putting his own words in the mouths of others. The mainstream word is of his concoction, and certainly doesn't apply to any theory on the Indo European homeland! Not as long several competing theories are "widely accepted".Rokus01 (talk) 20:43, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

hah, "soapboxing". As in, protecting articles against dishonest edits on the part of ideologists. None of the stuff Rokus is trying so badly to sell is "widely accepted" by any stretch. dab (𒁳) 14:15, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Merzow, you are asking the impossible: a source that says what theory is more accepted nowadays. I didn't encounter any recent source that points to one theory as "mainstream" or "predominant" in particular. This is what I mean: without any recent archeological confirmation of the Kurgan theory being "mainstream" or "predominant", to use this terms is blunt WP:OR.

I could go into lengthy details with you, even to conclude that the popularity of the Kurgan theory involves the label more that what it represents: the current interpretation has a tendency to adopt almost all of the broader homeland issues: what you can see is a Kurgan theory stripped of invasions from the steppe and "kurganization", and enriched with the Single Grave culture of western Europe, without minding that these might have been older than the cultures of the steppe: the source "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archeology", 2003, even puts the underpinning Yamnaya culture between 2400-1800 BC, the catacomb culture between 2300-1800 BC and Timbergrave culture between 1600-900 BC: younger than Corded Ware A-horizon dates in Poland (here I refer to C14, not CAL). So what, if there isn't even accordance on the dates? I am waiting for the first scientist to boast openly that all theories are Kurgan theory anyway, one way or the other, for that is how it works with hypes. Like this, without knowledge of the underpinning theories, it may be difficult to point out what version is meant anyway. However, Mallory still makes a clear difference.

What you say about using sources is positive. This means, that the current source of Mallory dating 1989 could be replaced by the one of 1997. The last source is clear in comparing actual popularity and acceptance of the most current theories, and that is what we need here. Rokus01 (talk) 20:43, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The questions that remain:

• How to sustain a WP:NPOV flag, introducing a wider scope to indicate relative popularity and acceptance that complies better to the multiple views requested by the NPOV policy? Or was this flag introduced primarily to qualify the POV of the article as a whole?
• How to sustain a "This article or section appears to contradict itself" flag, now the contradiction turns out to be rather the sourced views on the issue, and not the registration or edit itself?

Rokus01 (talk) 13:44, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Removed for now... - Merzbow (talk) 16:31, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

What Rokus is saying above is essentially that the broad homeland and the Kurgan hypotheses are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but overlap to a significant extent. This is correct. What he is raving against isn't so much the Kurgan hypothesis, but the "Kurgan" label. Like our Hindu fundamentalists, Rokus is particularly allergic to the "invasion" word. In this he is fighting windmills, since nobody postulates purely invasionist scenarios anyway. In his antagonistic approach of pro-Kurgan vs. pro-Broad-Homeland he makes it impossible to discuss the issues involved in a detached and academic atmosphere. The Kurgan hypothesis postulates steppe origins of PIE, it doesn't preclude, but in fact postulates, that Indo-Europeanized populations, which retained of course significant substrate elements, were "broadly" spread from the Caspian to (gasp!) the Netherlands by the Early Bronze Age. The simplistic weighing of "relative popularity" of Kurgan vs. Broad Homeland isn't useful, especially if based on cherry-picked quotes on stuff being "widely accepted". Yes, the term "Kurgan" is much more widely used than the "Broad Homeland" one. "Broad homeland" is rather a sort of agnostic addendum to "Kurgan" in the sense of "yeah, or maybe we can talk of 'PIE' slightly beyond the steppes, it's not like any of this has sharp definitions". dab (𒁳) 14:28, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I recognize this article should have sharp definitions. This does not change the support of other definitions. Recently, Mallory seems to have effectively abandoned the name "Kurgan theory" and uses "Steppe theory" instead, obviously to stress it is here all about a restricted homeland proposal in the steppe. Kurgans as an archeological feature, instead, can be interpreted indeed as a feature both of a "broad homeland" or the steppes, since barrows can be found all over and a specific "steppe" origin of western barrows was easier to refute than to prove all along: rather mutual influences and inspiration of local traditions could be inferred. To address this uncertainty, I would rather propose to change the name of this article correspondingly to "Steppe theory", and leave "Kurgan hypothesis" to indicate the historic Gimbutas proposals. Rokus01 (talk) 00:00, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

