The Anatolian hypothesis, also known as the Anatolian theory or the sedentary farmer theory, first developed by
British
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Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
archaeologist
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
Colin Renfrew
Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, (born 25 July 1937) is a British archaeologist, paleolinguist and Conservative peer noted for his work on radiocarbon dating, the prehistory of languages, archaeogenetics, neuroarchaeology, ...
in 1987, proposes that the dispersal of
Proto-Indo-Europeans originated in
Neolithic Anatolia. It is the main competitor to the
Kurgan hypothesis
The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory, Kurgan model, or steppe theory) is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and par ...
, or steppe theory, which enjoys more academic favor.
Description
The Anatolian hypothesis suggests that the speakers of
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) lived in
Anatolia during the
Neolithic era. It associates the distribution of historical
Indo-European languages with the expansion during the
Neolithic Revolution of the 7th and the 6th millennia BC.
The hypothesis states that Indo-European languages began to spread peacefully, by
demic diffusion
Demic diffusion, as opposed to trans-cultural diffusion, is a demographic term referring to a migratory model, developed by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, of population diffusion into and across an area that had been previously uninhabited by that gro ...
, into Europe from
Asia Minor
Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...
from around 7000 BC with the
Neolithic advance of farming (''wave of advance''). Accordingly, most inhabitants of
Neolithic Europe would have spoken Indo-European languages, and later migrations would have replaced the Indo-European varieties with other Indo-European varieties.
The expansion of agriculture from the
Middle East would have diffused three language families:
Indo-European languages toward Europe,
Dravidian languages toward Pakistan and India, and
Afroasiatic languages
The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...
toward the
Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. ...
and
North Africa. Reacting to criticism, Renfrew revised his proposal to the effect of taking a pronounced Indo-Hittite position. Renfrew's revised views place only
Pre-Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...
in the 7th millennium BC in Anatolia, proposing as the homeland of Proto-Indo-European proper the
Balkans around 5000 BC, which he explicitly identified as the "
Old European culture
Old Europe is a term coined by the Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas to describe what she perceived as a relatively homogeneous pre-Indo-European Neolithic and Copper Age cultural horizon or civilisation in Southeastern Europe and part o ...
", proposed by
Marija Gimbutas. He thus still locates the original source of the Indo-European languages in Anatolia around 7000 BC.
Reconstructions of a Bronze Age PIE society, based on vocabulary items like "wheel", do not necessarily hold for the Anatolian branch, which may have separated at an early stage, prior to the invention of wheeled vehicles.
According to Renfrew (2004), the spread of Indo-European proceeded in the following steps:
*Around 6500 BC: Pre-Proto-Indo-European, in Anatolia, splits into Anatolian and Archaic Proto-Indo-European, the language of the Pre-Proto-Indo-European farmers who migrate to Europe in the initial farming dispersal. Archaic Proto-Indo-European languages occur in the Balkans (
Starčevo
Starčevo () is a town located in the Pančevo municipality, in the South Banat District of Serbia. It is situated in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. The town has a Serb ethnic majority and its population is 7,473 people ( 2011 census).
The ...
–
Körös culture), in the Danube valley (
Linear Pottery culture
The Linear Pottery culture (LBK) is a major archaeological horizon of the European Neolithic period, flourishing . Derived from the German ''Linearbandkeramik'', it is also known as the Linear Band Ware, Linear Ware, Linear Ceramics or Inc ...
), and possibly in the Bug-Dniestr area (Eastern Linear pottery culture).
*Around 5000 BC: Archaic Proto-Indo-European splits into Northwestern Indo-European (the ancestor of
Italic,
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
*Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Foo ...
, and
Germanic), in the Danube valley, Balkan Proto-Indo-European (corresponding to Gimbutas'
Old European culture) and Early Steppe Proto-Indo-European (the ancestor of Tocharian).
