Indo-European studies Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical pro ...

, the salmon problem or salmon argument (also known by the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

term ''Lachsargument'') is an outdated argument in favour of placing the Indo-European

urheimat In historical linguistics, the homeland or ''Urheimat'' (, from German '' ur-'' "original" and ''Heimat'', home) of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the r ...

in the

Baltic region The terms Baltic Sea Region, Baltic Rim countries (or simply the Baltic Rim), and the Baltic Sea countries/states refer to slightly different combinations of countries in the general area surrounding the Baltic Sea, mainly in Northern Europe. ...

, as opposed to the

Eurasian Steppe The Eurasian Steppe, also simply called the Great Steppe or the steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome. It stretches through Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and Tra ...

, based on the

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical e ...

etymology of the respective words for

salmon Salmon () is the common name In biology, a common name of a taxon or organism (also known as a vernacular name, English name, colloquial name, country name, popular name, or farmer's name) is a name that is based on the normal language of ...

in Germanic and

Balto-Slavic languages The Balto-Slavic languages form a branch of the Indo-European family of languages, traditionally comprising the Baltic and Slavic languages. Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European bran ...

. The word's wide distribution likely means it existed in its current form in a

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- ...

language. The reasoning went as follows: Since the term for Atlantic salmon in the Germanic, Baltic and Slavic languages could be derived from a common

root ''*laḱs-'', the urheimat of the Indo-Europeans must be where both the languages and the object it describes can be found: Northern-Central Europe. The argument was first put forward by German philologist Otto Schrader in 1883. The argument was subject to continued scholarly debate throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in German academia. In 1953, German indologist

Paul Thieme Paul Thieme (; 18 March 1905 – 24 April 2001) was a German indologist and scholar of Vedic Sanskrit. In 1988 he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for "he added immensely to our knowledge of Vedic and other classical Indian lite ...

submitted that the descendants of ''*laḱs-'' found in the Caucasus described the

brown trout The brown trout (''Salmo trutta'') is a European species of salmonid fish that has been widely introduced into suitable environments globally. It includes purely freshwater populations, referred to as the riverine ecotype, ''Salmo trutta'' morp ...

(''Salmo trutta'') rather than the Atlantic salmon (''Salmo salar''). American philologist

George Sherman Lane George Sherman Lane (28 September 1902 in Wayne County, Iowa – 18 September 1981 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina) was an American linguist. His research focus was the Tocharian language. Life Lane began his studies in 1922 at the University o ...

concurred in a 1970 conference paper: "In my opinion, the name in question probably did refer originally not to the ''

Salmo salar The Atlantic salmon (''Salmo salar'') is a species of ray-finned fish in the family Salmonidae. It is the third largest of the Salmonidae, behind Siberian taimen and Pacific Chinook salmon, growing up to a meter in length. Atlantic salmon are ...

'' at all, but rather to the '' Salmo trutta caspius'' of the northwest

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia (country), Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range ...

region." That lent support 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 ...

References

Indo-European linguistics Indo-European studies Origin hypotheses of ethnic groups Salmon 1883 in science 1883 introductions {{ie-lang-stub

See also

References