1986 article

The 1986 article+comments I just added represents the "mature" theory as it evolved during Gimbutas' lifetime. We might use that as a reference for the "mainstream" Kurgan scenario. Further work and modifications accumulating over the past 20 years (including archaeogenetics) we might treat as "recent" developments. With this approach, we'll at least get a solid presentation of the theory as it stood in the 1980s. The item cited is an article by Anthony, with added commentaries by Bogucki, Comşa, Gimbutas, Jovanović, Mallory and Milisaukas. It becomes clear immediately, that there was no single "Kurgan theory", and that Gimbutas was just one voice among several in the controversies within the "Kurgan model" debate. Mallory (p.308) points out that "by the mid-5th millennium BC, we already have very striking cultural similarities from the Dnieper-Donets culture in the west to the Samara culture of the middle Volga ... this is continued in the later Sredny Stog period." The "Yamna culture in all its regional variants" arose later, and may already represent diversification. These 5th millennium "cultural similarities" are the basis of the term "Kurgan culture". The Yamna horizon emerges out of this in the mid 4th millennium and will at best make for "late PIE". How this ties into "kurganization" of the Corded Ware horizon is anyone's guess, and a problem to be (controversially) debated within the Kurgan framework. The point is that the "Kurgan model" is a general framework (the chalcolithic steppe cultures somehow correspond to PIE) actively and controversially debated within academia, not some idea once thrown up by a single scholar (Gimbutas) and to be accepted or rejected on a yes or no basis. Your focus on Gimbutas, Dave, will at best make for a "history of the theory" section, while a general overview will need to represent the topic in general. This is important, because Gimbutas taken on her own is far more fringy than the field seen as a whole. Gimbutas was (or became) ideologically motivated, for once not by nationalism, but by second wave feminism, and her focus on matrilineality vs. patriarchy is excessive. She is criticized for this (Anthony p. 310), and the Kurgan model can only be considered "mainstream" if we take it to be those parts of Gimbutas' original suggestion that were taken up and elaborated by other archaeologists (notably Mallory). While Gimbutas alone must be taken as skewed, in her later years even fringy, it is remarkable that her ideas were considered perfectly valid by author that didn't share her ideological bias at all. dab (𒁳) 12:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Mallory even reserved the term "Kurgan theory" exclusively to Gimbutas, and used "Steppe theory" instead to refer to the revised version. None of this is reflected in the current article, that instead adheres strictly to Gimbutas obsolete version.Rokus01 (talk) 22:40, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2008_July_25#Broad_homeland_hypothesis

This AfD is up for review. Comments would be appreciated. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:47, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Obsolete?

So in 1989, Mallory accounted that the Kurgan hypothesis was being "accepted by many archaeologists and linguists, in part or total", including Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Larousse, while in 1991, one Dutch study suggests that archeological evidence might question it. That's what I'd call a rather short period of acception! Also, Schmoeckel 1999, again, finds that the Kurgan hypothesis has been pratically evidenced by international archeological and linguistic research as correct for decades, and doesn't even find that one Dutch study mentionable. --Tlatosmd 11:58, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

the "Dutch study" is indeed of questionable relevance. The Kurgan hypothesis remains the mainstream opinion of IE origins. There is simply no contestant hypothesis that would fit the facts nearly as well. --dab (𒁳) 12:02, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Looks like somebody has started an amateur edit war. Now he even has about the same paragraph twice in the section, both times crediting this one Dutch study even with exactly the same sentence to it, making it look like two different aspects and two different sources while it's actually just one. This phenomenon of copied paragraph twice even happens again under the next heading. Also, his English looks rather puzzling to me: "Archaeologists are generally more critical of the Kurgan than Indo-Europeanists." Archeologists are critical of burial mounds? --Tlatosmd 12:21, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Tried to clean those things up. --Tlatosmd 12:44, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

the article has seen much amateurish tampering and needs to be reviewed in its entirety. Sections like "Criticisms and qualifications" and "Renfrew's genetic misunderstanding" need to be transformed into something presentable. --dab (𒁳) 13:52, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