The main strength of the farming hypothesis lies in its linking of the spread of Indo-European languages with an archaeologically-known event, the spread of farming, which scholars often assume involved significant population shifts.
Bayesian analysis
Research published in 2003 of "87 languages with 2,449 lexical items" by
Russell Gray and
Quentin Atkinson
Quentin is a French male given name from the Latin first name ''Quintinus'', diminutive form of '' Quintus'', that means "the fifth". Albert Dauzat, ''Noms et prénoms de France'', Librairie Larousse 1980, édition revue et commentée par Marie- ...
found an age range for the "initial Indo-European divergence" of 7800 to 9800 years, which was found to be consistent with the Anatolian hypothesis.
[.] Using
stochastic models to evaluate the presence or absence of different words across Indo-European, concluded that the origin of Indo-European goes back about 8500 years, the first split being that of
Hittite from the rest (
Indo-Hittite hypothesis).
In 2006, the authors of the paper responded to their critics. In 2011, the authors and S. Greenhill found that two different datasets were also consistent with their theory. An analysis by Ryder and Nicholls (2011) found support for the Anatolian hypothesis:
Bouckaert et al. (2012), including Gray and Atkinson, conducted a computerized
phylogeographic
Phylogeography is the study of the historical processes that may be responsible for the past to present geographic distributions of genealogical lineages. This is accomplished by considering the geographic distribution of individuals in light of ge ...
study, using methods drawn from the
modeling of the spatial diffusion of infectious diseases; it also showed strong support for the Anatolian hypothesis
despite having undergone corrections and revisions. Colin Renfrew commented on this study, stating that "
nally we have a clear spatial picture."
Criticism
Bayesian analysis
Bayesian analysis
Bayesian inference is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to update the probability for a hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available. Bayesian inference is an important technique in statistics, and e ...
has been criticized on account of its inferring the lifespan of a language from that of some of its words; the idiosyncratic outcome of, for example, the
Albanian language
Albanian (Endonym and exonym, endonym: or ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language and an independent branch of that family of languages. It is spoken by the Albanians in the Balkans and by the Albanian diaspora, which is gen ...
raises doubts about the method and the data.
[.]
The linguist
Andrew Garrett, commenting on Bouckaert et al. (2012), stated, "There is bias in the underlying data that leads to an erroneous conclusion, and strong evidence that is ignored which still strongly supports the Kurgan hypothesis."
According to David Anthony, "this type of model doesn't match the complex linguistic and archaeological evidence." He added, "The study is an example of retrofitting evidence to a model, but the results of such a model are only as useful as the underlying data and assumptions."
The linguist Paul Heggarty, from the
Max Planck Institute
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* Max (dog) (1983–2013), at one time purported to be the world's oldest living dog
* Max (English Springer Spaniel), the first pet dog to win the PDSA Order of Merit (animal equivalent of OBE)
* Max (gorilla) ...
, wrote in 2014:
Chang et al. (2015) also conducted a lexicostatistical (and some glottochronological) study, which produced results different from the results produced by Gray and Atkinson. The study instead supported the
Kurgan hypothesis
The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory, Kurgan model, or steppe theory) is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and par ...
.
Dating
Piggot (1983) states that PIE contains words for technologies that make their first appearance in the archaeological record in the Late Neolithic, in some cases bordering on the early Bronze Age, some belonging to the oldest layers of PIE. The lexicon includes words relating to agriculture (dated to 7500 BC), stockbreeding (6500 BC), metallurgy (5500 BC), the plough (4500 BC), gold (4500 BC), domesticated horses (4000–3500 BC) and wheeled vehicles (4000–3400 BC). Horse breeding is thought to have originated with the
Sredny Stog culture, semi-nomadic pastoralists living in the
forest steppe zone, now in Ukraine. Wheeled vehicles are thought to have originated with
Funnelbeaker culture
The Funnel(-neck-)beaker culture, in short TRB or TBK (german: Trichter(-rand-)becherkultur, nl, Trechterbekercultuur; da, Tragtbægerkultur; ) was an archaeological culture in north-central Europe.
