Customer Reviews

Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins

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The book provides an excellent overview of the linguistic issues involved in the Indo-Eurpoean problem. It also rightly claims that migratory theories are mere fantansies. When populations move they must have a reason to do so and they definitely follow some logical processes. The three models postulated by the author for spread of people and/or languages are lot more scientifc than the 19th century invasionst theories.

The author's main thesis is: the Indo-Eurpoean languages have spread all over Europe and Asia from their Urheimat (homeland) in Anatolia (Turkey). He carries his thesis well while describing the spread of languages in Europe and Scandanavia but runs into major problems when dealing with the Indo-Iranian aspect. The present reviwer disagrees with identifying Anatolia as the orginal homeland of Indo-European languages for the following reasons.

1. This is based essentially on the identifcation of the now extinct Hittite as an Indo-European language. The author basically ASSUMES that Hittite must have been spoken in Anatolia as far back as 7000 BCE. However, this assumption is cleary unfounded. The Biblical and Babylonean records , which are largely undisputed, identify Hittite people as relative new comers to the region (around 1500 BCE).

2. Hittie vocabulary has very large proportion of Non Indo-European words which indicate that it was a minor language when it arrived in Anatolia.

3. Comparitive mytholgoy has idenfied many common gods to the Indo-European people. However, the written records found in Hittite mention only one such god Inar (Vedic Indra, Greek Zeus, after Vedic Dayus Pittar)

4. Anatolian Urheimat model runs into major timeline problems with regards to South Asia. The earliest Neolithic settlement has been discovered in Mehargarh (Eastern Pakistan) dating around 6500 BCE. This is thought to be almost four times larger than its contemporary in Anatolia (Catal Hayuk). The wave model of spread of agriculture cannot acount for this fact, given the enormous distance between the two.

Few scholard will dispute the strong archeological trail of the spread of agriculture from Anatolia to Europe. However, there is no proof to equate that with the spread of languages.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND LANGUAGE is Colin Refrew's presentation for laymen of the problem of the linguistic affinity of most of the peoples of Europe and ancient Western Asia. Written by a scholar influenced by Britain's current disbelief against historical migrations, Renfrew argues that common linguistic elements spread through the ancient world not through the sudden invasion of a single people, but through the peaceful spread of agriculture out of Anatolia.

On one hand, it is nice to see a challenge to Marija Gimbutas theory, which got increasingly weird the longer she articulated it, that the Indo-Europeans were bloodthirsty patriarchal invaders who swept into matiarchal and peaceful old Europe introducing war. Renfrew, however, goes to far in the opposite direction and the work has serious problems, many of which are common to the works of Renfrew's school. The author has no problem speaking of the occupation of the Carpathian basin by the Magyars, and presumably he believes in recent Turkic migrations, but he refuses to accept migrations in pre-historical times. One of his three points against an South Russian origin is simply "It is a migrationist view." The Indo-Europeans are a people uniquely identified with horsemanship--look at the popularity horses in Greek and Germanic onomastics, and the words for "axle", "yoke", and "horse" itself are common to nearly all branches, so moving over long distances would certainly be within their reach. Yet, Renfrew asserts that there is no evidence that horsemanship was important to ancient speakers of IE languages.

Renfrew is also not a very committed historical linguist. His presentation of family trees is overly simplistic, with flat-out inaccuracies such as saying that German is descended from Gothic and all of the Slavonic languages from Old Church Slavonic. He seems to be quoting mostly from introductory handbooks of comparative IE linguistics instead of speaking from deep personal familiarity. The only authorities I would really trust to present this material are either amazing polymaths who are simultaneously excellent archaeologists and linguists, or archaeologist-linguist collaborations.

If you are interested in the fascinating question of IE origins and the various solutions which have been proposed, I'd recommend J.P. Mallory's IN SEARCH OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS, which is not perfect but does a good job of showing many viewpoints.

Renfrew suggests that the ancient history of Europe may have been much more peaceful than previously supposed, with the Indo-European languages spreading from Anatolia along with the invention of agriculture, rather than being imposed by waves of martial nomadic horsemen from the steppes. But the book made me realize how little we know for sure about these ancient populations -- Renfrew's theories (like those of his colleagues) seem to be largely speculation on the basis of the few physical and linguistic remnants that survive.