A short period of acceptance, to scholars or to Wikipedians? If this interest you, you could make a comparision to the "general acceptance" of the alleged Iberian origin of the Bell Beaker: this view was first contested in 1970, proposing a Dutch (and above all, a Corded Ware) origin, and still we have to wait for the first inventory of the full impact of this "detail", including the consequences to the dispersion of Kentum languages. Back to the Kurgans: Were it says the IE identity of Corded Ware has ever been seriously contested? Having sufficient archeological data since the nineties, it is not necessary anymore to assume an Ucranian "black box" to explain the advent of Indo European langages in Northern and the whole of Western Europe. However, if you wish you could keep the Kurgan corpse breathing to have some alternative for Greek and Indo Iranian languages (even though Catacomb culture has already been proposed to be the real missing link). The "Dutch conclusions" don't pretend to reach so far to the east, so please apply the same standard for cultures in the west untouched by the Steppes. As a rule of thumb, change needs a generation to become accepted. However, this time I can already see the Oxford University Press adopting the same view of the Dutch "study" I put forward in this article - a university standard and college textbook by the way. I deduce this information should have its English translations as well, so please don't come up now with old books to prove otherwise. By the way: Don't forget the current Britannica is a reprint from 1985, well before the nineties. I esteem the Oxford University Press, being more recent, is more reliable. Rokus01 19:40, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

In any such case, it would be far more reasonable to quote the more reliable Oxford Press source than that old, remote, and independent Dutch source you're quoting. Also note that even newer sources vastly detailing international research such as Schmoeckel 1999 don't find your one Dutch source mentionable. And finally, those archeological evidences you're resorting to are nothing but glottochronology, i. e. a mean far from being accepted for identifying cultures if used solitarily (see footnote 7 in the article). --Tlatosmd 01:35, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Why? You act as if I declared the Kurgan theory obsolete by quoting a Dutch source. You are wrong. Just read better, I wrote: This has led some archaeologists to declare the Kurgan hypothesis "obsolete". Reference to this source is for complying to sound WP:VERIFY policy. And yes, only nowadays I am aware of similar developments in thought at a more international scale. Indeed, the article needs an update, be grateful at least I made some effort to include valid information that turned out to be relevant and widely accepted. By the way, don't make the mistake to blame me for some of my contributions being edited by others and nowadays all out of context. Ah, you call a book written in 1991 old? You'd better call the 50s books of Marija Gimbutas obsolete cave art. Rokus01 23:40, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I should have known Rokus is behind the fringification of this article. Rokus is great in juggling sources around until they arrange themselves in support of his weird obliquely racialized "Netherlands-centric" archaeology. I still don't know what he is actually trying to acheive, but I am sure that if we leave the article to him, it will turn out that the Proto-Indo-Europeans are in fact from the Netherlands (which, as you probably weren't aware, are also the cradle of civilization, and, needless to say, also the origin of the nordic race). dab (𒁳) 08:53, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Most of the information from recent research would contradict your obsolete books from poor libraries and flea markets. Your definition of "fringe" information seems to include new developments that can be verified. This is conservatism (and conservative POV) and has nothing to do with being intellectual. Wonder what you want to achieve, for I don't think this includes making friends. Rokus01 23:40, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The Netherlands as the Indo-European Urheimat and even the very cradle of civilization, eh? As the Netherlands have been settled by Germanic tribes probably at least since the Early Middle Ages, I guess what we have here is nothing but another occurance of nationalist pseudo-scientific Nordic theory as common since the late 1800s. Rokus, that's as scientific as flying Vril disks that Hitler used to escape from burning Berlin. --Tlatosmd 14:13, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

"poor libraries", eh? "new developments" in underground racialism, I get it. --dab (𒁳) 11:46, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

New developments that imply smothering of acquired knowledge and passing over unresolved arguments are even worse. Just consider yourselves obsolete. Rokus01 21:06, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

"New developments"? The Nordic Theory you're trying to push is about 150 years old! --Tlatosmd 06:14, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

we should still consider ourselves obsolete. Singularity is damnable lie. Educators altered your mind.. dab (𒁳) 10:38, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

