In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth

In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth
J. P. Mallory | 1900-01-01 00:00:00 | Thames & Hudson | 288 | History
Reviews
It is a fascinating fact that most Western and some western Asiatic are based on the same ancestral tongue. Mallory discusses his linguistic theories while offering archeologic and geographic evidence to support them. He calculates that sometime between 4,000 and 6,000 B.C. a horse people, probably native to the steppe somewhere north of the Black Sea, produced a linguistic revolution destined to swallow ancestral languages from northern India, ancient Hatti [Hittite Empire] and almost all of Europe excluding only Finland and the land of the Basques. Hungary, which may have once shared a variant of the Indoeuropean tongue, was linguistically affected by later invaders especially the Huns of Attila.



Despite the fact that 'Indoeuropean' has since morphed into dozens of languages as distinct as Celtic, Russian, Greek, German, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian and Roumanian, they apparently all started as the same language affected by original languages and time. Mallory speculates on this incredible linguistic phenomenon--peaceful diffusion vs military ocnquest. I rather suspect the later. During late prehistory--before people could write of their experiences--there must have been a military juggernaut--a military and linguistic steamroller--perhaps similar to that of other Eastern invaders like the later Huns and Mongols, that radiated centifugally to conquer out vast territories. The conquerors would have left rulers and occupying nobles behind, although apparently not enough to significantly effect the ethnic composition of peoples as diverse as Indians and Norwegians. Like the Roman Empire, which occupied Gaul [now France], Spain and Italy, the Indoeuropeans left the indelible imprint of language.



If this is correct it makes us wonder how occasional peoples, like the Basques in the Pyrenees and the Finns in their taiga, could have withstood the linguistic impact of such a tidal wave.
Reviews
This book debuted in the 1980's and was probably reasonably current at the time. It explores the general questions relating to the question of who the speakers of Proto-Indo-European were, and when and where they lived. It is a generally interesting and useful book for people who are not well versed on the subject (although Mallory takes a general knowledge of phonemes for granted).



This work is a classic for which there is no simple replacement today. However, it was written over 20 years ago, and the fields involved have advanced considerably in that time. New, and better, models of how the Indo-European languages are related to eachother have been developed, and better approaches to the question of archaeological confirmation of specific Indo-European home lands have also been found. Hence while I would highly recommend the world, I must point out that it is still best suited to introducing someone to the field which would then be followed up with later study.
Reviews
Linguists define "Indo-European" as a language entity or unity from which all Indo-european languages derived. By analyzing linguistic patterns of change, scholars can "reconstruct" the language and situate it in a time period when it was a unified language. The task is then to provide this abstract language entity with a living group of people and a homeland.



The first chapters and the last ones, where the author presents the problem, geographically locates where Indo-Europeans are to be found and where he draws some conclusions, are really good. He lost me a bit in the middle, where the book acquires a "scholarly" taste (by this I do not mean difficult to understand); I mean that the author does not get carried away by his own hypothesis. He explains all the existing ones and then proceeds to present the evidence for and against each, mainly from the linguistic perspective, but also considering evidence from other areas (comparative philology, archeology, comparative mythology, etc.). For each hypothesis, evidence was found that contradicted it and I felt that no matter how many pages I read, we were as far from the "promised homeland" as in the beginning. In the end, no hypothesis is conclusive, but the one in which the contradictions could be "bridged" more easily is pesented as the most probable one. In his conclusion, the author himself kind of apologizes for having lead the reader through a lot of "cul de sacs". I myself prefer when an author writes more like fiction telling a clear and unified story at the expense of maybe drawing conlusions a bit to far. Then you can still read his opponent's book to have a more complete picture and enjoy both.



All in all, I learnt a lot from this book, for example, how do you analyze nomadic groups from an archeaological perspective if they left no "settlements"? Well, the answer is that they might have left some cemeteries or lonely graves and luckily some "gifts" for the deceased, as well as some ritual places or camps. The maps in the book are very useful.
Reviews
This book is very scholarly: it gets extremely detailed about comparative linguistics as correlated with the archaeological record. I was looking for exactly that, as I have been curious about this for many years.



Unfortunately, the book errs more in the direction of academic rigor and offers far too little as a story-telling experience. As such, while the content is truly fascinating, it get mired in details from the names of obscure archaeological sites that are not on the book's lousy maps to the particular scholars who are advancing certain points of view about a certain common word. Bottom line: it isn't very fun.



However, I learned an immense amount and am glad to I read it. The Indo-Europeans emerged in about 4000 BC, a pastoralist "people" in the Pontic Caspian area. Unlike sedentary agriculturalists, they migrated both to Europe (North and West) and South into India. They had a common vocabulary and language, a mythology with motifs that have survived to present in many cases (like divine twins), horses (a decisive advantage for warriors and nomads), and certain advanced technologies (chariots and agricultural implements and practices). These attributes enabled the Indo-Europeans to absorb an astonishing array of peoples in the areas of their migrations. Then once more sedentary, their languages became the roots of all the modern I-E languages, clearly the most commonly spoken of all the world's languages. The great contribution of this book is the merging of linguistic and archaeological observations, that is, how roots from the original I-E language correlates with objects and the landscapes they encountered.



For the curious, there are many many wonderful details. For example, the Persain language group generated quite a diaspora. In addition to the Iranians, you had the Alans (later the Ossetians), Medes, Parthains, and Scythians; they ranged from Aisa minor to Spain and N. Africa. The book follows their migrations and histories quite succinictly. It is very fun, as most of them are mentioned n classical histories but many are never differentiated other than being non-Greek. The book also traces how the Finno-Ubrian and Basque languages remained non-I-E.



I would recommend this book, but it is more for students of linguistics and/or archaeology than interested laymen.
Reviews
Great info but perhaps too many pages weighing the evidence for the exact geographic location of the original group of

people who spoke Proto-Indoeuropean. But an important basic text for understanding the issues of PIE.

Download this book!

Free Ebooks Download