Everything about Urheimat totally explained
Urheimat (
German:
ur- original,
ancient;
Heimat home,
homeland) is a
linguistic term denoting the original homeland of the speakers of a
proto-language. Since many peoples tend to wander and spread, there's no single Urheimat, that is, there's an
Indo-European Urheimat which is different from the
Germanic or
Romance Urheimats. If the proto-language was spoken in historical times, the location of the Urheimat is typically undisputed, such as the
Roman Empire in the case of the Romance languages. If the proto-language is unattested, however, its existence, and by consequence the existence and exact location of its Urheimat, may always be of a hypothetical nature.
Indo-European homeland
After this manner, scholars have tried to identify the homeland of the
Proto-Indo-European language, to which the term Urheimat is most frequently applied. Possibly relevant geographical indicators are common words for "
beech" and "
salmon" (while there's no common word for 'lion', for example—the fact so many European words for "lion" are similar-looking
cognates is due to more recent
borrowings). Many hypotheses for an Urheimat have been proposed, and said: “One doesn't ask ‘where is the Indo-European homeland?’ but rather ‘where do they put it now?’ ”
states that current discussion of the Indo-European homeland problem is largely confined to four basic models, with variations; these are, in chronological order:
Other, less widely accepted models include the
Armenian hypothesis (suggested by Soviet scholars in the 1980s), the
Paleolithic Continuity Theory (suggested by Italian "paleolinguist"
Mario Alinei in the 1990s), and the
Out of India theory (historically suggested by
Friedrich Schlegel).
Indo-Iranian homeland
The
Proto-Indo-Iranians are widely identified with the bearers of the
Andronovo horizon of the late
3rd and early
2nd millennia BC.
Balto-Slavic homeland
The
Balto-Slavic homeland largely corresponds to the historical distribution of Baltic and Slavic,
Proto-Baltic likely emerging in the eastern parts of the
Corded Ware horizon.
The
Slavic homeland likely corresponds to the distribution of the oldest recognisably
Slavic hydronyms, found in northern and western
Ukraine and southern
Belarus.
Balkans dialects
The history of the
Daco-Thracian/
Thraco-Illyrian dialects of the Balkans is obscure. The
Phrygian,
Macedonian and
Greek proto-languages likely also originate in the Balkans.
Proto-Armenian may also be Balkans (Greco-Phrygian) derived, or at least strongly influenced by a Phrygian substrate. The Phrygian influence on (pre-)Proto-Armenian would date to circa the 7th century BC, in the context of the declining kingdom of
Urartu.
Centum dialects
Celtic homeland
The
Proto-Celtic homeland is usually located in the Early Iron Age
Hallstatt culture of northern
Austria.
There is a broad consensus that the center of the
La Tène culture lay on the northwest edges of the Hallstatt culture. Pre La Tène (6th to 5th century BC) Celtic expansions reached
Great Britain (
Insular Celtic) and
Gaul. La Tène groups expanded in the 4th century BC to
Hispania, the
Po Valley, the
Balkans, and even as far as
Galatia in
Asia Minor, in the course of several major migrations.
Germanic homeland
Pre-Germanic cultures were the bearers of the
Nordic Bronze Age.
Proto-Germanic proper likely developed in the
Jastorf culture of the
Pre-Roman Iron Age.
Italic homeland
Candidates for the first introduction of
Proto-Italic speakers to Italy are the
Terramare culture (1500 BC) or the
Villanovan culture (1100 BC), although the latter is now usually identified with the non-Italic (indeed, non-Indo-European)
Etruscan civilisation. Both are derived from or strongly influenced by the
Urnfield culture and its predecessor, the
Tumulus culture of Central Europe (1600 BC), so that the latter is a likely candidate for the homeland of an
Italo-Celtic proto-language or dialect continuum.
Afro-Asiatic homeland
The more limited area part of the
Afro-Asiatic Sprachraum has limited the potential areas where the that family's Urheimat could be. Generally speaking, two proposals have been developed: that Afro-Asiatic arose in the
Semitic Urheimat (the Middle East/Southwest Asia), or in northeast Africa (generally, either between
Darfur and
Tibesti or in
Ethiopia and the other countries of the
Horn of Africa). The African hypothesis is considered to be rather more likely at the present time.
Austronesian homeland
The homeland of the
Austronesian languages is
Taiwan. On this island the deepest divisions in Austronesian are found, among the families of the native
Formosan languages. According to, the Formosan languages form nine of the ten primary branches of the Austronesian language family.
Comrie (2001:28) noted this when he wrote:
Archaeological evidence (for example, ) suggests that speakers of pre-Proto-Austronesian spread from the South Chinese mainland to Taiwan at some time around 8,000 years ago. Evidence from historical linguistics suggests that it's from this island that seafaring peoples migrated, perhaps in distinct waves separated by millennia, to the entire region encompassed by the Austronesian languages . It is believed that this migration began around 6,000 years ago . However, evidence from historical linguistics can't bridge the gap between those two periods.
Dravidian homeland
This geographical and chronological horizon of the distribution of the
Dravidian languages can correspond with an identification of
Proto-Dravidian with the unknown language of the
Indus Valley civilization, and the individual groups of Dravidian speakers would have been scattered after its collapse in the early 2nd millennium BC, a possibility that receives some support from human genetics: the frequency of
Haplogroup L (Y-DNA) in Dravidian upper and middle castes suggests that it may have been (perhaps besides J2) the original Y-haplogroup of the creators of this civilization (Sengupta et al. 2006). Various substratic influence on
Vedic Sanskrit ascribed to Dravidian lends further support to this Proto-Dravidian as the IVC language.
Asko Parpola has suggested that
Meluhha may be the
Sumerian rendition of the a native Proto-Dravidian name for the Indus Valley Civilization.
However this is disputed and the
Indus valley script is yet to be conclusively deciphered.
Harvard Indologist
Michael Witzel is critical of an IVC Dravidian homeland. In the essay "Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan", Witzel says "As we can no longer reckon with Dravidian influence on the early RV, this means that the language of the pre-Rigvedic Indus civilization, at least in the
Panjab, was of (Para-)
Austro-Asiatic nature."
Finno-Ugric homeland
The
Finno-Ugric homeland can't be located with certainty. A likely locus is the
Comb Ceramic Culture of c.
4200 BC–c.
2000 BC. This is suggested by the high intralinguistic family diversity around the middle
Volga River where three highly distinct branches of the Uralic family,
Mordvinic,
Mari, and
Permic are located. Also reconstructed plant and animal names (including
spruce,
Siberian pine,
Siberian Fir,
Siberian larch,
brittle willow,
elm, and
hedgehog) are consistent with this localization.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Urheimat'.
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