The Nordic Theory article is a good example of extremism from both sides coming together like the ends of a horseshoe. Whatever the kind of "idealism" to separate racism from fascism and at the same time, to confuse definitions of racism with the concept of physical type, please stop making politics here and invest precious time in some good reading. Read before you edit, and don't bore me with your fanatism to extend the invasions of a ridiculous version of the Kurgan theory to here. You are not well informed (less about me) and you have an obsolete mindset. Rokus01 10:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

So your grasp of English is lacking to say the least, you're pushing unscientific, unverified, peer-review lacking opinions bordering racism and that are in conflict with earlier and newer respected, acclaimed sources alike, and you constantly belittle and insult your opponents. Rokus, I take it you often run into disputes like these with your fellow Wikipedians and don't even know in the slightest why people are so mean to you? --Tlatosmd 05:31, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I would never belittle truely convinced people being bold, still, those that cower away from the consequences of uttering sheer nonsense I can't consider bold, just stubborn or worse. Sorry for not being your friend, I can live with it. Good luck with your political carreer for being a populist! (Wonder when this Rokus-hating sockpuppet will be obsolete as well) Rokus01 18:55, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

can we move away from the personal niceties to the actual issues at hand here? The fact of the matter is that Rokus01 is attempting to spin this article into advocating racialist fringecruft by way of misrepresenting academic mainstream. Rokus01 is most welcome to believe Homo sapiens, human culture and perennial philosophy originated in his native Netherlands, peace to him, but not on Wikipedia. dab (𒁳) 12:33, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

The matter at hand it that there is no coincidence of Tlatosmd being a banned sockpuppet and the personal niceties that tend to surround obsolete Kurganists. The Kurgan hypothesis is just a hypothesis, no academic mainstream that resulted from facts, having as a basic assumption that anybody able to pile up a burial mount derives from the steppes and must be a member a Indo European aggressive male society that owes its success to terrorizing friendly matrilinear worshippers of the Mother Goddess. How come, to suggest this bloody nonsense is not obsolete: to presume mythological division lines between oversimplified "masculine" and "feminine" traditions, while a social change that could have caused a shift in emphasis can be discerned as easily. Nobody will deny the existence of steppe cultures, though their impact, if any, is nowadays considered cultural. Note: nowhere in the last 500 years people changed their language by cultural diffusion alone, without any sizable demic diffusion, be it from the original speakers or amalgamated groups. The basic assumptions of the Kurgan hypothesis remain without the support of observed processes that would yield to the same result. The (social) examples of Mallory are of a slightly different nature and may justify a revised article on "Steppe theory" - even though I would remain very interested in knowing why pinpointing PIE to some amalgamated steppe cultures - deprived of the migratory advances and ("attractive"?) killing sprees forwarded by Gimbutas - would be anything more than arbitrary. Rokus01 (talk) 13:33, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Hypothesis?

Why is this article named Kurgan "hypothesis" when the much less accepted PCT is called a "theory"?--Berig (talk) 11:32, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

because the more fringy the proponent, the more convinced they will be they have it spot on. The Time Cube isn't even a "theory", it is the "truth". The PCT+Indigenous-Aryans crowd likes to misrepresent the Kurgan framework as a naive theory of the same kind "superior horseman warriors rode into town and bang, everyone was under the militarist IE yoke". This is of course nonsense, and even Gimbutas never cast it in such stark terms.

The KH is in fact a "framework" allowing for a lot of variation of how and when Indo-Europeanization ("kurganization", cultural assimilation, substrate and superstrate influence) took place. The unifying feature is simply that the nucleus was in the Pontic steppe, in the Chalcolithic. Whether or when the Corded ware culture became IE is a question left open by the KH. --dab (𒁳) 11:43, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup

A lot of nonsense and misrepresentation has accumulated, to the point of making it impossible to identify the valid criticism. The "criticisms and qualifications" section has become a dump for random editorializing. I have begun to unravel things, but more work is needed. --dab (𒁳) 11:39, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Too bad PCT and OIT proponents pay more attention to this topic than to discussing their own incompatible theories together.--Berig (talk) 11:56, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

well, the basic "theory" in PCT seems to be, languages don't change, ever. All languages always been spoken exactly where they are spoken now, because this is the "easiest" assumption. Occam is weeping in his grave. If you extend this "idea" to India, you of course get Indigenous Aryans and Paleolithic Tamil, and everyone is happy. Everyone excepting Occam, historical linguists and rational scepticists, of course, but who cares about such a bunch unpatriotic Marxist bastards. --dab (𒁳) 12:08, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Why "attractive"?