It developed as a technological merger of lo ...
in what is now
Poland,
Belarus and parts of Ukraine.
According to Mallory and Adams (2006), linguistic analysis shows that the Proto-Indo-European lexicon seems to include words for a range of inventions and practices related to the
Secondary Products Revolution
Andrew Sherratt's model of a secondary products revolution involved a widespread and broadly contemporaneous set of innovations in Old World farming. The use of domestic animals for primary carcass products (meat) was broadened from the 4th–3rd m ...
, which postdates the early spread of farming. On lexico-cultural dating, Proto-Indo-European cannot be earlier than 4000 BC.
According to Anthony and Ringe (2015) the main objection to the Anatolian hypothesis is that it requires an unrealistically early date. Most estimates date Proto-Indo-European between 4500 and 2500 BC, with the most probable date around 3700 BC. It is unlikely that late PIE, even after the separation of the
Anatolian branch, postdates 2500 BC, as
Proto-Indo-Iranian is usually dated to just before 2000 BC. On the other hand, it is not very likely that early PIE predates 4500 BC, as the reconstructed vocabulary strongly suggests a culture of the terminal phase of the Neolithic bordering on the early
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...
.
Linguistics
Many Indo-European languages have
cognate words meaning ''axle'': Latin , Lithuanian , Russian: , and Sanskrit: . (In some, a similar
root is used for the word ''armpit'': in Old English, in Latin, and in Sanskrit.) All of them are linked to the PIE root . The reconstructed PIE root gives rise to Old High German , Hittite , Latin , Greek ''ζυγόν'', and Sanskrit , all meaning
yoke. Words for ''wheel'' and ''cart/wagon/chariot'' take one of two common forms, thought to be linked with two PIE roots: the root "move around" is the basis of the unique derivative "wheel" which becomes (wheel) in Old Icelandic, (wheel, circle) in Old Church Slavonic, (neck) in Lithuanian, ', (wheel, circle) in Greek, / (wheel) in
Pali
Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhi ...
and
Sanskrit, and (wagon, chariot) in
Tocharian A. The root becomes (wheel) in Old High German, (wheel) in Latin, (wheel) in Lithuanian and (wagon, chariot) in Sanskrit.
Farming
The idea that farming in Western Eurasia was spread from Anatolia in a single wave has been revised. Instead, it appears to have spread in several waves by several routes, primarily from the
Levant. The trail of plant domesticates indicates an initial foray from the Levant by sea. The overland route via Anatolia seems to have been most significant in spreading farming to Southeastern Europe.
Genetics
A genetic study from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2015) favors Gimbutas's Kurgan hypothesis over Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis but "does not reveal the precise origin of PIE, nor does it clarify the impact Kurgan migrations had on different parts of Europe".
Lazaridis et al. (2016) noted on the origins of Ancestral North Indians:
[.]
However, Lazaridis et al. previously admitted being unsure "if the steppe is the ultimate source" of the Indo-European languages and believe that more data is needed.
See also
*
Armenian hypothesis
The Armenian hypothesis, also known as the Near Eastern model, is a theory of the Proto-Indo-European homeland, initially proposed by linguists Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov in the early 1980s, which suggests that the Proto-Indo-Eu ...
*
Indo-Hittite
*
Kurgan hypothesis
The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory, Kurgan model, or steppe theory) is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and par ...
*
Neolithic Europe
*
Neolithic revolution
*
Paleolithic continuity theory
The Proto-Indo-European homeland (or Indo-European homeland) was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and went on to form the proto-communities of ...
References
Sources
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Further reading
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Anatolian Hypothesis
1987 in science
1987 introductions
Prehistoric Anatolia
Ancient Anatolia
Indo-European studies
Neolithic
Historical linguistics
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...