Colin Renfrew takes a long time getting to the point here, his point being IE languages could have spread simply as agriculture did so. His points are not compelling. He doesn't do the linguistic footwork necessary to show an origin from the Anatolian plateau. He excludes the Balts entirely from his map of primitive Indo-European peoples. Are we to believe Latvian sprang from the Greek? He DOESN'T do any tracing of crops, much less provide genetic evidence of crop dispersals. The two god things he does get around to actually talking about here: enough of the endless Scythian-Cimmerian-Avar displacements and the almost de rigeur academic nonsense of postulating proto-idioms and then drawing on those fictions for archeological context. He puts the endless calculations of, say, Marija Gimbutas, into a reasonable perspective without demeaning her work. He also convinced me the Scythian semi-nomadic way-of-life spread EAST, not west, which provides some interesting comparisons for me at least between Scythian metal-work and that of modern Tibet, although perhaps I read too much into coincidences of design. An interesting read, but only if you're already interested in Indo-European origins. I really wondered why he didn't mention, amidst all the other criticisms of the historical concept of the Aryans, that the name most certainly means farmer, or more precisely, the guy who ploughs. Geoffrey Vasiliauskas

Judging from the reviews posted so far, this appears to be a topic over which there is heated disagreement. Notwithstanding the assertions that Professor Renfew's rejection of mass migrations is nothing more than a political agenda, however, there really do seem to be reasons to doubt whether the spread of Indo-European into Europe was the result of a late immigration.

The latest genetic evidence of which I am aware includes studies both of the Y chromosome and of mitochondrial DNA, and both seem to agree in the broad picture that they paint: that modern Europeans are in the main a combination of three groups:

(1) an early paleolithic population that separated into a eastern and a western branch during the last ice age

(2) a later paleolithic group that settled in central Europe

(3) neolithic farmers, late mimmigrants from the Middle East, who spread out along the Mediterranean coast

Archaeologically, there seems to have been only one movement of importance that could plausibly be associated with the spread of Indo-European: the movement of the Danubian farmers that seems to correspond to the genetic population (2) plus smaller elements of population (3) from whom they presumably learned agriculture. Indo-European words seem to indicate a level of culture that would be appropriate for the Danubian farmers: the knowledge of grain and grape crops, livestock, metal, wheeled vehicles, and forts, but not cities, weights and measures, irrigation, or an advanced mathematical system. The Indo-European number seven, for example, is apparently borrowed from Semitic, which argues against mathematical sophistication. Judging from the apparent lack of words for them, the early Indo-Europeans do not seem to have been aware of any non-European animals except leopards, which were abundant in neighboring Anatolia. Claims have been made that they had words for monkey, elephant, and even snow leopard, buth they seem to be doubtful: the claimed words for monkey, for example, are almost certainly borrowed from Semitic.

Profressor Renfew of course advocates an Anatolian rather than a European origin for Indo-European, and it is harder to comment on specifically that aspect of his thesis. Indo-European apparently did not, as he notes, have a word for olive, nor, one might add, for fig, pomegranate, or antelope, as one might expect from a group originating in Anatolia, but it seems impossible to rule it out. Perhaps the Danubian farmers got not merely their knowledge of farming, but their language as well, from immigrants.

A recent edition of "British Archaeology" noted that the ideological prejudice against the idea of population movements among British archaeologists had gotten to the point where some postgraduate student would soon come up with a paper 'proving' that the first humans in Britain weren't immigrants at all, but purely indigenous, symbolically transformed reindeer.

Renfew is already well along that road; in this volume he tortures (and/or massively ignores) two centuries of linguistic research in an attempt to argue that as soon as no literate observers are present the basic mechanisms of historical change are completely different.

This fairy-tale of peaceful farmers who, once there, never move, and of languages which remain perfectly static for 3000 years, is a stain on the reputation of a notable scholar.

He should reconcile himself to the notion that people have feet -- and note that you can walk from Denmark to Greece in a summer.