Mallory (1989:185): "The Kurgan solution is attractive". Since popularity of this theory is such a hot item, I am missing in this article a section that dedicates attention to what defines its attractiveness. Since obviously the depicted oppressive-male society, nor the Scythian-inspired killing spree from the steppes, nor the inequivocal archeological support would plead for any attractiveness of the "Steppe theory", my guess is that its real attractiveness lies in the absence of nationalistic bias. At least this last point is well documented, including Mallory and Chomsky. Rokus01 (talk) 07:32, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I am unsure why the Kurgan hypothesis is so attractive. You may have heard the old adage that the extreme left wing and the extreme right wing are ultimately one and the same, or that the further left or right one goes, the more the opposite ends converge, implying that the political axis is in fact circular. I do not buy that for the most part, but the old adage certainly applies in this case. By that I mean that the Kurgan hypothesis regarding the origin and dispersal of the Indo-European languages is eerily similar to the Nazis' "Aryan Master Race" scenario.

According to the Gimbutas hypothesis, the Kurgan people were nomadic steppe warriors, who apparently imposed their language on the peaceful indigenous Europeans through conquest. Like the mythical Aryan Master Race, the Kurgans were a warrior elite. Ironically, the Nazi version of the tale was based on aggressive nationalism, fascism, and institutionalized racism, whereas Gimbutas' seems to based on radical feminism (hence my point above about the far left meeting the far right). Just goes to show that the same nonsense can be recycled by ideologues of all stripes.

To be fair, the Indo-Europeans did have a very harshly paternalistic culture, arguably more so than most of the Upper Paleolithic culture of Europe (particularly if the theory that the Venus of Willendorf is symbolic of a matriarchal deity is true), and indeed neolithic and early Bronze Age cultures such as the Minoan. However, it is easy to imagine a male-dominated culture coming out of the Near East (i.e. Anatolia). It is puzzling why Gimbutas would identify the Kurgan steppe as a source for a sexist culture (when the legendary Amazons are believed to be based on a tribe from that region), and not the Near East.

Unfortunately given Wikipedia's (lack) of scholarship standards, they declare the fanciful Kurgan hypothesis to be the most popular and successful theory (without citations), and proclaim it to be best supported by linguistics (funny but forgivable), archaeology (laughably rediculous), and genetics (again, laughably rediculous). The all-knowing Wikipedia likewise regards the much more plausible Anatolian hypothesis to be a dying fringe theory. Ironically, this article seems to be more fair and balanced than other articles on Indo-European origins. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.79.5.34 (talk) 00:03, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The Aryan Race theory was a corruption of the Indo-European Theory, and like the Kurgan Theory, the quasi-mythical Asgard of the Nazi theory was placed in the Eastern-Ukraine/Southern Russia. Ironically Germanic mythology was written by people that did not consider themselves to be "white"; they called their neighbors the "álfr" which means white, a fact which was well documented before the Nazi's began promoting their theory.

As for the PIE-sexism idea that has been circulating of almost a century now, there is very little to support it. It is documented that Hellenic sexism was learnt during the Greek Dark Ages from the Phoenicians and Egyptians, and that early Greek and isolated Greek polis allowed women equal rights; the preceding Mycenaean civilization and it's Minoan predecessor both allow women equal rights or more rights than men. In early Celtic and Germanic society (documented in the time of the Roman invasions), women owned the a great deal of the land, and many were warriors. Pictish society (in ancient Scotland) was matriarchal until the Viking and Irish invasions. According to Armenian mythology, they had female warriors and female land owners prior to the Christian era. And in the Rig Veda (arguably the most ancient PIE document) does not show strong sexism, although that did develop in later Hinduism. 68.148.123.76 (talk) 07:25, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

More significative informations to add

Hi.

Since this article is about the Kurgan hypothesis, all the genetical studies elements that support this view should be put forward.

For instance, 2004 and 2009 genetic studies point to a west eurasian origin of R1a1 (or at least many of them).

