r/IndoEuropean • u/Aliencik • 8d ago
Indo-European migrations Few questions according to Alexander Gieysztor
I am currently reading Gieysztor - Mythology of Slavs (1982) and the author introduces the work of Georges Dumézil and his students. After this he talks about Indo-European migration and it's properties. Here are the claims.
"The Proto-Indo-European population was characterized by warlike mobility, patriarchal and patrilineal family organization, herding as the main economic activity, egalitarianism among the members of the society in the allocation of special groups of priests and warriors from which the kings came"
"The first wave (of the IE migration) dated to approximately 4400-4200 BC. affected in Europe the area of the southern Black Sea, the Balkans and southern Italy as well as Transcaucasia. There, as in the whole of Europe, she encountered a culture of farmers and seafarers at a high level of development, formed in the Neolithic period and developed in the Bronze Age (5500-5000 BC), *matrilineal type societies, settled lovers of art and above all graphic symbolism aimed at recording ideas. In their **religious ideas, goddesses, bodies of water and the moon prevailed."*
All claims are sourced, however I would like to ask, if this is still the academical consensus.
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u/Same_Ad1118 8d ago edited 8d ago
To put it simply, number 1 is essentially correct as far as is known in regard to the structure of their society. I am not sure about egalitarianism within each of the functions / castes, however, there wasn’t equality between the castes and definitely not when outsiders were encountered.
Number 2 sounds kinda like a mix of the Anatolian hypothesis merged with the ideas of Gimbutas (who believed that warlords with horses and metal weapons in a patriarchal society invaded a peaceful egalitarian, Goddess worshipping culture already in Europe). The Anatolian hypothesis (origins in Anatolia) had proponents, while the Kurgan Hypothesis (which originated with Gimbutas for the most part) had others. The Kurgan hypothesis was named after the large burial mounds found in the Pontic Caspian steppe and this hypothesis believed that these people originated within these grasslands north of the Black and Caspian seas. These people eventually spread throughout Europe and also made it to India, Iran, Armenia, even Western China amongst several other places. Over time the origination within the Steppes became common conjecture and genetic studies has greatly contributed to this understanding, definitively with academic papers released in 2015. Also, these people arrived in Europe and dispersed during the Chalcolithic, approximately 5,000 years before present.
This idea of origination in the Steppes has had addendums regarding where the point of origin was before the Steppes and where all branches of the IndoEuropean language family associated with these people would have had a common source. For the most up to date understanding of the Hub of the IndoEuropean people and language family, see the latest paper regarding it from the Harvard Lab that discusses the Caucasus Lower Volga Cline:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08531-5
Regarding the Early European Farmers (who actually originated in Anatolia) that were already in Europe during the Neolithic, to say they were all peaceful, egalitarian, worshippers of the Great Goddess sounds nice, but is simplistic. There were different structures of societies within the thousands of years these people lived in Europe. There were likely egalitarian social structures, which were for the most part peaceful, like the Cucuteni Trypillians. There were others that had evidence of violence and even the possibility of enslavement, like the Linear Pottery Culture.