Colin Renfrew's hypothesis that the spread and development of Indo European languages had more to do with static, less-migratory population groups than military conquest is one that has been tossed about for some time now in linguistic and anthropological circles. I found Renfrew's theories interesting, but I wonder how much of it is reactionary? Anthro-linguistic theory up until the 1940's was dominated by varying degrees of both racism and xenophobia - hence the preoccupation with locating a linguistic Urheimat or wellspring from which Indo-European language developed. Scholars from recent generations have undoubtedly found themselves in the uncomfortable position of sorting through volumes of past linguistic research peppered with references to "Aryans" and "High/Low cultures." Quite simply, past anthropological theory up until the time of Franz Boas held that culture was a byproduct of race. This theory was pushed to its logical extreme in National Socialist Germany. The knee-jerk reaction of post WW2 anthropologists and linguists seems to have been to run in the absolute opposite direction. While this shift in theory holds a great deal of validity, it would seem that a tremendous amount of research has been disregarded. Colin Renfrew in this work passionately and consistently attacks and seeks to refute the findings of many past scholars. In the abstract some of his criticisms are well founded, but after completing the book I felt the ease with which he junks past research clouded his overall thesis. That said, the book is still well written and interesting and belongs on the reading list of anyone interested in the embryonic formation of Indo-European languages

For those who prefer their IE ancestors waving bloody battle-axes as they horse across Eurasia, instead of pushing plows and herding cows, this book is not congenial reading. Renfrew identifies the "wave of advance" of agriculture into Central Europe from Asia Minor as the foundational event in the spread of IE languages. This puts the time of origin back beyond 4000 bce, possibly even to 7000 bce. The battle-ax gang was a later development, an offshoot, dating to around 2600 bce. As Renfew points out, pastoral nomadism requires the pre-existance of more settled agriculture.

Some of what Renfrew has to say is a reaction against those who imagine prehistory as a sort of Conan the Barbarian playground, full of tribal migrations and thrusts. It is possible to support Renfrew's ideas in the main, without denying that various warlike surges took place. The question is, do we attribute the root of the languages we speak to the transient nomads, or to the people who hung on, before and after?

There is more to this book than this one issue, but this seems to be the hot one as far as some other reviewers are concerned.

renfrew's book appears to try to prove that there were no mass migrations into europe that carried the indo-european languages into this continent, and it appears that he is altogether uncomfortable with the idea of mass migrations altogether. well, the migrations of celts and germans were facts that were recorded by greek and roman observers, and they were movements of whole populations, not just fighting men, so if you find it uncomfortable to admit that mass migrations took place, too bad. better documented and more recent examples are the movements of slavs and turks during the last two millennia. so migrations are facts.

the second fact that renfrew appears to overlook is that the indo-european languages are too similar to one another to have differentiated at the time when farming spread from anatolia to europe.

the third fact he appears to overlook is one also found in biology and is hence relevant (language, after all, is a behavioural phenomenon of humans, who are biologically speaking mammals): you derive the species from the territory of its genus, and the most likely candidate for the territory of the genus is the area with the greatest linguistic diversity, and this in this case is eastern europe with celtic, germanic, slavic, baltic, a bit further south italic, illyrian, dacian and proto-greek. armenian is also originally a balkan-type language, so you really have hittite, tokharian and indo-iranian that cannot be shown to derive from that area. you do not have that diversity reported for anatolia.

there are other points, too, but these are the most salient i can think of. it appears to be a tortured attempt to prove that 1) there were no bloody mass-migrations into europe (what were all these tombs containing iron weapons, then?) and 2) IE originated and spread from, anatolia. in my opinion it fails in both, but thanks dr renfrew again, it is a very provocative book.

Since the mid-nineteenth century it has been recognised that most languages can be grouped together with others based on their common roots. One of these groups is that of the indo-european languages (which include the germanic, romance, celtic, slavic, baltic, greek and indo-iranian languages). At one time the area in which these related languages were spoken stretched from the Atlantic to the Far East and from Scandinavia to the Indian sub-continent. Most archaeologists and linguists have suggested: a) that the origin of the indo-european languages lies within the relatively recent past, most probably within the steppes of southern Russia; and b) that the subsequent expansion of the language group was the effect of waves of invading groups stemming from that area. In this challenging and fascinating book, Professor Renfrew suggests that the time-depth of the spread and development of these languages coincided with the spread of agriculture from its middle eastern (e.g. in this case anatolian) origins. He also presents models for the spread of these languages which are intuitively satifying in that they do not require great hordes of people wandering around europe for no particular reason. If you are interested in the origins of the indo-european languages (including english, of course) this is a great place to start.