The specimen of the studies (almost exclusively associated with Y-DNA R1a1 for the 2009 study that tested the Y-DNA hgs) from South Siberia (*) and Kazakhstan (**) had almost exclusively mtDNA haplogroups of west eurasian/european origin especially during bronze age (90% of them in that time period) (as far as 1,800 BC). If we link that with the europoid phenotypes with light-colored eyes and hair and pale skin of Andronovo horizon south siberians described in the recent article of human genetics of 2009 (first http link), it does point to a west-eurasian origin of these populations. Several specimen of Kazakhstan have been tested R1a1 too, separately than the 2004 study.

That's especially meaningful since no south Asian haplogroups seem to be linked to the spread of R1a1, up to Europe.

Also meaningful is the fact that phenotypes matching the ones of south Siberia (Andronovo culture horizon - generally considered culturally Indo-iranian (and as such indo-european) are still found in the indo-european-speaking region of Asia. Some pictures there :

http://pastmist.wordpress.com/

Both south Siberia and Kazakhstan of bronze age (and region south of it too) were of this Andronovo culture, and it was later the territory of the indo-iranian-speaking Sakas (Scythians) and the population is described as being typically Europoid during bronze age (both genetically and phenotypically, and yet basically exclusively R1a1). It fits well in the Kurgan hypothesis pattern. That's a big hint.

(*) http://www.springerlink.com/content/4462755368m322k8/ - the full article gives informations about mtDNA hgs

(**) http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1691686 (Unravelling migrations in the steppe: mitochondrial DNA sequences from ancient central Asians.)

calabasas (talk) 14:40, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Call for cooperation on revisit

I once undertook a heavy edit on this article but I ran into such a storm of controversy and dispute I found it impossible, absolutely impossible, to continue. At the time the hypothesis was not being presented correctly and was not even being attributed to Maria Gimbutas, its inventor. It became obvious that feelings ran so high over this hypothesis that its enemies were not even going to allow it to be presented. Now, I urge you, is that in the spirit of objectivity? Everything I did was reverted and I received threats or implied threats from certain administrators (I will name no names, but you know who you are) that I should not continue with these edits. And yet, I was one of the few trying to work on this article who had much of any knowledge of the subject, including the administrator, who manifestly had no knowledge and yet was partisan to the hilt. I do not know what Maria did to deserve all this, I really do not. She ought at least to be presented correctly, hey? How can you call yourselves objective if you do not at least allow that? This reminds me of the time when another long-standing editor, probably also an administrator, absolutely insisted that the Spartans had a long line of queens and were matrilineal and matriarchal, based on one imperfectly known and inaccessible reference he insisted I keep. Something similar is happening here. Just how long are you going to keep up this trashy behavior? Is this an encyclopedia or what? You can check out my work if you wish; I'm not a novice. On revisting this article I note the same problems it had when I worked on it before: disorganized and few references. I had been trying to reference Gimbutas and those references were removed. How can you do that? This article is about Gimbutas' work and Gimbutas' thinking, don't you think we have to reference Gimbutas? I know there are few notes now, but most of the article has no references still! To these observations I add that the article seems to be about the hypothesis of everyone else and his brother instead of Gimbutas. I suggest we offload that stuff immediately. This is about the Kurgan hypothesis not about everyone else's hypothesis! However unless you good folks are going to cooperate it is vain to put tags on here calling for this or that and urging people to be bold when those actions and traits are immediately massively punished. What we need on this article is Gimbutas partisans not Gimbutas enemies. I never saw anyone raise such an emotional storm as she. Now, you Gimbutas enemies, don't you agree that the accused should be allowed a good defense? Why don't you get off this article and stay off it? Attack her all you like, but in some other article presenting some hypothesis with which you DO agree. Don't you agree that is the approach most consistent with our scholarship and jurisprudence? Since when are a man's enemies allowed on the jury? Well, there is a possibility I might start revisiting this article and moving it in better directions. I don't expect to be jumped. Thanks.Dave (talk) 19:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Assessing WikiProject:Archaeology tag

I'm giving this article a "B" rating on quality. The reasons I'm not nominating it yet for "Good Article" status include that there are still a few kinks left to work out, including a surprising lack of solid references, poor citation practice, and an unsettled dispute regarding the NPOV of the theory and this article's addressing of it. This article should be something that a lay-person could read and come away feeling that he or she had a fairly good foundation for understanding most of the issues regarding the controversy surrounding this subject, and it doesn't do that. However, this article does have a lot going for it, and it is generally well-organized and somewhat polished. I believe that this is an example of how some Wikipedia articles get so overworked by too many edits from different editors, some of whom disagree with one another, that it begins to lose a coherent narrative. If this article is to make it to "Good Article" status, this problem must be fixed.

I'm also giving this article a "High" priority level rating, since this actually is one of the more important topics that many non-academic laypersons would be interestedin, and it is very critical in explaining certain significant aspects of history, archaeology, sociology, human nature, and even religious and philosophical areas. Within the scope of Neolithic Archaeology, it would be difficult to find more significant subjects than this: thus the "High" rating. --Saukkomies ^talk 22:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Glottochronology

The problem with citing glottochronolgy as the basis for rejecting the Kurgan hypothesis is that few linguists nowadays regard glottochronology as a legitimate approach. If there is a significant body of scepticism about the Kurgan hypothesis it must be on other grounds. --Pfold 09:06, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Gray & Atkinson are of no evidence here. By mechanistically equating linguistic with biological change, they apply a very questionable algorithm to an even more questionable word list to arrive at a very early glottochronology - in the very sense of the word (they deny to do this by erroneously confining the term to the Swadesh method). Further the method of course bears no evidence on any homeland hypothesis. userHJJHolm

Glottochronology or not, is the lack of agricultural and horse transport technology vocabulary relevant?--John Bessa (talk) 20:18, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Citing wikipedia itself

The term is derived from kurgan (курган), a Turkic word for a tumulus or burial mound.[1] is citing.. wikipedia itself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan)! haha! Please find reliable sources, or don't cite at all. (But you can link Kurgan article if needed) --187.40.211.182 (talk) 10:01, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

that was just vandalism,[5] thanks for spotting it. --dab (𒁳) 15:09, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Something about Renfrew is not quite clear

Not to say that it should be mentioned here at all, but reading this article as a linguist only familiar with the Kurgan theory, I am having a problem understanding the way "Renfrew's linguistic timedepth" is explained here:

a) on the one hand: "This belief implies a significantly older age of the Proto-Indo-European language (ca. 9,000 years as opposed to ca. 6,000 years), and among traditional linguists finds rather less support than the Kurgan theory, on grounds of glottochronology"

b) on the other: "A study in 2003 by Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson at the University of Auckland[11], using a computer analysis based upon lexical data, favours an earlier date for Proto-Indo-European than assumed by the Kurgan model, ca. the 8th millennium consistent with Renfrew's Anatolian Urheimat. "

a) suggests that Renfrew wants to make PIE language older than is traditionally accepted, b) implies the opposite. I suppose that 9,0000 in a) corresponds to 8th millennium, and that the 6,0000 corresponds to our article.

That would suggest that the word "earlier" in b) is wrong and should be "later", but that is not an edit I would like to make myself, having no competence or knowledge concerning Renfrew. --Paul Pieniezny (talk) 08:32, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't get it. Both 9000 BP (7000 BC) and the 8th millennium BC are clearly earlier than 6000 BP (4000 BC). Why should b) say later? Oh, I think I see the problem now. The part on grounds of glottochronology is wrong. But it has already been removed. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:10, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Kurgan culture vs kurgan hypothesis

I think this article could be split into two articles, Kurgan culture and Kurgan hypothesis. The culture is well established archeologically, existed on the steppe between the Carpathians and the Baykal and could be easily connected to Indo-Iranians and the Rigveda. The hypothesis extends the culture as the history all the indoeuropean peoples, not well established archeologically. Also their time scale is quite different. 3rd–1st millenia BC for the culture and from 5th or even earlier millenium for the hypothesis. Hidaspal (talk) 16:00, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

That's really not what the current form of the article says, so I'm not sure I understand the basis of the split... AnonMoos (talk) 20:30, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

File:Haplogroup F (Y-DNA).jpg Nominated for speedy Deletion

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The image has been removed from this article.--Genie (talk) 15:00, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Pastoralism vs. agriculture

The Krell material could be somewhat misleading if not placed in the proper context (such as that only one vague indeterminate word for "grain" in general can be reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European, etc.). AnonMoos (talk) 19:39, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Walking or riding horse ?

Hello, The question of the transportation is unclear to non-expert. If I understand well, the horse taming and charriots appeared around 2500BC (Am I right ?). Then, most of the Kurgan spreading was made by foot, walking across the continent. I don't understand the field, but I think this point (Kurgan transportation mode), and its timing, should be more clearly state within the introduction. Especially given that the switch to horse riding occur in the end of the Kurgan period. Yug (talk) 07:15, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I think systematic horse-taming was probably first accomplished with rope bridles and bareback riding, at a time closer to 4000 B.C. than 2500 B.C. Then came semi-crude carts, with solid wheels made of three side-by-side planks fastened together. Chariots themselves weren't developed until a later time (and didn't spread to Europe until most of the expansion of Indo-European languages into Europe had already taken place, as far as I can tell). AnonMoos (talk) 13:08, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Dereivka (Ukraine) 4000 BC was formerly taken as the oldest evidence of horse domestication. However, it was an isolated find (stallion skull) and probably intrusive (i.e., buried in a hole and thus not belonging to the archaeological layer in which it was found). However, by 3500 BC we have evidence of widespread horse domestication throughout a 500-mile radius of Dereivka, suggesting a point of origin near Dereivka circa 4000 BC. This is discussed extensively in a wide variety of archaeology journals.

Stuart Piggott in The Earliest Wheeled Transport does a good job of summarizing the evidence for early wheeled vehicles. Oldest inconclusive evidence: TRB culture circa 4000 BC ± 500. Oldest conclusive evidence 3400 BC ±50 (also TRB). Oldest remains of actual vehicles, c. 3000 BC ±50 (Corded Ware). Up to then, only known vehicles are wagons with solid disk wheels pulled by matched pair of oxen. Two-wheeled vehicles seem to appear c. 2500 BC (e.g., Sumerian bas-relief of chariot c. 2700 BC ± 500).

The consensus seems to be that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were very early adopters of both wheeled vehicles and domesticated horses, as they (or their descendants) seem to have been responsible to transmitting them to many of the world's major civilizations. If Indo-Europeans were, if only for a few centuries (mid-4th millennium BC), among the few peoples on earth to possess both domesticated horses and wheeled vehicles, it would have given them considerable advantages. Zyxwv99 (talk) 15:32, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Contact with Uralic

I've long thought that the relationship observed between Indo-European and Uralic – regardless whether it is due to contact, genetic relationship (common descent), or both – is one of the biggest points in favour of Kurgan, and against Anatolia: In the Anatolian homeland scenario the relationship to Uralic is only explainable with heavy recurrence to the "secondary Kurgan" dodge, which dilutes one of the main strengths of the Anatolian hypothesis, namely its straightforward connection of the expansion of agriculture and Indo-European in Europe. The Kurgan hypothesis fits excellently in with the facts. That said, it also happens to fit in excellently with some less clear possibly areal-typological relationships with the indigenous languages of the Caucasus. (While the precise location of the Uralic homeland is contested, there is a universal consensus that its origins have to be sought somewhere in Northern Eurasia, in a continental, cool temperate climate: clearly far north of the Caucasus in any case.) Has the point of the northern rather than southern contacts of Indo-European not been made in the literature? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:30, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Feel free to add a source making that point if you do find one, otherwise our hypothesizing here is pretty useless! Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 01:15, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Jaakko Häkkinen does make that point here, but the source is unfortunately self-published.

By the way, I might note that thanks to Renfrew's revision of his hypothesis, at least the identification of the Kurgan horizon with Indo-European languages of some kind can now be considered uncontroversial. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:52, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Need cite for proto-chariot dating

The article seems largely fair and correct, but I question the early date of "early two-wheeled proto-chariots" in the Timeline. A cite is needed for this. (But I didn't know how to create a "Need cite" tag.) Septimus.stevens (talk) 01:35, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Use {{cn}}. I've added that. Dougweller (talk) 14:04, 8 April 2013 (UTC)